When my sister was small, father carried her everywhere in a woven pack-basket. Once he killed a deer with her strapped to his back. She moved and spoiled his first shot, and the deer ran off with one shattered hind leg trailing like smoke. Two miles they ran, stopping to shoot six times. My sister finally stopped screaming, but she says her ears still ring.

My parents never said a word one way or another, but on the day before her husband died, my grandmother swears on the souls of saints she heard a banshee. Her sister, Ruth, heard it; but my sister and I were too young to be listening.