Jacob and Joseph were in the guest bed. They were no longer children… yet they were. The bodies under the coverlet were long, the bodies of full-grown men, but the heads, although grotesquely swollen, were those of children. Rattlesnake poison had so bloated those heads that they had become pumpkins with Halloween faces. Their lips were black. Their foreheads, cheeks, and necks were stippled with snakebites. The eyes were sunken but hellishly alive and aware. They were grinning at me.
