Moon Pie Read Online Free PDF Page A

big cushion, still wrapped in his blanket, and began to open the boxes.
    ‘Sausage rolls,’ he said. ‘Ham sandwiches. Crisps. Cheese straws. Scotch eggs. Little tomatoes. More crisps. What’s this? Salad, very important. French bread. There’s butter too, somewhere. Damn, I forgot a knife. Doughnuts. Cherries. Orange squash. And apple juice. There. Have I missed anything?’
    ‘What’s in the tin foil?’
    ‘Ah, yes.’
    Dad unwrapped the foil, and leaned over Tug and shook him gently until he woke. ‘Look what we’ve got, Tug.’
    Tug opened his eyes and stared all round in astonishment at the trees and sky, and at last looked at what Dad was holding. ‘Whose pie is it?’ he whispered.
    ‘Your pie. Steak and kidney.’
    Tug smiled and closed his eyes again. ‘You came,’ he whispered. ‘You came with pie.’ And he went straight back to sleep with his fingers resting on the warm pastry.
    Dad had also brought some candles, and now he lit them and put them in the grass, and then Martha and Dad settled down on either side of Tug and began to eat.
    ‘Have you ever had a midnight picnic before, Martha?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Listen. How peaceful it is. So quiet.’
    Tug woke up again with a grunt, and said, ‘Where are we?’ in a very surprised voice, as if he hadn’t woken up before.
    ‘In the land of pies,’ Dad said. ‘Which is in the park, near the lake. We’re having a midnight picnic.’
    ‘Where are the gooses?’
    ‘Sleeping. If you listen, you’ll probably hear one snore in a minute.’
    Almost straight away there was a sudden splash from the other side of the lake, and a distant goose made a noise. It wasn’t a scream. It was a friendly honk.
    Tug began to eat. ‘This is steak and kidney pie,’ he said after a moment. ‘And I was dreaming about steak and kidney pie. So Marcus was right.’
    ‘Marcus?’ Dad said. ‘Marcus is a very strange boy.’
    For a while they were all quiet, eating peacefully. Dad had calmed down. Martha was no longer scared. Her eyes were used to the darkness, and she saw that the night was made up of many different shades and shadows. They hung in the trees and stretched along the ground. The trees were flat and still, but the water of the lake streamed white-and-black with moonlight, and the air around her was soft and peppery and warm.
    She looked across at Dad eating a sausage roll. Although he was behaving strangely, he was still Dad.
    ‘Why are we having this picnic?’
    ‘I thought you’d like it.’
    ‘But why a midnight picnic?’
    He thought about that for a while.
    ‘Because you’ve never had one before. Which makes it special. And I thought you’d like to look at the stars, which is hard to do in the middle of the day. Look how many there are.’ He looked up, sighing. ‘I love coming here at night. Before you were born I used to come here a lot. It’s a very special spot. Look, Tug. All the stars.’
    ‘Why?’ Tug said sleepily.
    ‘Just because.’
    ‘Just because why?’
    ‘Just because I love you.’
    Tug thought about that, while Dad laughed to himself.
    ‘How much do you love me?’ Tug said at last. It was a game they used to play.
    ‘I love you more than … ham loves sandwiches.’
    Tug said rapidly, ‘I love you more than gooses love honks.’
    Dad turned to Martha. ‘And you, whatsyername, I love you more than butter loves bread.’
    ‘And I love you more than fishes love water.’
    ‘But I love you more than Tugs love pies.’
    ‘That’s a lot,’ Martha said. ‘I can’t beat that.’
    Finally she relaxed, and lay back on the grass and looked up at the night sky, and smiled to herself.
When I’m older
, she thought,
I’ll remember this midnight picnic as a good thing. I’ll forget that I was scared of the dark, and that Dad was strange. I’ll remember the candles in the grass, like flowers made out of flame, and Tug dreaming of pie, and Dad telling me he loves me
.
    She was glad to have sorted this out. She liked