Hang the Moon

by Jeannette Walls

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

Don’t argue, but don’t agree. Find the in-between.

“That’s why you all are here. We’re forming a special committee, a secret committee, to collect the tax.”

land that had been fetching $150 an acre before the war was going for $2. With those federal banknotes, the Colonel started buying. And the Bonds sold. Buy when folks need money, the Duke said whenever he told the story, sell when they have it.

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.

“Way I see it, Prohibition’s federal law, not local law,” he says.

Last night, Lowe’s deputies ranged over the county, banging on doors, waving guns, flashing badges, cuffing people, shoving and punching anyone who resisted or back-talked or even questioned them.

You call yourself a man of God, but those deputies you brought in are treating human beings like animals.

“When you can’t solve a problem and you can’t run from it and you can’t hide from it, you got to make it the other man’s problem.”

I told Gloria she couldn’t let them win, but of course, that’s what we’ve all been doing ever since the deputies arrived, letting them win. Telling ourselves there’s nothing we can do, it’s out of our hands, and that kind of thinking has led to Abraham’s death.

We fought people for doing to us exactly what we did to others, fought them for wanting the same rights we had.

we turn onto Monument Avenue, passing statues of generals who lost the war but are posed like they won it.

She got what she deserved. That’s what some people said when Mama was killed. It is what you tell yourself sometimes, a way to make sense of things, a way to make you feel safer, that people who get hurt bring it on themselves. But it’s such a lie. Lots of folks don’t deserve what they get.

SOME SAY THAT WHAT doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but that isn’t always so. Many a time, what doesn’t kill you leaves you broken and crippled, unable to fight the next fight, or sometimes it leaves a wound in your heart so deep and ugly that it never truly heals, leaves you bitter and angry, unable to forgive the world for its cruelty.

The peculiar alliance of religion, nativism, racism, and progressivism that led to Prohibition is well-documented.