A Beautiful Affair

by Bob Waltrip

Ralph McCasslin was twenty-three years old, and worked in a little branch office of the Goodwill Industries, accepting junk that benevolent people phoned in trying to give away. He was slight and blond, with fragile features and little bird-like hands that continually performed their own ballet, completely uncontrolled by his will. He was ill, and his nervous system was governed by some cruel little demon inside that made his hands dart here and there and that once brought an unwanted bright smile to his lips at the exact moment that the doctor told him that his mother had died. Indeed, he was often known. to smile and turn his head impishly while his beautiful, paper hands conducted an unheard symphony.

One when he was in the seventh grade (during the period when the children called him Shaky, the Plastic Man) his brainless teacher made him stand before the class and read the Gettysburg Address. "Four score 'n seven," he whispered, and his hand performed such an amazing display of virtuosity that the heavy book sailed across the room and hit a little buck-toothed girl square in the face.

In grammar school the girls were the worst. People will tell you that children are cruel only because of their candor-they don't know deceit, so they always say what they're thinking. But the little girls that Ralph McCasslin knew in school were cruel. They had an endless fund of little pet names for himDrippy the Drip, for one, because he occasionally drooled, while desperately trying to get his lips together and stop it. But the little demon was prying his mouth open, and the saliva ran, hot as tears.

Alone in his bedroom in the late afternoons, Ralph, the fourteen year old warrior, would dream grand and magnificent dreams, ignoring his dancing hands.

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