Meanwhile, tío Pedro was across the field mending the corral with his friend, Sullivan, who had come over from Isleta Pueblo to give him a hand. “Has your nephew taken to talkin’ to ’imself?” Sullivan asked, who seemed to have laser-beam vision and had observed from the half-mile between where they were working and where Francisco was carving that his lips were moving. Sullivan pulled out a worn bandanna from his back pocket and wiped his brow.

Pedro didn’t stop to look up at Francisco because he already knew. For some time now it had gotten harder and harder to have even a simple conversation with el Franky. He didn’t even bother to answer direct questions no more. All the man did was work on his santos and pray. Yes, it was good to pray while working on the bultos, but Francisco was even moving his lips like that in his sleep!

To make it worse, the guy never went home no more, neither! Pedro had always let his nephew know he had a room there whenever he needed but, after a few days of intense work on a bulto or a retablo, Francisco used to insist on his going back to the little studio he kept in the “student ghetto” near the university. But something was welling up inside him like a fever, something that was going to have to give way soon, otherwise everybody was going to explode: him, Loretta, and el Franky for sure.

“I think he needs a woman,” Pedro said and surprised himself to have said it, since he had never really wanted to think about that nonexistent side of his nephew’s life. After all, a man was entitled to some privacy, ¿qué no? But there, he had said it. Loretta had been saying it about Francisco, the youngest of their morada, for years. “When’s Franky gonna find himself a girlfriend?” “When’s Franky gonna get married?” And now, unless Francisco decided to become a monk, his tío Pedro had the same thought. It was time for his nephew and fellow penitente in the morada to do something with his life. In other words, get himself a woman. There. He had said it and having done so, straddled himself on top of the fence and continued to work.

Sullivan grinned, still staring over at Francisco el Penitente, and dropped his tools. Before Pedro could stop him he saw Sullivan making a beeline for Francisco, hearing him call from the distance to Francisco already, “Hey, bro’! What’s up?”