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Summary
Sections 41-45
41
Demon begins reflecting on when his road to ruin might have started. In late October, during a football game, a bad tackle leaves him with a devastating knee injury. Determined to keep playing, he tries to push through the pain but eventually collapses and has to be carried off the field. Back at Coach’s house, he’s unable to make it up the stairs, so Angus prepares Mr. Dick’s old bed for him. His knee becomes swollen and blackened, and the sports medicine doctor, Dr. Watts, prescribes him Lortab to manage the pain.
June visits Demon to check on him and immediately raises concerns about his use of Lortab. She urges him to get another MRI and cautions him not to hold onto any hope of returning to the field this season. Her comments lead to a heated argument with Coach, during which she accuses him of playing with fire by allowing Demon to take the pills. June warns Demon that hydrocodone is no better than Oxy and tells him how dramatically her work has changed: she used to see two or three narcotics patients a year, but now she sees that many in a single day. When Demon brings up Kent’s pitch about safe pain relief, she bitterly calls Kent a "hired killer" for his company.
Demon sides with Coach, rationalizing that June doesn’t understand football, where playing through pain is just part of the game. Later, the doctor confirms that Demon needs another MRI and will likely require surgery. To Demon’s surprise, Coach doesn’t even ask when he’ll be able to play again. Feeling anxious about the prospect of surgery, Demon tells Coach he doesn’t want to be cut open. When he goes to pick up his prescription refill, he notices the medication has been changed to Oxy.
42
Demon promises to follow the doctor’s orders, and in return, Coach allows him to keep playing. For the first game against an easy opponent, Coach lets him sit out most of it, only sending him on for a brief walk-on appearance to elicit roaring cheers from the crowd. By the second game, Coach brings him in for critical plays, but the Oxy slows Demon’s reaction time and decision-making. To manage his pain, the doctor prescribes a regimen of tapering off Oxy before games but keeping him doped up for practices. This cycle worsens Demon’s knee injury, leaving it increasingly numb and immobile.
Demon starts to experience withdrawal symptoms, including severe diarrhea, which leads him to take more Oxy to counteract the side effects, especially with Homecoming around the corner. As the presumed Homecoming King, he becomes the center of attention. Girls flock to him, leaving cookies, nude photos, and even a pair of used panties in his locker. Despite this, he’s too nervous to ask Dori to the dance, fearing rejection. However, one day, she surprises him by visiting his home with a baby chick—the lone survivor of her coop after her dog got in and killed the rest. Over the week, Dori visits daily to bring food and water for the chick, but also because she’s lonely; her father has terminal cancer. One day, she asks if she can lie down and cry with him while he holds her.
Before the Homecoming game, Demon gives Dori an orchid, and she kisses him for the first time. During halftime, as they ride on the Homecoming float, Dori whispers to him that she’s been saving something for him, hinting at a significant first experience. After the dance, they briefly stop by her house before heading to a secluded spot. There, Dori reveals a Fentanyl patch she stole from her father, explaining that she’d heard it’s best the first time. They use the Fentanyl patch and then have sex for the first time, but Demon remembers only fragments of the night due to the drugs.
43
Demon makes plans to take Dori out the following weekend, but the day of their date, he gets an unexpected call from Maggot. Maggot tells him that Mr. Peg is sick and won’t wake up. June arrives to pick Demon up, with Maggot already in the car. Maggot has been staying with June ever since a blowout argument with Mr. Peg, and Emmy is conspicuously absent.
At the Peggots’ house, Demon notices Hammer Kelly, who looks devastated. Maggot’s Aunt Ruby asks Demon to take Maggot to see Mr. Peg. Demon finds Maggot outside by the creek where they used to play as kids. They reminisce about pretending to be Avengers, but the nostalgia is cut short when Maggot starts crying. That night, before either of them gets a chance to say goodbye, Mr. Peg passes away. Maggot is left haunted by their last conversation, in which he told Mr. Peg to go to hell. Part of Maggot regrets it, and part of him doesn’t, leaving him emotionally torn, possibly forever.
Dori accompanies Demon to Mr. Peg’s funeral, and Demon is struck by how different it feels from his mother’s funeral. At his mother’s service, the attendees seemed guarded, almost hardened against her memory. Here, everyone mourns Mr. Peg openly, sharing heartfelt stories and honoring his life. The funeral is far larger, with half the county in attendance alongside family and close friends.
