Jim started out playing a folksy instrumental. His fingers moved fast but relaxed, and he tapped his shined army shoe to a perfect beat. But it was when he began to sing that Guitar Jimmy emerged so beautiful. His speaking voice was your average manly alto but when he sang he became what I believe they call a tenor, a gut-bucket tenor. He was just discovering the blues then so he did quite a few Leadbelly numbers. He played the more gentle ones, and when he sang a line about dragging a cotton bag or hopping the rail, it sounded as natural as could be and I knew it wasn’t because Jimmy was a good mimic; he didn’t have to live a sharecropper’s life to guess at the hurt that came with it.

As he sang, I clasped my hands around my drawn up knees and watched as much of his face as I could see. Kissing him was now no longer simply an adventurous notion, but a bodily need as necessary to me as taking my next breath. When he paused to tune what he told me was a too-tight E string, I got on my knees, put both my hands on his meaty shoulders, and pressed my lips right to his, the guitar lodged between us. He smelled like sweat and Old Spice cologne and he tasted like jalapeños and chocolate. I pulled away as soon as I realized our mouths had opened some and I said, “Don’t be fooled; you’re the first boy I ever kissed.” He didn’t say anything back. He put that guitar off to the side and we stretched out on that rock and kissed and hugged and talked for a long while, until pink dawn spread out over Calaveras Lake and we stared into each other’s faces. We were privy to fate then, and we knew it. Jimmy broke into a smile and laughed out loud, then he pulled me closer and said he hadn’t planned on it but here he was AWOL and don’t count on seeing him for a time.

That time was only two weeks but it could just as well have been two years. Funny enough, the captain who belonged to the Buick thought highly of Jim and lightly of his crime and helped him get short stockade time and only one demerit. They let Jim have his guitar in there, too. He wrote me three songs, my favorite being “Kate Made Me Late, but I Love Her Anyway.” Leo likes that one. I asked Jim to play it for us last night and he did. We were all snuggled on the couch in the parlor. I lay back on the arm opposite Jimmy. Leo lay with his little back against me and I put a pillow between us to try and ease the pain in my stomach, his short legs sticking out between mine. I hugged him to me and as he laughed at the funny lines of Jimmy’s song, I felt his strong little body jiggle against me.