Louisiana Smith was sitting cross legged on the chair at Table 3, while Praire Walker took her turn on the small stage, flute in hand to mouth. Smith thought of the first time he saw her, somewhere late in the afternoon, in the mountains, when he had committed the unforgivable sin of wandering too high without thought of bringing a jacket for the night, when the temperature would plummet almost half a century of degrees. But she had been there, playing that flute, just beyond the next rise, and he found her, and she had seen him, and she had had an extra blanket and she built a fire and the fire and the blanket and that music had kept him warm until sunrise, when they walked back down the mountain, as one.
So, with that moment affixed in his mind's eye, Louisiana Smith reached down to open the guitar case lying on the floor at his side, and, withdrawing the guitar and slinging it across his shoulder strap as he stood, he began toward the stage where he would join his wife in song.
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