Submissions Welcome. If you’d like a fresh look at your opening chapter or prologue, please email your submission to me re the directions at the bottom of this post.
The Flogometer challenge: can you craft a first page that compels me to turn to the next page? Caveat: Please keep in mind that this is entirely subjective.
Note: all the Flogometer posts are here.
What's a first page in publishingland? In a properly formatted novel manuscript (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type, etc.) there should be about 16 or 17 lines on the first page (first pages of chapters/prologues start about 1/3 of the way down the page). Directions for submissions are below—they include a request to post the rest of the chapter, but that’s optional.
A word about the line-editing in these posts: it’s “one-pass” editing, and I don’t try to address everything, which is why I appreciate the comments from the FtQ tribe. In a paid edit, I go through each manuscript three times.
Before you rip into today’s submission, consider this checklist of first-page ingredients from my book, Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling. While it's not a requirement that all of these elements must be on the first page, they can be, and I think you have the best chance of hooking a reader if they are.
Download a free PDF copy here.
Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of this list before submitting to the Flogometer. I use it on my own work.
A First-page Checklist
- It begins engaging the reader with the character
- Something is happening. On a first page, this does NOT include a character musing about whatever.
- The character desires something.
- The character does something.
- There’s enough of a setting to orient the reader as to where things are happening.
- It happens in the NOW of the story.
- Backstory? What backstory? We’re in the NOW of the story.
- Set-up? What set-up? We’re in the NOW of the story.
- What happens raises a story question.
Caveat: a strong first-person voice with the right content can raise powerful story questions and create page turns without doing all of the above. A recent submission worked wonderfully well and didn't deal with five of the things in the checklist.
Also, if you think about it, the same checklist should apply to the page where you introduce an antagonist.
Wayland sends the prologue and first chapter of Good at Dying. The rest follows the break.
Prologue:
Peaceful, yet so wise, so married. ¿The occasional, appealing, dangerous flash is from remembered poetry?
~ Moran, Jr. starting his third long drink ~
∞ ∞ ∞
If you'd seen Madison Monroe Moran, Jr. an hour ago crossing Main Street in Blue Ruby, Virginia, empty-handed, you would have guessed he was a weary traveler like yourself just arrived in Blue Ruby. From the look he had then, you'd have guessed he was a frustrated bon vivant making his way back to the Inn from the Piggly Wiggly where he, like you, had found the selection of French cheeses limited and the wine nonexistent. His face then was haggard and you would have thought he was muttering animatedly about the ordinance against selling off-premises wine in the historic center of town.
You'd have found him attractive, dangerous, but vulnerable. Subconsciously, you'd have wanted to give him one of your famous foot massages. But his attractive vulnerability was just one of the reasons we've waited until he's in the comfort of his suite at the Inn to invite you—the first handsome woman we've encountered in Blue Ruby today—into the story.
Now that he stands in the kitchen of his suite in the Sage County Inn, before his bottle a third time, an iron grip on the neck, is Madison Monroe Moran, Jr., the orphan son of an Irish (snip)
Chapter 1:
She'll unbutton the top button on her dress and use one of the napkins from Momma's cedar chest to wipe down into the front of her dress a little and around her neck and she'll close her eyes and hold her face up at the sky and let you look at her neck without having to be ashamed.
John L plans a picnic alone with Cleo
~ ∞ ∞ ∞ ~
JOHN L WHITTLES: A SHOW of busyness to avoid being in the kitchen with Cleo. She stands bemused at the sink washing the breakfast dishes, barefoot with swabs of cotton between her toes to allow her nail polish to dry unmarred, enjoying the warmth of the water on her hands. She looks out the window at a doe and fawn, nervously eating what leaves they're able to reach. The deer are nibbling on a sassafras tree John L pruned to make bushy at a lower height so it would attract does with fawns. All the trees are holding on to their leaves this year, she thinks.
Cleo tries to conjure her mother, a mother she’s only ever seen in pictures. 17 years old and no mother. No mother to explain the fix she finds herself in. Occasionally, she glances back over her shoulder to smile at her Uncle John L whittling away in the front room.
He whittles at the life-size replica of a flintlock blunderbuss rifle he previously whittled from a big hickory limb. The blunderbuss is his proudest achievement in 13 years of learning the art of whittling. He started whittling at 15 to pass the time when he couldn’t go back to sleep at (snip)
Although well written, this prologue’s opening page (and the rest of it) illustrates the risk you take in writing in the second person. The writer asks me, the reader, to be someone else for a while. This is not the same as immersing me in a character’s story, it’s asking me to be the character.
