Unbidden, the face of Macy-Lee Barton came to me. I didn’t like to dwell on it, but she’d looked a bit like Nisa, dark-haired and dark-eyed. And while Nisa’s stillness suggested self-assurance, Macy-Lee’s had seemed almost premonitory, and ominous. Macy-Lee didn’t sing, though her speaking voice carried the Appalachian twang I associated with old-timers like Ralph Stanley. It had been a cold voice, I thought at the time, especially for someone so young, her tone bleak as she recounted what had happened to her—what she claimed had happened to her. Her voice didn’t hold the undercurrent of
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