Finding Home (6 page)

Energy high, Phoebe went to the truck and retrieved the sack of trip-worn, dirty clothes. It took her some minutes to sort out how the washer worked, but once it was filled with h
ot water and detergent, she managed a steady stream out to the clothesline. She longed to use the electric dryer, but prudence suggested sun drying.

Before she washed
a single Morgan garment she inspected it, taking care that it was washed according to instructions. Those belonging to Gage Morgan had a smell about them. Of clean oil, old soap and man scent. Phoebe put one of his shirts to her nose and inhaled. She got wicked thoughts. Lor! She plunged it into the water.

When all the clotheslines were filled she stood in the shade on the porch and watched towels and sheets and shirts billow in the summer salt-breeze. She had worn a path in the high weeds to the lines. It was almost like trailblazing. Like being a pioneer woman
, or leastways like one of the women who took up with Hawley men in the distant past. She had so many good feelings inside she felt weak.

She had hung one of her blouses tail to tail with a shirt belonging to Gage Morgan. In her mind it was an intimate coupling, linking their lives.

All in all, thought Phoebe, this was most likely the best day of her life.

Gage did not come u
p to the house for supper, but worked in the welding shed long after dark. Phoebe bathed herself and Willie-Boy and sent him and Maydean to bed.

Dorie balked at mention of bed. Phoebe let her be. The child fell asleep on the sofa. When Gage came in, he carried his daughter to her room.

“You want me to help you get her into nightclothes?” Phoebe asked.

“
No.”

“
I set aside a platter of chicken and biscuits and gravy in the oven for you. You want I should put it on the table?”

“
I’ll eat in a bit.”

Phoebe hesitated. Best thing she could do, she thought, was take
herself off to bed, too, lest they engage in a conversation regarding her leaving at first light in the morning.

Gage nodded absently
, his attention wholly on Dorie.

