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The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart
M. Glenn Taylor
This one is for Margaret
I have gulled the pith from a sumac limb To play a tune that my blood remembers.
Louise McNeill
Table of Contents
ONE The Woman Could Cure Ailments
THREE Climbing And Digging Came Natural
FOUR Frank Dallara Fashioned A Tool
FIVE Beast Eye And Something Else
SIX Then Came More of Sorrow and Anguish
EIGHT Who Among Us Has Read The Signs
TEN The Powerful And The Ones Beneath
ELEVEN Folks Will Dust You Quick As Look At You
THIRTEEN They Had Grips On Them
FOURTEEN Strange Days And More Of The Same
FIFTEEN Who Has Worn And Who Has Broken?
SIXTEEN It was Regimented Living
TWENTY You Carried What You Could
TWENTY-ONE Wide Vision Running
TWENTY-TWO Writing Came Natural
TWENTY-THREE Kennedy Had A Way
TWENTY-FOUR Discovery Had Its Way
TWENTY-FIVE The Tri-State Dump
TWENTY-SIX Man Attacked, Man Robbed
TWENTY-SEVEN Goddamn Son Of A Bitch
TWENTY-EIGHT Boys Should Have Gotten Their Educations
TWENTY-NINE Ewart Smith Spoke In A Dream
THIRTY A Man Took It All To The Stage
On December 3rd, 2010, the old man sewed his mouth shut with saltwater-rated fishing line. The sores and the throbbing were back. It was his 108th birthday, and it was the day Time magazine sent a reporter to his home in Warm Hollow, West Virginia. This was on account of the old man’s reputation, and on account of Pearl Thackery. Pearl Thackery was the oldest living West Virginian and had died the week prior, leaving the old man, a one time inventor, snake handler, cunnilinguist, sniper, woodsman, harmonica man, and newspaperman, as the oldest living Homo sapiens in the state.
He’d left a small, pinto bean-sized hole unsewn, so that he could ingest chicory coffee and spruce needle tea through a straw. So he could speak if he needed to. And so he could smoke his Chesterfields.
When the Time magazine reporter sat down across the kitchen table from him, the old man broke his vow of silence and mastered, in minutes, smoking and speaking simultaneously. It was a speech difficult to discern, but it was talking nonetheless. The reporter pushed the record button on his miniature, steel voice