But when “I” wanted to give another character one of my famous foot massages, I was thrown out of the story. For one thing, I don’t have any famous foot massages. For another, I wasn’t feeling any urge to give one. Perhaps this is just a failure of my imagination, but I was unable to get past the disorientation of being whoever and whatever this character is. And I didn’t know who and what “I” was supposed to be. Male? Female?
Then there’s the lack of story questions in this leisurely introduction of a character. The same applies to the opening page of the chapter. And then there’s the shifting point of view in chapter 1, hopping from the head of the man to that of the girl and back again. This is either head-hopping or an omniscient point of view, and neither works well for me. I find it confusing to have to switch from one mind/point of view from one paragraph to another without any kind of transition. And I ended up not understanding what the story was about after reading these first pages. I’m sure it’ll be engaging for someone, but the styles of both the prologue and the chapter just didn’t work for me.
Your thoughts?
For what it’s worth.
Ray
Submitting to the Flogometer:
Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):
- your title
- your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
- Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ. Note: I’m adding a copyright notice for the writer at the end of the post. I’ll use just the first name unless I’m told I can use the full name.
- Also, please tell me if it’s okay to post the rest of the chapter so people can turn the page.
- And, optionally, include your permission to use it as an example in a book on writing craft if that's okay.
- If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
- If you rewrite while you wait for your turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of the first-page checklist before submitting to the Flogometer.
Flogging the Quill © 2016 Ray Rhamey, prologue and chapter © 2016 by Wayland
Continued from the prologue:
. . . orphan, still worth your closer look?
You think, ¿Married?
You're right that he looks married, but as he sips his whisky (very good, very expensive Irish you now see) he also is beginning to relax, look alive, lose that haggard look—sipping carefully, savoring the taste, breathing slowly out to have the vapors numb his nostrils, leaning back now, closing his eyes, fighting not to finish with this second drink so quickly...
¿The occasional, appealing, dangerous flash must be from remembered poetry? Peaceful now… Yet so wise.
He was muttering animatedly when he crossed Main Street about the letter he left on his desk back at The Blue Ruby Times. With the letter, his friend in London included a clipping of The Horse of the Year show in which Sefton, survivor of the July Hyde Park IRA bombing, was named 1982’s Horse of the Year. In the letter, his friend, an English reporter he knew in Africa wrote, “Most moving ceremony with Sefton yesterday. Long after we have forgotten the 4 men killed at Hyde Park, Sefton will be remembered. Parker Bowles was first on the scene and is credited with saving Sefton. It takes a horse to rally the people.”
For a month or so after the Hyde Park bombing, Moran read accounts of it in The New York Times delivered a day late to his office. Mainly he was interested in what answers the bombing provided for The Irish Question. And he was always interested in seeing if any Morans were involved in the answers.
Not having seen him cross Main Street from his Blue Ruby Times newspaper office—it’s there behind that big window, occupying all of the 2nd floor directly over Autie’s on the left and Piggly Wiggly on the right—you're now sure he's married, but still think he's a poet. And dangerous. ¿Dangerous because he’s married and stays in the Governor's Suite at The Sage County Inn at Blue Ruby? The governor of Virginia is Charles Robb, inaugurated in January. Moran's not the governor, so what gives?
So, want to get Moran dressed to go back across Main Street to Autie's to be irresistible in public, prowl for company? ¿You'd like to see him rouse himself for a dangerous liaison, shuck the mantle of ease he's starting to drape about his person? ¿Slip on tasseled loafers without socks—without socks even though it's a cold and dropping November Tuesday and the sun is down?
Going over to Autie's with no socks would be a manly enough clue for the sort of eager woman you've deduced in your one day in town inhabits Blue Ruby. ¿But, any night, a manly clue in Blue Ruby? ¿For whoever can be found taking advantage of the jukebox advertised in Autie's window: America's last nickel jukebox? Your thoughts are right on: No socks is manly, yet tasteful in Blue Ruby, a sufficient clue, particularly for a maiden looking for a motel memory, that this man has come from just the stone's throw across Main Street at the Inn; comforting clothing language at last call so that there'd be time to order your last drink if you were the one who wanted to keep him waiting without seeming too... too… too virginal; the kind of dynamite hint you'd want that there was a warm—and expensive—bed just that close. Bedroom slippers with no socks would be gauche.
