She called it quits on the papers and turned to a box of massively tangled resistance bands. Blew out her breath and lay back on the floor. “Fuck this shit. I don’t guess you know anybody that could use a truckload of heavily used sports equipment.”

  “I might, actually.” I was thinking of Chartrain’s teammates. Legless Lightning.

  She sat up. “Then I hope you’re driving a huge motherfucking vehicle.”

  “Pretty small. But she’s a cutie-pie. Want to come outside and see?”

  “You and your cutie-pies.” She shoved the box at me. “Take this out to the trash pile for me. First mountain on your left, can’t miss it. I’ll be out there in a sec.”

  Outside it had gotten colder, not even yet noon. I stood watching my steamy breath come out of my mouth, which I took to mean I was still alive on the inside. Snow started to fall, just a little spit here and there. I lit a cigarette. Thirty seconds later she came out, and I hid the smoking gun behind my back. She laughed and said she was telling Coach. And then we were okay. We studied the giant pile of crap she’d hauled out of there. I told her where she could get a railroad-car-size roll-off for three hundred dollars. She checked out the Beretta and said of course I would have a car that’s the color of the ocean. I hadn’t even thought of that.

  “Did you ever get to see it? After the tragically aborted early attempt?”

  Two attempts. The school-trip rout at Christiansburg she meant. I’d never told her much about the Richmond-Mouse debacle. I finished my Camel and ground out the butt. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay, that’s a no. But it’s still out there. Just so you know.”

  “Do tell?”

  “Yessiree Bob. You can take that one to the bank.”

  “I’ll have to take your word on that. Given the college degree.”

  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.

  She gave me a funny look, chin pulled back. “What Christmas. That was all your doing.”

  “But you seemed so into it. Am I wrong?”

  “No. But we never knew how to do it before you came, and the magic went away again after you moved out. The magic was all you, Demon.”

  We were quiet for a minute. I warmed myself on a little bonfire of remembered ridiculousness, and hoped she was doing the same. “I still have that ship. In the bottle. Everything else I’ve ever owned, I’ve lost by now or thrown out. But I kept that. You thought I was going places. We just didn’t see the bottle part coming.”

  She opened her mouth, then shut it. Opened her empty right hand and looked at it, like something was in there. Then put it behind her back. “I’m sorry you and Annie didn’t get your book thing put together,” she said.

  “I’ll get it figured out. And I’m sure she’ll get back to me eventually. I mean, how long can one baby last?”

  She laughed. But something was winding down here.

  “We could give it another go,” I said. “Christmas. What do you want?”

  “A big fat check for this house.”

  “You know my price range. No real improvement there, sadly. I might have notched up a little on the naughty-nice scale, though.”

  She leveled me with a stare that stirred something up I couldn’t name. Or was scared to admit to. “Okay. I have a present for you,” she said. “It’s not wrapped. I just thought of it.”

  “Okay. Where is it?”

  “Um. Five hundred miles from here. Directly adjacent to a bunch of sand.”

  I laughed. “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious. I’m giving you the ocean.”

  “It’s winter.”

  “You know what? They don’t roll it up and put it away. It’s just sitting there. Take it or leave it, home skillet. One goddamn Atlantic Ocean on offer.”

  “Can I get that to go?”

  She pulled down the earflaps of her hat with both hands, like she might otherwise levitate, and got up in my face. As nearly as she could, being a foot shorter, reaching up at me with the big gray eyes: Not kidding. She said she had the week off work, due to testing schedule or something. She asked if I had a deadline on getting back to Knoxville. I didn’t.

  “So what do you say, Demon. Time to say grace and blow this dump?”

  I followed her back to Coach’s apartment so she could grab what she needed. We took the Beretta, as the slightly less risky option. She said that sea-blue car was asking for it, and she was a good sport about it smelling like an ashtray. We kept the windows down as far as Gate City, which was damn airish in that weather, but by the time we got on the interstate it was fine to roll them up. And I was still yet shivering for some reason, ready to jump out of my skin. Angus was a couple of steps out ahead of me, as she always and ever would be. So happy. Utterly chill.

  She rifled through her bag of car snacks. Opened a bag of M&Ms and threw one that bounced off my face. I called a traveling penalty. She picked it up off the floor and popped it in my mouth. “So, to get this straight, as far as your motives. You’re not in it for the suntan, right?”

  I told her I was not. Just wanted to look at that big drink of water.

