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We
wore our best clothes,
played our favorite
games
and
treated every hour as
though it were the
last
drop
in a bottle of fine
perfume.
Thursday
morning, the sun looked
like a timid little
candle,
flickering
among the icicles, but by
ten o'clock, it
poured
across
the glassy fields as though
on Easter
Sunday.
Dad
built his fire so big that
Mom was sure he'd burn the
house down this time, but
she kept right on cooking.
I
wasn't much help that day,
cause
Ryan Carroll was coming to
supper.
I
heard his boots on the
porch, and pretty
soon
he
was in the house, all
smiles and
laughter,
shaking
hands with Pops and teasing
my little
brother.
I
peeked in there and felt
like I was tumbling down
into
a giant meadow of spring
flowers.
Mom,
bless her heart, sent me to
fetch some extra chairs
from the
cottage
and
then sent Ryan to "help
with the
chores."
We
snuck in a good five
minutes of
kissing
before
we got back with those
chairs.
She
knew -- and couldn't help
giggling.
After
supper, the boys threw
football with Ryan and
Pops
while
I cleaned up. Fastest that
kitchen's ever
been
cleaned
yet. They came back in, and
we sang
hymns
and
Christmas carols with Mom
at the piano. I
was
too
scared to play at first,
but something told me I
should,
so
I played my favorite,
"Christ the Lord is Risen
Today,"
inappropriate
as it
was.
That
night Ryan took me to town,
all the way to Memphis in
his daddy's car.
We
stayed out so late, I knew
I'd have plenty to take
care of on
Sunday.
The
train was leaving early
Friday
morning.
I
rode Crimson all the way
down to the
station
at
five a.m. to say bye. I
cried hard,
and
you could see in his eyes
that Ry would have
too
if
all of his friends hadn't
been
there.
And
then it all happened so
suddenly. Bags and
papers
shuffling,
smoke and grinding wheels
and
hurrying
feet,
and next thing I knew, me
and Crimson
were
clopping
back through the stillness
of Stillman's
Forest
and
the early morning
frost.
A
few months later, we got
word that Ryan
Carroll
had
claimed a little piece of
the beach of
Normandy
for
the United States. But I've
never been
there.
Just before he got on the
train, he held me,
and
held me,
and
said, "I wish this hug
could last a
lifetime."
It
did, Ry. It
did.
Original publication
date, 1996.
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©
Shelley Harrison
www.shelleyharrison.com
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