The World of Foxy Patch

For weeks I was hanging out at the Takapuna Market on a long metal rack with dozens of friends and acquaintances. “Hey, zzzzip!” we called out to each other. There were the Camo bros, decked out in splotchy green and gray; the Hello Kitty kids, looking cute in pink-white-red canvas; the North Face squad, looking seriously professional; and the various Disney crews, from Aladdin to Frozen, sporting all colors of canvas. All of us with our shiny zip fasteners, our strong adjustable straps, and rows of perfect teeth that promised never to get jammed.

People came and went. Some paused and investigated.

“Pick me, pick me!” I whispered. Although it was fun to hang out, I wanted desperately to find my One True Carrier. Who would take me off the rack and bring me home forever. I wondered, Will I be the one to bring fruit and veggies from the market to a hungry family each day? Or will I be the one to lug camp stove and tent for my carrier on long hikes? Or will I get stuffed with rugby clothes and dangle studboots from my back side?

The suspense grew as the days passed and our numbers hanging out on the rack dwindled. To pass the time, the Camos and North Face packs got into friendly competitions: whose zip was raspier? Or noisier? The Disney packs had humming matches. I felt I had no talent to share.

One fine sunny day, finally, a small carrier, a boy, came and pointed right at me.

“This one,” he said, touching my patch. “I like the Fox.”

The carrier’s friend, a tall person he called Dad, unclipped me from the rack and eased my thick padded straps over the carrier’s shoulders. “Is that comfortable?”

“Yes.” The boy wiggled his shoulders.

“Looks a little big. Any others you want to try?”

“Nope.” He patted me. “It’s purr-fect.”

I sighed. Love at first sight. For both of us. Or so I thought.

Dad gave the shop owner a plastic card and a minute later said to the boy, “You can wear the backpack home if you like.”

“Yes, please,” said my new carrier. A smile lit up his face.

Away we went, so happy together. That first trip home, my inside was empty, but my heart was full. The boy wore me on his back all afternoon. And the next day, he gently stuffed me with his Batman towel and Speedo swim goggles, put a tube of sunscreen lotion in my side pouch, and brought me to Takapuna beach. Other days he slung me on his back when he cycled around with friends. I kept his snack and water bottle and rain poncho together. “Foxy,” he said, “you’re always with me on my adventures.”

I stayed inside the boy’s room that summer, quietly cheering while he played games and watched TV. Sometimes, though, the boy’s mom felt sick and gave the boy errands to do. Like groceries. I got filled up with heavy things like cartons of juice and milk and a paper receipt stuffed into my change pouch. He was careful how he packed me and no carton sprang a leak.

One day, early in the morning, the yawning boy put two new notebooks in the back pouch, a Goosebumps paperback and a square plastic container into my biggest pouch, and a water bottle in my side pouch. He boarded a yellow bus with many others like him—some who carried my friends from the Takapuna shop. “Hey, zzzzip!” we called to each other, our not-so-secret greeting.

Most days now I get loaded down with books. The boy will pull out one book and work for a long time with one page saying magic spells like “parallel and perpendicular,” and “spheres, cylinders, and pyramids.” The magic spells do not seem to work.

Then a loud chime rings and he slams the book of magic spells shut.

Slam slam slam. Books all around the room are quickly shut and put into an army of us backpacks. There are about twenty of us hanging out at the back of the classroom. Some are different colors but most are indigo blue and have mountains or triangles or strange squiggles on their brands. Only one other has a fox patch like mine, Redfox we call her, and then there’s Buttons and LaBuBu who have ornaments on them.

We live for the parade. We love getting packed up by our carriers, who sometimes cram a little too much inside. We love getting marched around the big brick palace they call school.

Well, most of us like the parade, but not Badteeth. He’s a pale blue backpack with a goofy dog logo that, even on Day One, couldn’t be properly closed. But his carrier, a girl, loved his goofy dog logo and even drew hearts and daisies all over Badteeth. She put two big safety pins to close the gaping mouth of the ruined zipper. After the first week, he disappeared.

Rumor spread among us that Badteeth had ended up in the wastebin. Oh no! Worry and sadness spread among us.

But the next week, he came back with a dramatic rescue story. “My carrier pulled me out of the wastebin and begged her mama to take me to the tailor for surgery!” And there he was: with a new row of strong teeth, and a bright blue zipper pull. It gave us chills to think we might be next.