  “Good,” she said. “Because it’s going to be cold. But there are lots of advantages to going in winter.” She named them: No crowds. No strutting peacocks in Speedos. We’d have the place to ourselves. Motels would be half price. This was Angus trusting the ride, we were staying in a motel. I was extremely unclear about where we were headed. Was she still my sister?

  She smacked her forehead. “Oh my God. Oysters.”

  “What about them.”

  “You can only eat them in winter! June, July, August, they’re poison. You have to wait till the months that have the letter R.”

  This sounded highly doubtful. “Why is that?”

  “Believe it or not, with my amazingly advanced degree, I don’t know. It’s one of these things you pick up. I went to New Orleans a few times with friends.”

  There he was, the friend. “And you’re saying it’s worth the wait? Because I’m saying Mrs. Peggot used to cook them in soup at Christmas, and I was not a fan.”

  “This is nothing like that. At the beach they’re fresh. You crack them open and drink them right off the shell. Raw. Technically I guess still alive.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  “You won’t believe how good. It’s like kissing the ocean. Demon.” She leaned forward so I could see her face, and drilled those bad-girl eyes into me with a look that threatened my perfect driving record. “And it’s kissing you back.”

  Oh my Lord. The girl has set her cap. Not my sister.

  We talked the whole way through the Shenandoah Valley. The end of the day grew long on the hills, then the dark pulled in close around us. Snowflakes looped and glared in the headlights like off-season lightning bugs. Ridiculous nut that I’d been to crack. I drove left-handed with my right arm resting on her seat back, running my thumb over the little hairs on the back of her neck. The trip itself, just the getting there, possibly the best part of my life so far.

  That’s where we are. Well past the Christiansburg exit. Past Richmond, and still pointed east. Headed for the one big thing I know is not going to swallow me alive.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m grateful to Charles Dickens for writing David Copperfield, his impassioned critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children in his society. Those problems are still with us. In adapting his novel to my own place and time, working for years with his outrage, inventiveness, and empathy at my elbow, I’ve come to think of him as my genius friend.

  Many generous people helped me sketch out and color in the frames of this novel, offering their expertise on subjects ranging from foster care and child protective services to the logistics and desperations of addiction and recovery, Appalachian history, cartooning, and high school football. Mistakes are mine, authenticity is theirs: Camille Kingsolver, Reid Snow, Silas House, Kayla Rae Whitaker, Linda Snow, Amanda Freeman, Christine Dotson, Sue Ella Kobak, and Art Van Zee. Beyond the scope of this novel, we can all thank Dr. Van Zee for his groundbreaking exposure of dangerous prescription opioids, ultimately bringing the crisis to public attention. I’m in awe of his dedication to his patients.

  The Origin Project, cofounded by Adriana Trigiani and Nancy Bolmeier-Fisher, enriches our schools and inspired my fictional Backgrounds project. Parts of this story came from my own Mammaw and Pappaw, Louise and Roy Kingsolver, and great-aunt Lillian Wright Craft, who still speak to me with the confidence of the living, in a language that my years outside of Appalachia tried to shame from my tongue.

  Every draft of this book was improved by advice from insightful readers, especially Sam Stoloff, Terry Karten, Silas House, and Louisa Joyner. Judy Carmichael calmed the stormy seas and kept my little boat from sinking. Steven Hopp, in addition to reading and talking me through every page, kept me fed at my desk, accompanied me on fact-finding adventures, and pulled me outside into the sun, time and again, to get me back from the dark places this story needed me to go.

  For the kids who wake up hungry in those dark places every day, who’ve lost their families to poverty and pain pills, whose caseworkers keep losing their files, who feel invisible, or wish they were: this book is for you.

  About the Author

  Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, Prodigal Summer, and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. With her husband and daughters she authored the influential Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2000 was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. She lives with her husband on a farm in southern Appalachia.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Also by Barbara Kingsolver

  Fiction

  Unsheltered

  Flight Behavior

  The Lacuna

  Prodigal Summer

  The Poisonwood Bible

  Pigs in Heaven

  Animal Dreams

  Homeland and Other Stories

  The Bean Trees

  Essays

  Small Wonder

  High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never

  Poetry

  How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)

  Another America

  Nonfiction

  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

  Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands

  Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  demon copperhead. Copyright © 2022 by Barbara Kingsolver. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  All art courtesy of Shutterstock, Inc.

  first edition

  Cover design by Robin Bilardello

  Cover images © Getty Images; © Shutterstock; © stock.adobe.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  Digital Edition OCTOBER 2022 ISBN: 978-0-06-325199-1

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-325192-2

  About the Publisher

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  Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

 

 

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