The narrator frames his intent to tell events in order, admitting childhood meant powerlessness. He observes how adults dodge kids’ questions, using the Peggots’ moldy gourd birdhouse—and the family’s silence about Maggot’s imprisoned mother and dead uncle Humvee—as examples of what goes unspoken. Mr. Peggot leads the boys in the woods and teaches hunting, while Maggot shields the narrator by taking blame for a shattered TV, giving the narrator a rare sense of being protected.

The Peggots are not devout, but they take him to church, which he enjoys for its automatic love. The Lazarus story unsettles him, inspiring hope his dead father might return. When Mrs. Peggot suggests visiting the grave in Tennessee, his mother and Mrs. Peggot argue, and Maggot calms the narrator by calling Bible stories a kind of superhero comic, separating myth from life.

He contrasts the Peggot household’s order with his mother’s chronic disarray, trying to keep his own small space neat. He and Maggot roam creeks and old coal camps, with Peggot’s Branch serving as their refuge. The boy and his mother live in a Peggot-owned trailer, a reminder that the Peggots watch over them like a second-string arrangement after a favorite daughter, June, moved away.

Amid the Peggots’ sprawling clan, he envies Maggot’s easy abundance of cousins and affection. He calls Mrs. Peggot “Mammaw,” and she treats him like family—fair in treats and firm in scolding. She alone persists in using his real name, underscoring how names matter where nicknames tend to stick and define lives.

He reveals his given name, Damon Fields, noting his mother didn’t attach him to his father’s surname and that Mr. Peggot drove them home from the hospital. “Damon” becomes “Demon,” and with copper hair he’s tagged “Little Copperhead,” evolving into “Demon Copperhead.” As Maggot begins shoplifting, the narrator leans into this charged nickname, finding recognition and a sense of identity.