Flour

chapter 4

I seen her dimples first. I don't know why but that was the first thing I noticed about her. Not them funny looking clothes she was wearing but them dimples. I went down to the creek to fish and try and get us some meat. I'd been up most of the night listening to Daddy beat on Mama. He'd come in mad as fire again smelling like liquor. I was so tired and all I wanted to do was sleep but we had to eat. "Hey!" She said running up to me waving her hand. She had a pie face and big smile. It struck me that it wat'n the kinda smile I was used to gettin. She didn't look at me like I was one of the Munro boys. She just looked at me like I was one of her people whoever they were. "What's your name" she says . "Gideon". "That's a cool name! Mines Delilah ". "I didn't know what in the hell she meant by cool but I hadn't had much schooling so I figured I'd let it go for now because she was curious to me". "You live around here?" She asked. "Yea I live up yonder" "where's that?" "You ain't from around here are you" I asked "No but some of my family is, I'm just visiting my Aunt for the summer" "You over there at the Cole place?" "Yes!". Funny thing was I didn't remember them having a niece but then again the Cole's didn't do all that much socializing with my kind so maybe I had missed it somehow. "I live on the other side of those woods passed the Yates farm." "Oh ok" she smiled like it wasn't nothing. It sure as hell wasn't the reaction I was expecting to get. Everyone knew the Munro's lived on the other side of that farm. "What happened to your eye?" My mind went empty and I felt my mind start to slip away into one of them panic episodes. I closed my eyes and tried to talk myself out of it. I couldn't tell her the truth. I couldn't tell her Daddy had hit me upside the head that morning for not fucking one of his whores. "Are you ok?" Her voice was kind and tried to follow it out of my own mind. "You look like you don't feel too good maybe you should sit down" I nodded like the mute fool that I was. "Here we can sit here" she said patting a fallen down tree. "You might have a concussion I got one of those one time when a ball hit me in the head". I knew I was ignorant but for a young thing she made me feel even more dumb for not knowing what she was talking about. "I was helping my brother patch up the barn and a tool slid off and hit me". Her mouth softened and she looked at me with one of those worried looks mama used to give me when I was young enough to get sympathy. "You poor thing I'm so sorry. here" she reached up into her tangled hair and untied a handkerchief. "You can use this to clean off the blood. It's not dirty I promise. It was my aunt's and I needed something to tie my hair up out of my face."

She was a smiling little thing. I had never seen anyone smile that much. She looked at me with ease like I wasn't something to be pitied or looked down on. Her eyes told me she was intrigued by me. She looked at me with a curiousness I had never experienced. She seemed unphased by my torn up overalls or my shy demeanor. I had a problem with eye contact I knew that. We had learned young to avoid it with Daddy and I reckon it had become a habit. I took the handkerchief from her tiny little hands. She was kind. I liked her already. Maybe she didn't like me but I sure hoped she did. She watched me as I did my best to clean the dried blood from my bruised face. She had these honey colored eyes that sometimes looked green when the sun hit them just right. I wondered how old she was. I knew it was younger than me but she had this way of carrying herself like someone well beyond their own years. "Did I get it all?" I asked in a side ways glance. She nodded and I saw those 2 big dimples pop up again. "You want your handkerchief back"? She let out a laugh that shook her whole body "What?" I said. "It's just funny when you say that word" "what word?" "Handkerchief" "why's that?" "Because you sound like an old man". I thought on it a minute and decided that if it made her laugh it didn't matter to me who was supposed to say what.

I could see she had her own insecurities. I recognized that look she hid behind those smiling eyes as one of my own. She wanted me to like her.

Everybody around here felt sorry for me because of my Daddy. They knew he was sorry.