You're not really interested in seeing him work Autie's, believe us. The kind of maiden who's already in Autie's comes too early and stays too late to hold Moran's interest for longer than a quick nod would take. Though… the one maiden—Racey Osgood—settled in tonight is full of hope for finding another manly man. Her interest would hardly be piqued by Moran’s big office overhead, or his influential position as the owner-publisher of the paper: She works there, actually runs the place, has since before Moran ever took over the paper from his father. He’s not her kind of manly man.
Racey’s memories of past successes of attracting manly men at Autie’s come up as smoothly as her drink goes down, so smoothly that she occasionally must spice her sweet dreams with three drops of Tabasco sauce tapped into the vitamin-laden mix of V-8 juice, a squeeze of lemon, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. She's in her seat for the long haul tonight to take advantage of the cheap music—Queen of the Silver Dollar is playing now; she's there early to watch for the first handsome stranger through the door.
Racey dances from the waist up while on the napkin she spins her drink to appear thoughtful instead of penurious; nurses her Four Barrel Carb (Autie's clever name for the mix of V-8 and beer) to save a buck. She straightens to decline the ever-present Ernest's tiresome offer—his third this afternoon—to "mix in a little ethanol to keep her horsey running.” He palms the shiny flask toward her under table height and glances back at the bar to make sure the barkeep doesn't see him offering free samples: If you get it elsewhere, drink it elsewhere is Autie's hard and fast rule.
She'd also refuse Ernest's request to dance even if he'd ever been known to request such a thing. She's polite, waits for him to glance back at the bar before her next furtive glance at the door; says, while glancing, she has to work tomorrow, can't afford a hangover, plans to leave as soon as The Fiddle Barn idiots start coming in.
Moran'd be puzzled but flattered if he knew you still saw possibilities after studying him this long, were now actually impatient to see him work a room, drop a quarter in for six plays and watch him go for a honkytonk honey, watch to see if he was really the kind of man a classy woman like you would find worth studying for a first, maybe a second evening... To honor his feelings for the little woman you’ve guessed is back home, you may hope he'd resist anyone else’s charms, but still you'd like to see what he was made of, what types he might be enchanted by, or if he was one of the rarae aves still looking for a good woman, a little randy, but with a sharp mind to separate her from your average honky-tonk honey.
Not much else to do in Blue Ruby on a Tuesday night unless you're into two-step dancing, which, being Tuesday, will start in about two hours at the aforementioned Fiddle Barn in the mall on the outskirts of town.
You'd be surprised, disappointed in Moran's backwardness, a reluctant retreat he started when his forwardness contributed to his marriage failure, and his wife running off with his best friend. This Tuesday night, he has already briefly entertained the thought to go to the Fiddle Barn where the maidens are younger and harder to enchant with no socks or other habiliment idées fixes; where they're looking for bumptious, rough-edged men who will dance if cornered until it's time to go home. But alas, he knows that Pearl Slemp, his current obsession, would be there for sure. And that he’d start drooling publicly after a couple of long drinks.
He has no intention of leaving his nest at the Inn. He will drink himself into a stupor. We've been out with Moran before, studied Moran for over a year now, and have good notes on his 3 years since his father killed himself and left him a goodly chunk of money and the great, modified Governor’s Suite, with the best shower in Blue Ruby, and a mere 43 long strides from that best shower to his desk as publisher of The Blue Ruby Times. Before the goodly chunk of money piques your interest, move on in for a closer look, e.g., at the seemly scar across his fetchingly agley nose. Turns out Moran's newish nose is a trophy he won early in his stay in Blue Ruby in a bar fight right there at Autie's.
Now that he's finished three long drinks standing in the kitchen, he is back from the bedroom… now shucked down to his shorts, wearing—open in front—the bathrobe his father left him, one he will drape the tail of over the back of his chair and hold down with bricks on the hem… Then, a safety pin to close the robe at his sternum; then, a space heater between his feet to blow hot air under his chair where the cheap bathrobe will trap and redirect the hot air to warm his back. Not easy to imagine the beauty of the nest he’s devised unless you'd seen him settled in on the several chilly evenings like we have; and had our more fully developed gift of being able to listen to his thoughts.
