And I have to admit that the steady slap-slap-slapping into all that dark was kind of comforting.

Meg, who always wears flip-flops-even in winter-was wearing them that night. Laverne and I told you we've heard a whip-poor-will for two weeks straight at Sunny Brooke Acres.' Sunny Brooke was the subdivision of large houses where Meg and Laverne lived. 'March Anne, I still don't see why we didn't have our first meeting two weeks ago. Laverne turned on a batteryoperated lantern, and wordlessly we started toward the woods.Īs we picked our way through briars and branches, Meg was the first to speak. Meg and Laverne were already waiting for me in the clover field when I arrived at midnight. I stuck my head farther out into the shadows now pinpricked with stars and asked, 'Where … where?' 'Come … come,' the voice seemed to cry across the distance. It was almost like a voice calling to me. The sound of the horn had changed a little. I stared out into the darkness of the fields, wondering where the train was coming from, where it was going. It was the faraway clatter and wail of a train passing by the Point at Sunny Brooke Acres and continuing on through downtown Jubilee.

In fact, nights were so loud outside my bedroom window that every summer I forgot there was such a thing as silence.īut that night I heard another sound above and beyond all the racket. I was turning twelve in August, and I guess I'd lived on a watermelon farm long enough for my blood to pump to the rhythm of all that sound. Then I sat down beside the window and looked out at the night throbbing with the chirps and chants of crickets and frogs and katydids. I picked up the phone and called Meg and Laverne, and we planned to meet in the clover field at midnight. On the last Saturday of June, I heard the seventh whip-poor-will's cry float up from the woods and into my bedroom window.

Hummingbird by Kimberly Greene Angle