Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

People love to believe in danger, as long as it’s you in harm’s way, and them saying bless your heart.

I wanted to go home. Which was nowhere, but it’s a feeling you keep having, even after that’s no place anymore. Probably if they dropped a bomb and there wasn’t any food left on the planet, you’d still keep feeling hungry too.

I could smell the dirt of the fields waking up, see the mountains with every tree lighting up on top like a candle, first neon green of spring. It should have been enough for any human person. I did know that, I have to say. Give me a view, pretty as a picture, I’m still pissed that I’ll never get to see the ocean. I wondered what would it take to stop me feeling like I had rotten fruit down in me instead of a heart.

There will always be those that look down on your station in life and call it a sty, but if you get in there and wallow, that’s on you.

Like the dreams you wake up from with your heart on fire because some dead person you cared about was alive, and then by noon it’s just vague nonsense.

Where does the road to ruin start? That’s the point of getting all this down, I’m told. To get the handle on some choice you made. Or was made for you.

People find more ways to shut up their monsters than a Bible has verses.

It’s a situation, being invisible. You can get to a point of needing to make the loudest possible noise just to see if you are still alive.

“I’m saying you wake up and you’re still yourself, every day. I’m not like that, I give in. I change my recipe, to suit people.”

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.

I thought about what Rose said, wanting to see the rest of us hurt, because she was hurting. You have to wonder how much of the whole world’s turning is fueled by that very fire.

I tried to think of one place on the planet of earth where I would feel happy to be. Came up bust. Then tried to settle on someplace I could stand to be. Nothing again. No house or vehicle or yard or pasture came to mind. No place. A guy could take this to mean he ought to be dead.

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.

Age-old heartbreak of this place, your great successes fly away, your failures stick around.