It was just as the sun was setting that my little brother Jack and I found the fox along the path behind our house. Jack thought it was alive at first, as if a fox would be so tame. It appeared as if it had just laid down for a nap in the sunlight. The white patches in his red fur gleamed like fresh snowfall.

“It’s dead,” I told him. “Look at his head.” Part of the skull was missing. Flies buzzed around the open wound.

“Yes,” he replied.

We stared at it. I could feel his small hand trying to escape mine.

“Looks like a bullet hit him,” I said.

“Why didn’t the hunter take him then?”

“Maybe he couldn’t find him after he shot him.”

“That’s what the dogs are for,” Jack said, matter-of-factly. He reached out to stroke the fox’s fur, but I caught his hand.

“You’ll get germs. They still have germs, rabies and other stuff.”

“He’s dead,” Jack said, but he drew his hand back and put it in his pocket.

At home that night Jack asked me if I really believed the fox died from a hunter’s bullet. He said it didn’t make sense. That most hunters rarely go hunting without dogs, and the dogs can find anything they kill. I said I didn’t know for sure.

“Maybe he died of natural causes and another animal ate part of his head,” Jack said while I was tucking him in. “Or maybe a sharp branch fell out of a tree and hit him on the head.”

“I don’t think so.” I pulled the covers up under his thin, bare arms.

“I guess,” Jack said, but he said it in that unconvinced way, the way he says something that he plans to think about for a while.

“Don’t stay up too late,” I said, but Jack didn’t answer. He had his sketchbook out and was drawing the fox.

In the morning, Jack asked if we could go back to look at it.

“Not until you eat your breakfast,” I said, although I rarely ate all of mine. We were down to oatmeal and had no brown sugar to make it seem less offensive. We forced it down one mushy bite at a time, grimacing after the third or fourth.

“When will we get more food?” Jack asked.

I didn’t answer. We had ten dollars left. The money from the government was due any day, late as usual. It was never enough.

“Ok,” Jack said, pushing his half-eaten bowl of oatmeal across the table. “Let’s go see the fox.”

The fox was still there and in worse shape than the day before. Jack took out his sketchbook and began drawing, adding the torn flesh and exposed parts of sinewy muscle and gray organs.

At dinner we picked through another bowl of oatmeal and a few mushy apples from the tree in the backyard.

“Do you want some cinnamon?” I asked.

Jack shook his head. “Do you think mama’s body looks like the fox?”

“Do you mean is it decaying?”

“Are animals tearing it apart?”

“No. She’s in a coffin deep in the ground. Animals probably can’t get to her.”

“But they could. Her coffin is wood, and what if their teeth are really sharp? They could chew through the wood and tear her apart.” His voice cracked a little, and I reached for him.

“It’s unlikely. No animal can dig that deep and tear through the coffin. Mama is fine,” I said.

“Can we visit her tomorrow? Just to make sure?”

“Yes,” I said and squeezed his hand.

After Jack went to bed, I counted the money again. Tomorrow I would buy flour and sugar. I wanted to bake Jack a cake for his birthday. Maybe buy him a new sketchbook too, if the check was at the post office.

In the morning, Jack insisted we go to our mother’s grave before walking to town.

“See?” I said, when it came into view. “Everything’s fine.”

“I guess,” he replied, walking around the grave, looking for animal tracks. “Can we go see the fox again too? Please?”

“Why? It’s probably gone now.”

“We should bury it. It’ll be safer in the ground.”

I put my hand on his head and ran my fingers through his soft blond hair.

The fox was gone. Jack stood with his hands in his pockets, looking from the ground to the sky and back again.