She put her hands in her back pockets. “You know I’d lay down my life for that girl.”
” I know. I think she wants you not to, though. Anymore.”
She looked at me, surprised. “That’s just how it works, Demon. You should be as mad at her as I am. We give these kids all the advantages, and they won’t stoop to pick them up. Emmy’s acting like a child, and Maggot, good night. I don’t know where to start.”
” He’ll be all right. He just needs more time to find his way out of the weeds.”
” What he needs, she said, ” is a boyfriend.”
I might have blinked. “You’d be okay with that?”
The preceding excerpt is lifted from author Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, Demon Copperhead. It can be found on page 414, line 10 of the first edition.
Damon,aka Demon, is the lightning rod of this story. The novel open’s with his premature birth and follows him through the first eighteen plus years of his life. As I wrote last month, his young life walks hand in hand with abuse, death, betrayal, loss, hope, friendship, young love and passion. All blunted by drugs, pain, and crowded loneliness. To Demon, family is a momentary safe harbor only to be washed away by the next storm door closed to a tomorrow by the feckless foster care system. A system that harbors many adults who have no moral compass.
Demon Copperhead grows into a thoughtful, insightful, artistic , well spoken young man donning his manhood persona during his teen years of glory and personal disappointments. His story is set in Appalachia where young people and old are struck by the spears of pain that are sharpened by addiction. Demon, as I said, is a lightening rod that is dulled by easily prescribed oxy and available fentanyl. His crowd or posse of friends are mostly walking in that fog. Unlike many other young people in Appalachia whose goal was “Get married at fifteen with no bigger hope in the world than to have kids and not watch them die.” (page 376) Demon’s goal,( stated multiple times), was only to get to the ocean.
Does Demon make it to the ocean? Does Demon even live beyond eighteen years of age? In keeping with my principles I leave the ending of this wonderful novel to those of you who choose to read it. I will share author Barbara Kingsolver’s penned tribute to Charles Dickens for writing David Copperfield, his impassioned critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children in his society. Kingsolver continues, Those problems are still with us.
As I sit up here in New England sharing my thoughts with you in the fall of 2023, I can say, as we all can say, too many of our children are still living under the yoke of poverty and the empathetically starved state foster child system. Or even worse, homelessness. Mr. Dicken’s how far we have NOT come!
Another month has past and like Demon I too love the ocean and my own imagined light house! As I lean back and rest against her stable tower, her light washes over me and the angry ocean. The ocean’s chop and wash froth at the mouth of her frantic waves. Why so unsettled my salty mistress? The wind of her answer brushes my ear, salt tears cry out the answer.
Trust! Find truth you can trust! Trust and truth are rare and precious. The animals, the trees, the stones, the moon, sun and stars: the whole universe speaks truth. Most of you do not! Change your tunes before you are swept aside to lay beneath your lies!
Wow, I am startled, to say the least. We are facing the beasts among us! Our swords are sharpened only with truth!
Thank you for reading.
Be in peace and joy!
Mark