Emmy arrives late to the funeral and avoids attempts by June to reconnect. Soon after, a commotion outside reveals Rose trying to pull Emmy’s hair out in a heated fight. Demon and Maggot intervene to break it up, and Maggot tells Demon that Emmy broke up with Hammer and was caught with Fast Forward. He says June asked if Fast Forward is a decent person, and Demon replies that he doesn’t know him well enough to say. He reflects bitterly that he wishes this were true.
44
Coach tells Demon he needs to stop taking Oxy completely and cut back on Percocets, aiming to get him back on the field in the fall. Demon tries, but the withdrawal symptoms—vomiting, diarrhea, shivering, and profound misery—are unbearable. He ends up taking Oxy just to function, trapped in a cycle he can’t seem to break.
Demon spends most of his time with Dori, helping her care for her dying father. When Dori runs errands, Demon stays with her dad, who opens up about his life. He explains how working in the mines as a maintenance worker exposed him to coal dust and asbestos, leading to his lung failure. The asbestos settlement allowed him and his brother to start the store, but now his brother is dead and he’s nearing death, so it wasn’t worth it.
One day, while picking up Dori’s father’s prescriptions, Demon runs into Tommy. Tommy is still with his girlfriend and working at a newspaper. He’s living in the garage of a nice couple with four kids—shockingly, the McCobbs. Demon asks if the McCobbs are still struggling financially, and Tommy admits they are, but Mr. McCobb has a "promising business" selling weight-loss products. Demon warns Tommy not to invest his own money, but it’s already too late.
As Christmas approaches, Demon becomes deeply invested in his relationship with Dori, causing tension with Angus when he blows off their usual holiday plans. Instead, he takes Dori to the stripping house at Creaky’s old farm, where they have sex and drink wine, already under the influence of pills. Dori carefully manages his drug intake, always giving him just enough to keep him functional—partly because of a past incident where he threw up on her during withdrawal, an embarrassment Demon is determined never to repeat.
45
Demon all but moves in with Dori, completely skipping Christmas with Angus. Though he misses Angus, he rationalizes his absence by telling himself her household is simply returning to its natural state.
On a rare day spent with Angus, they watch a nature show about seals. Demon, feeling restless, gripes about how he’ll probably never get close to the ocean. When Angus gives him a pointed look, he decides he’s going to see the ocean for himself. Dori, unable to leave her father, encourages him to go without her. Demon recruits Fast Forward to drive, Maggot to join since he’s been fighting with June, and Emmy, who decides to come along as well. During the trip, it becomes clear that Emmy and Fast Forward are romantically involved, though Fast Forward treats her with the same casual detachment he shows toward all his girlfriends.
Their plan is to drive to Virginia Beach, but they only make it as far as a place called Hungry Mother. They come across a lake with a dirty patch of sand, and while the others are excited, Demon is furious—this isn’t the ocean he’s been dreaming of.
That night, they break into a cabin to sleep. Demon, unable to rest, sits on the porch, where Emmy joins him. Her presence makes him think of their closeness back in Knoxville. Emmy confides in him about June, who has been receiving death threats at work from people addicted to Oxy. Many of them don’t even realize they’re addicted—they were simply following their doctors’ orders and now are suffering. She speculates that Hammer is with June to protect her and then begins to cry. Emmy admits she feels like a terrible person and reveals that Martha recently got pregnant, and Emmy drove her to Knoxville for an abortion. Emmy doesn’t feel guilty about the abortion itself but feels burdened by the lies she’s been telling her mother, including her current whereabouts. She also shares June’s growing concern about Maggot, revealing that he’s using meth and trading sex for drugs.
Demon reflects on their shared circumstances. All three of them—Emmy, Maggot, and himself—were shown kindness by various people at different times in their lives. Yet, it feels like none of it was enough to truly change their trajectories. The weight of their circumstances, shaped by the conditions they were born into, seems insurmountable–it was too late for them because they were born to hungry mothers.
