There’s a fox spread out like an unfinished tapestry on the road that leads to the police station. Its innards – exposed to overnight rain – are sluiced pale pink and continue a long way up the road. I change lanes to avoid its ironed-out hide that’s laid out on the tarmac.
On the passenger seat of the minivan – sitting in a layer of dust – a family-size bag of ‘flamin’ hot’ Cheetos. Michael could eat a whole bag to himself – two Cheetos at a time in his small fist while he was glued to his Gameboy – screeching at the screen and coating the buttons with dayglo-red dust that soon turned to paste.
It’s raining again when I arrive at the police station. I leave footprints of murky water in the reception area. The officer at the front desk is young; I haven’t seen him here before. He’s pale and doughy from too much time behind a desk. I tell him that an officer called me to say they’ve found a man who fits the profile of my son. He glances at the bag of Cheetos that I’ve brought in with me. Rainwater from my hair dots the tiles beneath me.
‘His name is Michael.’ I say.
‘Oh, yes. The man we have in the hospital isn’t awake yet. Homeless, I think. No ID. I have some photographs to show you. Would you like to see them?’
‘Sure,’ I say. My hands are in my pockets with the bag of Cheetos tucked under my arm.
‘It’s probably best if you sit down. Shall we go through here?’ He indicates through a side door into an interview room.
‘No need,’ I say. ‘Show me here.’
He blinks at me, then stares at his monitor as he clicks his mouse. ‘I’m sorry, the photographs are attached to an email, I just need to find them.’ His cheeks go pink. ‘I’m so sorry for the wait.’
‘It’s fine.’ I shrug. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Here we go,’ he says with a sigh. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes.’ I smile, trying to put him at ease.
He swivels the monitor towards me. ‘Ginger hair, brown eyes. The same as your son’s profile,’ he says while I look at the first photograph, at a face that’s so incorrect – the wrong skin formed over the wrong skull – he may as well be a different species.
‘No,’ I say simply. ‘It’s not him. Thanks anyway.’
The officer looks at me, his finger hovering over the mouse to show me more photos, before pulling his monitor back towards him. He clears his throat. The rain is loud on the roof.
‘I’m sorry for the disappointment,’ he says.
‘S’ok. I get a couple of these calls a year.’
I drive home with the bag of Cheetos tucked between my thighs. The rain relents. The pulp of the fox is still in the road but there is no sign of the bundle of bones and fur. I prepare myself to see it dragged – carried by vehicles – but it’s gone.
By the time I get home it’s dark and the weather has brought the ground alive. Leaves are poised with the weight of rainwater. Climbing out of the minivan, I draw my coat tightly and imagine wrapping myself in a fox fur and sealing it shut like a chrysalis.
My house squats alone in a stretch of untamed brambles that crowd in on a yard where thistles thrust themselves up through cracks in the concrete. Standing on the front doorstep, I pop open the bag of Cheetos and scatter handfuls of them across the ground. They’re luminous in the early-evening darkness – dayglo-red – and their scent is strong in the still night air.
The screeching from the foxes starts beyond the brambles as they approach. The comfort is almost painful – this old familiar comfort that returns to me. I don’t have to call to them anymore – they know. There are more tonight than ever before. They cross the thicket and they’ve grown. They surround me without getting too close. They snatch up the Cheetos two at a time. Copies of the same ginger and brown calcified or sewn together in these intransigent errors.
I used to worry that animals would take him into themselves, that he’d become a fleck in their impermanence. But look how permanent they are and how easily they returned. Can you see us here? Not a mother among children, no woman with ghosts. In the darkness we’re warm and familiar bodies, skulls and bones wearing deviations of thin husks, sharing this cosmic struggle against our own skins. Hello, again, we say.
Eleanor Walsh has a BA from the University of Chichester / Thompson Rivers University (CA), an MA from Bath Spa University in Creative Writing and a PhD from the University of Plymouth, where she researched feminist literature in Nepal. Eleanor was an Associate Editor for the travel writing journal Coldnoon Travel Poetics, where she wrote a column on South Asian literature. Her debut novella, ‘Birds with Horse Hearts’, won the Bath Flash Novella award and was nominated for a Saboteur. Find Eleanor on Twitter at @EPutali.
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash.
Vivid and compelling. Well done, Ellie.
Just Beautiful.