Hillbilly Elegy

kill him.
I feared this because, according to
family lore, Mamaw had nearly killed a
man. When she was around twelve,
Mamaw walked outside to see two men
loading the family’s cow—a prized
possession in a world without running
water—into the back of a truck. She ran
inside, grabbed a rifle, and fired a few
rounds. One of the men collapsed—the
result of a shot to the leg—and the other
jumped into the truck and squealed
away. The would-be thief could barely
crawl, so Mamaw approached him,
raised the business end of her rifle to the
man’s head, and prepared to finish the
job. Luckily for him, Uncle Pet