Jim put a down payment on a used Chevrolet sedan, and three weeks later he put a month’s rent on a one-story house in the fields out near Calaveras Lake. We moved in on January 12, 1952, a cool sunny day. That night we had Mama and Gram over to eat fried chicken and potato salad on the porch with us. Leo had drunk a whole bottle of Coca-Cola and was so giddy I let him stay up until the widows drove home. The upshot of all this is that two weeks or so later, almost February, Ryder “Harmonica” Stillwell walked up onto that porch at 8:00 on a Friday night, half drunk, laughing, limping, a little belly hanging over his buckle. His cheeks were fleshed out too. Jimmy picked him up in a hollering hug and kissed him right on the lips. I ran over and hugged the both of them and we made such a racket Leo woke up crying so I went and got him and reintroduced him to his Uncle Ryder.

We spent the weekend together. Ryder had indeed been at this Heartbreak Ridge. Apparently a supply truck was blown up not far from him and he took pieces of it in his legs and hips. He spent ten weeks in a hospital in Yokohama, Japan, sleeping and eating, he said. The doctors told him he’d probably always have a limp and arthritis would settle in at a young age but otherwise he’d be fine. That next Monday morning, Jim signed Ryder on with the fence builders. By Tuesday night we decided Ryder should live with us till he knew what he was doing next. I had a large pantry I hardly used. There was a single window in the rear wall. I hung a curtain there and a sheet over the doorway to the kitchen. Jim bought an army surplus cot. I put a little throw rug on the floor and Ryder rested his folded clothes on the empty food shelves above.

By day they worked, by night they played. Sometimes in the kitchen, most times on the porch. After a couple of months they were really coming together, so good that they knew it and felt inspired to do something about it. But Jim wasn’t even up to trying San Antonio again. He said country music was fine if you preferred cardboard to oak, and this was a cardboard town. We were sitting on the porch, as I recall. They had finished and were sipping cold Jax beers. The night was quiet save for a few hundred springtime crickets out in the grass. The sky was ablaze with stars. I didn’t see that we had any choice: “We have to go to Paris, y’all. The French know oak when they see it.”