Free Candlemoth by R. J. Ellory

in a basket of
new-mown grass. But there was something else, something that would have been
hormones or passion or love. Something that could never be described in a
language anyone but me would understand. When Caroline approached me my pulse
increased, my strong heart beat stronger, and when she opened her mouth to
speak I would hold my breath for fear of my own lungs obscuring the sound that
came forth.
         Hi
Daniel, she would say, and I would smile, and feel something warm around my
face, and I would nod and say Hi back. And then she might say How's
it going?, and I might say Just fine there, Caroline, how's it going
with you?, and she would make some small pleasantry and then be gone.
Incidents such as these occurred once, perhaps twice, a month, and the days in
between would be spent waiting.
        Nothing
else.
        Just
waiting.
        Despite
her seeming unwillingness to share little more than a Hi or a How's
it going? with me, my teenage heart, big and red and as strong as a stirrup
pump, was for some time owned exclusively, and with no right of return, by
Caroline Lanafeuille.
        And I
carried a secret.
        And
the secret I carried was a picture.
        Greenleaf
Senior High published a monthly Journal. The Journal of Endeavor. In the
Journal were words and pictures demonstrating the attainments of students. In
the Journal of August 1962 there was a picture of Caroline standing on the
football field in her short-skirted cheerleader outfit, a pom-pom in her
outstretched right arm, her legs slightly apart, her head tilted a little to
the right, her long neck exposed. I cut out the picture. I covered it with
Scotch tape so it wouldn't spoil or crease irretrievably. I carried it well.
Like a professional.
        The
outstretched arm was an invitation into the gates of Heaven. The long graceful
neck was a stairway to Paradise and all the gold of Eldorado. The skirt was the
work of the Devil.
        I
yearned for Caroline. I pined for Caroline. I would have walked a thousand
miles to Hades with her schoolbooks if I could have held the same hand that
held that pom-pom.
        For a
while she was my life.
        Perhaps
I would never recover, I thought. Perhaps I would never love like that again.
For even now, these many years later, I can remember times I spent with
beautiful girls, passionate girls, girls another man might have loved the way I
loved Caroline, and yet to me they never quite reached that same Olympic height
of perfection that so effortlessly permeated everything she was.
        And
then November came, Thanksgiving Day, the promise of Christmas, and where my
thoughts turned to some vain belief that Caroline Lanafeuille would find it in
her heart to look my way with more than just a passing glance, the nation
turned its eyes to Dallas and the passage of the King.
        I was
upstairs lying on my bed beneath the window, which was open just a fraction.
Beside me, a small wireless carried sounds from KLMU in Augusta, Georgia, and I
was thinking of Caroline. I know I was thinking of her because it was during
that time that I thought of little else.
        I
knew something was wrong, very wrong, when my father appeared in the doorway.
It was not how he looked. It was not the drawn expression, the bloodshot eyes,
it was that he was there at all. My father had never missed a day's work in his
life. Through influenza, a broken wrist, through colds and coughs and an eye
infection that blinded his right side for a week, he was ever present, ever
correct, to carry the folks of North Carolina on the railroads.
        'They've
killed him,' he said.
        I sat
up. For a heartbeat I believed he was speaking of Nathan.
        'Who?'
I said. 'Killed who?'
        'Mister
Kennedy,' he replied, and I heard the knot of emotion in his throat unravel.
        He
reached up and placed his hand against the frame of the door, and then he
rested his face against his outstretched