Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

But the wicked have a different head for numbers than most. Any bad they do will end up on the side of never-mind. What’s done to them weighs double.

At the time, I thought my life couldn’t get any worse. Here’s some advice: Don’t ever think that.

There’s this thing that happens, let’s say at school where a bunch of guys are in the bathroom, at the urinal, laughing about some dork that made an anus of himself in gym. You’re all basically nice guys, right? You know right from wrong, and would not in a million years be brutal to the poor guy’s face. And then it happens: the dork was in the shitter. He comes out of the stall with this look. He heard everything. And you realize you’re not really that nice of a guy. 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.

Live long enough, and all things you ever loved can turn around to scorch you blind. The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.