Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

It was a weird day at work. My head was not in the normal place, but it wasn’t just me. I mean, a lady leaning out her car window and yelling for a solid half hour about had we seen her motherfucking husband that had done hightailed it with her SSDI check. Also, finding a mother skunk with her four babies inside a twist-tied bag of trash. She’d made a little hole and got her family in there. This is skunks, right, so getting them all out is another story. Lethal Weapon III.

At the end of my shift the Peggots did not pick me up. I’d lied to Baggy, knowing she’d never in this life or the next one call up the Peggots to check. I told Mr. Golly I wouldn’t be able to come in the next day, not a lie, so he gave me my week’s pay early. I picked up some items I said were for the McCobbs, and to put it on their tab. Candy bars, Slim Jims, easy-to-carry type things. If Mr. Golly noticed this wasn’t the usual McCobb grocery list, he didn’t say anything. With a good hour of daylight still hanging, I turned my back on Golly’s. Walked out to the junction, turned south on Highway 23, and stuck out my thumb. It probably wasn’t five minutes before a guy pulled over in a rusted-out El Camino, those half-car, half-pickup type of deals, with two muddy dogs in the back. I thought that was a good sign, as regards the guy not being a child molester. Why carry around dogs to crime scenes? Anyway, I got in. Wherever those dogs had been to get so muddy, this guy was right there with them. He had dried mud on the sleeves of his shirt and caked in his hair. But fine, not blood. I thanked him for picking me up. He asked where I was headed tonight, and I told him Tennessee. He laughed. “Where at in particular, buddy? Tennessee’s kindly big.” I said it was a place he’d probably never heard of before. Murder Valley. He told me I was right, that was a new one on him. But that he’d not be able to forget a name like that, now that he’d heard it. I said no, sir. You never do.

He said it was a small church in Carter’s Valley where he preached. I pictured those places you see on a Sunday drive, out on the bendy back roads, people coming out the door in their overalls and housedresses. Nothing high or mighty about their God business. This guy was like that. He said fishing was something he did to clear his head. Sitting with his dogs at the water’s edge listening to the birds and frogs all singing their praises, he felt right close to God. He asked me who all lived in Murder Valley that I was going to see, and I said my grandmother. He asked how long since I’d seen her. Not wanting to blow smoke on a guy that’s just come from visiting God, I said I couldn’t remember. Because look, if Mom was telling the truth about this lady showing up the day I was born, would I remember that? I knew her name though: Betsy Woodall. It felt like a power to say that aloud, similar to how I’d gone all Hulk that time and claimed back my money jar. Snake handler or child beater the lady might be, but still mine to claim. People owe their kin. Her dead son should have been paying me his social security all these years, to name one example. Worst case, she’d turn out to be somebody that never existed, due to my mom making her up. Or if real, I might not find her. Knowing where my dad was buried was no guarantee of her living in the same town. Also, I might get picked up by the cops, if anybody was looking. So really there were quite a few worst cases, I wasn’t stupid. N...

Even before I stormed the fortress and got it back, I’d spent time that summer thinking about my hourly, times weeks I’d worked, which came out to a number that wasn’t real. A lot of dollars. Obviously the McCobbs took a chunk for their rent, but I still hoped for something decent, in the hundreds. If I showed up at my grandmother’s with cash on hand, she would see I was a person that could do a day’s work and was worth something. Not trash.

“Do I need to call your parents?” he asked. I laughed. “Good luck with that.” He didn’t get the joke. “Can I see some form of identification?” “Form of identification like what?” I asked, and he named some things, driver’s license, school ID, nothing I had or ever did have. It dawned on me that I could get run over flat on the highway out there, and nobody would know or care what to call the carcass. Roadkill. By this time the whole place is on edge, crazy lady caterwauling, people shifting around in the checkout line, and Willie throws a sucker punch that doubles me over. Grabs my backpack. Professional-quality moves. I can’t even catch my breath before he’s pulled out the jar and is asking all high-handed, “What do you call this, you little fucker?” Shaking it in my face like now he’s got me ha-ha, while the rage blows up in my gut, and the hooker bitch is all, I told you! Only she’s wide-eyed, seeing we are talking money plural, major bucks. Her shrieking goes sky-high. Singing her happy song of getting shitfaced for the foreseeable month of Sundays. It doesn’t even seem real, seeing this guy put my money in her hands. With all those people watching, not one soul on my side. Nothing to do but punch the magazine rack so hard it crashes over, spilling free brochures all over the fucking welcome mat. Where the screaming is coming from, who knows, it doesn’t feel like me telling this guy he’s a Nazi and I worked all year at my job for that cash so he could give it to a lyin...

