Read Online The Moonlight Man by Paula Fox - Free Book Online

asked.
    His question took her by surprise. With an emphasis that startled her, she answered, “Yes. Very much.” Did she? She was about to say that Carter was nice. She didn’t want her father to ask her what that meant.
    â€œA steady sort of chap?” he asked lightly.
    â€œSteady? I don’t know about that,” Catherine replied. “He’s kind.”
    â€œKind. Kind to kittens and tots? And steady, I’m sure. And certain. Oh, to be certain,” he said.
    They didn’t speak again until he had parked in front of Reverend Ross’s parsonage.
    â€œIt’s doubt that makes one think,” he said then. “Certainty answers everything.”
    She wanted to argue with him, but before she could speak, she saw an elderly man walking down a path toward them. She didn’t, in any case, know what she would have said.
    â€œHow do you do,” the Reverend said to her with a nod as he got into the car. He had a weatherbeaten face and a large jaw. She had started to give him her seat in the front. He shook his head vigorously. “No, no,” he said in a deep, baying voice. While they drove the narrow country road to the trout stream—the Reverend’s secret place—he told them what Catherine suspected was the entire history, with footnotes, of the Maritime Provinces.
    Mr. Ames parked the car in a field. The three of them climbed a low stone wall and walked through a meadow, where the grass grew as high as their waists, down the slope to a line of willow trees. The secret place was a wide, shallow stream strewn with boulders, sonorous with the sound of rushing water.
    The Reverend held a finger to his lips. “Not a word,” he whispered, “or they’ll hear us.” He waded out into the stream in his high rubber boots. Like an important conductor about to lead an important symphony orchestra, he raised high his fishing rod.
    â€œDo you think he’ll stop for our picnic?” Catherine asked her father.
    â€œPatience, child,” he replied in a low voice. “Eat a few leaves, a twig or two. Be dignified. Don’t howl for your dinner. Here. Stand here … I want you to learn how to use this thing.”
    But she couldn’t get the hang of casting. Her line caught in the branches of a willow. It flew everywhere except behind the rock her father pointed to. She glimpsed a brown fish lurking a few yards away just beneath the surface of the water. “Why don’t I just pick it up?” she asked.
    Her father snorted with laughter, looking somewhat nervously to where the minister stood casting effortlessly. “You just try! They’re cunning creatures. I fear you’re no match for them.”
    She was relieved when he went off by himself, as the Reverend had done. It was agreeable to sit on the bank and watch the two men, so still except for the graceful motions of their arms as they cast, reeled in, cast again and again. The water flashed where sunlight touched it. She heard the delicate buzzing of the reels as the lines flew out, arced, rested lightly, briefly, on the surface of the stream.
    Her father appeared to be as absorbed as the Reverend. Was it because he glanced over at her from time to time that she felt he was giving a performance of a man fishing? Not only for her but for himself? She dozed a while, read A Child’s Christmas in Wales, which she nearly knew by heart, then went for a walk through the meadow back to the stone wall, following it for half a mile or so until it dwindled to a few moss-covered rocks near the lip of a small pit. In the pit, she saw the skeleton of what had been a little animal. She squatted down and stared at it. She could have touched the clean, bleached bones that formed the rib cage. The heat of the sunlight on her back had weight like a full pack. The sudden drumming of a woodpecker was loud, a door rapped with a cane. She stood abruptly and turned away from the pit. With