Flood Victim

While Arky sat leaning against the porch post, studying the raw sewage floating by, overhead a snake, coiled and ready, pondered a big mosquito that landed on the back of Arky’s neck.

Sookie, watching it all from the swing, put her knitting down in her lap and wondered out loud. “Arky, Hun, there was something in the paper this morning ‘bout the flood bringing in diseased skeeters. You think if a snake was to eat one of ‘em, it’d die from it? ”

“I reckon it would,” said Arky.

“Well then,” Sookie said, and she went back to her knitting.

Jerry H. Brown is a fiction writer living in Memphis, TN.