Every so often my carrier forgets to empty me. His mum comes sniffing around me and unzips my compartments, sliding her fingers hither and thither until she pulls out a bag of moldy sandwiches. Or an orange that is no longer orange. “Ee-ew!” she cries and then unzips and unsnaps every single one of my pouches and pockets.

Muttering, she turns me upside down and inside out and gets shaking and jiggling, jiggling and shaking me until I feel all sick and jumpy, like it’s my fault that the food was left inside.

Then she throws me into the mini-typhoon—a whirling sea of water where I and some T-shirts and pairs of pants must fight for our lives as we get churned around in hot, gray water with a chemical stench. Ugh! This is the worst!

I never think I’ll survive—but I do. Three times.

My favorite days are when my carrier’s dad comes to visit the boy. Dad thinks of interesting places to go. It’s not just back and forth to the school bus and the school and the apartment. It could be to the big playground with the thrilling (but sick-making) carousel, or the long hiking path near a volcano, or the reptile house at Auckland Zoo. My carrier buzzes with excitement and sweats a lot, sometimes right through my shoulder straps. I love it when his dad pats him. Sometimes on the arm or shoulder—and sometimes even on me.

But lately the dad and mum disagree. They try to hide it from the boy, only quarrelling when he is not around. But Foxy Patch knows things aren’t right.

Did the boy know things weren't right?

One day there was a mix up. The boy and I waited a long time on the front porch. I was all packed up with their favorite sandwiches (ham for the boy, Marmite for the dad). I had a picnic blanket folded around two chilled cans of soda pop. And the sticks for a kite poking out of my side-pouches. We’d visited the kite park once, when the boy didn’t have a kite, and he’d begged his dad to try it.

It seemed like we waited outside in the hot sun forever. I could feel the cans warming up.

Two bigger boys, both carriers, too, came walking by. I recognized my buddies, Camo and North Face, from the shop rack in Takapuna market and we rustled excitedly at each other: “Hey, zzzzip!” we called out to each other.

“Hi, how’re you doing?” Camo said

“Hangin’ in there,” I said. “Haven’t lost any teeth yet, ha-ha.”

The carriers had a different kind of conversation.

Camo’s boy said to my boy: “Whatcha doin,’ kid?”

My boy said, “Can’t you tell? I’m waiting.”

North Face’s boy gave a mean laugh. “Enough lip outta you, kid.”

My buddies, the two backpacks, rustled warnings to me: “Get your carrier away! Our carriers are pretty nasty.”

I tried to pull my boy back into the house by the shoulder straps, but I was not strong enough. The big boys grabbed the kite sticks from my side-pouches. They slid them right out.

Suddenly his dad’s car appeared, and the two boys ran away, clacking the kite sticks. The boy’s scared face turned angry, and he shouted at his dad: “Where were you?”

Again and again he ranted, growing louder and more upset.

The boy grew so mad, he pulled me off his back, threw me on the ground and kicked me.

I landed with a soft thud—right on the sandwiches. The picnic blanket inside muffled the tap of the soda cans against a stray pen.

The boy kept swinging his arms at his dad. “I hate you!” snarled the boy’s red, snotty face.

His dad side-stepped him. “Whoa, whoa. Calm down, Mikey! Jeez, I’m just thirty minutes late, crazy traffic, and you have a tantrum?”

The boy tried to land a punch on his dad, but could not. So he began to pummel me.

A moment ago, I’d been worried for his safety, wondering how to protect my boy from the big boys, but now I felt his fists ramming into me. The stray pen stabbed one of the soda cans and it began to leak on the blanket. There’s not much I could do except try to keep my zippers inside their plackets, because once the zip is damaged, that’s the beginning of the end. (Unless you’re lucky like my old friend Badteeth and have found your One True Carrier.)

The beating didn’t hurt because I’m tough. I’m a rugged backpack. I can take the rough and tumble and I can take the mini-typhoons and I can take a boy’s fists.

A moment later it was over. The boy was wheezing and sweating.

His dad was ruffling his hair, saying, “There, there,” and telling him to hop in the car. His dad tossed me into the back like a sack of rubbish.

I felt the blanket, getting ever soggier from the soda, and I wanted to warn him to check my internals right away.

They ignored me and drove away.

Now I lie in the back feeling the soda soaking through me, deep into the back seat. The dad will be angry at the soggy, sticky old backpack. But he won’t put me in a mini-typhoon. I think he’ll look for a wastebin so he can get rid of me, forever, and forget this bad, sad day.

Hopefully my One True Carrier will come to my rescue then.