¿And that flyer he uses as a coaster to protect the elegant end table by his nest? The picture that dominates the flyer is the colorized official picture of Pearl, Miss Virginia, 1965. Moran commissioned the colorization for the advertising campaign for Blue Ruby Motors. It is the first time The Blue Ruby Times will include flyers in the paper.
The table is the only thing of his mother’s he’s kept. It has followed him to Africa and back. Every evening before he rests his drink on the flyers, he makes sure there are enough of them to prevent moisture from the glass from soaking through to the table. You are spot on, it’s some significant torture Moran puts himself through every evening when he comes out to drink on his balcony: A mix of subliminal oedipal yearnings and a crippling obsession to bed Pearl Slemp.
Tonight, Two-Step Tuesday, be with us as Main Street in Blue Ruby comes alive below him. This Pearl will appear, twice as old as her picture, but twice as beautiful.
Moran will savor the lingering taste of the whiskey from his kitchen drinks and wait for the full impact of the six ounces of Irish whiskey he’s finished before pouring a final long shot. This Tuesday, he will wait to pour until a few minutes before Pearl appears in the flesh on Main Street below him. He places his empty shot glass on a corner and runs his finger over Pearl’s lips.
Except for a border around the flyer of the names of car brands, drawings of clown face balloons, and pictures of Ford cars and trucks, the flyer is dominated by the 17-year-old, newly colorized picture of Pearl Slemp at her coronation as Miss Virginia, wearing a crown of diamonds, hugging a trophy. Under her breasts is written the question: Would you buy a used car from this woman? Across the bottom it reads: Blue Ruby Motors, Pearl Slemp, VP-Pre-Owned Vehicles. Crown, trophy, earrings, tears, lips, and teeth: sparkle.
He looks again at the picture of Pearl he uses to keep from making water rings on his mother’s table. Moran is distracted from bad memories by a heated discussion on Main Street, two pickup truck drivers about to come to blows over who’d been waiting longer for the parking spot to open up in front of Autie’s.
Not that your eye is anything but uncommon, but even a common eye would've caught right off that the bathrobe is made from one of those cheap modern fabrics with aspirations to silk. Moran has already determined that real silk, cotton, or wool are all too breathable, let too much air flow through instead of redirecting it up his back. Under his microenvironment he will wear only underwear shorts. You are not ready for this yet, but if you succeeded in getting him into the big bed his father left him—a bed in which Pearl spent many a night with his father—you’d soon come to know he’d worn the shorts all day and he doesn't take them off even for bed.
We need your uncommon eye, your thoughts, your sympathy for Moran, Jr.
Thus, with your second look, you've confirmed dangerous but can dismiss cool. Not cool, even if you do like the sketchy, rock-star stubble. Your observations are all good, in fact, great— and we're glad you saw into and right through Moran. Moran is an aspiring poet which accounts for Moran not being cool in private. The question: Can we plumb his depths, his poetical anxieties, inspire a public face that's not so slaveringly expectant when he encounters the eager, beautiful women who are immediately attracted to him? Is he salvageable for the kind of classy, but sexy, woman like you who is looking for a trophy husband? Can we relaunch him?
Moran is always out here on the balcony a little early on Tuesdays. He waits for the appearance of Pearl, who is looking for a trophy husband to father her children.
He sporadically bobs and weaves to see clearly through the balustrade. He is watching the early arrivals wait for Piggly Wiggly patrons to leave the prime parking spaces in front of Autie’s. His fleeting blissful look is a yen for the corned beef and cabbage special Autie’s serves on Tuesdays.
The roar and the burrap, burrap, of the downshift of his dad’s classic Porsche, the only one like it in the county, causes him to blink alive and lean forward. From around the corner it comes into view.
Watch:
When his father’s old—now Pearl’s new—car comes directly below, he will lean back slightly to make sure Pearl doesn’t glance up and see him. Chilly as it is this Tuesday, she has the top down and as usual her ex-husband Harley sits in the passenger’s seat. Those two women standing at the open trunks of their cars will respond to Pearl’s burrap, burraps by slowing down instead of hurrying. The women have stopped to chat while they transfer their groceries from their carts to their trunks. They will continue to talk to each other while looking scornfully at Pearl and the Porsche. Cars will queue up behind Pearl. Harley will get out of the car to help the women with their groceries and start them smiling when he bestows his locally famous “snake” dance move on them.
