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

long strides, she followed the wall back to the point where she had begun to follow it. She was frightened, though she could not think why she should be. When she reached the willow trees and saw the two men standing beneath them on the stream’s bank, she felt comforted, as she did when she awoke from a bad dream and knew it to be only that.
    Mr. Ames was admiring the Reverend’s four trout. He had had no luck himself.
    â€œYou must take three of them,” the Reverend said, adding that he and his wife ate only light, modest suppers.
    Mr. Ames said crankily to Catherine, “Look. You’ve left your Dylan Thomas on the ground. That’s no way to treat a book.”
    She took it from his hand and put it in a back pocket of her jeans. She supposed he was cross because he hadn’t caught anything. She quickly spread out the picnic on a blanket she had taken from her bed. She noticed how suspiciously the Reverend was regarding the food, the deviled eggs and ham and tomato sandwiches, the thick wedge of cheddar, a box of cupcakes, this last which Catherine had asked for despite her father’s scornful remark about mass-produced food.
    Reverend Ross picked up a deviled egg and stared at it closely. A modest supper made you rest easy at night, he declared. And a modest lunch left your mind clear for reflection. He had several theories about the way people ate, he said. There were those who snapped at their food like foxes. Others mooned over their dinners and made designs with their forks in mashed potatoes. In church, he had observed that the snappers threw down communion wine as though it were rum, but the mooners and dreamers sipped it like fine wine. Each type, he said, consumed the Lord in his own way.
    Mr. Ames looked very patient. He was holding a sandwich and staring at the egg the Reverend continued to hold on his outstretched palm. “I think, after all, I’ll have a bit of that cheese,” Ross said at last.
    â€œI admire your restraint,” Mr. Ames said.
    â€œIt is not restraint. It’s fear of indigestion,” the Reverend answered coolly.
    Her father stuffed the sandwich in his mouth. The Reverend continued his sermon on feeding habits, taking bits of cheese from time to time. When Mr. Ames offered him coffee from a Thermos, he observed, “Coffee is not good for us.” Mr. Ames then lit a cigarette. Reverend Ross shook his head and rolled his eyes at the heavens, then walked to the edge of the stream, turning his back on Catherine and her father. But Mr. Ames followed him and clumsily, Catherine observed, intruded himself between the minister and the water. In a rush of words, Catherine heard him praising Ross for his casting technique. He was stammering. Why was he grinning so doggishly?
    â€œTime we were, going back, Mr. Ames, don’t you think?” the Reverend asked.
    Humbly, it seemed to Catherine, her father helped her gather up the picnic things and load the car. He even slid humbly into the driver’s seat. It must have been the Reverend who had managed to bring about all this meekness in her father, but Catherine couldn’t figure out how he’d done it—unless it was by his apparent disapproval of everything. He hadn’t spoken to her at all. Perhaps he thought of her as a divorced child and not worthy of conversation. Yet when they dropped him off at his parsonage, carrying his one fish for his modest supper, he said rather sternly that he had had a splendid time. They must do it again. “Perhaps the girl will learn to cast—if she’s given proper instruction.”
    â€œThat was pretty funny,” Mr. Ames remarked, as they drove on toward home. “I don’t think the old horse even knew you were there—or me, either, for that matter. He certainly doesn’t exude the warmth of Christian love, does he? Heavens! I couldn’t get his attention for one minute.”
    That was it, Catherine realized. It