In due time I found Unicoi, and Nashville, and asked if he could let me out right there please because I’d spent the last five hours going the wrong way. Son of a bitch. Off to seek my fortune, and on day one I’d put myself in the hole by some-odd hundred dollars and half of Tennessee.

I was starving. I dug in my pack for an apple and ate it as I walked along, thinking of Mr. Golly I’d stolen it from, charging it to the McCobbs. Thinking of Creaky calling us pissants if we didn’t eat the apple seeds and all. Interrupting this report card of my happy life, somebody yelled “Hey brother!” I jumped. I’d had my eye on the Phillips 66 and totally missed this couple camped by the road. The guy came staggering out of the tall weeds with his dirty Jesus hair and pale glassy eyes, asking am I his brother and am I saved. The girl tagging behind him was all hangdog, hair in her eyes, like he was the master. They both had the look that comes of hard living, clothes and skin all the same drab color of washed-out leather. “I’m as far from saved as it gets,” I told him and kept walking. “Give me five bucks then,” he yelled. “The Lord will bless you for it.” “I got no money.” I didn’t turn around. “Reckon the Lord’s got nothing on me.” The guy came around and grabbed the apple out of my hand. He walked backwards in front of me, teasing me with it. “Repent!” he said. “Whosoever sows generously will reap!” “Oh for fuck’s sake. Really?” I stopped walking. “Somebody already stole everything I had, and you’re going to take my last half an apple?” That threw him. We stood in the empty gas station bay while he stared at my apple in his hand like he thought it might speak up and settle this. “Who is this coming from the wilderness?” he asked it. “Beneath the tree I awaked thee w...

I got out my drawing pad and made an amazing sign using all the colors: UNICOI. Freaking unbelievable. The very next car to come along pulled over, a yellow VW, not a Beetle but one of those sporty sedans. Power windows. The girl driving it rolled down the passenger side and said, “Go you!” so I did. Headed the right direction at last. Could this girl ever talk. The first subject she got onto was how she had a thing for unicorns, same as me, was that too bangin’ crazy or what. I had no idea what to say, being actually not a fan, but I was not needed for this conversation. I watched the miles go by while her list of favorite unicorn items went in one ear and out the other. Bedspread, raincoat. I spent all that time trying to figure out how old this girl was. She had to be Miss Barks’s age or so, because of driving a car for one thing, and for another her too-small T-shirt was showing off her bare middle part and plenty else. On the other hand, glitter nail polish, pouffy bangs, those little butterfly clip things like bugs in your hair, pretty much on par with Haillie McCobb, second grader. She moved on eventually to TV shows, her favorite one being Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I told her I liked comics better than TV. It might have been the first thing I’d said since I got in the car a hundred miles before, and she was like, “Go you!” It turned out she said that a lot. If I told her I knocked off an old lady and hid her body in a thirty-foot roll-off, I’m pretty sure this gir...

I ate the last Slim Jim I had to my name, stolen from Mr. Golly. The thing about him though. He loved nothing better than giving you food and watching you eat it. He made a big deal of handing customers their fried pie or corn dog, and had a sign saying people were welcome to eat in the store. It was for the reason of his childhood. This might be one of the weirder things ever. He said his parents, sisters, and all their dump friends were so-called no-toucher people. Meaning if they touched food or anything at all, it was like, doomed. Regular people would have none of it. Same for bodies, no shaking hands. If he let his shadow touch a high-class person, they’d call the cops to come beat the hell out of him. He said a name for this kind of people that sounded like “dolly.” I was sure there had to be a catch. What about helping somebody get up out of the road, if they fell? No, he said, they would get run over before they’d touch you. What if you wanted to give them a present? Nope. What about money, buying something at a store? He said you’d leave the money on the counter and they’d do a prayer thing over it to clean it up, after you’re gone. He and his little pals for their best prank would run up to some guy selling food on the street and put their hands all over it, so he’d have to throw it away. If they hid out long enough and didn’t get killed first, they’d go back and eat it. This was a million years ago obviously. But even after all this time, you could see how he h...

