GENTRY’S CREEK

"Come out here son, that old panther is traveling fast tonight. He’s about to outrun those mystic winds that Alta is always talking about!" Mama yelled from the front porch.

When I got outside he let out a loud squall on top of the Whinnlin Ridge and in just a few minutes time another fainter scream back behind the Hootey Knob towards the Listening Rock.

Then he was gone!

"Mama, tomorrow is Saturday and I don’t have to go to school. Do you mind if I go back on Gentry’s Creek and catch us a mess of trout?" I asked.

"You can’t make it over there and back in one day. You’ll have to camp out overnight you know. Anyway, you’ll never get back in time for Sunday School!" she replied unconvincingly. "A mess of trout with fried potatoes and onions would be mighty good though. You better take your jacket and I’ll pack you something to eat. If you get up early you can get over there by noon!"

By ten o’clock the next morning I was at the Burnt Schoolhouse a little over half way and by noon I was at the lower end of Gentry’s Creek and started fishing up the creek toward the falls.

This was the second week in October and the weather was beginning to turn colder as the afternoon wore on. I had caught several nice trout by the time I got to the falls. I cleaned them and wrapped them in some hemp sacking and placed them in the edge of the creek and weighted them down with some stones.

It was almost dark by the time I got the fish cleaned and I noticed it had clouded up and the weather was getting colder and colder.

I ate a can of pork and beans with some soda crackers and sardines. By this time it was almost completely dark and I raked up a pile of dried leaves next to a big log just below the falls. I was dead tired and fell asleep by the time my head hit a bunch of moss I was using as a pillow. I slept like a log!

The next morning when I awoke I was warm as toast. The first thing I noticed was a roof overhead. Sometime during the night someone or something had covered me with pine branches, tree limbs and leaves. I looked out and to my surprise it had snowed about eight inches during the night!

I got up and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes with a hand full of snow and noticed that a path of large cat tracks like a panther circled the log and my mysterious makeshift tent now covered with snow. There were no other tracks or footprints to be found anywhere!

I walked over to check my fish and looked up toward the falls. Outlined against the sky and squatting on his back haunches was the biggest panther I have ever seen.

That old cat let out a squall and was gone in a flash!

I packed up my fish and headed home.

Sunday night we were in the dining room eating fried trout, potatoes and onions when Mama reached over, got me by the hand and said "Come on, I hear that panther again!"

We walked out onto the porch and that old cat let out the loneliest squall you ever heard. He was on the hill at the graveyard just above our house.

He never came that close to the house again!

I used to think
That squalling cat
Was either this,
Or maybe that!
But as he chased
Those mystic winds
I came to know
That we were friends!

For over sixty years I have visited the old home place, at least once each year. Every visit I walk up the hill toward the cemetery where I still listen and yearn for the lonely squall of my old friend, the panther!

Desire, a yen of my mother’s and I for a nice, big platter of mountain trout, in actuality placed me in harms way that night so long, long ago. My peril, if it actually existed, was somehow part of a mystery. Was the panther an enemy and I the intended victim of prey, or was he my protectorate?

I feel a kinship to that old cat! I had not come to dig up his tobacco patch and therefore I tend to believe that he was protecting me. From an unknown danger perhaps, another panther or other wild beasts. I have come to accept the fact that I was in the safest place in the world that night!

That old cat and I had shared a freedom. Elements were afoot that would change our lives forever. We would have to run faster, fight harder, learn more and fear less if we were to survive and be what the mysterious force had in mind for each of us!

I have a feeling that somewhere out there I will once again hear the lonesome squall of welcome from a trusted friend.

And he will understand!