The cigarette tip rose in an arc, then burned brighter. Jim blew out the smoke slow and long, as if he were very tired, the way he got after working a double shift, empty, but that’s all right because everything’s done and done right. Jim stood there in the dark another ten or fifteen seconds, not smoking, just standing, and Leo wanted to say something, though he didn’t know what. Then his father said from the hallway, “I’ll wake you at 0400.” He closed his own door and Leo heard the faint engine rumble of a far-off plane. He’d also heard the pride in his father’s voice, just now, when he’d used military time on him.

Leo pulled the sheet out and got under it. The air was warm and smelled like jack pine. On the far wall the shadow of a branch hung still against a triangle of moonlight, and Leo reminded himself to put his harp harness in the clothes bag his father had packed, that and the book and map, the earrings, though he knew he wouldn’t forget. Down the hill the river was so quiet Leo knew it was back to being summer-low and lazy. He didn’t feel scared now; he felt calm, and sadder than he could imagine. Tomorrow, as soon as he got a chance, he would write a long letter to Allie and explain everything. He might even call her on the phone. Then she would write him, and they would keep writing, no matter what, and by the time he got back they would know each other ten times better than they did now.

In five hours, before light could reach the ridge of Spoon Hill, he would be sitting in the front seat of an army car with some soldier, a sergeant probably, heading down street-lit Paper Boulevard for Springfield and a plane or bus to New Jersey, to Fort Dix, a place that sounded like its name was chopped off before it could finish itself. And he thought of his mother and father. He reached up behind him and felt for their photograph. He found the thumbtacks, pulled them from the walls, then set them and the picture on the bedstand. He wished he’d had a picture of him and Allie to pack too. He remembered how she said this was the summer of free love, but Leo didn’t believe love was free. As far as he could tell, love cost people more than anything. But without it, no one would be here at all.

He took a long deep breath and let it out. There was a slight ringing in his ears, low and constant, and he realized it had been there all night. It was from the show, from those amplifiers so close to their mikes, his and Ryder’s harmonicas cutting through the air like sound knives through butter, Jim singing like a king.