really, bloody-crusted and weepy yellow down its muzzle. Surely it was infected? And it hadn’t left, hadn’t had any water nor food as long as the man had been there; surely it would die soon. Soon, he would be able to leave, if the fox would just die. Please, he thought, I will be its witness. I will watch it die, and I will then take it out and give it a proper burial. I will mourn it. I will make a headÌone. JuÌ let it die. The man knew this was crazy. He left off looking at the fox and looked instead at the window hoping he might see feet going by, in which case, he would begin yelling again. He was sure this window was at the front of the house behind a low shrub, but had realized he’d never known for certain, and in fact wasn’t even clear about the four directions. Which way did the front of the house face? East? South? He knew he should know, but understood now that he really had no directional sense. Before, he would have sworn his home had faced east, but the light coming and going didn’t bear this out, and if the house did face east, and this was the window in the front behind the row of bushes, then shouldn’t that mean the kids and his wife would come and go in front of it on their way to and from school and jobs? Shouldn’t he see their feet? Or that of the mail carrier? FedEx? ups? My god, the kid who dropped off the NY Times, at least on Saturday and Sunday? But he couldn’t recall now what day it was, and didn’t know where his family was, but the fox was here and had never left, and it must be dying then. Mustn’t it? It hadn’t eaten. It hadn’t had water. In fact, he realized now, that in the last several hours it hadn’t gotten up again, as it had before. Before, it had rested and then gotten back up menacingly, coming close to him, backing off, snarling and hissing a little like a snake, though it didn’t sound like that at all, but not like what he’d thought a trapped fox would have sounded like, so he didn’t know what to think. But now, if his thinking was right, though he wasn’t sure it was, wasn’t sure he was even lucid anymore, he thought it had been an extra long time now, and maybe the fox was on its last legs, so to speak, and maybe, maybe he should crawl close, maybe fast, he wasn’t sure, but get to it, grab hold of it with both hands, and throttle it, and then it would be over, and he could crawl out. And yes, he would bury it, just like he’d promised in his mind. But throttling something, strangling even a dying thing is harder to do than to contemplate, and the missing eye frightened him to his core in a way he could not rationalize, and also it was a sorry living being, sorrier even than the man felt himself to be, and here they both were and wasn’t that kind of, in a strange way, miraculous? The thought of that made the man think he was now heading round a kind of bend himself, and he touched his face, which was matted and his
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