"The Blond One"

A squeal of yimmeryammers announced Hoke, the Blond One, as he strode in through the foyer like a prince. Hoke hoisted a half-eaten chicken leg in one hand while his other picked at a splinter of bone lodged between his broad, white teeth. Hoke had a young girl with him, following a few steps behind. She was unusually thin, wearing a light homespun dress, pink flowers in a frayed hat. T.J. averted her eyes. The scouts of the heart. Was this the girl he had glimpsed in the window? T.J. didn’t think so. He was pretty sure the girl in the window was Beatrice Evans, whom T.J. had not laid eyes on for the better part of two years.
Hoke strutted across the room to help the men lift the body back into the coffin. T.J.'s father smiled and squeezed Hoke’s arm, muttering something to him as he glanced over his shoulder at T.J., who pretended not to notice.
T.J. looked to his feet as a kind of refuge. His laces had come undone. He crouched down to tie them. And there, leaning against the wall opposite, was the girl with the pink flowers in her hat, pressing her scourpot hands against the wrinkles in her dress, her eyes flitting around the room like a child looking for its mother.
T.J. fiddled with his laces and the blood from his wound dribbled out onto the floor. He wiped it against his pants leg and looked up to see if she had noticed. The girl’s eyes pinned him to the floor like the insect he knew he was.
T.J.'s grandfather had been tucked back into the coffin now. T.J. sucked the last of the blood away, stood up, and took his place again in the back row. No one asked him to help hold up the body this time. Instead, Hoke assumed T.J.’s position beside his father.
Hoke winked back at T.J.
“How are ya, Slick?” he asked.
T.J. hated it when Hoke called him that.