Moran is smiling now at the memory of Harley at The Fiddle Barn doing “The Cobra” on the dance floor. Harley is a man Moran thinks is a little loose in the loafers, but that is probably sour grapes, given that Harley holds Pearl’s heart in his hands every Tuesday night. After parking, as Pearl exits the car she glances up at the balcony. Moran quickly leans backward, like a boxer dodging a haymaker, and wonders if she saw him smiling foolishly over the railing.
When he arrived in Blue Ruby in 1979, some 2 years, 10 months, 21 days, 5¼ hours ago—notice he glances at his watch—Moran ensconced himself in his dad’s suite, this Governor's Suite, and began, unwittingly, to shut down his systems.
Moran, Jr. is not going anywhere this Tuesday night, same as most every other night for the past 11 months.
Chapter 1
She'll unbutton the top button on her dress and use one of the napkins from Momma's cedar chest to wipe down into the front of her dress a little and around her neck and she'll close her eyes and hold her face up at the sky and let you look at her neck without having to be ashamed.
John L plans a picnic alone with Cleo
~ ∞ ∞ ∞ ~
JOHN L WHITTLES: A SHOW of busyness to avoid being in the kitchen with Cleo. She stands bemused at the sink washing the breakfast dishes, barefoot with swabs of cotton between her toes to allow her nail polish to dry unmarred, enjoying the warmth of the water on her hands. She looks out the window at a doe and fawn, nervously eating what leaves they're able to reach. The deer are nibbling on a sassafras tree John L pruned to make bushy at a lower height so it would attract does with fawns. All the trees are holding on to their leaves this year, she thinks.
Cleo tries to conjure her mother, a mother she’s only ever seen in pictures. 17 years old and no mother. No mother to explain the fix she finds herself in. Occasionally, she glances back over her shoulder to smile at her Uncle John L whittling away in the front room.
He whittles at the life-size replica of a flintlock blunderbuss rifle he previously whittled from a big hickory limb. The blunderbuss is his proudest achievement in 13 years of learning the art of whittling. He started whittling at 15 to pass the time when he couldn’t go back to sleep at night after being awakened to give Cleo her bottle.
Now he has started to whittle it into ¾s life-size replica of a 30-30 rifle with the stock reduced to be the grip of a walking stick. He started the reduction using a picture from a magazine, but now works from his memory of his grandfather’s 30-30.
John L hasn’t told Cleo he is whittling the gun into a walking stick for weekend hikes through the woods with her. When he's finished, he wants it to still look enough like a real rifle that you could fool a flatlander. But, for his purposes, whittling some of the stock away will make it lighter, better to use as a walking stick. Every so often, he touches the knife to his thumb to test the sharpness. Breathing out during each long curl of wood he strokes from the stock relaxes him; besides whittling a realistic looking gun to use to threaten Brother so Brother will shoot him with a real gun, he has found the whittling distracts him from his evil thoughts about Cleo.
Occasionally he stands to make sure the grip will be at the proper height for pushing himself up a hill or bracing himself coming down. He measures the length of the new gripping area with the breadth of his hand. The old stock gives him plenty of wood to work with. He could speed his project by using a power jigsaw and leave the fine tuning for whittling, but he likes to see how thin he can make the curls of hickory dropping into the pan between his feet.
He was undecided until just this morning if he wanted the grip to be smooth or crosshatched. Crosshatched would give him a better grip but could cause his hands to become calloused and rough. He’ll just wear gloves when he walks in the woods with Cleo to keep his hands from getting rough. Young women don’t like rough hands.
Making a walking stick of it risks defeating his original purpose for the replica—he’d planned for a year and a half for it to be the weapon he’d use to provoke Brother to kill him. But lately he has thought he can avoid getting himself killed. He looks up at Cleo and thinks how foolish he is to get himself killed instead of letting Cleo’s and his appetites take their sinful course. His niece gets more womanly every day.
His plan to have Brother kill him once more gets pushed to the back of his mind.
IT’S SUNDAY, NOT THE SABBATH for the faithful of Nash Hollow Holyfull Church but still the true day of rest for John L and Cleo, a day of reflection for things human. It's after breakfast and before a picnic Brother hastily arranged at Tuesday vesper services, and confirmed last night. “The faithful can enjoy a day of fellowship during this glorious October God has offered,” he'd said.