He kept asking why didn’t me and him go try and locate some women. I said no thanks, but he was kind of one-track. Finally I told him I’d sworn off hookers because the last one I tangled with took all my money. He slapped the steering wheel, laughing and laughing. Ride three, a Caddy Deville. It was that dark brown color they call doeskin, and so was the man driving it. Another preacher. Suit and skinny tie, neat-cut hair, not young and not old. His car, definitely old. He had this way about him like whatever you’ve seen, he’d probably seen it too. He asked what was my burden and I told him: eleven years old without a dime, running away from nobody that gave a damn, probably headed for more of the same. He kept his eyes on the road, nodding his head, sometimes running a hand over his hair, while everything came out of me. Fighting with Stoner, Mom dying on me, getting sent to Creaky Farm, right up to two nights ago where I’d cursed a junkie hooker to die for stealing my money. He listened, now and again rubbing that hand back over his head like sweeping off the tears of heaven falling on us. He’d heard of Murder Valley. He said he traveled pretty wide over those parts looking after his folks, and I could believe it. If he was in charge of my church, I would go. He never put on the hard sell about Jesus or anything. His only advice was to be careful in Unicoi because there were folks down there mean enough to hang an elephant. I said okay, thinking it was an expression his ...

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.

I probably asked a dozen people if they knew any Betsy Woodall. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t. In Lee County if you were looking for some person by name, the odds are you’d hit a cousin or an ex by the third try. Not so in Murder Valley. Some gave me the brush-off, some jerked me around. A guy at the diner ran me off, thinking I was begging. There was a town with some stores still alive and lots more dead, boarded up. I don’t think they got a lot of strangers through there. But I had no steam to go farther, so I kept asking. Even if treated like a pest. “I got a wood-awl in my toolbox,” one joker told me. Another one said sure, he knew the lady. Last seen riding a broom. This was at the feed store and hardware that wasn’t open because of Sunday, but had quite a few guys hanging around the loading dock. The one that made the riding-a-broom crack was standing in the back of a pickup pitching hay bales into the back of another, with an audience of guys in overalls chewing their cuds. They all laughed. One of them piped up. “I’d say a boy that size, she’d put him on a spit and roast him for his brisket.” I was already walking away, but that made me turn around. It was like they were discussing a lady they knew, even if she was nobody you’d want to run into. “Are you saying she’s real? Like, a human person?” They looked at each other, then me. Leery. A whole lot of pigeons were lined up on the wire overhead, all facing my way, and it felt like they were staring too. The guy up i...

My grandmother had no use for anything in the line of boys or men. “Any of them that stands up to make his water,” was how she put it. Bad news for me. Her parlor smelled of stale cigarette smoke and old people and you never saw so much furniture in one room, from the olden times. The chairs had wooden legs with animal feet, and lace things on the arms so you wouldn’t wreck them. She spread out a tablecloth on her sofa for me to sit on, same reason. Then pulled up a chair and looked me over, fanning herself with one of those funeral home fans with the stick handle. It was hot as hell in there, and crowded with knicknacks and whatnots all over the place. Big old clocks on the mantel, and I’m saying more than one. If you wasted this lady’s time, she was going to know it. “What are we going to do with you?” she kept asking. Like I knew. She sounded like a man, with that deep type voice smokers get as their prize for the hundred millionth pack. But it was also what she said and how she said it. Like somebody that doesn’t give a damn if you agree or not.

She said I’d about given her a heart attack out in the yard. “My own boy come back from the dead, is what I thought, come to me as a boy instead of a man to get back on my good side. But it won’t work. Boys aren’t a thing but just little men still learning what to aim at.” I wondered if this pertained to how we pissed, which seemed like a major sticking point. I told her I was sorry for all that, and asked what my father did that had put her out so bad. “Lord, child, I don’t have days enough left to tell you.”

