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 settled down—but she wouldn’t agree and claimed that Mrs. Fitch would do what she could, but that she (Della) was the only one who knew exactly where each of the children was and what kind of progress they could be expected to make, emotionally and intellectually. And whatever sacrifice they imagined Della was making, to have her there instead of anyone else was what they really wanted anyway.
One of the boys was named John, after Wilson’s great-grandfather. If Della could be said to have favorites—and of course she couldn’t, and didn’t, but still if someone were to have to say which one she liked the best, if she were forced to give an answer other than all of them—it would be him. There was a hidden fierceness in him, lacking in the others.
John Montgomery did not stand out as an unusual boy until he was almost ten—mostly because he had always been shy. Even in school where his own mother taught he would blush whenever he spoke. He looked pretty much like a direct cross between his older brother Alex and his sister Rebecca, though more withdrawn than either. At first, that was all there was to him. Then he began to stand out. It was noticed that at infrequent unpredictable times he would slip into moments of self-absorbing sensuality, as though he could not contain himself and was overpowered by pleasure, like being carried away by a joke—an image so dramatic it suggested a personality split. But then it was also noticed that the shyness returned immediately afterward and he would look very guilty. And this, though it explained in a minor way the shyness, presented a question of its own; because it was not natural that a boy of that young age would have learned what it is about emotions that he should be ashamed of. He would certainly not have learned it from Della and Wilson. It was just as though he had been born with the two coincidental characteristics: his tremendous capacity for feelings, and the accompanying guilt.
He was well liked, though not comfortable to be with during the few times when he would fall to enjoying his lunch to such an extent that everyone sitting across from him at the lunch table would be forced to admit that their own enjoyment of eating must be a very shallow thing in comparison. Also because of an icy chill in the room in which he greedily cut off contact with everything else but himself and his sandwiches—turning from the world of reason, communication and people to the world of his own swirling emotions and sensations. It was unpleasant to be so ruthlessly ignored; but the shyness, which he retained throughout his life, compensated and endeared him to people. It seemed he was always afraid someone would find out, and because those times were known to everyone, the knowledge was an intimacy, arising from knowing more of him than he might have wished.
As John grew up, automobiles began to replace horses, and the huckster wagon was abandoned after it became less time-consuming for families to get to the store themselves (the bigger stores in Iowa City as well). But cream still flowed through Wilson’s grocery store like water. The road to Hills was widened, and the fences were set back several feet on each side. A hardtop was set down and became Highway 1, crossing the road to Hills in the middle of Sharon Center. A garage was made out of Barns’ store, with two tall, thin pumps close to the highway. A high school was built across from the Masonic Lodge.
John’s older brother Alex was old enough to be accepted into the Army at the same time the United States decided to enter its first war with Germany, without the approval of his mother. Wilson had no opinions, either on the war or his son’s desire to be in it, and silently drove him to the recruiting station in Iowa City in the wagon. They shook hands, and as Wilson left he watched Alex being taken in by the other boys there, laughing nervously and talking about military weapons. At home Della told him, “I can feel that it was a mistake, Wilson.” Of course this was not a judgment of the war—only the way she chose to tell him that, as far as she was concerned, their son would never come home.
“You can’t know that,” said Wilson.
“Yes I can.”
John Montgomery had already decided that, and watching