Cleo thinks of the week ago Sunday she spent in Blue Ruby with Paige and Paige's date, Paul—poor, timid Paul, preoccupied with his pimples as always that day—a prop Paige brought along to permit her to explain her sexual thoughts with bold words. She used Paul to make her counsel seem to be that of a friend who already had her man. Cleo wasn’t fooled for a minute that Paige was practicing what she preached with Paul.
Cleo's stomach turns again when she thinks of Paige's familiar use of her Uncle John L's first name. Paige has become enamored of the whole idea of an older man for herself; she has her sights set on Uncle John L. Cleo knew Paige was gossiping with her other friends about how John L was so rugged, soooo sexy.
Later in the conversation, Paige said, “Did you know my parents waited until I was two months old to give me a name? For two months, I was Baby Girl Hatcher. Mother read a European novel where they named the heroine that way, waited until her personality was formed enough that they could give her a fitting name. You should think about getting your name changed. If it weren't for the movie, I think Lolita would fit your personality, make you more attractive to men.”
On parting, Paige said, “Take John L on a picnic, ask him about the birds and the bees. Hee hee.”
Cleo wishes now she'd not come back to report to John L that Paige thought Cleo should arrange a picnic with John L. She checked Lolita out of the library on the Monday after the date with Paige and read it in two nights. She wished she’d seen Lolita in the movie. After she read the book, and saw what a tart Lolita was, she asked John L what he thought of the name Lolita. He uttered the name aloud several times and said he liked the name a lot but not as much as he liked the name Cleo.
Today she wonders, again, what it would be like to seduce her uncle. She has started to seduce him in her daydreams. It makes her feel like Lolita in the book.
For Christmas, she will give him an ecru button-down shirt Paige told her that she and the other cheerleaders thought would top off a sexy outfit. She imagines the Christmas morning scene. She will smooth the shirt on him, walk around him to tuck it neatly into his trousers when he tries it on. She’ll ask him to take it off under the pretense she wants to iron smooth the folds, let her eyes dwell on his chest when she hands it back to him, ask him to wear it to church.
When they come home from those Christmas morning services she’ll ask John L to take off his suit coat and necktie and put on the pumpkin sweater she has put on layaway. When they passed by it he called it Pumpkin-colored. He probably called it pumpkin because it was so close to Halloween when they saw it. It was the color of a shirt her father, the Spaniard Delgado, had given John L when he was 13, a year before she was born. Cleo is calling the sweater tangerine at Paige's urging. Tangerine is a sexier word than pumpkin, Paige had said. “Think of him wearing an ecru shirt under a tangerine sweater.”
Cleo remembers sex scenes from books she's read lately, wants to live what she's only read about up to now. Cleo's nipples are hard and her breaths shallow. She will teach Uncle John L to call it the tangerine sweater as soon as possible after Christmas.
John L is also eager. His throat is constricted. Full. He touches the pulse in his neck. He has forgotten his grandmother’s harangue about being careful about what he does around Cleo. She lectured him that one of the faithful from the church told her about rumors she'd heard in town. The congregant had repeated rumors being spread by Ralph Skeens. Ralph told all who would listen that Cleo’s friends were telling stories about her trysts with John L, trysts Paige proposed, but trysts that are only coalescing in John L and Cleo's daydreams of becoming incestuous lovers.
After breakfast, Cleo had called John L out of his bedroom to entice him to admire the new gingham cloth she'd bought to cover the food in the basket, and the dress she planned to wear to the picnic. She already knew it was his favorite. He smiled sweetly and his first words were that they couldn't afford the cost of church picnics. She blushed—the way he said it made it seem like they were married.
She seized the moment. “If you drank wine, I would’ve gotten you to buy a bottle. Paige says a good, full-bodied Bordeaux would be right for roast beef sandwiches. I thought about it, but I knew they'd not welcome us with spirits. I’m making fried chicken. Wine wouldn’t go with fried chicken Paige said. But, let's do our own picnic next time.”
He said, “You've got to stop listening to Paige. You're too young to be drinking.” Nevertheless, he started then to plan a picnic alone with her:
If she will agree to go on a picnic with you without the church, you can drive the back road toward Dillard to the wide spot where the path up to the old graveyard starts. The five steps up to the platform are getting too shaky and you'll go first so that you can pull her up to the platform after you. Then she goes ahead so you can catch her if she slips. You'll remind her you told her to wear her winter shoes to keep from slipping, but you're glad to have a reason to put your hands on her soft spots.
