Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

Plus that thing of being loved automatically, Jesus on your side. Not a faucet turned on or off, like with people.

If you’re surprised a mom would discuss boyfriend hotness with a kid still learning not to pick his nose, you’ve not seen the far end of lonely.

A city is the weirdest, loneliest thing.

But a thing grows teeth once it’s put into words.

We had the moon in the window to smile on us for a minute and tell us the world was ours. Because all the adults had gone off somewhere and left everything in our hands.

It hit me pretty hard, how there’s no kind of sad in this world that will stop it turning. People will keep on wanting what they want, and you’re on your own.

But in a city, the rules do not apply. It’s like everybody is bored of all the normal things, out looking for the weirder option.

we were sad together for a while. I’ll never forget how that felt. Like not being hungry.

The thing about school you don’t realize is, everybody’s moving towards something. Even if you’re one of the screwups, you still participate. Okay kids, let’s get through this lesson, this unit, this grade.

I wanted to go home. Which was nowhere, but it’s a feeling you keep having, even after that’s no place anymore.

“You’re saying I’m lucky.” “Are you lucky, if a drunk comes at you through a stop sign and totals your vehicle?” “No.” “No, you are not. You got the wreck you didn’t ask for. And you walked out of it.”

she was a reader like Tommy but more adult ones like sci-fi and female-type shit that could scare the hair off your balls, titles alone.

I told Angus my mom being dead wasn’t something I pinned exactly on my birthday. “It’s more like this bag of gravel I’m hauling around every day of the year. If somebody else brings it up, honestly, I’m glad of it. Like just for that minute they can help me drag the gravel.”

“People,” Mr. Armstrong finally kind of yelled, like he did whenever we were ignorant in class. “Are you following me here? A war. Opposite sides. Flying both those flags at once makes no sense. It’s like rooting for the Generals and the Abingdon Falcons in the same game.” Whoah. We were all like, Crap. Because that’s unthinkable.

Another old-guy topic: how they didn’t want handouts. They grew up hardworking men and that’s what they believed in, working. Even if they were on disability now, goddammit to hell. They’re not that person. They hate that person.

With everybody else in the world being richer than us, doing all kinds of nonsense and getting away with it. It pisses you off. It makes you restless.

To start over someplace from scratch, as nobody and nothing? I hated the thought. I was only just now starting to exist.

Yes, life sucks, hungry nights and hurtful people, but compared to buried in a box, floating in a universe of nothing and never? I wouldn’t trade.

Pain is water, of a drowning kind. You waterboard awhile, come up for air, go back down. You’re afraid you’ll die, and then you’re afraid you won’t.

I said probably they were just scared he was going to put ideas in our heads. She smiled. “Imagine that. A teacher, putting ideas in kids’ heads.”

The people I know are seldom idle with their hands.

Did this baby join up with my little brother in the black hole of lost and nameless, or was he lucky enough to skip the draft pick altogether.

🤍

Fly away and don’t fall back into the slime I’m trying to crawl out of here, and also drinking on the sly, calling it my life’s blood. Too scared to leave the last place where people looked at me and saw their son or blood brother or their shot at a winning season.

where some little nut cracks open inside you and a tree starts to grow. Even harder to nail. Because that thing’s going to be growing a long time before you notice. Years maybe. Then one day you say, Huh, that little crack between my ears has turned into this whole damn tree of wonderful.

I think most of humankind would agree, the hard part of high school is the people.

The main one I could understand was that money-earning ones pay taxes. Whereas you can’t collect shit on what people grow and eat on the spot, or the work they swap with their neighbors. That’s like a percent of blood from a turnip. So, the ones in charge started cooking it into everybody’s brains to look down on the land people, saying we are an earlier stage of human, like junior varsity or cavemen. Weird-shaped heads.

It’s hard to explain how you can miss a place and want it with all your heart, and be utterly sure it will obliterate you the instant you touch down.