Demon Copperhead

A ten-year-old getting high on pills. Foolish children. This is what we’re meant to say: Look at their choices, leading to a life of ruin. But lives are getting lived right now, this hour, down in the dirty cracks between the toothbrushued nighty-nights and the full grocery carts, where those words don’t pertain. Children, choices. Ruin, that was the labor and materials we were given to work with. An older boy that never knew safety himself, trying to make us feel safe. We had the moon in the window to smile on us for a minute and tell us the world was ours. Because all the adults had gone off somewhere and left everything in our hands.

She asked me about Creaky Farm, and I told her. The old man was brutal to Tommy, and Swap-Out should be in some other kind of situation […]. Had Crickson ever hit me, she asked. Answer: no. I myself had not been struck. And that was that. Miss Barks was sorry, but Tommy and Swap-Out weren’t on her. Usually all kids in a home are from one foster company, but Crickson was an emergency-type place, and Tommy and Swap-Out belonged to a different foster company that Miss Bark didn’t work with. So fostering was done by companies, and we, as Stoner would say, were Product. Rotating and merchandising foster boys at more than fifty customer accounts. Live and learn.

If Philip Morris and them knew the devil had real teeth, they sat harder on that secret than you’d believe. Grow it with pride and smoke it with pride, they said, giving out bumper stickers to that effect. I recall big stacks of them at school, free for the taking […]. We drove around with “Proud Tobacco Farmer” stickers on our trucks till they peeled and faded along with our good health and dreams of greatness. If you’re standing on a small pile of shit, fighting for your one place to stand, God almighty how you fight.

Mr. McCobb was big on idea for making that little bit extra to turn things around, and had tried most of them: selling Amway, breeding AKC pups with fake papers, human advertisement, sperm donor, etc. Plus buying lotto tickets, obviously. His newest idea was taking in a foster. If I went okay, they might take in two, for twice the cash. It didn’t hurt my feelings. Creaky made no bones about wanting that five hundred a month per head. I knew the score.