I park my sleigh outside a trailer near the edge of the village at dusk. God sits on the steps smoking, but God’s face is hidden in the cloud.

I park my sleigh outside a trailer near the edge of the village at dusk. God sits on the porch steps smoking, but God’s face is hidden in the cloud.

“Are you the one feeding the foxes?” I ask.

“What?” God says, exhaling a big puff.

“I’m asking if you’ve been feeding the foxes. I don’t really think that’s allowed, they’re wild animals.”

“No idea,” God says.

I hear two villagers discussing God’s recent behaviour. There was a grocery list that God had apparently left in the basket after leaving the store. One of these villagers has found God’s list and tries to use the list to explain some of God’s recent mischief.

“What’s all this? Why would anyone need so many onions?”

“So have you actually seen God cutting up all these onions?”

“Well, I’ve seen people crying.”

I’ve been told that God gives hilarious advice. I try to get God’s attention at the assembly.

“God, help me out.”

“Shh, I’m trying to listen.”

“I need some help with my taxes.”

“Um, okay, sure.”

God’s hands are in God’s denim jacket pockets, and God’s face is still hidden in the cloud. Foxes mix in the assembly crowd, but no one seems to mind. The speaker goes on and on, words broken and sentences punctuated by gnarly spikes of microphone feedback. Then everything goes quiet and people and foxes begin to drift away into every corner of the village.

I watch God chasing badgers around the field. They whistle to each other. Then the badgers are chasing God.

The village is mostly trailers up on blocks. It floods. Waterlogged pine, slick and oily. The wood seethes a little, white, when squeezed. There’s a corner store. There are porches and little fires. Over at the edges, endless woods and a dirt road (all the roads here are dirt), and over at that edge, a wide shallow lake. Low silver clouds reflect on the smooth silver surface of the lake, but it’s too bright, and I can barely look at it. The place is full of animals. Dogs and cats, beavers and martens, badgers, megatherium, ravens, foxes, Irish elk, and an unfamiliar kind of small fly that doesn’t bite.

God sits on the porch. God doesn’t do much that I can see. I mean, I imagine God fills God’s days, since the hours keep coming and must be filled, even with nothing, and so God must fill the hours, too, or allow them to be filled.          

Sometimes in the early morning, God walks around the village with a green plaid sleeping bag draped over God’s shoulders like a cape. I have the impression that God must be trying to quit smoking.

The foxes come around and hang out by the doors of some people’s trailers because they think God is going to feed them, but they’re not sure where exactly God lives. And yet here God is, every day, sneaking the foxes pemmican.

God and I run and hide and chase through in the ruins with the kids in the paper masks. Between the washing of the rain and the fading by the sun, all the rainbows of paint disappeared from the ruins like the chalk from the pavements. Bone white. When God catches me, God hugs me, and we talk a little, but I keep running away. For a while I come back, just like I promised. The lost kids with the masks can’t find the pay phone. Go on and call for help, I want to say, but why call when you’re not even really afraid.

Village fires burn on day and night and keep us warm. I walk into the corner store to the sound of the old bell. There are shelves and shelves of goods, a high ceiling, a man with a face both leathery and rubbery. I take my time. God comes into the store. Nobody minds. God looks around, picks out butter, shoes, and a book. Will God read the book alone, or will God read the book to someone? What is the book? God stands at the counter where a line would form.

“Can I see that?” I ask. God just turns the book cover to face me. It’s a book about weasels, jumping and playing in the marshland. There does appear to be a story to it—not just facts.

“I want to read it, too,” I say, “after you.” God nods.

Smoke curls around the chimney. Some time has passed now without my noticing. I think at first the storekeeper is still there, but he’s not. Through the open door, I can hear the grease spit in the pan in the kitchen. I had best go be about dinner, too.

I imagine it’s God who’s been leaving me strange gifts. I found a blank postcard—the photo is of women, wrapped in blankets, in a Mexican street market—in my doorjamb; a handful of jellybeans in my mailbox; a small stack of firewood at the foot of my front steps. I have other neighbours, but God is the one I think of most as a friend. I know some of the others better, and indeed, well enough to know the presents aren’t from them. It’s a mystery, but not a complete mystery.

I try to think of nice things to do for God. I consider hiring a skywriter. Finally, I write a little story myself and slip it through God’s mail slot. It doesn’t add up to much, but it’s what there is. Happy birthday, God, whenever it is.

It rains in the village. First smoke is everywhere. The rain appears to be unending, and the lake rises. The village is wet and cold, so we all huddle under the branches of a gigantic cedar and make a fire and sing together.

Who feeds the foxes?

Who feeds the foxes?

Who feeds the foxes?

Who feeds the foxes?

Dark clouds a-risin’

Thunderbolts a-rollin’

Seek on, seeker

Come go to glory with me

And you shall wear a starry crown

Join in the band with the foxes

Who feeds the foxes?

Who feeds the foxes?

Who feeds the foxes?

Who feeds the foxes?

And the thunder gets farther and farther and farther away.

Amen.

---

Jeremy Stewart is the author of I, Daniel: An Illegitimate Reading of Jacques Derrida’s “Envois” (Peter Lang Verlag 2025), as well as poetry collections In Singing, He Composed a Song, Hidden City, and (flood basement. Stewart lives in Vancouver, Canada. He once dropped a piano off a building.