Hillbilly Elegy

wrong.
Mom walked in the door a few
minutes after Mamaw called, and I was
already sobbing. “Papaw... Papaw, I
think he’s dead.” The rest is a blur: I
think I relayed Mamaw’s message; we
picked her up down the street and sped
over to Papaw’s house, no more than a
few minutes’ drive away. I knocked on
his door violently. Mom ran to the back
door, screamed, and came around front,
both to tell Mamaw that he was hunched
over in his chair and to grab a rock. She
then broke and went in through a
window, unlocked and opened the door,
and tended to her father. By then he had
been dead for nearly a day.