“Church was his trouble,” she said. “It started him off on the wrong foot.” This was a new one on me, especially coming from an old person. I’d heard of course about the snake-handling, but she said it was worse than that. Men wanting to get back to the Old Testament, reaping virgin girls and using daughters for their slaves. “There’s some I knew would have taken more wives than Jacob if they thought they’d get away with it.”

I was holding the empty plate that had a picture on it of Abraham Lincoln. I wondered how he got in here. It took some doing to keep myself from licking the sandwich crumbs off his face.

“He was crazy over cars, too. He had the sickness. A car can kill a man faster than a snake. I’ve not driven one of those killing machines since 1961 nor had one in my possession.” This was a lot to take in. First, that my dad was into vehicles, the same fever I had in my blood. I was always that kid on the playground with my eyes turned out to the road, watching the metal roar by while the older boys yelled, Oh man, a Continental with suicide doors! Second of all: since 1961? How did a modern person not have a car? She said she got her groceries delivered, and if she needed anything else in town, she walked. Or had one of her girls drive her, or run the errand for her. She’d raised and educated eleven girls total, some from wayward teens, a few from babies. So she was like a foster mom. She said she did it on her own steam, though, without paychecks or anything. She took a dim view on how they could mess things up at social services. I told her amen to that. So, Mom’s crazy story was true. Betsy Woodall must have come to see her. The hell and brimstone she’d supposedly laid on was surely not true, just Mom’s nightmares talking. But the plan of taking me was real. Did Mom agree to that? If I’d been born without the plumbing, would I have grown up here in this house as a whole different me, sitting around eating sandwiches in chairs with animal feet? My brain was pretty close to blowing a gasket.

I told her my sorry tale. I didn’t want this lady being all “told you so” where Mom was concerned, it’s not like she’d dropped the ball totally, so I said my life was great and everything until Mom took up with a guy that believed in educating with his fists, that bullied and brainwashed her till the day she died. Then came foster care with an old guy running a slave-boy farm. And all the while this lady’s looking at me like, Told you so. I tried to work a different angle other than Men Are Satan, because honestly Mrs. McCobb was no great shakes, nor Old Baggy either. Not to mention Miss Barks that dumped me for better pay. And the truck-stop whore, definitely a bad character, but that was tricky to get into. I just wrapped it up saying I was a hardworking person and had started out with the money to prove it, but it got stolen.

Also for liking to read and knowing the answers in school, which everybody knows is asking for it.

One no-toucher kid knows another, you have to think.

Somebody one time gave me the one where the boy is hateful and sent to bed with no supper, and in his head he’s a monster and goes to this island where it’s all wild monsters like him, seriously ticked off, making their wild rumpus. I loved that.

Mr. Dick didn’t take offense at much of anything, so in time I asked some nosy shit, like how did my grandmother get such a nice house (by outliving everybody else in the family), and what did the others die of (being meaner than snakes).

What he did between leaving this house and taking up with Mom in Lee County, which was a lot of years, Mr. Dick had no idea. Possibly nobody did. I wished I could find the book of my whole dad in that house and read every page.

So, taking crap from a teenager that looked like me: Was this the start of my grandmother taking her dim view of boys? I had to ask. Mr. Dick smiled and shook his head no, motioning over his crooked shoulder like, way, way back. Of course. The big, stinking guys that shoved his little wishbone arms and legs in a feed sack, laughing their nuts off. She’d made up her mind long before she had her redheaded baby boy. He probably never had a chance.

So wise so young, they say, do never live long. Words that made no exact sense, but probably true. He’d written other sentences all over that kite. Like, a hundred of them. My eye picked out: Dispute not with her: she is a lunatic. Uh-oh, I thought, trouble with sister dear. But another one said: I am determined to prove a villain, and hate the idle pleasures of these days. I couldn’t make heads or tails. No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. And in the center, in bigger print: And if I die no soul will pity me. And why should they since I myself find in myself no pity to myself. I asked what it was about, and he patted his book on the desk that he’d just finished. Did he aim to write out the entire book on the kite? No. Just certain parts he liked the best. “And then what happens?” He pointed out the window. His hand motioned up, up. “You fly the kite?” He nodded yes. He said after he read a book he oftentimes wanted to thank whoever wrote it, but usually they were dead. His book had a name on it I’d heard of, Shakespeare. Dead, evidently.

