RUNNER-UP: The Ministry of Presence

By John Lane, Co. Sligo

There is a fox that comes to my house.

He is small, ginger, and hopeless, with legs too long for the rest of him. I watch him in my kitchen through the old porch doors I stole years ago from a ghost estate in Leitrim, though I never lived in Leitrim. I was young then, bold, and apparently in the height of my door-stealing days.

The fox comes at night. I do not know how old he is. I have not counted the rings on his tail, or whatever way you measure a foxes age. But I know young when I see it. Young looks as if the world has already asked too much. I often wonder what he has done to end up alone.

Maybe he forgot his homework behind the old Mass Rock. Maybe he yipped back at his mother. Maybe he was simply too strange for the den he was born into. Or maybe nothing was his fault at all.

Maybe home became a place he could no longer understand. A place of teeth and silence. A place where a young fox, with only barks and yips, could not explain what had happened. So he ran, out under hedges and wet grass, closer and closer to humans.

Humans are dangerous creatures. Tall, hairless things that walk on their hind legs and keep bastard foxes on leads. But humans have food. They leave it everywhere. That is how I first met him.

He was standing in my garden eating pizza. I had bought the pizza for him.

I rang Domino’s and asked if pineapple made foxes sick. “What?” the lad said.

“Never mind,” I said. “Leave it off, just in case.”

My wife laughed when the pizza arrived. My children were raging I would not share it. But of course I did not share it.

It was the fox’s pizza.

Now he comes often. Some nights he takes the food and runs. Some nights he stays beneath the kitchen light. He never comes too close, and I respect him for that. Trust should be earned slowly, like a fox crossing a field.

I tell him he is doing well. I tell him he is a fine fox.

I tell him that whatever happened before this garden, it was not his fault.

I can say foolish things to pizza men. I can tell stories about stolen doors and Mass Rocks. But I cannot say the simple thing.

I am afraid.

Afraid of the doctor, of the kidney that has to come out, of the word cancer sitting in the room like a black dog.

So I watch the fox.

And I love him, because he keeps coming back.

Because something in him still believes there might be food at the edge of the dark. My eyes grow hot.I feel a warm hand on my shoulder. My wife says nothing. She only clicks the kettle to on.

Outside, the young fox takes another mouthful of pizza and disappears back into the dark.