Status Updates From The Killing Hills

Linda waited, knowing Knox would fill the silence. On average, men tended to interrupt a woman after eight seconds. If a woman didn’t talk, most men couldn’t last four seconds, according to social scientists with government funding and a stopwatch.

The older two boys were lost to her—one to the graveyard and the other stationed at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. For a while she worried about him in California with all those serial killers and vegetarians but she figured a Marine could take care of himself.

Shifty Kissick made her bed every morning, careful not to let the pillows rest on each other lest such a sight be too suggestive of sexual conduct.

Mick’s great-grandfather had built the four-room cabin by hand, solid construction with corners that still held true, the walls plumb, a floor as level as water. He’d picked this place due solely to the rough terrain. The hills were too steep and the hollers too narrow to log the woods...The two old men taught Mick all they knew about the woods, wisdom that ran back to the Great Depression.

He’d heard that time heals all wounds, which he knew to be a lie. Time didn’t heal anything, it made you forget. Whiskey accelerated the process.
~ Mick Hardin