Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

I hoped Sophie’s family wasn’t watching

Redneck Zombies.

Or Delive...

Tommy got this wild look. “Okay, let’s see you do better. Superhero needed here. I’ll watch.” And he did. Just like in our Creaky Farm days of old.

I named my strip Red Neck. Signed, Anonymous.

I was living life as a flat tire.

U-Haul

U-Haul, born Ryan Pyles, is Coach Winfield’s assistant who will later become an assistant football coach. U-Haul is jealous of the attention Demon gets from Coach and is sexually interested in Angus, who is a teenager. He’s a lascivious, exploitative person who ultimately tries to blackmail Angus into having sex with him by claiming that Coach has been embezzling funds meant for the football team and threatening to expose him. Demon helps subdue U-Haul before he can harm Angus, and he learns that U-Haul the one who has been embezzling money.

Ms. Annie’s

Mr. Armstrong,

Age-old story, who gets to look down on who, for what reason.

Addiction is not for the lazy.

Stoner,

Stoner was Demon’s mother’s boyfriend who was awful to Demon and an overall bad guy

larceny.

As if it’s only by hurting yourself that you can be true.

Swap-Out.

The door is always open, etc. I wouldn’t expect people really to mean that, they just feel guilty walking away from your mess, back to their lucky lives.

It was trippy, seeing these teachers in their sock feet, being married.

I always forgot that was her last name, Amato, different from his.

Mr. Armstrong and Ms. Annie just gave me more to worry about, putting it in my head that I should break up with Dori.

Rose Dartell.

Martha.

Haillie,

The thing is, Demon. I’m pregnant.

money. I just asked

I was getting an itch in my fist, for a certain cocksure jaw.

from

I notice throuvhout the misuze of prepositions ex Hammer wasnot parti g FROM inztedod WITH

and the ponytail straggling down Maggot’s back.

Marlin 336C

Hammer laughed and splashed right in and

Hammer I couldn’t even see anymore.

Ever-faithful Big Bear.

from the crank wearing off, from

QB

QB quarterback

But Hammer was having no dead men here. He couldn’t let that be. He said it three times, maybe four, I’m not letting a man die, and then he was in the water while Maggot and I screamed no and no and no.

What a waste, a dead body, with most of its parts still ready and eager to work.

I could drag Hammer onto dryer land.

All I could see were the years that body still had in it, should have had.

I knew Dori was where she needed to be.

Hammer was not. This was a body robbed of all its righteous goods.

I got him over to the same stone ledge where the other body was.

Hammer’s enemy.

It felt like the one might contaminate the other.

Hammer and Fastforward

such was my rage and grief and stupid regret.

I should have been the one to jump in the water. If it had to be done, then me, not Hammer. I’ll never believe anything else. It’s the one good promise I ever got. Not drowning.

So Hammer had to take his last ride with the bastard that stole his woman and ruined his life. I was sick over that, and shaken up,

Maggot rode with me in the ambulance,

Rose.

She said losing Fast Forward was like dying herself.

Fast Forward had a beautiful poison inside him that infected people and got them hooked.

That the scar he’d put on her was his way of making sure Rose would belong to him for life.