Scout Emerson's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The fox watched her from the far bank, ears forward, one paw lifted above the water. Scout laid out her offerings on the log: the strip of dried meat, the tin cup of brook water, the cedar sock. She held the meat out first. The fox looked at it and did not move. She set the cup on a flat stone at the water's edge. The fox looked at the cup and did not move. Scout felt the morning slip. She had brought a child's picnic to something that was not a dog and not a wild thing either. Its blue fur caught the light like it belonged to a different season. She understood then that food and scent were not the trade. The fox had come for something else, and she had not brought it. She stood up in her underclothes and stepped into the brook. The cold bit her ankles. She left the meat and the cup and the sock on the log behind her. In her hand she held the strip of cloth she had been fidgeting with, a torn piece of the hem of her nightgown, warm from her fist. She waded to the middle and knelt so the water reached her ribs. She held the cloth out on her open palm. The fox crossed. It stepped onto the water and then along it, paws barely dimpling the surface, and Scout stopped breathing. It took the cloth in its teeth. It did not slip back. It climbed onto her wet forearm, light as a folded shirt, and pressed its small skull against her collarbone. She stood slowly with the fox on her shoulder and walked out of the brook. Her offerings sat untouched on the log. She left them there and started home in her underclothes, the fox riding quiet against her neck, and she knew already she would have to hide it before her mother came back at noon.