That Allie’s got a neck,
a neck so fine,
I want to kiss it,
Kiss it all the time.
We got a house,
Me and her on the hill,
It’s got a porch
bigger than the paper mill.
Sometimes when we hug
I feel like I’m gonna explode,
But then we do what we have to
Up there in our Love Abode.

He signed it and called it “The Love Abode.” The following Wednesday he handed it to Ryder who held it up in the afternoon kitchen light and read it out loud. When he got to the part about exploding and doing what we have to, he laughed and shook his head, then laughed some more.

“Now it’s my turn.” He showed Leo first how to hold his harmonica, how he should wedge the bass-notes end of it between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand so his right would be free to cup in around the harp, making an echo chamber in there he’ll want to use later. Leo had long thin fingers. Ryder’s were long too, but meaty. He said short fat fingers were best for the blues harp, the kind you get working with your hands your whole life like cotton pickers or mill workers, something like that. But Leo being only seventeen, he shouldn’t worry about that because he was his father’s son and was bound to flesh out more soon anyway.

Right about then Jim showed up in the kitchen doorway. He held a tall iced coffee with milk and between his fingers was a smoking Lucky Strike. The sun was getting low behind Saunders Hill so Leo couldn’t see much of his face too well. Jim watched while Ryder showed his son how to find do re mi, then how to choke the mi note into a maw sound by constricting the air flow in the throat. All of this Leo picked up on by the second or third try, which surprised Ryder until Leo reminded him he’d been watching and listening to Ryder play since he could remember.

“Your boy’s a songwriter too, Jimmy. Did you know that?” Ryder started to unfold “The Love Abode,” but Leo touched his hand. Jim let smoke out his nose and walked over to the two of them near the window. He looked up at Leo. “I’ll take a little credit for the music you might have in you but whatever wordsway you conjure, you’re getting from your mother. She was a poetess. I never told you that.” Jim turned his back on them, then he took his guitar out of its case and started to tune it up on his stool. Ryder winked at Leo and put the song back in his front shirt pocket behind three Heywood Paper Products ballpoint pens.