The Crossing
.
He came to a stop. The headlights of his ten
year old Toyota Camry lighting up a Jesus
fish on the rusting tailgate of an old Ford truck.
Below the low moan of an approaching
freight train, and the purr of a neon sign,
he saw a red fox, grip, and rip apart a garbage
bag with its teeth: shaking its head from side
to side to get at whatever food there was.
The high beam of an SUV reflected in his
rear-view mirror; the freight train rumbled
through - on its back - the silhouettes of
migrants and John Steinbeck.
He tried to remember the last time he saw
a fox: He was a kid. It was summer.
He had a job, mowing the lawn for a man
who had been paralyzed from the neck
down, in a car accident, and spent his days
in a hospital-type bed in a bay window
overlooking the garden. Each week, when
it was time to get paid, the man’s wife asked
if he would go in and talk with her husband
for awhile, but he always made excuses
and never did, because he was scared.
He thought about the day, that summer,
when he walked into the house and saw
the paralyzed man’s wife holding his face
in the palm of her hand and kissing the
corners of his eyes as though he had been
crying. He thought about, he and his friends
racing down a hill in upturned trashcan
lids. He thought about the tire swing that
never was. He thought about the river and
the mud of low tide. He remembered the fox.
