The Fox at Third Base

The divorce had turned him into something approximating a zombie—moving through rooms he once inhabited with purpose, now just occupying space until sleep claimed him again. At forty-two, Paul found himself standing in his ex-wife's backyard at 3 AM, watching a fox drag a half-eaten pizza crust across the patio stones.

The creature paused, ears swiveling like radar dishes toward him. In the moonlight, its fur caught the silver glow, beautiful and wild and utterly indifferent to his existential crisis. Paul's own hair had started thinning at the temples right around the time his marriage began its quiet decay—funny how the body kept score even when you refused to.

"You win," he whispered to the fox. "She always liked you better anyway."

The fox vanished into the rhododendrons with its prize. Paul's thoughts drifted to the baseball diamond where he'd coached their son's Little League team three seasons running, before the sponsorship money dried up and his enthusiasm along with it. How many times had he shouted "keep your eye on the ball" while his own life blurred past him?

He should have fought harder for the house. Or maybe for something else entirely.

The screen door creaked behind him. His former brother-in-law, still living in the garage apartment, stepped out with a cigarette. "You good, man?"

Paul realized he was gripping a baseball bat he'd retrieved from the shed—for what, protection? Exercise? Some primitive assertion of territory in a life that no longer belonged to him?

"Just watching the wildlife," Paul said, setting the bat against the siding. "You know your sister saw a fox here once? Called animal control. Said it looked at her like it knew something."

"Yeah?" A long exhale of smoke. "What did it know?"

Paul laughed, the sound rusty and unused. "That we're all just pretending we know what we're doing."

The fox reappeared briefly on the fence line, watching them with those liquid eyes, before slipping away into the darkness. Some things, Paul decided, you don't get to keep. You just get to watch them leave.