Page 60 of My Darling Clementine

After a half-hour of following a stream that meandered through a dappled grove of beautiful, leafy trees, it fed into a lake. They followed the bank to a clearing and stood looking at the beauty spread before them. It was a warm September, with no breeze, and the still flat water reflected the beauty of a bright blue sky ringed with the changing colors of autumn.

“Oh, my,” Kizzy couldn’t help exclaiming. “Look at that, and tell me there’s no God.”

Both of Clem’s eyebrows shot straight up on her forehead. She looked out at the lake, then back at Kizzy. “The view is exquisite, and there is no God,” she said.

Shocked, she reached out for her arm. “What did you say?”

“Walk with me, I’ll try to explain,” said Clem, holding out her hand for Kizzy to take.

She did, following without looking where they were going. “How can you say that?”

“Being the daughter of a minister and all, I didn’t know how to tell you,” Clem said, reaching up to tear down a slender, eight-foot branch from a young tree, stripping its leaves as they walked. “It doesn’t bother me that you believe,” she glanced sideways at Kizzy, “each to their own, right?”

“You don’t believe in God?” Was she hearing this right? “Everyone believes in God.” The idea shocked her, upending everything she knew, ruffling her suppositions. “What about Jesus, then? Him, either?”

Clem shook her head. “I’m sorry, but no. There have been no miracles or blessings in my life, nothing to make me believe in a benevolent God.”

The world spun. “But, what about faith?”

Clem shook her head again, her mouth twisting. “I don’t take anything on faith, not anymore. If there’s a god that knows everything, sees everything, understands everything, then he’s a cruel son of a bitch who knows how I feel, and there’s an end to it.”

“Oh.” Kizzy felt the blood rush from her head. She looked for a place to sit, but not in time, collapsing on the sandy beach. She ran a hand over her eyes, chuckling. “You knocked my legs right out from under me.”

Clem held out a hand and helped her up. “I figured it would shock you, but I’m still the same person I was ten minutes ago when you didn’t know I’m an atheist. Don’t let it worry you. Let’s enjoy this lovely day, each in our own way, okay?”

“Okay, but together.” Kizzy hugged the woman she’d grown so close to over the last few weeks, wondering why it didn’t bother her Clem was a nonbeliever.

Why should it? What she thought, felt, knew, made up the sum total of her. Kizzy liked Clem just as she was, and didn’t want her to change. And she wasn’t asking Kizzy to change her views to suit hers, either.

“It’s just another new thing to learn about the world and its people, isn’t it?” She kept her arm around Clem’s waist as they continued walking until they found a downed tree leading out past the water’s edge. “I used to think I was smart, but there’s so much more to the world than I ever imagined.”

“Takes a pretty smart person to realize how little they know,” mused Clem, as she leaned on the higher trunk of the log. “An even smarter one keeps learning.” From her pocket she pulled a coil of strong, dirt-colored line, fishhook already attached. “For instance, can you tie this to the pole?”

“Sure.” She tied it in a bow around the pole.

Clem laughed, nodded, and plucked it loose. “Okay, let me show you another knot.” While Kizzy watched, she attached the line and had her tug on it. “The way I’ve got it now, a fish can go back and forth and fight, but the line won’t slip off the pole.”

“What’re you going to use for bait?”

“Nature provides.” Clem plucked a caterpillar from its stalk of grass and threaded it, still wriggling, on the hook. “Hold this,” she said, thrusting it at Kizzy with a playful grin.

She held it at arm’s length while Clem pulled off her boots and socks. In her element, her tall husband leaned down and kissed her. “Thanks.” She took back her pole and skittered barefoot along the log, past the waterline, out to where it sank into deeper water, then tossed in her line.

Kizzy sat and watched, wondering about their strange similarities and odd differences. What does it take not to believe in God? How would that feel? Freeing, she imagined, looking at the sky spreading to the horizon. And lonely. She heard a splash.

“Got one!”

Clem clambered back across the log, holding up a large yellow-gray fish with an orange spot near its head. “Sunnies, there’s a group of them over there.” She maneuvered the hook from the gaping fish’s mouth, then tossed it in the pail, where it flipped and flopped. She searched through the grass until she found another bug, this one a tiny grasshopper. Holding the pole out to Kizzy, she offered, “Would you like to try?”

“Yes, I would.” She kicked off her boots and jumped up, watching Clem thread the wiggling bug on the hook, then took the pole and, balancing on her toes, passed along the log until standing where it bobbed in and out of the water. “Go get me a big one,” she said to the grasshopper before throwing it in the same direction Clem had. She stood there, watching her line, when the pole jerked in her hand. She jerked back, and as the line wriggled and circled in the water near her feet, she pulled up a fish. “I caught one,” she cried, dashing back across the log to show Clem. “It’s bigger than yours,” she crowed.

“Well, I’ll be,” she grinned back. “It sure is. Guess I’ll have to go get me an even bigger one.” She unhooked Kizzy’s fish, put it in the pail with the first, and plucked a moth from a nearby branch. “You’re going to have to wrangle up your own bait next time, if you think you’re going to beat me.” She laughed as she took her place at the end of the log. After a few minutes with nothing happening but puffy white clouds scudding by in the sky, she pulled her line in, checked to see if the drowned moth was still hooked, and threw it in the opposite direction.

A fish jumped out of the water to grab the bait before it even landed, swimming down with the hook in its mouth. Clem laughed and jerked on her line, but the big fish tugged back. She grabbed the line with a hand, dropped her pole, and pulled hand over hand, slow and steady, lifting it out of the water.

“Aha, this one’s as big as yours.” But as she started back across the log, the big fish leaped out of her hands, wriggled off the hook, and dove back into the water.

“Hey, he took my bait.” She shook her fist at the water, and Kizzy fell over on her side, laughing.