“Don’t show Larsmouth that kitty.” Ryder stood in the doorway smiling. “I can hardly say ‘lesson’ with you anymore, Young Buddy, so how ‘bout a short set ’fore we eat?”

While Jim wrapped presents in his bedroom, Ryder and Leo played alternating lead and backup to a Lightning Hopkins record with little or no harp in it. Leo was just beginning to learn which keys you could marry and which you couldn’t. If Ryder picked up his C, Leo would grab his G, but not his D or B-flat; they just didn’t go. On the third song Ryder backed way off on playing lead, so Leo took his cue and swept in with his best single-note wailing right behind Lightning’s crooning, careful not to wash out Hopkins while he did. He ended the number with two throat pops, a hand-smack, and one long tremolo wah-wah.

Ryder was shaking his head, smiling. He pulled the needle off the record. “Are you done out there, Jimmy? ’Cause I gotta give this boy his present.”

“Go ahead.” Jim stepped into the parlor carrying in front of him two newspaper-wrapped boxes. The one on the bottom was long and rectangular, the other short and square, and Jim set them on the coffee table.

“Here,” Ryder said. “Open mine, it’s prettier.”

Leo took the dark blue box and sat on Jim’s guitar stool. The room was suddenly quiet and he could hear the late-Friday-afternoon traffic up on Paper Boulevard. “You didn’t have to get me anything, Ride.”

“Just open the damn present.”

Leo untied the silver ribbon, ripped off the paper, opened the box, and pulled out what he thought at first was a carpenter’s apron. But then he saw the new-metal-shine of a harp in one of the sheaths. “Oh man.” He lifted the harness free of the box and let it uncoil from buckle to buckle. It was dark brown and shiny and he could smell the dye fresh in the leather.

“It’ll hold eight harpoons, Young Buddy. This gal I’m seeing, her brother hand-tooled it for me.”

Leo wrapped it around his waist but the buckles overlapped each other a good six inches.

“No, lookit.” Ryder draped the harness over Leo’s left shoulder so the harp sheaths hung against his back. Then he reached under Leo’s right arm, grabbed the other end of the harness, buckled the straps together in front of Leo’s chest, and pulled down on them until the sheaths swung around to the front. “See kid, it’s a bandolero.”

“A blues bandit.” Jim laughed. Leo did too. The new harp was in the top sheath right between his nipples. He pulled it out fast and sucked out a high fluttering train whistle. Ryder took Leo’s harmonicas from the window sill and stuck them into the harness, one beneath the other.

“This is your all-American steer hide, Young Buddy.”