Cold Comes

The hand had been going bad for days before she let herself know it. She had torn it open digging the coffee can out of the frozen garage floor with her fingers the night they ran, and she had not had the time then to do more than wrap it, and the cold and the cart handle had kept it from closing, and somewhere on the climb it had turned. She woke one morning and the whole hand was hot and swollen tight and there was a red line starting up the inside of her wrist, and she knew that line for what it was. Papa had taught her. When the red climbs the arm, the poison's found the road to your heart.

Then the storm came in and shut the door on the mountains, and she got the fever.