She turned a roller-wheel thing with cards in it that was her list of people. Names, phone numbers, but we’re talking maybe a hundred cards in that thing. Imagine knowing that many people. She was an old person of course, fifties or sixties. Time enough to round up a posse. “My girls don’t usually end up staying in Unicoi,” she said. “They have bigger fish to fry.” I thought of what Mr. Dick said about them marrying, so maybe it was their husbands that had the bigger fish. But I was not about to pick any fights with the spider lady that had me in her web, deciding my fate. Because that’s what this was about. One of her girls was going to take me in. We went over the different ones, what they did, if they had kids now. They lived all over. Two in Knoxville, one in Johnson City. Most had gone to college, she was proud of that. So naturally they’d end up in the city. I said I’d be real glad and amazed if anybody wanted to take me in, but please not the city. And my grandmother said okay, she understood.

Oh crap, I thought, here I go paying the rent. I did not like the sound of this house with the dead wife. Who’s taking care of the baby? A husband ruling the roost on his own? There’d be nobody to remind him kids need shoes and haircuts and the shit they don’t really want but you still have to qualify as a person, like toothpaste. New ring binders for school. Not to say I’d caught my grandmother’s disease, but let’s face it, guys can be dicks.

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

He was quiet, holding that string and kite with everything he had. The way he looked. Eyes raised up, body tethered by one long thread to the big stormy sky, the whole of him up there with his words, talking to whoever was listening. I’ve not seen a sight to match it. No bones of his had ever been shoved in a feed bag. The man was a giant.

Scrawny though, almost my height but skinnier, wearing one of those dweeb flat caps that would instantly get a guy poundcaked at school, if not for the badass leather jacket and Doc Martins. Those things cost, meaning there’s backup somewhere, so watch who you’re punching. This kid looked sad, a little soft, a little scary. All of those, at the same time.

The middle window looked down the driveway, and the front one looked across the top of Jonesville to a big hill behind it. I could see why they built houses like this, back in the day. Whoever launched an attack, you’d see them coming. It was the best room I’d ever been in, and also the best house. I said so, but Angus just shrugged. “It’s too much house for us.” “I didn’t think there was any such thing. Like too much money or too much food.” “A person can eat too much. Obviously. People die of it.” “Sign me up,” I said. Again the big sad eyes, puddles on a sidewalk. “Kidding,” I said. “Sorry. I won’t eat you all out of house and home or anything.” “I don’t think you’ll get a choice. Dad likes the look of your frame, so he’s going to bulk you up like his new prime steer.” “Snap,” I said. “Next comes the slaughter.” He almost smiled. “That’s one word for the game. Said you, not me, for the record.” “For the record, I never heard of anybody that died of being a linebacker. Maybe just fang-banged into a coma by horny cheerleaders.” His half smile yanked back in so fast, like a slug if you touch his little horns. All pulled back inside the pissed-off black leather and the blank eyes. Shit. I was piling stupid on stupid here, but didn’t know how else to go. As far as I’d seen, the basis of friendship for guys past the age of bedwetting is trash talk. Throw “fuck” into any sentence and you’re dead hilarious.

Angus was altered. Ready for bed, out of the jacket and the hat, in some kind of white stretch outfit that showed the build, skinnier even than I’d thought and small through the waist. A lot of curly, sort of moppy blond hair. What I am saying is, girl hair. A girl build. We stared at each other, then the door shut and Angus was gone, leaving me to stuff my blown-out brain back in my head and remember what all I’d stupidly said to him, to her. I couldn’t. There was too much. Other than, was she on the JV football squad, pretty memorable. Fang-banging cheerleaders. Had I said I thought we’d be sharing the same room? I couldn’t fall asleep for wondering how I was so stupid. I guess I’d not been around girls much lately, especially not in those boots. But still. The second I knew, it was plain as daylight. And my mind couldn’t stop running back over every single asshole thing I’d said to Angus, the girl. Starting with, “Like the cattle.”

