Going Places

You were right from the start.

You saw trouble coming four years ago when Oriel made an exception and baptized Cleo a year early in Bold Creek in Momma's white wedding dress. Cleo didn't want to wear the dress and even Grandma didn't want her to since it was the dress she got married in herself.

Oriel convinced Grandma to get Cleo to wear it since she was getting married to Jesus; it was Oriel who said to Grandma that Cleo was old enough to be baptized even if it was a year before she came of reason.

He just wanted to see her through the dress like the pictures of grown women wearing wet clothes. Cleo was already bigger in the chest than Grandma and Momma was so the dress fit her tight all over. Her baptizing was the first time you seen Cleo being close to a woman even if she wasn't of age.

Oriel walked her up and down the creek bank acting like he was instructing, but really was looking his eyes full and laying hands on her. Oriel is famous for laying hands on the Sisters at Holyfull, but up to when he baptized Cleo you wasn't the uncle of those ones.

Oriel aims to get Cleo used to him so he can marry her when his wife dies. You're her uncle and you're the only one left to take up for her since Grandma mouths about everything Reverend Oriel says and claims he preaches the straight gospel without dressing it up.

The closer Cleo gets to being a woman, the more people can't get used to the way she looks; her hair and eyes are black as her daddy's and her teeth are prettier.

Cleo's daddy's name's Delgado or close to that. His family's from somewheres below Mexico. His hair was the first time you'd ever seen anybody with hair that black. Everybody in Nash Hollow and most of Sage County is some shade of lightheaded and has a different, harder look to them than Delgado or Cleo. Cleo has a rounded face shaped like the old picture frames on Grandma's walls.

The whites of Delgado's eyes was dusted with brown specks and you couldn't see blood veins in them. Jimmy Ray has been looking for Delgado to come and get Cleo and has the picture of him Joy Ann gave him.

Delgado didn't think nothing was wrong with putting his hand on your shoulder or looking at you straight on when he talked to you, like he was somebody mad at you. But you could tell he wasn't mad. His eyes looked like he was going to laugh at the next thing you said and caused you to get used to him fast. He'd be your friend in less than the time you could tell a joke.

When you were young, you had plenty of things you could do to get used to somebody, including two double-joint thumbs, and a long tongue to touch out on the tip of your nose and you could cross your eyes at the same time to see your tongue moving when you moved it right much. You had a good memory full of jokes then. Plus people who has heard you says you could talk more like Donald Duck than Donald Duck could.

When she brought Delgado home, Joy Ann brought colored pictures of her and him in his sailor's suit, but he didn't bring the suit with him because it was a blessing to get out of it when he was off duty. When he come to Nash Hollow for nearly a whole week he was wearing black clothes and had some in his suitcase, which he took out and put in your dresser. He had two of everything black except for only one orange, puffy-sleeved shirt you liked a lot. Every night he washed whatever he wore, including his underwear, and took out his other pair of clothes and put them on the...