Southern Quarterly, April 1st, 2003
MANY YEARS AGO, I regularly went owling with my family. There was always snow, in my memory anyway, and always gray footprints, and smoke from the crumbling chimneys of the Negroes' cabins, and a song of trains and farm dogs through still, cold air and the black pine trees, and my father's face was a bright mask in the light of the big moon. Even now when the wind blows, pecan branches rattle in my mind like bones.
In my memory an uncle or an older cousin leads us into a clearing and lifts his mittens to his mouth and calls, "Whoo, whoo." And sometimes an echo threads its way back through the...
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