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minutes showering and getting dressed, five minutes eating breakfast and pouring a thermos of coffee from the coffeemaker that, luckily, I’d remembered to set the night before, and two minutes throwing a couple of poles and my tackle box into the back of the truck. Baxter, the Burmese Mountain Dog that shared my house, heard me rummaging around and was happily waiting by the truck, his entire hindquarters a-wag at the prospect of a ride. I’d gotten Baxter for Meg as a Christmas present, but now he stayed at the cabin where he had the run of the mountain.
    “ Not today, boy,” I said and handed him a dried pig’s ear. The big dog chomped on it delightedly and made his way to the front porch, apparently appeased.
    It was a fifteen-minute drive to the McCollough’s trailer, so I’d probably be right on time. I didn’t worry about being a couple of minutes late, though. Moosey would have been on the front porch waiting for me since the sun came up. It was foggy and a little chilly at six in the morning, but the weatherman had promised a beautiful seventy-degree day with just a few clouds. I figured he might get lucky. I started the old truck and slipped a CD into the player—just about the only thing that was up-to-date on this dinosaur. The Chevy had no power steering, power brakes, power windows, power door-locks, fuel injection, air conditioning or computer chips. I also suspected it had no springs in the seats or shocks to speak of, and a family of mice was living in the air cleaner. The sound system was top-notch though, and I was treated to the sounds of Anton Bruckner’s Te Deum sung by the Berlin Philharmonic Chorus. I knew the text well enough that, even though my Latin was as rusty as the tailgate latches on the truck, I had no trouble being drawn in by the poetry as well as the music.

    Te Deum laudamus: te Dominum confitemur.
    We praise you O God: We acknowledge you to be the Lord.

    The Te Deum was heading into the fourth movement as I pulled into Ardine McCollough’s drive. Moosey, as I expected, was sitting on the edge of the porch, his chin in his hands, tapping his tennis shoes on the dusty ground. He had his old cane pole wedged upright against the porch post, and as soon as he saw me, he stopped counting the ants (or whatever was consuming his interest at the moment), grabbed the pole and ran toward the truck.
    “ Hey there,” I said. “You ready to catch some fish?”
    “ You bet!” exclaimed Moosey. “Hey, can I ride in the back?”
    “ No, you may not. Put your pole back there though unless you want to use one of the rods I brought.”
    “ Can I?”
    “ Sure. Do I need to tell your mother we’re leaving?”
    “ Nah,” said Moosey, leaning his cane pole back against the porch. “I’ll tell her. She’s prob’ly still in her drawers.”
    “ Go tell her then.”
    Moosey disappeared into the trailer and banged out of the door a minute later carrying a large coffee can.
    “ Almost forgot our worms,” he said. “I’ve been keeping them in the fridge, but Mom says she’ll be glad to see ‘em go. She says they’ve been causing a racket.”
    “ Really,” I said. “I didn’t know worms carried on so.”
    “ It weren’t the worms so much. Pauli Girl reached in there to get some coffee.”
    “ I see.”
    “ She screamed for about a minute, and now she won’t go near the fridge.” Moosey’s ears perked up. “Hey, what’s that music?”
    “ That is the Te Deum of Anton Bruckner for chorus, orchestra and organ.”
    “ What’re they saying?”
    “ Hmm,” I said, listening harder to pick up the text. Per singulos dies benedicimus te. “They’re saying ‘We bless you every day and we praise your name forever until the end of the world.’”
    Moosey nodded thoughtfully. “Are they talking about God?”
    “ Yep.”
    “ That’s a good song.”
    “ It is indeed.”

    * * *

    The fog was still heavy on the lake as we walked down the hill from where I parked, but we