I guess he was right pretty. But just setting there all day

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

When cold weather come on he would tell me to move his chair up in front of the fireplace. He would sprawl out there in the same way all winter long. There wasn’t room for anybody else to get around saw just at the sides. Every time anybody set down he would rare about them killing time. ‘Setting here hain’t buying the baby a new dress nor paying the one it’s got,’ he would say. And he would keep on patting his foot. Whether he was piddling with anything or not.

Sometimes though he wanted us to pop popcorn for him, and we did. We never could pop it to suit him much. He said he just liked to see the white balls go up and down. It did seem like they went up and down just like his foot—fell right into the time. He made us crack walnuts and pick out the kernels for him. One time he got so mad at Amy because she didn’t get the boy’s britches out whole that he grabbed the hammer and hit her on the head with it. He knocked the breath plumb out of her.

That was before she was yet four year old. I though he had kilt her and it near scared the daylights out of me. Barshia didn’t do a thing but set there and grin like a possum all the time I was working with her. Amy still has got the scar on her face. None of us ever told the truth about the scar. We always just said she bumped into the crib door over there.

Barshia said he liked to watch the blaze and see the sparks fly up. Sparks like the color of his hair. And Barshia thought is was pretty—he was stuck on himself. Sometimes the smoke would puff out in the room and he would say ‘Look at it. It comes right toward me. Smoke always follows beauty.’ I guess he was right pretty. But just setting there all day.
—excerpt from “Barshia’s Horse He Made, It Flew”
The Hawk’s Done Gone: And Other Stories
Mildred Haun (1911-1966)

Mildred Eunice Haun grew up in Haun Hollow—located in the Hoot Owl District of Cocke County, Tennessee near Russellville—where she absorbed the culture and music of the southern Appalachian Mountains.

Haun enrolled at Vanderbilt University in 1931 and was encouraged to pursue writing by John Crowe Ransom and Donald Davidson, who were among the core members of a group of prominent poets and literary scholars at Vanderbilt called the Fugitives. She received her bachelor of arts from the College of Arts and Science in 1935. Haun then earned her master of arts in English from Vanderbilt in 1937. Her thesis, “Cocke County Ballads and Songs” pays tribute to the ballads that she heard her mother, uncles and brothers sing around the evening fire in Haun Hollow.

The Hawk’s Done Gone (1940), the only collection of fiction published by Haun, creates a vivid portrait of the stark reality of life in southern Appalachia. The book combines modern realism with ancient beliefs and superstitions, creating a disturbing yet intriguing look at east Tennessee mountain life in the period from the Civil War to 1940. The work consists of a group of stories linked by the narrator Mary Dorthula White and members of several families.

The themes of witchcraft, infanticide, incest, and miscegenation reveal a dark side of the author. But amid the talk of spirits and age-old prejudices is Haun’s use of dialect, mountain beliefs, and songs. The collection is not quite a novel, but is more than a series of stories.

Haun worked during the early 1940s as the book editor for The Tennessean. She also was an editorial assistant to author Allen Tate on the Sewanee Review. From 1950 to 1963 Haun worked as an editor and information specialist for the Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tullahoma, writing speeches, news releases, correspondence courses in engineering and technical subjects for military personnel, training manuals, and featured articles of the Department of Agriculture.

She was sent to Europe and the Near East in 1965 to report on agricultural projects under American foreign aid. At the end of 1965, a serious illness forced her to return to Nashville for hospitalization and treatment. Haun died on December 20, 1966, in Washington, D.C., after months of hospitalization, and is buried in Morristown, next to her mother in the Haun family plot.

sources: https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/mildred-eunice-haun/

Chapter16 biography of Haun

The Hawk’s Done Gone: And Other Stories, by Mildred Haun, Vanderbilt University Press, 1985

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