snake river

When she sees her son hacked and bleeding, she thinks the worst has happened. But he has escaped death, run home in the darkness. She wants to save him, washes the blood away, wraps him with torn sheets, tries to calm him. He is back on the bed of his childhood, flat. Let this not be his shroud she thinks. Let this not be. But too soon they do come. She would give anything. Take the two cows for my son. Anything. She begs, begs.They say they will take him to hospital but she knows well where he is going.