You'll offer to let her use your right glove so she won't wear blisters on her hand from pulling herself up by grabbing sassafras saplings and you'll like her softness on your bare hand. And her soft spots will get warm from your touch and her thighs and her soft behind will heat up from climbing. She'll be dewy before you make it halfway up the climb and you'll tell her “We could do it here and not go up to the tables.”
She'll understand, but she'll say, “Do what?” She'll act like she's innocent but it's her way to tell you she wants to too. But she won't tease you too much. You'll say out loud her idea to have a bottle of wine with her good roast beef sandwiches the way they do in picture shows was a good one.
She'll color up but you won't be able to see it because her cheeks will be red from climbing. She'll unbutton the top button on her dress and use one of the napkins from Momma's cedar chest to wipe down into the front of her dress a little and around her neck and she'll close her eyes and hold her face up at the sky and let you look at her neck without having to be ashamed. You'll put one of Momma’s napkins over your lap to hide yourself, but you won't be able to hide your smell and she’ll be thinking she smells bleach. And she’ll know you’re trying to stay manly but she needs to hurry.
You'll be sitting on the old tablecloth and put the basket off to one side and you'll play her waiting game by asking her to tell you about pineapples again. How they have such small seeds for such a big fruit. It'll make her think you're more interested in her mind and give you the chance to swell up again.
She'll make the first move to let you know it's what she came for. She'll open one other button but hold it closed for just a minute and you'll get the nerve to look at her chest and lick your lips with your mouth open and look up at her face and say, “Whew.”
And she'll color up again and know you see it, but still will let go of the button and reach in towards her shoulder with her thumb to pull up the strap of the new brassiere she forgot one day on the kitchen table and you saw was padded because she thinks her behind makes her look too much like a pear shape and Paige told her she had bought one like it for balance for when she had her clothes on. Then she'll ask if you mind if she unbuttons the rest of her buttons to cool down some and will unsnap the front of the brassiere, which she'll say when she unsnaps it was a brassiere made especially for good picnics.
You'll tell her her breasts are fine, plenty good enough. And you’ll move over next to her and put the right one in your mouth because that's the side you'll be on since you're right-handed. And you’ll use your right hand to put her hand down on your thing.
She'll brag on your thing and then put her tongue in your mouth and breathe through her nose and then she'll be thinking about what Paige told her the last time you spied on them after play practice. The thing about men forgetting about your breasts when they take off your panties and how men with good manners like small breasts.
She'll push off her shoes with her toes, and you'll open your eyes to look at the frosty wine toe polish and use your hand to go up under her dress looking for the place where her underwear has hair coming out from under, but you won't find any underwear and she'll push herself onto your first finger and start moving slow and she'll stop kissing in your ear and start moaning like she's having a bad dream.
Then she'll whisper in your ear, “Do you mind a woman with no smallclothes? I wanted it this way so I could show you my underpart while we ate sandwiches so you'd know I was sure. But you knew without me showing you it.”
And she'll start cooing like doves.
And after you'll tell her to stop acting like a tramp but you'll tell her you'll let it go this time but don't do it next time and will start when you get back home to write down things to say for the second times.
But any of those times you won't say you love her or let her know you think all the time about her. Young women don't like things like too much love.
And when you get home after the picnic you won’t go into her room and tell her her breasts are perfect instead of just plenty good enough.
CLEO FINISHES PACKING THE PICNIC basket, “Uncle John L, did you ever finish that book Cold Sassy Tree I gave you a while back? I saw it somewhere here the other day and I want to let Brother borrow it. It's about a man that marries a younger woman after his wife dies.”
“Cleo, what am I going to do about you? You told me it was about a town named after an overgrown sassafras tree at the city limits. I'd’ve been worried about what you were reading if I'd known it was about something dirty.”
“I was telling you how the book got its title the day you were cutting back the top of the little sassafras sapling outside the kitchen. No whole book is about a sassafras tree, even if the tree is as big as the one in the book.”
“I'll start it soon. I'll give it to Brother myself when I'm done with it.”
“I’ve been watching that same doe and fawn come past the sassafras for a while now, wondering if I'll ever see my mother before I die. Tell me why I’m named Cleo?”
“Your mother... Joy Ann named you. I think she expected you to grow up to be special like Cleopatra. Jimmy Ray is still talking to her about coming back for you. She’s got children by another man than your daddy, even if the second man is a Spaniard, too. It's nothing about you, she just got married without telling her husband about you and she's probably scared he'll divorce her if she tells him.”
