Free Black Mountain Breakdown by Lee Smith Page A

After all, she did reach the top level of the 4-H hierarchy in the whole state, she did get her picture on the front page of the
Black Rock Mountaineer
, and she did get a free chopping block just for being there.
    One day while Agnes is out of town on the potato salad trip, Crystal walks over to town after school by herself and buys some creme rinse in the Rexall. Then she calls Lorene to come pick her up. She stands outside on the sidewalk towait for Lorene, facing the gray stone courthouse with the clock in the tower and the black benches out in front. It’s cold and the benches are empty now, and nobody much is downtown. There are empty parking places all around the square. “Think it’ll snow?” asks Edwin Sykes, her uncle, hurrying by with his coat collar up.
    “I wish it would,” Crystal says. She looks up at the close gray clouds. There’s a cold place between the top of her knee socks and the bottom of her coat, and she wishes her mother would hurry up. Trash scuttles along the side-walk.
    “Hello, Crystal,” says Mack Stiltner. It’s the first time he has ever spoken to her. But suddenly he’s there on the sidewalk beside her, wearing somebody’s old navy pea jacket. Crystal is surprised to see that he’s not much taller than she is.
    “Hi,” she says. Then a terrible embarrassment descends and Crystal looks away from his strange light eyes that close to hers, nods to a friend of her mother’s rushing by, and Mack kicks the toe of his boot on the sidewalk. The wind comes down the street and Crystal shivers in her coat.
    “Cold?” asks Mack.
    Crystal nods yes. There does not seem to be anything else to say.
    “Listen to this,” says Mack, and to Crystal’s astonishment, although she knows Mack has the reputation of being liable to do anything, anytime, he whips a harmonica out of some inside pocket in the pea jacket and starts playing “Blue Eyes,” playing really well, right there in front of the Rexall. His hair falls into his eyes while he plays. Somebodyopens the door of the Rexall to see what’s going on, then closes it to keep in the heat.
    “Oh, I’m thinking tonight of my Blue Eyes
    Who is sailing far over the sea
    Oh, I’m thinking tonight of him only
    And I wonder if he ever thinks of me.”
    Crystal moves closer to Mack. Now she’s so close that she can see how his skin is greasy and he has hair growing in the V of his plaid shirt collar. Mack finishes playing with a long sad trill and wipes off the spit on his sleeve.
    “OK,” he says and puts the harmonica back into his pocket. Crystal stares. She’s very close to him and she feels funny, weak at the top of her legs, the way she feels when she considers the circulation of the blood.
    “It’s starting to snow,” she says.
    Mack Stiltner grabs her shoulders with both hands and pulls her to him, roughly, and kisses her on the mouth. He never closes his eyes and neither does Crystal. He puts his tongue into her mouth, and Crystal is kissing him back. Then suddenly he lets her go, almost pushing her, back against the Rexall wall and he’s gone, rushing off into the wind. Snowflakes swirl around him until he disappears, never once looking back, and snowflakes fall all over Crystal’s face. She looks straight up at the sky and catches them in her mouth. They melt on her tongue immediately, sweet and cold and utterly strange. Then Lorene is honking the horn.
    “Didn’t you see me?” she asks, cross, when Crystal finally gets in.
    “No,” Crystal says. All she can think about is how Mack Stiltner’s tongue felt in her mouth. That night she sits by the telephone, but Mack Stiltner doesn’t call, and the next day he isn’t at school.
    One Sunday afternoon, Roger Lee borrows his daddy’s Jeep and picks up Crystal and another couple, Sue Mustard and Russell Matney, and they go way up on the Paw Paw fork of Knox Creek for a picnic. The day is crisp and cold and sunny, the sunlight pale but strong. All the leaves have fallen