Wilson soon returned and they drank their coffee together, watching the darkening evening. There were too few clouds to keep the light herded around into view, and because the moon had not yet risen, stars quickly began to come, as though a pin were sticking tiny holes into the black cloth covering, letting small streams of light down from far above in a place where it was never dark. Soon they could see Boötes and Hercules withhis four-star club, his right leg winding around in a circle. The Great Bear stalked across the horizon in all his sidereal glory. Above him, nearly at the zenith, the two milky streams of the Milky Way intersected.
“What do you suppose the constellations mean?” asked Wilson.
Della began, “My father used to think you could smell panthers.”
“How so?” asked Wilson, finding it difficult to keep his thoughts from wandering.
“He said they smelled sweet and warm—that if you were walking at night—especially if you were afraid, because animals have a haunting sense of fear—and you smelled a sweet, warm smell which as it grew in strength made you forget your fear and drew you toward it—that was a panther. Also he said they sound just like a woman screaming, and they only scream at night, and sometimes scream from the tops of trees in order to drive you mad with fear. He told me panthers love blood, and in the moonlight they cast a shadow of a man on the ground, and that if they died a normal death then an evil child would be born, but if they were killed then their souls could rest. He said the smell was a mixture of sweet clover and animal warmth, with sometimes a little clove. He shot one once.”
They remained long after they had set the empty cups away from them on the porch floor. Della got up once to begin the dishes, but Wilson drew her back and promised to do them himself, tomorrow. He suspected Della knew more about her father than she was willing to share with him; but as they grew older and their faces looked more alike, each time he asked her about him she would offer more. He already knew of the smell of panthers, though she had forgotten telling him, and was waiting, as she talked, for something he hadn’t heard. He thought momentarily about life and its problems but his thoughts wandered, and before devoting himself completely to a new theme that he had come upon, he acknowledged that, no, he didn’t care as muchfor the problems and questions of life as he had when he was younger, though he felt it was not that he was incapable (that his wits had slowed), but that it seemed increasingly of little consequence and a full life could be accomplished just as well without them. “If it’s all right,” he said, “I’m going to go fishing Saturday night with Sam and Dave.”
“Where are you going?”
“Down 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 feltto 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
