Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

guy called Copperhead. Supposedly he had the dark skin and light-green eyes of a Melungeon, and red hair that made you look twice. He wore it long and shiny as a penny, said my mother, who clearly had a bad case.

After we got old enough to handle a rifle, nine or ten, he showed us how to take a buck, and how to heft up the carcass on the tree branch over the driveway to dress it out, letting loops of guts fall out steaming on the gravel.

Long before school age, I’d heard it all. Screamin’ Demon, Demon Semen. But once I got my copper-wire hair and some version of attitude, I started hearing “Little Copperhead.” Hearing it a lot. And look, no red-blooded boy wants to be Little Anything. Advice

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.

you are one of the few that still hasn’t been, let me tell you what a city is. A hot mess not easily escaped.

I wondered if DSS had anything like Step 9, where you eventually have to apologize to all the kids you’ve screwed over.

The world is not at all short on this type of thing, it turns out. All down the years, words have been flung like pieces of shit, only to get stuck on a truck bumper with up-yours pride. Rednecks, moonshiners, ridge runners, hicks. Deplorables.

A ten-year-old getting high on pills.

How screwed-up is it that the DSS can’t be bothered about Creaky being hateful as a snake, but they’re all high-beams and every step you take, as regards the druggie mother?

of us as a family making Mom relapse. You’re going to say, What kind of shit is that for a mother to be telling her kid? Even I thought that, at the time.

The world needed our burley tobacco and wanted it bad. Philip Morris and those guys got their product, got the kids hooked, made their fortunes, and we all lived happily ever after, for a hundred years or something. Until people caught on to the downside of smoking and sued the hell out of somebody. And the government said, Well, never mind on that, and phased out the price supports.

If you’re standing on a small pile of shit, fighting for your one place to stand, God almighty how you fight.

Mom is dead.

but if it was true, then what did she die of, and Miss Barks said oxy. Believe it or not, I had to ask. What’s oxy?

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.

Was this me now, for life? Taking up space where people wished I wasn’t? Once on a time I was something, and then I turned, like sour milk. The dead junkie’s kid. A rotten little piece of American pie that everybody wishes could just be, you know. Removed.

Sunday school stories are just another type of superhero comic. Counting on Jesus to save the day is no more real than sending up the Batman signal.

With the same Melungeon look as her, the light eyes and dark, dark skin. These had to be my people.

Never be mean in anything. Never be false. Never be cruel. I can always be hopeful of you.

39

This is what I would say if I could, to all smart people of the world with their dumb hillbilly jokes: We are right here in the stall. We can actually hear you.

The little did she know, they could have come over here and scored

For a minute the sun came out, while it was snowing. People say that means the devil is beating his wife. Then the snow stopped, which I took to mean she was leaving the bastard. I asked Angus what she and Coach were doing for Christmas.