Pax

Peter carves a small figure that looks like Pax. He then tells Vola about the feeling of merging with Pax, “how sometimes he didn’t just know what his fox was feeling, but actually felt it himself” (186). Vola tells him he’s experienced Two but not two—A Buddhist concept about nonduality. Peter asks her “Do you think that if I feel Pax living, then he’s alive” Vola says yes, and Peter is overjoyed.

He asks why she’s still living there, why it’s taken her 20 years to figure out who she is. Vola says the truth about yourself is the hardest thing to see, but Peter presses for an answer about why she doesn’t live with other people. She says she’s afraid of hurting more people. Peter says, “You don’t hurt me. […] I know, in my core” (190). This is a passage about love and instinct.

That night, Peter goes to the woods and gathers material from outside Vola’s cottage to make a stage. He builds it and tells Vola he can do the puppet show for her and then he’ll be ready to leave. Vola says tomorrow, she’ll test him: “You hike five miles, show me you can make a camp on one leg, and hike five miles back… then we’ll talk” (192).

Pax guards Runt and cleans his face and ears. Bristle lets him. They discuss the war-sick. Bristle says, “We are not safe if a single human is nearby” (196). Pax says his human is different but then remembers Peter throwing the toy soldier in the woods and then getting in the car. Pax tells Bristle “My boy is not war-sick. But he has changed. He is now false-acting” (196).