Plus they had this Mattie Kate individual around the house at all times. Not just for chores, she’d sit with you in the kitchen after school and drink Cokes and talk if you had questions, which I had a few. Should I be doing my laundry, making my lunches? Answer: No. She did all that. I told her I was pretty used to doing everything for myself like laundry and worst case, paying the rent. She laughed and said not to be putting her out of her job. She said mine was just to be a little boy. Weird. I’d not had that job before.

She did know he was a liar. That much she told me. The real assistant coach was Mr. Briggs, a paid teacher that taught history at Jonesville Middle and was JV coach, plus helping out with the high school team. In practices he coached defense, where Coach worked mainly with offense. U-Haul was just an errand boy, paid part-time out of the booster funds. Angus said he acted more important than he was, and got away with it by saying he was “nobody” while pretending he’s assistant coach. Like bowing down and sweeping his lies behind him.

Being new though, I was supposed to check in with Mr. Armstrong. It took him some weeks to work me in, due to other kids needing him to testify for them in juvie court. Busy man. I’d settled in with my new crowd of Jonesville dogs that were not pups but hot bitches and guys that could pass for beer-buying age. Friends with potential. And the freedom to draw in my notebooks all day, unpestered by education. Then comes Mr. Armstrong to rock my boat.

Just by waiting me out, he got a few things off me. That I liked to draw. He asked if he could see some of my so-called work, and I said not at this time. Lately I’d been studying on the human form, aka this girl in all my classes they called Hot Sauce that sat in a chair the way ice cream melts. Soft porn basically.

“Hey Demon, drawl me some different kind of pussies right quick!” Fish Head whispered, and by “whisper,” I mean the entire back of the class laughed. I was not that acquainted with pussies to know there were different kinds. I asked did he mean like shaved or not shaved, but no. He had names for different types. “Like tits,” he said. “You know how they’s as many kinds of tits as they is kinds of cars?” I’d never really thought about it. Not that I was admitting to that. “Like your long low ones.” Fish Head, not being great with words, was trying to explain with his hands. Other guys jumped in to help. “Slab sides, pontoons,” they said. “Vans.” Somebody had a Playboy, worth a thousand words like they say. I only got to keep it till the end of class, but I can study a thing and keep it in my mind’s eye. I started charging guys for these drawings, fifty cents for parts, a dollar a whole body. Minus the face. For faces and hands I would have to charge extra because they take the most time, and there was no interest. Then I told these guys I needed to keep their magazines overnight, to get better familiar on the different makes and models. My chassis fixation took a new turn.

Her scariness pertained to taking apart everything she looked at. Not just amateurs like Michaela, I mean people on TV. Like if we’re watching some show and a girl is ugly, glasses, etc., Angus would say, Okay, watch. They’ll make her the smart one. If a foreigner, possibly the villain. Angus could wreck a show like nobody’s business. If a character ever turned up that talked like us, country-type person, he was there for one reason only, stupidness. Wait for it . . . joke! He’s a dumbass! If a girl, worse. She thinks condoms are party balloons and the guy trying to get in her pants is just the sweetest li’l ol’ gentleman. Angus couldn’t believe I’d never noticed this before. You get so used to not even being anything on TV, I guess I was just like, Yay, country kid gets invited to the party!

Long story short, she despised Kent. She said he barked like a seal whenever he and June were doing the nasty. He pretended to sleep on the fold-out couch downstairs on his stay-overs, waiting till they thought Emmy was asleep. I hated the idea of Aunt June stooping to monkeyshines. Maggot was putting on his whole act of Nothing-shocks-me-I’ve-got-lip-earrings-y’all. But I could tell he was. No surprise on Kent being a loud one, even upstairs with the door closed we could hear him talking to the Peggots in a TV voice, like they’re watching Home Shopping Channel and he’s the product. Maggot suggested Emmy could put something in his coffee like pee or Drano. He got off the bed and went to poke around in Emmy’s makeup. “You gank my Max Factor and you’re busted, Mattress. That stuff costs a fortune.” “Okey dokey. Where’s your lubricant for the stick up your ass?”

