Allie walked up behind her family. Christopher was asleep on her dad’s chest. She put her hands on her father’s shoulders, leaned over, and kissed the top of his head. Her mother smiled up at her, and her hat started to slip off, but Allie caught it. Her father reached up with his good hand and squeezed Allie’s at his shoulder. He held her fingers tightly in his and didn’t let go until the song was over and Leo’s dad started singing another one.

Allie sat on the blanket next to her mother and listened. They sounded wonderful, the three of them up there. Especially when Leo and Ryder played to each other over Jim’s guitar. And his dad was so handsome. There weren’t many mustaches in Heywood. His made the rest of him seem darker, like a Spaniard. And it was hard to hear him sing without moving a little in time. After a few more songs, Leo played a harmonica solo. He was going on for a good two or three minutes and it seemed he didn’t make any mistakes. Allie’s mother touched her knee: “Did you hear what Leo’s father said about Leo?”

Allie shook her head.

“He’s joined the army. He’s leaving tomorrow.”

Allie’s father was looking at her now, from his chair, in his casts. Allie looked back at the gazebo, at Leo fanning his hand so fast against his harmonica, his eyes closed, his chin almost touching his chest, his legs bent slightly at the knees as he leaned back and hurled that sound out over the Green and onto them all like handfuls of fine gravel.

Leo’s lips felt waxy just from the final number, Mance Lipscomb’s in G, which they’d dragged out to twice its normal length. Ryder and Jim really gave it their all too, trading notes off each other like only on their best nights back home. Helena was the first to come up to them after the show. She walked right up to Ryder and gave him a hug and a kiss. Jim thanked everyone for coming, and the crowd clapped almost a full half-minute. They were all still out there, some of them standing to go, others lying back on their blankets talking again. Right away Leo squatted and started pulling tape off the mike wires; it wasn’t the crowd he minded so much now-Ryder was right, once you got into the music everything was fine-it was the Donovans under that tree near the white rail fence. Chick was staring at him and Allie wasn’t looking his way at all, was, in fact, walking back through Beatrice’s parking lot holding her little brother’s hand. During the harp solo, Leo had opened his eyes only once and they started to burn from the sweat coming off his forehead. His father and Ryder were giving him a complete chord backup and Leo knew he had the reeds honed in on a dime, but before he closed his eyes again he saw Allie watching him, sitting perfectly still on the ground in her white uniform dress next to her mother. Allie’s hair was down and even though she was blonde she put Leo in mind of an Indian, and that’s what he pictured as he closed his eyes and played out the rest of the riff: tipis and wild horses; prairies, woods, and rivers; shirtless braves and warrior girls like Allie; black-haired babies wrapped in buffalo and rabbit skins; Allie crying in the rain gulley behind Spoon Hill, a long strand of hair stuck to her wet cheeks, looking at him with the same eyes that watched him play to the whole damn town right now.