3.

The boy walks his bike up a hill. In the middle of his street he sees a dead chipmunk, crushed evenly by the tires of a car. It has been flattened into a purse of fur. Around it, a red aura of gore. It makes a brown streak in the center of the lane, straight as a divider line. Ahead of him on the sidewalk he sees a live one. Only a yard away, a second chipmunk stands tensed on all fours, eyeing the boy and his bike. When it wrinkles its nose in rapid sniffs, the boy can tell that it is smelling the carcass stench, wafting in faint off the tarmac behind him. It must seem, to the chipmunk, as if the boy is its brother’s murderer. He does not know how to correct this misunderstanding, or reassure the rodent that he means it no harm. He stands silent, trying to stifle any movement that might terrify it. It flees in terror anyway. In an abrupt about-face it dashes up the sidewalk, hugging the hill’s concrete retaining wall; when it reaches a ground-level drainpipe—barely bigger than its body—it squeezes inside. The boy walks his bike up to the drainpipe. He moves slowly, so as not to startle the animal. But his wheel spokes make a sinister sound as he approaches: each bony click seems to close in on it, skeleton sound of Death’s scythe shaft tapping. When the boy reaches the drainpipe he bends to peer inside. Huddled into a ball, the chipmunk is shaking violently, its walnut-colored chest convulsing. It glares out at the boy, trapped. The rear of the pipe is backed up with gunk: mud, pine needles, dead leaves. The sight of the boy there, darkening the aperture of the drainpipe, must be a source of unbearable dread for the creature. He starts to back away, but it is too late. Inexplicably, recklessly, the chipmunk rushes forward. It reaches the edge of the pipe and leaps free, landing on the sidewalk at the boy’s feet. There it freezes, locking its eyes on his shoes, as if awaiting the killing blow. The boy is careful to stand behind the bike’s front tire. He gives the chipmunk a barrier, a zone of safety. He reassures it, by his very posture, that he means it no harm. The chipmunk cowers, catching its breath. The wheel casts a barred shadow over its body, a cage of shade in which the chipmunk trembles, frozen amid the many spokes. Indeed, the way that the tire’s shadow encloses the rodent, it looks like a phantom hamster wheel. Like the kind of toy Death would keep its pets in—all the mortals who are Death’s pets. Maybe that is why the chipmunk dares not move, the boy thinks: because it already understands the nature of this wheel. To flee from Death is just to jog in place. Spinning inside one’s dying. The boy takes the bike by the seat and rolls it back. As the front wheel withdraws, the shadow slides off its prisoner.