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Practiced now, he found what he was looking for quickly, although it wasn’t Clothilde, but “CLOTILDA, ST. (d. 544) daughter of the Burgundian king Chilperic, and wife of Clovis, king of the Franks.”
Tom thought of Clothilde sweating over the stove in the Jordache kitchen and washing Uncle Harold’s underwear and was saddened. Daughter of the Burgundian king Chilperic, and wife of Clovis, king of the Franks. People didn’t think of the future when they named babies.
He read the rest of the paragraph, but Clotilda didn’t seem to have done all that much, converting her husband and building churches and stuff like that, and getting into trouble with her family. The book didn’t say what entrance requirements she had met to be made a saint.
Tom put the book away, eager to get home to Clothilde. But he stopped at the desk to say, “Thank you, ma’am,” to the lady. He was conscious of a sweet smell. There was a bowl of narcissus on the desk, spears of green, with white flowers, set in a bed of multi-colored pebbles. Then, speaking without thinking, he said, “Can I take out a card, please?”
The lady looked at him, surprised. “Have you ever had a card anywhere before?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. I never had the time to read before.”
The lady gave him a queer look, but pulled out a blank card and asked him his name, age, and address. She printed the information in a fu
“Can I take out a book right away?” he asked.
“If you want,” she said.
He went back to the Encyclopaedia Brita
He returned to the Reference Room and put the volume back. They keep yapping at you to read, he thought resentfully, and then when you finally say okay, I’ll read, they throw a rule in your face.
Still, walking out of the library, he patted his back pocket several times, to feel the nice stiffness of the card in there.
There was fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and apple sauce for di
When they had finished and Clothilde was clearing off the dishes, he went over to her and held her in his arms and said “Clotilda, daughter of the Burgundian king Chilperic, and wife of Clovis, king of the Franks.”
She looked at him, wide-eyed. “What’s that?”
“I wanted to find out where your name came from,” he said. “I went to the library. You’re a king’s daughter and a king’s wife.”
She looked at him a long time, her arms around his waist. Then she kissed him on the forehead, gratefully, as if he had brought home a present for her.
II
There were two fish in the straw creel already, speckled on the bed of wet fern. The stream was well stocked, as Boylan had said. There was a dam at one edge of the property where the stream entered the estate. From there the stream wound around the property to another dam with a wire fence to keep the fish in, at the other edge of the property. From there it fell in a series of cascades down toward the Hudson.
Rudolph wore old corduroys and a pair of fireman’s rubber boots, bought secondhand and too big for him, to make his way along the banks, with the thorns and the interlaced branches tearing at him. It was a long walk up the hill from the last stop on the local bus line, but it was worth it. His own private trout stream. He hadn’t seen Boylan or anybody else on the property any of the times he had come up there. The stream was never closer at any point to the main house than five hundred yards.
It had rained the night before and there was rain in the gray, late-afternoon air. The brook was a bit muddy and the trout were shy. But just slowly moving upstream, getting the fly lightly, lightly, where he wanted it, with nobody around, and the only sound the water tumbling over the rocks, was happiness enough. School began again in a week and he was making the most of the last days of the holiday.
He was near one of the stream’s two ornamental bridges, working the water, when he heard footsteps on gravel. A little path, overgrown with weeds, led to the bridge. He reeled in and waited. Boylan, hatless, dressed in a suede jacket, a paisley scarf, and jodhpur boots, came down the path and stopped on the bridge. “Hello, Mr. Boylan,” Rudolph said. He was a little uneasy, seeing the man, worried that perhaps Boylan hadn’t remembered inviting him to fish the stream, or had merely said it for politeness’ sake, not really meaning it.
“Any luck?” Boylan asked.
“There’re two in the basket.”
“Not bad for a day like this,” Boylan said, examining the muddied water. “With flies.”
“Do you fish?” Rudolph moved nearer the bridge, so that they wouldn’t have to talk so loud.
“I used to,” Boylan said. “Don’t let me interfere. I’m just taking a walk. I’ll be back this way. If you’re still here, perhaps you’ll do me the pleaseure of joining me in a drink up at the house.”
“Thank you,” Rudolph said. He didn’t say whether he’d wait or not.
With a wave, Boylan continued his walk.
Rudolph changed the fly, taking the new one from where it was stuck in the band of the battered old brown felt hat he used when it rained or when he went fishing. He made the knots precisely, losing no time. Perhaps one day he would be a surgeon, suturing incisions. “I think the patient will live, nurse.” How many years? Three in premed, four in medical school, two more as an intern. Who had that much money? Forget it.
On his third cast, the fly was taken. There was a thrash of water, dirty white against the brown current. It felt like a big one. He played it carefully, trying to keep the fish away from the rocks and brushwood anchored in the stream. He didn’t know how long it took him. Twice the fish was nearly his and twice it streaked away, taking line with it. The third time, he felt it tiring. He waded out with his net. The water rushed in over the top of his fireman’s boots, icy cold. It was only when he had the trout in the net that he was conscious that Boylan had come back and was on the bridge watching him.
“Bravo,” Boylan said, as Rudolph stepped back on shore, water squelching up from the top of his boots. “Very well done.”
Rudolph killed the trout and Boylan came around and watched him as he laid the fish with the two others in the creel. “I could never do that,” Boylan said. “Kill anything with my hands.” He was wearing gloves. “They look like miniature sharks,” he said, “don’t they?”
They looked like trout to Rudolph. “I’ve never seen a shark,” he said. He plucked some more fern and stuffed it in the creel, around the fish. His father would have trout for breakfast. His father liked trout. A return on his investment in the birthday rod and reel.
“Do you ever fish in the Hudson?” Boylan asked.
“Once in awhile. Sometimes, in season, a shad gets up this far.”
“When my father was a boy, he caught salmon in the Hudson,” Boylan said. “Can you imagine what the Hudson must have been like when the Indians were here? Before the Roosevelts. With bear and lynx on the shores and deer coming down to the banks.”
“I see a deer once in awhile,” Rudolph said. It had never occurred to him to wonder what the Hudson must have looked like with Iroquois canoes furrowing it.
“Bad for the crops, deer, bad for the crops,” Boylan said.
Rudolph would have liked to sit down and take his boots off and get the water out, but he knew his socks were darned, and he didn’t cherish the idea of displaying the thick patches of his mother’s handiwork to Boylan.