Hang the Moon

by Jeannette Walls

“Time. Money comes and goes, but time only goes.”

“Tom, if I ever do marry, I’d want it to be you, but truth be told, marriage scares me. It didn’t work out so well for my mama. I’m not sure I’ll ever want to get married. Maybe I’ll have a change of heart one day, but I surely can’t promise you. So no, don’t wait around.”

“People choose their own fates. You got to remember that,

“Otherwise, you fall to pieces.

“Nothing to be gained by falling to pieces.”

pretty much everything you can’t make or grow on your own, and more than a few that you can because everyone knows that store-bought is better.

and now we say homemade or madd frim scratch is the best.. How times change

so I know what it’s like to be beholden to kin, to be dependent on their kindness, all the while knowing they can cut you off with a snap of the fingers.

reading was a way of traveling the world, getting to know people you’ll never meet, also traveling through time, getting to know people who lived long ago.

There are people like Eddie, with plenty of book smarts but no people smarts. Then there are ones like the Duke, plenty of people smarts but a little thin on the book smarts. Then there are those rare few with both, like Tom, and they have enough people smarts to know better than to show off their book smarts.

“Miss Cain used to say that teachers and parents can’t change children and shouldn’t try. What they can do is bring out children’s strengths.”

and everyone’s got something to say about everyone else.”

Because sometimes men don’t take care of the women. And that’s why we women need our jobs.

her back is already bent, like she’s been carrying a heavy load her whole life.

Is jumping brave? Or downright foolhardy? Both, of course. And of course I’m going.

but how do you protect someone from grief?

handout. You think you’re being all generous, but what you’re also saying is you got what the other person doesn’t—so much of it you’re giving it away.

“This is a chance for folks who never had much money to get their hands on a little.”

“Folk always hate change and they always get used to it and life goes on,” Mattie says.

they get you coming and going, this country has gone to hell in a handbasket ever since those same thieving federals passed that law forcing us to pay income tax, it’s communism, it is, it’s downright un-American.

Buy when folks need money, the Duke said whenever he told the story, sell when they have it.

I used to think what a fine thing it would be to have a paycheck job—you show up, work your hours, and at the end of the month, doesn’t matter what the weather is, you get your money. Now that I have one of those jobs, I see it’s not the rain that’s your worry, but the whims of the boss man. Some of the times, the things you’re asked to do are foolish. Leaves you rolling your eyes, but it can be done. It’s when the boss asks you to do something you know to be wrong and you do it anyways. That sort of work whittles away at the soul.

Hunting is waiting, the Duke used to say, and if you never came home empty-handed they wouldn’t call it hunting.

“When you lose the man you love, you live with the loss for a while. You don’t rush out and find another man to take his place. That makes light of the loss.”

People who’ve never gone without find it easy to pass judgment on those who’ve struggled.

I figured that for the first time I was seeing the true world of grown-ups, the secret world they kept hidden from children, where things were not what they seemed.

They accept it the way you accept roosters crowing in the morning and moths burning themselves in candle flames.

So many women are natural mamas, but the harder I try, the more I see that I’m not one of them.

There are two kinds of brave people in this world, it hits me, those who fight and those who protect the ones who can’t fight.

“The women in this household are under my protection. They’re all fine.” “Glad to hear that, sir. Glad to hear the ladies of this household got the protection of a man so batshit crazy the governor had to send in the militia.”

“Before you right now you all see a skinny, knock-kneed gal who not too long ago lived with her aunt up in the hollows, barely making ends meet washing the stained sheets of sick people. But as you folks know, us mountain gals can be tough. We don’t need ourselves any parasols or scented hankies. We can work a plow, milk a cow, shoot a buck, and slaughter a hog as well as any man.” “Wheooo!” It’s a woman giving a mountain whoop.

And you trust no one. But on the off chance that you do find one man you can trust, you do whatever the hell you have to do to keep that fellow.”

there’s a lot of blame to go around for what happened and I reckon we were all doing what we thought we had to do.

‘Forgive and forget’ is fifty percent bullshit,” the Duke used to say. “Forgive, but don’t ever, ever, forget.”

legal and illegal and right and wrong don’t always line up.

hair—“you believe you can do everything on your own and you’re gosh darned good at it, but as you get older, life gets harder—and lonelier.

“Honey, there are some rocks you don’t want to look under.” “I don’t want to but I got to, Aunt Faye. I’m tired of being afraid of the answer

I stare at Aunt Faye in the mirror. Someone once told me that when Aunt Faye was young, she was beautiful enough to make good men write bad checks. Now, the afternoon sunlight catches the fine lines around her eyes and mouth, etched there by years of hurt and heartbreak.

hifalutin

Look up meaning update: highfalutin? ·(especially of speach, writing, or ideas) pompous or pretentious

the Duke hated it in his own son. Because he feared it in himself.

the things this family keeps quiet about are the things that matter the most.

“But was it really self-defense?” “Only Annie and the Duke knew.”

stare at myself in the mirror. A woman I barely know is staring back. She’s older. Not a child, and yet still a daughter.

the shooting begins and they’ll think you’re scared of them.”

“Once a fight gets started, it takes on a life of its own.

I wish I could say we were always on the side of right, but that would be a lie. We fought people for doing to us exactly what we did to others, fought them for wanting the same rights we had.

“I’ve never picked a fight in my whole life,” I say, “but if someone comes at me, I won’t back down.”

“Uncle Sam don’t hold a lot of sway around here. We pay him all these taxes and our hard-earned money goes into the pockets of politicians who dole it out to the fat cats who bribe them. Your Uncle Sam doesn’t look out for us, so we take care of our own around here. I protect my people.”

“But Prohibition—” “Big old ugly word that means you ain’t allowed to do something. A bunch of numbskulls in Richmond and Washington who think they’re smarter than everyone else pro-hib-it-ing other people from doing what they got to do to keep their families from starving to death. Seems downright un-American to me.”

“Young man, there are things that you brag about and things that you keep to yourself,” Cecil says. “The Duke understood the difference.

A lapse in judgment. A mistake. But you never know how your mistakes are going to turn out.