Pax

by Sara Pennypacker

In the dugout, the familiar mingled scents of leather, sweat, and stale bubble gum wrapped around him like a hug.

distrust is no match for kindness administered consistently and unmeasured, especially in creatures new to the world.

There is a disease that strikes foxes sometimes. It causes them to abandon their ways, to attack strangers. War is a human sickness like this.

Because I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing. That is peace. Eat.”

She said it meant that no matter how bad things got, we could always make ourselves new again.”

what if he was like his father, with that threatening kind of anger, the kind that was always simmering, the kind that could boil over at any time and hurt everyone in the way? The apologies afterward never healed the damage.

It hung between grief and yearning, and it welled from a deep ache for something that Pax could never divine.

Pax lay down shoulder to shoulder with the old fox, pressing tight in full company. He could offer only withness, but nothing else was asked.

It was a valuable thing, he suddenly realized, to have someone you could count on for honesty. How many times in his life had he wanted only that? How many questions had he needed an honest answer for and gotten instead, from his father, dark silence?

We all own a beast called anger. It can serve us: many good things come of anger at bad things; many unjust things are made just. But first we all have to figure out how to civilize it.”