Page 110 of Demon Copperhead

I sat letting her words happen, smelling her fruit, and it hit me between the eyes: It was always June.

This thing I’d had for the Knoxville women, aka dome house women.

All along June, never Emmy, not past the puppy love.

This was the full-throttle type love that I never got figured out properly, due to being raised in shotgun fashion.

What my twisted little raggedy heart had always, always wanted. A mother, simple as that.

I asked her why me, why not Maggot. She had her reasons. Meth addiction is tough, no medical remedy. She said with opioids you can swap out the bad one for a different one that won’t get you high, but you won’t be dopesick either. Just take a pill and get on with your life.

“Right,” I said. Not mentioning the part about wanting sum-total obliteration of your life.

“I would do anything for Matthew, you know that. But rehab is something a person has to do on their own two feet, and he’s not ready.”

I sat on my two hands to keep from fidgeting.

Wanting a little bump of something, so very very much.

Maggot wasn’t ready, and I was? She said she and Mrs. Peggot had their doubts on Maggot ever taking responsibility, he just wasn’t cut out that way.

So it would have to be somebody else making him stick to the program.

Not voluntary. Meaning the law. They’d been waiting for that, assuming an arrest or a good scare was what it would take.

“We thought a shoplifting charge,” she said, shaking her head.

“Not that somebody would have to die.” She got kind of emotional then, but told me not to blame myself.

She said there were a hundred people she could blame for what happened that day, and Maggot and I were not even on the list.

“I had my part in it,” I said. “We all kind of lost our minds.”

She looked at me like there was something written on my face that she was trying to read. “For God’s sake, Damon. It’s the same place your father died. You didn’t start this fire.”

I felt rage boiling up. My ears were ringing and I wanted to scream: Yes.

It’s the place I hate the most, and that’s why I got lured out there.

That’s the motherfucking deal I get. I turned away from her and looked outside at the deck where my blondie teenager mom used to light every cigarette off the last one.

She saved all the Pall Mall coupons to get us free stuff.

Once, a radio that looked like a jukebox.

It was mostly plastic and quit working after a couple of months and I thought it was made by God’s own hands.

Some minutes passed. June was not letting this go. “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.”

I asked her like what. She got up and walked around the room, upset.

No decent schooling, she said. No chance to get good at anything that uses our talents.

No future. They took all that away and supplied us with the tools for cooking our brains, hoping we’d kill each other before we figured out the real assholes are a thousand miles from here.

I told her I didn’t hold with that line of reason. I knew plenty of assholes at close range.

She smiled in the sad way I knew well. The hard kid to handle. But instead of leaving, she sat down on the bed again. “The question you have to answer now is, What are you willing to do for yourself? And I won’t lie, it’s going to be harder than anything you’ve done before.”

I doubted it. Getting smacked around daily for my betterment came to mind.

Going hungry for the entirety of fifth grade.

Did she think I was looking for a new personal best in the hardships department?

I told her it was a lot to take in. I didn’t say, You think I’m strong, but I’m not. I will always want that next hit.

She said she’d come back over tomorrow, and we’d talk some more.

I asked where all this would be happening and she said Knoxville, which freaked me out.

Not my idea of happytown. She said it wasn’t like I was thinking, not a big apartment building downtown.

They have regular houses there, with yards and such.

The kind of living situation I’d need would be more on the outskirts, she said.

I could get used to it. “You’d have to. Because if you do this, I don’t want you coming back here for at least a year. ”

“A year.”

“I know. You can’t see it. I couldn’t either, I had to leave here, and then come back as kind of a different person.” June looked so beautiful and kind. She was killing me.

“What if I like the person I am now?” Said with a straight face, no small trick.

“I’m not saying the problem is you. It’s not the drugs either. It’s a whole lot of other things that are wrong, and they won’t get better as long as you stay here.”

A year was not thinkable. Where I would go, who I would be.

Damn her. If we were all such a mess, did she think the whole of Lee County should empty itself out?

I pictured the long line of cars and pickups backed up on 58.

Next in line behind us, our neighbors: Scott County, Russell, Tazewell.

Half of Kentucky. Leaving behind empty houses, unharvested fields, half-full beer cans, the squeaky front porch rockers going quiet.

Unmilked cows lowing in the pastures, dogs standing forlorn in yards under the maples, watching the masters flee from the spoiled paradise where the world’s evils all got sent to roost.

I told her I would think about it. She had to know I was lying.