All the Days and Nights by William Maxwell

to compare the life of the Talbots with his own well-ordered but childless and animalless life in town. Everywhere they go, he thought, they leave tracks behind them, like people walking in the snow. Paths crisscrossing, lines that are perpetually meeting: the mother’s loving pursuit of her youngest, the man’s love for his daughter, the dog’s love for the man, and two boys’ preoccupation with each other. Wheels and diagrams, Arnold said to himself. The patterns of love.
    T HAT night Arnold was much less bothered by the crowing, which came to him dimly, through dreams. When he awoke finally and was fully awake, he was conscious of the silence and the sun shining in his eyes. His watch had stopped and it was later than he thought. The Talbots had finished breakfast and the Sunday
Times
was waiting beside his place at the table. While he was eating, John Talbot came in and sat down for a minute, across the table. He had been out early that morning, he said, and had found a chipmunk in the rat trap and also a nest with three bantam eggs in it. The eggs were cold.
    He was usually a very quiet, self-contained man. This was the first time Arnold had ever seen him disturbed about anything. “I don’t know how we’re going to tell Kate,” he said. “She’ll be very upset.”
    Kate came home sooner than they expected her, on the bus. She came up the driveway, lugging her suitcase.
    “Did you have a good time?” Mrs. Talbot called to her from the terrace.
    “Yes,” she said, “I had a beautiful time.”
    Arnold looked at the two boys, expecting them to blurt out the tragedy as soon as Kate put down her suitcase, but they didn’t. It was her father who told her, in such a roundabout way that she didn’t seem to understand at all what he was saying. Mrs. Talbot interrupted him with the flat facts; the bantam hen was not on her nest and therefore, in all probability, had been killed, maybe by the rat.
    Kate went into the house. The others remained on the terrace. The dog didn’t snap at the ducklings, though his mind was on them still, andthe two boys didn’t quarrel. In spite of the patterns on which they seem so intent, Arnold thought, what happens to one of them happens to all. They are helplessly involved in Kate’s loss.
    At noon other guests arrived, two families with children. There was a picnic, with hot dogs and bowls of salad, cake, and wine, out under the grape arbor. When the guests departed, toward the end of the afternoon, the family came together again on the terrace. Kate was lying on the ground, on her stomach, with her face resting on her arms, her head practically in the ducklings’ saucer of milk. Mrs. Talbot, who had stretched out on the garden chaise longue, discovered suddenly that Mr. Rochester was missing. She sat up in alarm and cried, “Where is he?”
    “Down my neck,” Kate said.
    The duck emerged from her crossed arms. He crawled around them and climbed up on the back of her neck. Kate smiled. The sight of the duck’s tiny downy head among her pale ash-blond curls made them all burst out laughing. The cloud that had been hanging over the household evaporated into bright sunshine, and Arnold seized that moment to glance at his watch.
    They all went to the train with him, including the dog. At the last moment Mrs. Talbot, out of a sudden perception of his lonely life, tried to give him some radishes, but he refused them. When he stepped out of the car at the station, the boys were arguing and were with difficulty persuaded to say good-bye to him. He watched the station wagon drive away and then stood listening for the sound of the wood thrush. But, of course, in the center of South Norwalk there was no such sound.

What Every Boy Should Know
    S HORTLY before his twelfth birthday, Edward Gellert’s eyes were opened and he knew that he was naked. More subtle than any beast of the field, more rational than Adam, he did not hide himself from the presence of God or sew fig leaves