Sweet Everlasting by Patricia Gaffney

of all—Miss Essis, the Sunday school teacher, sitting in a chair and stroking the most beautiful music out of a great big harp between her knees. Carrie’s toes began tapping; she closed her eyes and let the lively melody come right into her, the same way she could let birdsong or the sound of wind in the trees flow into her whole body. How pretty it was—how lucky Mr. Dattilio and Miss Essis and the others were to be able to make music whenever they liked. She thought of the time when she could sing, when she and her father had sung “Nellie, Don’t Let Me Down” at the top of their lungs, while he drove the wagon to the next town they were going to live in. Her mother would say, “If you two don’t stop that screeching, you’ll paralyze the horse.” But before long she’d join in, too, and in the end they’d all be laughing and singing as loud as you please.
    The music stopped, and Mr. Dattilio called out that the Shufflers were going to take a little break. Couples started drifting off the floor. Carrie saw Eugene Starkey with Teenie Yingling; they were holding hands. And here came Eppy, heading straight for her and looking put out about something. Carrie put on another bright smile, anticipating what the something was.
    “Carrie Wiggins, you haven’t moved from that spot since you got here! How do you expect to have any fun if you don’t mingle? Now’s a good time, now that the band’s taking a rest.”
    Eppy only meant to be kind, but oh Lord, this was awful. With her arm held tight so she couldn’t slip away, Carrie let Eppy drag her around two sides of the empty dance floor. They had to stop every few feet so Eppy could greet friends and chat for a minute. She did her best with each group to include Carrie in the conversation, but of course it didn’t work; It didn’t seem like such a hard notion to grasp, not to Carrie—why couldn’t Eppy see that a person who couldn’t talk could never “mingle”? She wanted to disappear, fall through the floor and get swallowed up and never be seen again, she hated, hated, hated this …
    She heard the warm, rumbling sound of a man’s laugh, and the skin on her arms got tight and began to tingle. He was here.
    She had to give Eppy’s hand a little jerk to get her to let go, so she could turn around and look for him. There he was—beside the punch table in the corner. He wore a dark brown coat over tan trousers, and a yellow shirt with a white collar. Ordinary clothes, but they looked anything but ordinary on him. They were richer-looking than other people’s clothes, that was one thing. But mostly it was the way he stood, strong and tall and graceful, and the easy, confident way he moved that set him above all the other men she’d ever seen. He had one hand in his trouser pocket, and he was using the other to gesture with. Whatever he was saying was making the half-dozen men gathered around him laugh and grin and slap each other on the shoulders.
    “Why, there’s Dr. Wilkes,” Eppy noticed, hearing all the hilarity. She caught Carrie’s arm again and started toward the men. Carrie wanted to hang back, but Eppy squeezed her way right into the middle of the knot and said how do you do to everybody.
    It was clear to Carrie that they were interrupting a purely masculine conference of some kind. She recognized most of the men; they said hi to Eppy and nodded to her. But when Dr. Wilkes smiled, looked her straight in the eye, and said, “Hello, Carrie,” a jolt of excitement streaked through her like an electric shock.
    “So anyway,” Hoyle Taber said, sounding impatient. “Tell what it was like charging up that hill, Doc. Bet you pinked plenty of them Spaniards. Come on, tell it again.”
    “Oh hell, Hoyle,” Dr. Wilkes laughed, “you could tell it yourself by now.”
    “Well, Ed here hasn’t heard it, or Taylor either. Come on, Doc. You’re runnin’ up San Juan Hill, minus your horse because it drowned swimming ashore, while the ship’s