Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

The next day was a Sunday for sure. I could tell by the people coming out of everywhere driving to church in their good clothes. Kids all washed and buttoned up in the back seats. A few families offered me rides, but I saw their faces as they got close and saw the hay-headed filthy mess I was. I said I was fine to walk, and asked how far to Murder Valley. Turns out I was there. It was a valley. Farms. And cemeteries, sure enough. The first I came across was small, in back of a little white church. I combed it from one end to the other but there was not a Woodall to be found. Everybody there had died in another age, 1950s or before. I sat down in the middle of the graves and listened to the singing coming out of the church. The people inside sounded so glad of somebody looking out for them, never to be alone, so sure that promise was real. I’d have given an eye to be one of them.