Dylan had been responsible for the death of creatures before, sometimes intentionally (as with bugs and worms), sometimes by mistake (terrariums left to dry out), even squirrels that had died in the same way as this one. But this was different. In this case he had beheld the creature dying. He had finally found, while cradling that dying squirrel in his hands, the intimacy, the connection, he had so desired, but not in the way he had envisioned it. He had found another intimacy there as well, an intimacy with death, in all its mystery and finality, and yes, the sting of culpability, and the ache of remorse as well. He had just wanted to know and love something beautiful and wondrous, something that would be all his own, that would take him to the forest canopy on the wings of his imagination, and instead had found the death that casts its shadow over all lives and loves. It was a deep lesson for so young a boy.
He told me through his tear-filled eyes that this was the same squirrel he had caught a few weeks before. He had played with it for several days before letting it go. The trap had been in the same place, he pleaded. He was right. I could see the injured foot from the fox who had tried all night to get at it the last time, tearing up the grass all around the trap as he turned it over and over. But I did not say so. It was enough that the animal was dead. I kept a gentle hand on Dylan’s back and told him to find a place in the woods to put the squirrel. A place where our cat, Gandalf, would not find him, I added. This drama proved all too much for Erin, who was weeping now as well, and looking for her mommy. I imagined what Dylan was thinking as he made his way back through the fields in the dusk to the even gloomier woods beyond, searching for just the right spot in the dying light on which to lay down the body of his departed friend. I could imagine what was going through his mind as he looked at logs and boulders and patches of ferns and grass, and I knew the moment was right and necessary, and that he needed to do it alone. When he returned I told him it was time to go inside, the day having drained completely of light. The pain had sunk in and was complete. He was still sobbing. I put my arm around his shoulders. His little shoulders were so strong and hard. Ten years in the open air of northern New Hampshire, amidst the forests, streams, fields, innumerable rocks and sticks, and all the adventures that our little town and our rugged thirteen acres could afford had made them so, but they were buckling now beneath the weight of this new understanding.
Upstairs in the bright bathroom brushing teeth, I could still hear Erin crying downstairs with her mother. Karina was very loving to her younger brother, uncharacteristically hanging around in his room after teeth-brushing, not saying much, but just being his big sister in case he needed her. Dylan was still crying and saying he was not going to trap anymore when I came again into his room. I sat down on his bed and told him good night, stroking his forehead and hair, acknowledging his pain. After turning off all the lights and saying goodnight to Karina, I returned to check on Dylan, who was nearly asleep now, and catching his breath as children do when they have been crying heavily.
I lay in bed listening to the house settling down; Karina’s footfalls in her room as she prepared for bed, Gandalf the cat padding from open window to open window, ears up, alert to the night sounds from beyond the screens, and I counted breaths, my wife’s, Erin’s and Angela’s, and thought of Angela, our special child. How many seizures would she have in the night? Would I hear them? Or, like the little bird of my youth, would I awake to find that she too had passed quietly into the darkness? What will it be like for me when she dies? How will the kids handle it? Angela did seize during the night, twice, and I did hear her. And these trials and anxieties did pass as the morning came.
The morning twilight and birdsong found Dylan up and running barefoot out towards the woods while I set the breakfast table. I wondered if he was going to look for the squirrel and thought about what I would say to him upon his return. Of course, it would not be there, not because it had revived, but because something would have eaten it. Would I lie or speak the truth? I resolved that I would speak the truth. I could hear the pounding of his feet again in the grass out the window as he bounded back breathless, “Dad, the pork chop is gone!”
“Is the fox there?”
“No, he got away. The door didn’t fall.”
“Well, you’ll have to try again tonight. We have one more chop in the fridge.”
We ate breakfast together in a room soon flooded with the morning sunlight. I smiled to think that we had passed through yet another small gateway together, and that we had come out the other side closer to each other, and stronger for it. That is all that one can really ask for in this life.
A few days later I watched as Dylan (the self-appointed animal control officer in the house) carefully caught a swallow that had flown down our chimney and gotten caught in our wood-stove. (It was a bat last year.) He brought it outside in a pillowcase, took it out carefully for his cousin and sisters to see, and then released it, its wings flapping ecstatically to the waiting skies. Forty years ago a young boy stood alone in a wood after burying a small bird and made a silent wish, a wish that returned decades later to alight upon the man’s son. As the bird took to the sky, I caught a glimpse of the enchanted circle of life, in all its completeness; its power to restore that which has been lost, and heal that which has been broken.
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