Cleo thinks she’ll tell John L soon that Lolita is a Spanish name for a young girl whose real name is Dolores, which means suffering.
AT THE PICNIC, CLEO STANDS in the younger crowd dominated by Ralph Skeens. He is reprising his role as congregation clown for the 16- to18-year-old Holyfull congregants, a role he started to perfect seven years ago when he dropped out of high school to work in the big mining equipment warehouse outside Dillard. At 23, Ralph still wears his worldly wit with some great appeal for the younger crowd.
With little success, John L tries not to stare at Ralph’s adoring crowd. Occasionally, he makes a point to pause close enough to Ralph's group to find out what they're talking about. He hears enough of two of Ralph's jokes—neither joke fit for a church picnic—to remember he used to entertain with his jokes. And Ralph is too old to be talking like Donald Duck.
John L walks from table to table sampling food he has no appetite for. He sees Brother, surrounded by the churchwomen listening to Ralph’s sister, Sister Skeens, hold forth. Brother is looking over the top of their heads at Ralph’s crowd. John L thinks of Brother staring at Cleo through her wet clothes when he baptized her when she was 13.
Not knowing of Brother’s weekly counseling session with Ralph for his flatulence at Holyfull during Saturday Sabbath services, the last thing John L would ever suspect Brother of is his thought: ¿Next week, find out from Brother Skeens if he knows Autie’s recipe for corned beef and cabbage?
Grandma Owens kin Phoebe, not believing in going to church affairs where men and women dress up, is not here: “The kind of thing alley cats would go to if they could dress up,” was her rebuff to Brother, who made the mistake of announcing the picnic after the vesper prayer and before consulting with her.
For John L's comfort, Cleo is far too animated about what Ralph is saying. He wishes he wasn't always nervous around Cleo these days. He wishes he was in Ralph's place. He'd like for Cleo to be putting her hand on his arm to let him know she liked what he just said. Like Cleo’s daddy Delgado did his arm.
John L feels like someone has pulled his insides out when he overhears Cleo excitedly accept Ralph's invitation for a date next Friday for “a night of dancing at The Barn and a midnight snack at Autie's.”
John L will say to her when they get home, “He's too old for you, Cleo. And you're too young for midnight snacks with a man Ralph’s age.” He begins to get another erection. He'll also remind her when they get home she wanted them to go on a picnic with wine. Not knowing how to dance bothers him, makes him think again he needs to invite her to the Blue Ruby Fiddle Barn, or promise to take her to a dance over at the Dillard Fiddle Barn if she'll teach him how to dance at home.
He wonders if being her uncle gives him enough Biblical authority to lock her in her room if she disobeys him when he tells her she can't go with Ralph on a date into Blue Ruby.
A few minutes later Cleo is glowing. It's her first date alone with a man. She leaves the group and walks over to Brother, who has broken away from the churchwomen to stand in front of the fried chicken Cleo made.
By the time she reaches Brother, he has a piece of chicken in each hand. “Hello, Brother. I made the chicken you're eating.”
“I guessed soon as I tasted it. Your frying hen did not die in vain.”
“Brother John L's not finished with the book we talked about—with the older man who married the younger woman. He promised this morning he would give it to you himself soon.”
Brother says, “Is Brother John L instructing you after the Bible? Proverbs 22:6 says, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’”
“What about women, shouldn't us shes be trained up?”
“Would we like to share something about our upbringing, Sister? Would we need to come in for instruction?”
“Maybe we would. Brother John L's embarrassed about grownup things. I remember you saying women must be subservient to men.”
“It's husbands or ministers—husbands in the Lord—women must subject themselves to, not just any John L, Dick, or Harry husband. Ephesians 5: 22 and 23 says, ‘Wives be subject to your husband, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as Christ is also the head of the church. He Himself being the savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in all things.' Husbands being Jesus and authorities of the church as well as husbands of the flesh.”
“I've accepted a date with Brother Ralph to go into Blue Ruby to a movie and a late supper on Friday. You won't be too hard on me if I'm out and about a little after the Sabbath begins, will you?” She tucks her chin and bats her eyes coyly.
“Before you do, I'd like to meet with you. Have Brother John L drop you by the house on your way home from school tomorrow.”