Appalachia Bare

“Once in a while, as she sat there, a whippoorwill would call under the window, an owl would hoot from down in the pasture, or out in the woods there would be the quavery little cry of a screech owl, and these were her favorite sounds. They bespoke the mystery of the night, not sweetly but hauntingly, half savagely, the way it was. Ah, the way it was even among humans . . . ”
— Wilma Dykeman, The Tall Woman