Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

Actual fact: you could make an entire second world out of what people throw away. The landfill is where I figured out one of my main philosophies, that everybody alive is basically in the process of trading out their old stuff for different stuff, day in day out. The idea though is to be moving up the ladder, not down, like the McCobbs were. Landfill, pawnshops, Walmart. All places for moving things one way or the other along that road. I had this nonsense idea of a comic strip with no superhero, just some item of earthly goods like a chair that gets passed downhill from one family to another until it’s a chair-shaped dirt pile. I would call it Earthly Bads.

The moral of his story was how you never know the size of hurt that’s in people’s hearts, or what they’re liable to do about it, given the chance.

What is the deal with women, somebody tell me. A day can be going to hell in a hornet’s nest, you’re fixing to lose your breakfast, but she’s still going to get her homework done.

I thought of Mr. Peg saying a man can get used to anything except hanging by the neck. Fine. I was going to see the motherfucking ocean.

Ms. Annie said all God’s children have to take a shit, but you’d never know it from the way they treat the ones that clean it up.

Everything that could be taken is gone. Mountains left with their heads blown off, rivers running black. My people are dead of trying, or headed that way, addicted as we are to keeping ourselves alive. There’s no more blood here to give, just war wounds. Madness. A world of pain, looking to be killed.

Damn April to hell, I could be done with that one. November also. Birthdays, Christmas, dogwoods and redbuds, even football season. Live long enough, and all things you ever loved can turn around to scorch you blind. The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.