Analysis
emon’s knee injury during the football game symbolizes the beginning of his physical and emotional unraveling. Football, previously a source of identity and belonging, becomes the very mechanism through which he is introduced to prescription opioids. Coach and Dr. Watts, figures he trusted to guide him toward success, inadvertently lead him down a path of dependency by normalizing the use of painkillers to maintain his performance. Demon’s initial reluctance to undergo surgery reflects his fear of vulnerability and his desire to maintain control over his body, even as his reliance on pills steadily undermines that control. His later switch to OxyContin highlights the insidious escalation typical of opioid addiction, where attempts to manage pain lead to worsening dependency. June’s warnings about opioids are layered with dramatic irony, as she correctly predicts the dangers of hydrocodone and Oxy even before Demon fully grasps their consequences. Her accusations against Kent as a “hired killer” for the pharmaceutical industry mirror her broader disillusionment with a medical system that preys on vulnerable communities.
The ripple effects of Kent’s work as a pharmaceutical representative are evident in the rising number of people addicted to opioids in the community, many of whom began with legitimate prescriptions. June’s accounts of patients unaware of their addiction highlight how medical authority is weaponized against vulnerable populations, turning trust into dependency. The community’s increasing reliance on opioids reflects the broader exploitation of Appalachia, where systemic poverty and lack of opportunity make escape nearly impossible.
Dori’s introduction into Demon’s life represents both solace and destruction, their relationship defined by a complex intertwining of care and harm. Built on a mutual understanding of loss and caregiving, their bond quickly becomes entangled with substance use. The Fentanyl patch they share during their first sexual encounter does more than dull their physical pain—it symbolically infects the moment, replacing the intimacy and excitement of a significant milestone with a drug-induced haze. Fentanyl becomes a substitute for the emotions and milestones they should be experiencing, blurring the lines between tenderness and dependency.
Dori, burdened by her father’s terminal illness and tasked with managing his pain medications, carries these caregiving responsibilities into her relationship with Demon. She sees giving him pills not as enabling, but as an extension of her role as a caretaker, mirroring how she administers her father’s medication. This dynamic ensures that Demon never truly detoxes; instead, his drug intake is managed enough to keep him functional, fostering a dependency he cannot break. The tender moments they share, such as holding each other during her grief, are inseparable from the destructive habits they develop together, making their bond one of simultaneous healing and harm. Their connection becomes emblematic of how addiction intertwines itself into relationships, distorting acts of love and care into vehicles for dependency.
Emmy’s trajectory reveals her unraveling, mirroring Demon’s own struggles in ways he hadn’t previously recognized. Her confession about taking Martha for an abortion underscores the pervasive stigma in their community, which makes her feel tainted despite knowing she did the right thing. She feels like a bad person, even though she hasn’t done anything wrong—a burden of guilt imposed not by her actions but by the weight of societal judgment. This internalized shame erodes her sense of self-worth, leaving her feeling undeserving of anything good, much like Demon.
For Demon, Emmy had seemed like someone who had risen above their shared circumstances, someone more well-adjusted and confident. Yet, her tears on the porch as she confesses her feelings of being a terrible person shatter that illusion. Their conversation reveals that Emmy, too, is deeply fractured, caught in a cycle of secrecy and self-recrimination that parallels Demon’s own feelings of inadequacy. The image of them together on the porch recalls their childhood closeness, but it is now layered with a painful awareness of how both have been shaped—and broken—by the same forces of poverty, addiction, and despair.
The trip to see the ocean encapsulates the disillusionment that permeates these chapters. For Demon, the ocean represents a symbol of freedom and possibility, a place untainted by the struggles and betrayals he has faced. However, the group only reaches Hungry Mother, a lake whose dirty sand starkly contrasts with Demon’s idealized vision. This moment reinforces the theme of unmet expectations and the limitations imposed by their circumstances. Hungry Mother becomes a bitter metaphor for their lives—an inadequate substitute for the dreams they once held.
The reference to "hungry mothers" in the final chapter ties together themes of systemic deprivation and inherited trauma. The term evokes the physical and emotional hunger of Demon’s mother and others like her, whose struggles with addiction and poverty leave an indelible mark on their children. Demon’s reflection that it was too late for them because they were born to hungry mothers highlights the deterministic nature of their circumstances, shaped by generational poverty, neglect, and systemic failure.
