“I suggest you take the boy out and do something, just the two of you. While he can still walk.”
Ben Harper’s words fell like an anvil on Ed Shanly’s chest. Just a week before, Tommy had been fine, a healthy nine-year-old boy.
“Ain’t there nothin’ you can do, Doc?”
Harper shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ed. Tommy’s getting weaker by the day, but I just can’t find anything that could be causing it.”
Reverend Anson stepped out of the cabin’s back bedroom. “Tommy’s in good spirits. Wants to go fishin’.”
“Then we’ll go fishin’,” Ed said and shuffled past the preacher.
When he was gone, Anson addressed Harper. “May God help you see the way to help this child, Ben.”
“At this point, it would take a miracle, Reverend.”
“Well, then, that’s what we’ll pray for.”
And so they did.
--
“Maybe we can use that shiny bait again, Pa.”
Ed and Tommy were standing on the bank of Coon Creek, ready to wet their lines.
“Shiny bait?”
“Yep, them worms over in that holler.”
Ed followed Tommy’s pointing finger to an old oak with a deep, dark crevasse at its base. Ed walked to the tree and crouched down in front of it. He called over his shoulder to Tommy.
“Is this where you got the worms you been usin’ to fish this week?”
“Yep! Careful, though, Pa. They’ll bite your fingers!”
Ed frowned in confusion, then turned back to the tree just in time to catch a sunbeam splash across the cleft. There in the breach, a dozen baby copperheads squirmed to get out of the light.
Behind them, the mama snake’s belly slithered by, and she hissed in the darkness.
“C’mon, Tommy!” Ed whooped. “We gotta go see Dr. Harper!”
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