Sex, was Maggot’s theory. Giant pork sword. Emmy said no, it was all the free stuff. This guy was Santa Claus Junior in a Ford Explorer, coming around to throw presents on all the receptions and nurses. Candy for the fat ones, coupons for Hair Affair if they were on diets. It was like Kent had spy elves telling him what they’d all want. The doctors got actual free vacations to Hawaii and such. Golf trips. “Mother H. Fuck,” said Maggot. “Get me Hawaii.” “You have to be a doctor or nurse practitioner. It’s your prize for prescribing his pills.”

A Burt Reynolds type, mustache, too dressed up for a Saturday, shoes like nobody from around here. Looking down on him, I could see a pink shine on top of his head with the dark hair pulled across it. Not a full Homer Simpson like Creaky’s, just a little beginner’s hamburger helper up there. But do you trust a guy that cheats on his own head? Aunt June was bottom-feeding.

“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.”

Angus said it was different for her, because she didn’t remember her mom. Not a bag of gravel. “It’s more like this shiny little thing I wear around my neck. Once in a while some lady will lean over and say, ‘Honey, she was so pretty’ or ‘She was a jewel.’ And I just say, ‘Okay, great. Thanks.’ ” Angus slopped more glop in the bucket. “Ignorance is bliss.”

Generally speaking, Angus could be a giant ass-pain as far as looking on the bright side. “Demon,” she was always saying, “life is a wild, impetuous ride. There could be good shit up ahead, don’t rule it out.”

“Fine,” I said. “I know where we’re getting our tree.” We stole one. Never mind realizing after we got it home that we had nothing to decorate it with. We hung whatever the hell we felt like on that tree: spoons, mint Life Savers, CDs, some earrings and shit that Mattie Kate had given Angus over the years in a futile attempt to mold her fashion sense. Pretzels. It was our tree of utter ridiculousness. Epic.

Angus got me amazing comics including a manga series of a kid named Gon Freecss on a journey to find his dad that left whenever he was a baby, and was said to have superpowers. Obviously a hit. Also clothes, which sounds boring but this being Angus, was not. Not the badass stuff she liked, either. She thought out the angle of Demon, Popular Kid, from head to toe: a Members Only jacket, parachute silver, just for example. I would own the school in that jacket.

The thing about Angus. We both had our crap to live with, and her way was to give no shit whether you liked how she was doing it, or not. But if I wanted to be a different type person and try for popular, she wasn’t going to stand in my way. She was going to help. Not very usual. She also gave me a model ship, with tiny sails, tiny ropes, an entire seafaring vessel made of painted wood and toothpicks and here’s the killer part: inside a bottle. Not even big like a deuce, just the regular beer size. How in the holy heck somebody got it in there, she had no idea. She’d found it that way, at the antiques mall. She said it was me all over, my ocean thing, and also the thing of beating impossible odds, because someday I was going to go wherever the hell I wanted. “If you say so,” I told her. “But will I always still be in a bottle?” She laughed. “The world’s a bottle, Demon. Gravity and shit. Don’t expect miracles.”

I found an awesome hat, black velvet, with a veil that came down over the face part. More femmy than typical Angus, but I had a hunch, and was right. She vamped around in that hat, saying she would be the funeral fox of Lee County. I also got her some old-time books including this advice one we read aloud, on what to do in every emergency: shipwreck, nightclub fire, plummeting elevator. What is a nightclub? She said it’s like a bar, only in the city, so you’re jam-packed in there with your face against the armpits of others. So in case of a fire, you’re toast. I can’t remember the advice.

My main thing, though, was her portrait. I put it in a serious pawnshop frame, glass and everything. I’d known for a long time what superhero she’d be: Black Leather Angel. A badass one, black leather angel wings. It took quite a few tries to make it not look like any form of Batgirl. But I got it. The main aspect of Angus being those gray eyes that look straight into what’s eating you. The superpower of reading your mind and making you talk. She was floored. She carried it around with her all day, cuddling that big square frame like a freaking teddy bear.

Why did I want that so much, to go back to the place where my childhood got crushed? After we went, I knew. The reason was power. To face down Amityville and yell at whatever still crept or clawed inside, “Fuck you. Fuck your thrashings and starving us and making all of us but mostly Tommy wish we were dead. Fuck you for making me glad it was him and not me.” To hocker and spit on the frozen grass. Turn my back on evil and walk away.