Demon Copperhead

The ride problem turned out not an issue. Coach made us come out two hours ahead of kickoff for last-minute drills. I was wound so tight over so many things, getting the thunderous trots in public for one, I took every pill I was supposed to. Stood on the sidelines watching the hole in our game that should have been me. I was there and not there, the crowd noise and stadium lights melting into a long grasshopper whine in my ears. Feeling my heart thumping in the backs of my knees and my teeth. One sorry son of a bitch. Only one thing could save me.

She’d turned up looking like a wet dream. The purple-hair waterfall down one side of her face, the shiny blue dress also like water running down her perfect body. I wanted to drink it off of her. Before kickoff we’d met up in the parking lot so I could give her the flower thing. But really just to see her. I didn’t fully believe she’d come. I fetched the clear box out of U-Haul’s car and slipped it on her wrist and she was like a kid on Christmas morning. Holding it up to her hair. Perfect match. She’d not seen an orchid before, let alone anybody giving her one. It killed me to leave her. I told her to find the pep squad and they’d tell her where to line up for the halftime court. I’d already caused no small amount of drama, signing up a date that was not enrolled as a student. Seriously ticking off the cheerleaders and locker-cookies chicks. But Dori would never know about that, I’d make sure. I felt fifty years older than these kids in high school.

“See you on the field,” she said. That open-lip smile. “My liege.” She reached up and kissed me, surprise attack, and I got hard. What that feels like inside a jock and cup, oh man. Like a V8 under a Yugo hood. I couldn’t help wondering what I had to look forward to later.

I got some idea at halftime. We did the whole pony show, homecoming court, marching band, walking out, our names over the loudspeakers. The runner-up guys with their cheerleader dates in red hair bows and mickeymouse skirts. Me, the king, with my mermaid queen, as proud as it’s possible to feel in shoulder pads and a plastic crown from Halloween Express. They honored the graduating seniors while the rest of us stood out there smiling like our shoes were too tight. All but Dori, that was sexy hot and lemonade chill. In the middle of all that, she whispers she’s got a surprise for me later. Something she’s been saving up, because you only get one first time. Jesus.

Second half, not a story worth telling. You hate to lose homecoming, hate worse to be the reason. Not that I was blamed, the locker room afterward was all just, Fuck it, next time we’ll own those bastards. But I knew the main event of the dance would be a consolation party behind the gym. Dori of course was all about the dancing and dress-up party, dying to see people she’d not talked to in forever, whereas I was more in need of the frontal assault of Mountain Dew and vodka. I wanted to be outside with the team, standing where I could hold her close in front of me, one arm across her shoulder and chest like a seat belt. All the guys looking at me like, Man, no yards, no possessions, and still you get one of God’s angels? Yes, I did.

So we were in and out. The usual gym smell of armpit and Lysol had a frosting of girl perfume that seemed flimsy, like the trellis thing loaned by Tractor Supply with Kleenex flowers on it for taking your photo. Sourpuss teachers doing their time around the refreshments table. Speakers rattling an ear-killing mix of Thong Song, Destiny’s Child, Mariah Carey. Every so often, the shock of the whole gym falling into step for the Electric Slide. Dori tried to introduce me to her besties, but there was no talking over the din. It was plain to see she’d been popular, one of those that would have loved staying in high school if she could have. I begged off from dancing due to my knee, but really from not knowing how, my main dance partner so far being Mom that only knew the ridiculous ones: Robot, Worm, Macarena. Dori though. The first notes of every tune and she was a little bouncy ball, Yay, this one! Hopping all around in her shiny dress and smile, dancing with no one person, just all the moving bodies. Just once, a fast song trick-faded into “Beautiful Mess,” and this asshole Keg Barnes oozed her into a slow dance. Then before I could go put his lights out, it finished, and everybody’s flailing to “It’s Gonna Be Me.”

We stayed as long as I could stand, then took off in her dad’s Impala SS. Seats like couches in that thing, front and back both. She said she had a place in mind for us to go parking, but first we had to stop by her house to check on Daddy. She had a neighbor staying over, so I didn’t see the point, but didn’t argue. The house was way out towards Blackwell. Deep country. She was talking a mile a minute, saying if her daddy was awake she would introduce us again because the time we’d met at the store didn’t count, he hadn’t paid any attention, not knowing I’d be taking out his daughter at some future time. I wondered if she was nervous like me but it didn’t seem so, just glittery, the way she was. Talkative. I listened.

I ended up getting nowhere near Daddy. I opened the car door and this thing comes barreling off the porch straight at me like a heat-seeking dirty mop full of teeth. Dori just laughed, saying, “Jip you scamp, you are rotten,” scooping him up, kissing his nasty toothy face, telling me how Jip was a little old sweetie. Unbelievable. I waited in the car.



The rest gets foggy. I hate this. Due to pills, booze, me being an idiot, all the above, that amazing night is a locked-up house I have to look into from outside, through the windows. I recall my arms around her, steering while she did the gas and brakes, Siamese drivers. Us laughing about that. And where we parked, some random place, a ridgetop gravel road that ended at a chain-link gate. Down below, a wrecked valley and stairstep tailings of an old mine with the reclamation trees planted the way they do, in rows, like the hair dots of a doll that’s been scalped. The moon was out bright and hard, hitting these bean-shaped acid ponds down there, making them pretty. I was keyed up, nerves being my home turf. But less so after Dori said it was first time for her too. That she’d saved up for me. I could live on that forever, even if she dumped me tomorrow. Or so I thought. Until her surprise. It’s the shocks that end up sticking with you, while all the rest melts away. I can still see her saying it, with her face lit by the moon.

“Daddy gave us a present.”

I said I’d thought he was asleep, and she said yes. That’s how come he gave it to us. He didn’t know. Twinkly eyes, holding up a flat foil package, teasing me with it before tearing it open. Me trying not to wonder about Dori’s dad having condoms. But it wasn’t a condom. It was something like a Band-Aid. Evidently made out of money, given how careful she was with it.

“Shine,” she said.

The shine I knew of was clear, in mason jars. Drinkable.

No, not that. Painkiller patch, she said, the extra-special kind. Fentanyl.

The next surprise won’t ever leave my brain. The kit she took out of her purse. The spoon she used first, to scrape the patch. The lighter she held underneath. The cotton ball, the syringe, pulling the cap off the needle and holding it in her mouth like a nurse giving booster shots. I don’t know what I said but she could tell I was scared, and she was sweet with me, the same voice she used with Jip. She’d been saving this, because the first time you do it with somebody, they say it’s the best you’ll ever feel in your life. Like having Jesus all up in your blood.

Jesus or not, I admitted to despising needles. She took the syringe cap out of her mouth and kissed me a long time. Then pushed the tip of the needle into the patch with such tender care. The way her tongue pressed the middle of her top lip, she looked like somebody concentrating on the best present a person could ever give. She drew something out of the patch, squeezed the clear drop of gel onto her finger, then put her fingertip in my mouth, under my tongue.

Barbara Kingsolver's books