to the English River, I guess . . . for catfish.”
“Fine,” she said. “Can you take me over to Clara’s before you go?”
“We’re going to be out almost all night. We’ve got Dave’s boat and we’re going to use bank lines.”
“Good. Then I can ask Clara to come stay with me. I want to find out if something’s wrong at their house. I get a feeling from Meg that things aren’t going well. The poor girl seems to sulk all day and never talks to the other kids.” She went inside. Wilson remained for another half-hour talking to Duke and thinking of flatheads lying in mud-bottom holes in the river. In the morning Della saw a tree covered with Monarchs bunched for migration, so thick that the tree, except for the trunk, did not exist at all, and was only butterflies.
Wilson left early in the evening, before Clara Hocksteader arrived, though Della had made her promise to come before dark. He wondered if he shouldn’t go a mile and a half out of his way to the river to make sure she was on her way, so if she wasn’t coming, he could return home and tell his wife, because sooner or later she would begin to worry. But he didn’t. He took his team out of the cover of Sharon’s trees, exposed them to the face of the twilight sky and watched the mouth of the road to the Hocksteaders’ yawn open on his left, beckoning him to be sure first of all of Della’s feelings, and he went past it, forgiving himself at the same moment because of his tearing desire to be in the boat. The night grew darker. He put on a jacket and felt to see if he had brought matches for his pipe. He breathed the heavy air, and lay imaginative plans for the crafty big fish. His team went at a slow trot, and felt Wilson tug back on them every now and then, though Sam and Dave were already there waiting. Purposely he was going slowly because he was putting himself ready to fish. Thinking slow, deliberate thoughts, moving with extreme caution and exacting precision, he was trying to think like a flathead. Sam and Dave, waiting for him at the water, were not talking, but were, like Wilson, fixing themselves to fish. It was late enough in the fall so that the mosquitoes and biting flies, gnats and chiggers were gone. In the timber, barred owls sounded like a dinner table of laughing, howling dwarfs.
At the bridge, Wilson got out and dropped the shaft away from the team and took them down into the ditch, where his first thought was to leave them in harness; then he decided there was no excuse for that and went back to the buggy for the halters and tethering rope. Returning the harness to behind the seat, he took out the leeches and one hand pole and was aware, while climbing down beneath the bridge, of the still unbroken reflection of the moon on the water, like an unblinking eye. Below the wooden planks in the shadows along the bank were Sam and Dave, their gray hats muting their faces, straight sharp gold hooks and spoons sunk farther than the barb into their blocked crowns. Around his neck Dave had lengths of line, some longer than others, and some weighted with shot, making a kind of mane falling down-below his waist. When he moved, the hooks rattled faintly together like frozen teeth. Sam had the gaff and a lantern, and he held it up above his head in order to help Wilson make his way along the bank through the brown stalks of weeds. The water seemed to be not moving at all.
But once in the boat and away from the hard mud, a strong, deep current caught ahold of the bottom of the boat and carried them downstream. And still the surface seemed unruffled. The moon’s reflection stretched out into a thin yellow line in front of them, coming to one end of the johnboat and disappearing. They fought with the oars and rowed slowly upstream, no faster than a walking dog. Sam had put the lantern in the bow, lighting only the ends of the plants along one bank. Deep, silent strokes of the oars, making noise only from the creaking oarlocks. They passed up the river, around Four-Mile Corner. No talking or moving except for the oars. Here they could hear the shallows. Once in them, the water noise was deafening. Then they kept to the south bank, where it was deeper, and went on. One hundred yards upstream the river broadened and there was a gravel bank extending halfway across. Wrinkled circles of swirling water were lit by the lamp. The noise of the shallows was gone. Wilson, sitting in the stern, saw Dave light a cigar, and every time he inhaled Wilson could see his face.
At first Wilson had felt he would rather not have the lamp, because on the ride from home he’d had the pleasant sensation of slipping unobserved through the night, drawn by sounds which were not his own. At first he’d felt that the light was not fitting and, at the very point where it became of use, became too bright and destroyed the feeling of selflessness and unity. But by the time they had cleared the shallows he’d decided that the light was better—that it was more honest for three men on a river to carry a lantern, confessing their intrusion and adding something which, viewed from a distance, was impelling, mysterious and beautiful. It was a way of offering themselves for inspection, and though they were not, and could never be, part of the natural world of night, by doing it they could feel accepted. It is better to admit that, thought Wilson, and to stay away from fantasy. They heard several ducks get up from an unseen backwater, and a whippoorwill. Bats flying above the surface of the water passed through the wingspread of their yellow light, searching frantically for what remained of the summer’s insects.
A creek willow stood out over the water, and onto several of its branches they tied weighted lines, baited with leeches which smaller fish could chew on without damaging them and without hooking themselves. They broke off three dozen branches of varying lengths, and as Dave rowed on farther upstream in the silent, quick water, Wilson and Sam tied on the lines and threaded the brown leeches. Then in places Dave would pull over close to the shore and Sam and Wilson would jab the thick end of one of the limber poles a half-foot into the bank so that the line fell into the water just at the edge. One quarter-mile upstream they were out of poles and lines. They pulled the bow of the johnboat up onto a sandbar and several minutes later had a fire burning next to the water. All of them smoked, sitting on logs. The wood was dry (shag-bark hickory) and it burned clear and bright, and the pockets of air exploding in the dead cells of the wood, sending sparks upward, was the only sound they could hear. The moon was below the trees on the opposite side of the river.
Then downstream a channel cat broke water, and its thrashing filled the silence. Wilson got into the boat and Sam pushed him away from the bank and he floated downstream. The lantern still burned resolutely in the front. He found the fish, anchored, and brought him in with the help of the gaff, unfastened the hook from his mouth and threw the undisturbed leech and line back into the water. Being careful to avoid the horns, he fastened the fish onto the stringer and tossed him into the water. Maybe three pounds, he thought, or maybe less. Then another began thrashing twenty yards upstream and he got that one too, rebaited the line, reset the pole in a new area of the bank and rowed back toward the fire, where he soon saw Sam and Dave, both of them nearly sixty, sitting and looking at the orange fire. The whippoorwill again, then a screech owl, then two. I should do this more often, thought Wilson, it’s foolish not to when the experience is so satisfying.
Dave pulled him back up on shore, and they fastened the stringer to the bank. He had barely sat down when another, louder, thrashing began. Dave took this one, and Wilson watched him floating effortlessly down the dark water until he could no longer see him or the lantern, and Sam sat down and they began to talk about famous dogs, their courage and resourcefulness. Sam regretted the death of Jumbo, and they recalled several nights of running fox. The light of the fire enclosed them like a room.
TWO
Though for some reason Della had not had children until fairly late in life—late according to the usual age for becoming a mother (she was twenty-nine) and many of her close friends were worried about her welfare because of her bones being too old to stretch—it seemed that after she got started she never stopped, and she was either just getting ready to have one and people would comment, “She sure is round, have you noticed?” or she was carrying a new one and giving it to Wilson or Mrs. Miller to look after while she went off to teach school. Many people told her not to do it—that they could find someone else to fill in at the school until everything
