Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [101]
HAMM SPARKS WAS NOT, as noted, particularly good-looking, not very tall, only about five foot nine, and of average build. He had brown hair, dark brown eyes, but he had something more. He had charm and was naturally seductive and he did not even know it. There is a certain kind of appeal about people who know exactly what they want and let you know up front what you can do to help them get it and what you can expect in return.
But the most seductive thing about Hamm, which made his overt, raw ambition oddly charming, was that, unlike most ambitious men, he meant what he said. There was not a covert or phony bone in his body. He believed that everyone was his friend and that he was his or her friend. He believed that he was the person to speak for them, to fight for the average person, and for those who were being pushed around. And he was a man looking for a fight. Dukes up, ready to take on the world. He was nice but tough and single-minded and came from a long line of proud people.
When the Tennessee Valley Authority had wanted to take over the family’s land and build a dam to supply electricity for the entire region, his father had fought them as hard and as long as he could. But to no avail. In the end the TVA flooded the entire area and nothing of theirs was left. They even dug up his ancestors who had fought and died in the Civil War and moved them to another place. Unlike most of the others in Norris, Tennessee, who had made the best of a bad situation and had gone to work for them, his father had refused to accept a government job or to live in the company town they had created. He had moved his family around and had spent his remaining years painting the roofs of barns all over the South with SEE ROCK CITY. It was a rough job and paid little money and eventually killed him at age forty-one but by God he had not caved in to the federal government. And as far as his son was concerned, he died a hero. His father had told him over and over, “Son, if the federal government can steal one man’s land and get away with it, democracy is in danger of failing. Once they sacrifice one for the so-called good of many, you’ve got socialism. Now, if they had asked me for my land, I might have given it up. I’m not dumb enough not to realize that electricity was a good thing but when they just come in and don’t give me a choice—that’s what wars are fought over. That’s why I fought, to be able to be free from government. To own my own land. That’s all we had. And the bastards took it away from us and don’t ever forget it.” This one event had changed his father and his family’s life forever. It had forged Hamm into a fierce defender of individual rights. His own and everybody else’s. In this one respect he was like a horse with blinders and could see neither left nor right. Now that the Depression and the war were over, he thought that Roosevelt’s handout programs should be stopped. He had no sympathy for anyone who would not work if they could. He knew firsthand what a toll a handout exacts from the spirit and dignity of a man. The only time he had ever taken anything from the federal government was one terrible day after his father had died. His mother was sick and he had walked all the way to Knoxville to get help. Although they had not signed up for it, the woman at the welfare office had begrudgingly handed him a sack with navy beans, a piece of a side of beef, a few potatoes, flour, and sugar in it. He had taken it and cried all the way home, thinking about how his father would have felt. But they were just about starving to death so they ate it. Afterward he had gone outside and vomited it back up. Sick with shame. That day he’d vowed never to take another thing from the government as long as he lived.
He went to work the next day at age thirteen and saved enough money to buy a used twenty-two rifle and every day before and after school he hunted and brought home meat for the table. In summer he fished and planted vegetables, swapped catfish and turnips for eggs, sugar, and cornmeal. Swapped rabbits, deer, and