Read Online The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by Sharyn McCrumb - Free Book Online
Authors: Sharyn McCrumb
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sheep's eyes at a pretty dark-haired girl. It was the perfect picture of young love, except that if you looked closely at the bushes behind the courting couple, you could see an Indian in war paint and feathered headdress,
brandishing a tomahawk, and ready to attack the oblivious lovers. Tavy Annis, renegade brave. He couldn't remember who had taken the picture, or whether Taw had been in on the joke. Taw was always the serious one, burning with ambition to get more than there was in little Wake County. If he couldn't find the gold in the Little Dove River, he would seek it elsewhere.
Taw had been pulled out of the hollers of east Tennessee by World War II, or maybe he had wanted to go, picturing his triumphant return with fame and fortune in his wake. But it had taken him forty years to find his way back home. He had ridden through the battlefields of France with Patton's Red Ball Express, seeing combat and learning more about the world than he'd dreamed of from the geography books of John Sevier High. How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm—indeed. After the war, he had headed north to the automobile factories in Detroit (where he learned that it was pronounced with the accent on the last syllable). Money was good in the car factories after the war. There was a waiting list a mile long for new cars, once they could start making them again, instead of turning out jeeps and tanks for the war effort. He wouldn't stay long, he told himself. Just until he earned enough money to go back to Wake County in style. But while he was in Detroit, he met Wanda, and when they got married, she had wanted to stay up there where her kinfolks were; they had bought a refrigerator on time, and he had to keep his job
to make the monthly payments. A year later, the first baby was on the way, and it seemed foolish to think of giving up a good union job to go back to an uncertain future in Appalachia.
One year stretched into the next, always with some good reason not to go, until he had spent more than half his life in Michigan and his Tennessee accent had worn away into the flat, bland sounds of midwestern speech: y'all gave way to you guys in his need for a second-person plural. He was closing in on forty-five years in urban exile, his dreams still picturing Dark Hollow in 1941 simplicity, when Wanda died. By then the kids were grown and gone to jobs in the Sunbelt, and he was retired from the plant with a good pension for forty years' work. Suddenly, he had run out of family, installment payments, and excuses to keep him in Detroit. One night he was down at the bar with some old friends from work when the old Bobby Bare song came on the radio, the one about the homesick Southern boy being trapped in Dee-troit City. "/ wanna go home." Taw had felt tears spring to his eyes when he heard those words, and he realized that he didn't want to see another skyscraper or sit through another traffic jam as long as he lived. He wanted to go home. His friends in Detroit kidded him about it at first. All you hillbillies go home, they said. Every time a redneck retires, he starts packing. You can get the boy out of the mountains . ..
The woman next door helped him run a yard sale, and he sent most of what was left after that to the Salvation Army. He told the realtor
not to jack up the price on the house; he wanted a quick sale. Three weeks later, Taw McBryde was back in the east Tennessee mountains, looking for a place to live, and trying as hard as he could to go home again.
Hamelin hadn't changed all that much. Main Street still looked pretty much the way it always had, except that the movie theatre had closed, and a Laundromat had been installed in the building, so that the movie marquee was permanently set to read washarama. The old hotel was closed, too, but a neatly painted sign on its front door said that the historical society had plans to restore it as a local landmark. He didn't know too many of the people in Hamelin anymore. Most of his
brandishing a tomahawk, and ready to attack the oblivious lovers. Tavy Annis, renegade brave. He couldn't remember who had taken the picture, or whether Taw had been in on the joke. Taw was always the serious one, burning with ambition to get more than there was in little Wake County. If he couldn't find the gold in the Little Dove River, he would seek it elsewhere.
Taw had been pulled out of the hollers of east Tennessee by World War II, or maybe he had wanted to go, picturing his triumphant return with fame and fortune in his wake. But it had taken him forty years to find his way back home. He had ridden through the battlefields of France with Patton's Red Ball Express, seeing combat and learning more about the world than he'd dreamed of from the geography books of John Sevier High. How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm—indeed. After the war, he had headed north to the automobile factories in Detroit (where he learned that it was pronounced with the accent on the last syllable). Money was good in the car factories after the war. There was a waiting list a mile long for new cars, once they could start making them again, instead of turning out jeeps and tanks for the war effort. He wouldn't stay long, he told himself. Just until he earned enough money to go back to Wake County in style. But while he was in Detroit, he met Wanda, and when they got married, she had wanted to stay up there where her kinfolks were; they had bought a refrigerator on time, and he had to keep his job
to make the monthly payments. A year later, the first baby was on the way, and it seemed foolish to think of giving up a good union job to go back to an uncertain future in Appalachia.
One year stretched into the next, always with some good reason not to go, until he had spent more than half his life in Michigan and his Tennessee accent had worn away into the flat, bland sounds of midwestern speech: y'all gave way to you guys in his need for a second-person plural. He was closing in on forty-five years in urban exile, his dreams still picturing Dark Hollow in 1941 simplicity, when Wanda died. By then the kids were grown and gone to jobs in the Sunbelt, and he was retired from the plant with a good pension for forty years' work. Suddenly, he had run out of family, installment payments, and excuses to keep him in Detroit. One night he was down at the bar with some old friends from work when the old Bobby Bare song came on the radio, the one about the homesick Southern boy being trapped in Dee-troit City. "/ wanna go home." Taw had felt tears spring to his eyes when he heard those words, and he realized that he didn't want to see another skyscraper or sit through another traffic jam as long as he lived. He wanted to go home. His friends in Detroit kidded him about it at first. All you hillbillies go home, they said. Every time a redneck retires, he starts packing. You can get the boy out of the mountains . ..
The woman next door helped him run a yard sale, and he sent most of what was left after that to the Salvation Army. He told the realtor
not to jack up the price on the house; he wanted a quick sale. Three weeks later, Taw McBryde was back in the east Tennessee mountains, looking for a place to live, and trying as hard as he could to go home again.
Hamelin hadn't changed all that much. Main Street still looked pretty much the way it always had, except that the movie theatre had closed, and a Laundromat had been installed in the building, so that the movie marquee was permanently set to read washarama. The old hotel was closed, too, but a neatly painted sign on its front door said that the historical society had plans to restore it as a local landmark. He didn't know too many of the people in Hamelin anymore. Most of his
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