I'll Fly Away
"When the shadows of this life have gone
I'll fly away
Like a bird from these prison walls I'll fly
I'll fly away
Oh how glad and happy when we meet
I'll fly away
No more cold iron shackles on my feet
I'll fly away"
*** I do not own Lawless or the Bondurant boys! I am just a fan of the movie and particularly Tom Hardy with a few connections to Virginia myself! This is my first fanfiction so please read and review. I'll take any and all constructive criticism J ***
I'm still not sure how I wound up in Franklin County, Virginia. I had a tendency, that once I had my mind wondering, my feet were sure to do the same.
It was summer, the nights were long and warm, and you were never alone. There was always a buzz in the air, it was close. The crickets and caddy-dids sang aloud, while the moon hung huge in the sky. It was summer in the mountains, and I was happy to be home.
It was prohibition-era Virginia, Franklin County to be exact; and I was starting over. I had tried to make it in the big city, but given my looks, I often found myself not welcomed, or shunned. While I was of an Irish name, Kait MacMahon, my appearance was surely a disparity. My mother was Cherokee Indian, the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. I had lighter skin than my mother, and the facial features of my father; but I was not of the build of a white woman. I had curves, but defined muscles in my legs and arms from the work I had put in on the family farm; and long black hair…and some even said black eyes. The women in the city all were tall and slender, with porcelain skin. I had none of this, and was thus an outsider to them. The only thing I had of envy to them was a necklace my mother had given to me when I turned 12. Made of Indian turquoise, it was a small stone on a silver chain which shown brilliantly against my tanned skin. That, after a few looks from the rich women of the town, I kept hidden, close to my heart, but it never came off….
Anywhere I went in the city, I received unwelcoming stares from the other women. They all seemed uncomfortable that an Indian woman was in the same establishments as themselves. It made it hard to find a decent job, and I certainly had the misfortune of attracting much unwanted attention from many lonely and desperate men.
I had originally grown up in Virginia, but further north where my family had owned a small farm. Both of my parents had passed when I was young, around the age of 13. I had taught myself to survive off of the things that Daddy had had time to teach me. It was a solid life, but a lonely one. I had no family nor friends nearby and nothing to stay for. When I turned 18, I caught a ride to Baltimore, and took the first train to New York. I had gone there in the hopes of finding a lost brother of my father who had chosen to stay in the city when my father and his family came to this country. However, my journey ended with the discovery he had passed a year before from the Spanish flu. I had no money for a train ticket back to Baltimore, so I settled into the city life for a while. Doing odds and ends jobs, I tried to survive in a world I did not belong in.
Five years have passed, and I feel as if I've seen too much for my short twenty three years on this earth. The city is a different world from the country, and it ages people. I needed time to slow down. To reconnect to my past and everything I had tried so hard to bury. I'm not sure why I went south, other than I had heard of possible job prospects in Franklin, it was called the "Wettest County in the World." With the prohibition still on, moonshining had become a regular business in the mountains. I had some experience with it while I had been living by myself in Buena Vista. I would use the orchard apples and mulberry bush berries to makes a few jars for the few neighbors I did have. At least I would know what I was doing and feel like I belonged again. So I packed up the few things I had, and headed South.
Surely, I would find a good job and peace there.