Blue Racer

Walking stick in hand, my father rustles the brush, stirs up life beneath the dead leaves then pauses to poke at the underbelly of a snake, its skin stretched tight, body limp. "Blue Racer," he says. He grabs the tail as it pulses and twists to life. It slips from my father's hand like water and streaks off through the woods, under leaves over stumps a blue whip of a tail glinting in the sunlight Suddenly, it turns over and lies again, motionless. My father pulls my hand and leads me past the white scar of a snake carved into rotting growth. "If you can't go as fast as a Blue Racer," he says, "the next best thing is playing dead." The thick blue veins in my father's hands pulse and twist. My hand slips from his, and I run faster, faster, faster his voice calling to me, echoing in the trees.

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