Delilah looked through her fogging windshield, resigned, pulling over with what was left of the dying motor onto the shoulder of the lonely interstate. The beat up Toyota, with its old, cracked, faux leather seats, missing volume knob on the well loved radio, and the equally old CB nailed to the dash... it had finally given its last, and left her stranded. The thick rain was a steel gray sheet across the sky, pounding the car with tinny thumps, and she lay her head on the steering wheel, dialing for road side assistance.
A solitary tear streaked Delilah's cheek, as she set down her phone in the cup holder. Its battery was low, and with the car dead, she had no way to charge it. At least she had a signal, and was grateful to whatever gods there were for that small fortune. But now she had hours to kill on this desolate interstate in the middle of nowhere, with only the occasional car or truck passing by for company, less seen and more heard plowing through the small ponds forming across the no longer dusty asphalt, the scorched, broken earth not ready for the violence the sky had seen fit to do to it.
Inexorably, Delilah's eye was drawn to the CB radio. Old, worn, but well kept and seldom used these days, a relic of her father. She knew how to use them, her father had been a fan, and he had taught her how to use the one that still sat, gathering dust now, the map full of pins faded and lonesome in the basement.
Not knowing what else to do, Delilah picked it up, strap pinched by the nail, hefting the thing. Its hard plastic, rubber, and leather surface commanding a certain air of respect, and of nostalgia she couldn't escape. Uncertain if the old thing would even work, unsure of the charge of the battery after so many years, she flicked the switch on the side; it took effort, it being heavy and resistant against accidental activation, and perhaps crusted with age. And, from somewhere deep inside, unexpectedly, she felt delight when the old lights came on, and the crackle of staticy air played from it.
Cautiously, Delilah held down the send, and spoke.
"Hello?"
She let go of the switch, and waited, but there was nothing.
"Hello? This is Delilah Mitchel. Anyone read? Over.
Again, she waited. This time, when she released the button, the static seemed muted, as if someone had picked up and was poised to speak, but the voice she expected to hear never came. Perhaps she was imagining things, maybe the rain was simply growing impossibly intense. She couldn't tell, and was disappointed.
Delilah held the CB radio back to her muzzle.
"My name is Delilah Mitchel. I am a fox, and thirty-three years old. Do you read?"
Nothing, but for that somehow expectant silence.
"I'm on the way home from the funeral of my father. Conrad Mitchel, 71. He died of cancer. It was in his lungs to start, and was treatable, but it spread to his heart."
Uncertain of why she had said that, if anyone was even really listening and she wasn't just loosing her mind, she set down the radio. Still, the silence reigned, waiting, absorbing, expectant. It gave her chills, and taken in a fit of paranoia, shut it off. Expecting relief, somehow she felt worse, disappointment welling up inside her. It felt almost like a wild animal clawing it's way up her stomach and into her throat, but in time, it settled, and she relaxed.
The rain continued to drone on, dull, gray, grating on her nerves but nevertheless calming in that strange way that rain always does, contemplating her life, her fathers life, and the radio in her hand. Swallowing, she turned it back on, the light shining. This time, that ephemeral, silent expectantness met her, and she held it to her muzzle and tired again.
"Hello, my name is Delilah Mitchel. Do you copy?"
Nothing.
"Who are you?! Why won't you answer me?!"
Again, nothing. Just... quiet.
A helpless sniff, bordering on a sob, resounded through the cab of the vehicle.
Again, Delilah shut off the CB radio.
Not long after, distant thunder awoke her from a light doze, the soporific effect of the rain on car omnipresent, but though she had been quite exhausted at the outset of the trip home and had barely slept a half hour according to her phone, she felt rested, bolstered. And the radio was still in her hand, its weight more reassuring somehow. Again, she flicked it on, and the sense of latent expectancy filled the car, the static that should be there suppressed by whomever was, listening. She was sure that someone was listening.
"My father was a smoker. That's what did it to him. Me, mom, my sister... We knew that was how he was gonna leave us; a cigarette in his hand. We begged him to quit, to think of us, the family he'd leave behind. Well, mostly mom. But we all were with her on it. But he only ever smiled, flicking the ash from whatever number cigarette he happened to be on at the time, saying, 'We all have to live our own way, and we all go out sooner or later. I choose this, because it makes me feel good.'"
The silence became more pointed, shifting as if it had become interested in what she had to say. It was a void that seemed to draw meaning away, soundless, to leave only what it wanted to convey behind. No word spoken, but left in the end, feeling as if she had been encouraged to continue. And continue she did.
"God, I miss him so much. He could've been here longer, if he'd only stopped."
Delilah paused, letting the radio droop away from her muzzle, and let out a small sob, the beginning of the grief she had held at bay, to be the rock her mother needed through the service and burial coming up from nowhere at last.
"I miss him so much... I miss you so much dad. Why did you have to go?"
"Because I had too, sweetheart..."
Delilah let the radio drop from her hand and wailed...
