Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

The cold snap finally hit while we were there, and the news showed all these hard-luck cases trying to get in the library, bus station etc. To sleep. Like they didn’t have relatives. I mean, it sucks to barge in on people that don’t really want you. But you’ve not seen the like of these sad individuals with nobody to barge in on, and nothing to eat. Because where are you even going to steal an apple off a tree? In the city if you’re out of money you are screwed, no two ways about it. Giving rise to mayhem, such as carjackings.

The moral of his story was how you never know the size of hurt that’s in people’s hearts, or what they’re liable to do about it, given the chance.

Now, versus the old days. I said maybe the difference was we could see now what all we were missing. With everybody else in the world being richer than us, doing all kinds of nonsense and getting away with it. It pisses you off. It makes you restless.

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.

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.

“It’s not natural for boys to lose their minds,” she said. “It happens because they’ve had too many things taken away from them.”

You have to get up every morning and decide again, in the cold lonely light of day, am I brave enough to stick this out?

One thing I learned from Mr. Armstrong while striving heartily to remain uneducated: a good story doesn’t just copy life, it pushes back on it. It’s why guys like Chartrain wear their clothes too big and their teeth edged with gold, why Mr. Dick puts words on kites and sends them to the sun. It’s why I draw what I draw.