autumn requiem

‘Dead fox’ texts a friend, as I’m making dinner. ‘On the hill just outside the village. Thought you’d like to know.’ It always starts like this. I’m grateful for these calls. Dread them too. Digging a grave for a fox is not what I need to be doing tomorrow morning.

The children leave just as it’s getting light, and in the calm after the morning panic for the bus, I call the dog, run down the hill to find him. He’s been dragged to the side of the narrow lane. Frost on his fur, a thin smear of blood on his teeth. December lean and seemingly perfect. ‘I know you’ I think. He is surely the one who visits the garden? Who took a hen that burning August of ‘22. I didn’t begrudge him. I stroke his scalp, and despite the rigor his skull shifts unnaturally along lines that shouldn’t be there. On closer inspection he is as anyone would be after they had been hit by a ton of speeding metal: broken. I run back up the hill, the dog is confused. I grab the car keys, frustrated by the delay as I scrape the ice from the windscreen. I am with him again in minutes, no-one is around yet. I pick him up, heavy in death, and lay him on the tarp in the back. The blood pools.

At home I take the spade and the mattock and head to the sweet chestnut in the garden. Its where I buried the cub the year before. The soil is still soft beneath the frost, but the shale below is savage. Surely there can have been no more physical job than that of a gravedigger? He lies beside me under the tree. Winter dense fur catching the early morning sun. Red fox, red leaves, red blood, red earth. An autumn requiem. I weave shrouds for the smaller ones, but I don’t have one large enough for a fox. I line the grave with chestnut leaves. Tuck him in. It hurts to cover his face. It always does.

I don’t know if this is right. But I can’t bear to leave them. Waiting for the next tractor, the next lorry. Bodies rendered lethal to any who try to complete the natural cycles of decay. It’s a small act of care. It’s, well, perhaps something at least…