For a brief moment Phoebe wished he would focus his attention on her, but she couldn
’t fault the man for looking after his daughter. “G’night, then.”

~~~~

Gage left Dorie in her shorts, brushed sand from the bottom of her feet and covered her with a thin flannel sheet. He was only now learning how to parent. Dorie’s mother had held the child up to the world, to himself, as an achievement of her own. Dorie had adored her mother and Velma enjoyed the adoration to an unhealthy degree. She had kept Dorie for herself. Wrongly, to keep peace, he’d allowed it. Now Dorie suffered for it, and he didn’t know how to stop her suffering.

He brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead. Her round tanned face was clean for a change. The Hawley woman
’s doing no doubt. He wondered how she’d managed it. Dorie wore her dirt like a badge of honor.

It was too soon to tell, but perhaps allowing the transients into his home wasn
’t such a bad thing. Even if it was only for a day or two, they seemed a pleasant diversion for Dorie.

He turned on the
ceiling fan, snapped on a Dora the Explorer night light, switched off the overhead light and went to get his supper. The transit woman was pleasant for him, too, he mused when he bit into the chicken. He was the worst cook in the world, and the chicken the best he’d ever tasted.

Phoebe
woke
in
the thin light of morning. Maydean was curled into a ball at the foot of the bed. Willie-Boy lay on his back. She put her ear to his chest. No sound of wheezing. That was good—and bad. She’d have to figure out a way to stay, beyond his recovery.

She had clean jeans and blouse to wear today. In the bathroom she yanked a brush through her hair, taming it as best she could. A woman had to look her best at first light, Ma always said.

She tiptoed down the hall to Gage’s bedroom. The door was closed. She put her ear to it.

“
Looking for me?”

She spun about. He stood at the head of the hall, holding a cup, looking suspicious. Phoebe cast about for the right words.
“I was just hopin’ my stumblin’ around didn’t wake you. I get fair noisy in the mornin’.”

“
You didn’t.”

She brushed past him, ever aware of his great height and powerful body. He followed her into the kitchen. Coffee was made. Pho
ebe poured herself a cup, savoring the rich-perked taste of it. “Willie-Boy passed a fair to middlin’ night,” she said.

“
I’m glad to hear it.”

“
I washed all the clothes I found in the laundry hamper. I put Dorie’s in her room, left yours folded in the basket. You want me to put ‘em away?”

“
I can do that.”

“
You want me to fix you some breakfast?”

“
Never eat in the morning.”

Never stretch out your words, either
.
Phoebe hunted up something to say so an awkward silence wouldn’t fall between them. “I got that letter written,” she advanced, reminded of the envelope addressed to her mother. “Left a quarter for the stamp on your desk. You reckon I can put your address on it, so as they can write me back...if there’s work?”

“
Meaning?”

“
Meanin’ I can pick it up, if one comes after—” She stopped, not allowing the words to cross her lips. “Those seafood houses down the road, are they hirin’? I reckon I could earn enough money outta one of them to pay you for the bumper. That way, if there’s still a job for me down the road a piece, I can get on the road quick.”

He looked
askance at her over the rim of his cup. “You ever pick crabs or shuck oysters?”

Phoebe read the doubt in his expression. Her chin came up. Not a dime
’s worth, but mayhap a nickel. “I can pick and shuck with the best of ‘em. I’ve picked cotton, shucked corn and hoed sorghum. Picking crabs and shucking oysters can’t be much different.” Or worse. She’d pulled cotton until the tips of her fingers blistered raw, shucked dry corn until her thumbs bled and had to use the hoe as a crook to hobble out of muddy milo fields at dusk, worrying that her spine would be bent the rest of her days.

“
If you say so,” G. G. Morgan gave her an odd dogleg smile. It hiked one corner of his kissin’ lips.

Phoebe didn
’t like the looks of his smile. It was crafty. She’d never seen a live crab or oyster in her life, but she’d seen pictures in
National Geographic
in the library back home. And not a Thanksgiving or Christmas slipped by in Phoebe’s living memory that Pa didn’t rant about his grandma’s oyster dressing and she-crab soup, all the while dishing up second helpings of Ma’s cornbread dressing and buttered sweet yams and Ma sitting at the end of the table going pink with vexation. Phoebe determined she wasn’t going to be outdone by any critter smaller than herself. Or bigger. She eyed Gage and tendered a last attempt to convince him of her abilities. “My hands are agile. My old boss in the cotton mills said I had the best hands he ever saw for threadin’ bobbins.”

“
Threading bobbins?”

“
That’s right.” Phoebe displayed her hands, thrusting them out, turning them over. “I know they appear waiflike, but you’re lookin’ at a strong set of hands.” She had his full attention. Seeing as men sometimes didn’t notice what was under their noses unless it smelled high, she decided to give him a good impression of the rest of her. “Matter of fact, I’m strong all over. I just don’t appear so. I ain’t never had a back problem and my brain is quick on complications.”

“
Quick on being slick you mean.”

“
Nope, that’s not what I mean a’tall,” she said with undue calm while keeping an eye on him, liking what she was seeing and trying not to. She was coming close to having wrong way female thoughts about how good he looked in the morning, how much man there was packed into his pants. She lifted her face and found him smiling at her. Caught, she sniffed. “I ain’t havin’ evil thoughts about you, if that’s what’s makin’ you grin like a cream-fed cat.”

“
Wouldn’t do you any good if you were, you’re not my type.”

“
That’s a good thing for both of us, ain’t it?” She let a fine friendly smile light up her expression to cover hurt feelings and held it until she thought her face would crack. She didn’t have the time or wherewithal to study on him at the moment. It was just as well he didn’t know how she was when she set her mind to something. “You got any objection to Maydean watching Willie-Boy and Dorie after breakfast while I check with one of them seafood houses? Like as not they’ll put me to work and I can have your seventy dollars by nightfall.”

Mentally calculating the proposed arrangement six different ways, Gage re
filled his cup from the percolator. Hers was a simple request. No short end of the stick for either of them. “I’ve no objection. But Dorie can look after herself.” His tone softened when he said his daughter’s name.

“
Dorie’s self-sufficient, all right,” Phoebe said, being agreeable. Lor! The child couldn’t look after herself coming or going. Men were blind to the day-to-day responsibility of girl-child rearing. “I’ll tell Maydean not to boss Dorie while I’m gettin’ up your money,” she said, which had the effect of making him scour her with another of his probing once-overs.

Emboldened by the way he was looking at her, thinking that no doubt he was noticing how fresh and neat she was of a morning, Phoebe continued.
“I reckon I’ll be back in time to fix you a tasty supper. Anybody asks me, I’m sure gonna tell ‘em how good and kind you been to Willie-Boy, allowin’ him to stay here and all.”

He
plonked his mug down the sink drain, muttered an epithet beneath his breath and went out the back door in the early dawn, work boots thudding on the porch. On the path he stopped for a minute, shaking his head. He should’ve looked at it
seven
different ways. Phoebe Hawley had a tongue too clever for her head. In less than twenty-four hours she’d somehow talked herself into his everyday life, not to mention his house and larder. He was going to have to put a stop to it.

Standing the behind th
e screened door, Phoebe watched him pause and shake his head. She divined G. G. Morgan was awed by his good fortune and was trying to absorb it. It wasn’t every day that a man wrecked a stranger’s truck in the morning and by nightfall found himself enjoying that same stranger’s talent as a cook.

Somewhere over the marshy landscape a gull squawked. In the canal a shrimp boat was
thrumming its way into the bay, lights fore, aft and on the boom sparkling like a Christmas tree. A breeze freshened by the incoming tide swept across the yard and through the screened door. Phoebe breathed in the smell of salt air, dank seaweed and honeysuckle blooming at the first hint of dawn. She wished Gage Morgan could’ve been goaded into breakfast. Her buttermilk biscuits were so mouth-watering Pa said even his grandma couldn’t best ‘em. But she noted it was in G. G. Morgan’s favor that he was an early riser and did not have to be prodded to work. That said something about a man without having to speak a word.

~~~~

After breakfast Phoebe gave Maydean a thousand orders and left the kids watching cartoons on the color television. She tucked the letter upright in the old metal mailbox, raised the flag, and patted the old metal as if were a pup before turning onto the sandy, rutted road. Ma would sure be happy to learn she might’ve found them a place.

The
sun was just
giving the sky a good pink color by the time Phoebe approached the first of the seafood houses. A group of women were filing through the opened door. Phoebe got in line behind them. A man stopped her just as she entered the building.

“
Hey! Hold it. Who’re you?”

“
Phoebe Hawley. I’m lookin’ to pick or shuck.”

“
Where’d you come from?”

“
Gage Morgan sent me down here.” The man’s name was sewn on his shirt above his pocket. “Gage said for me to see Hank. You know Gage Morgan, don’t you?” Her nose was twitching. The smell of old sea and dead seafood filled the concrete building. Years of it. Phoebe resisted the urge to pinch closed her nose.

“
Everybody knows Gage.”

“
Well, then?”

“
You ever pick before?”

“
Sure have.” No sense being dicey with words, she thought, or pointing out it was cotton.

“
You’re not from around here.”

That was the trouble with small towns, thought Phoebe, everybody knew everybody.
“Sure ain’t. We came down from Cottontown. To help Gage with Dorie and the house and all. What with his wife dying...”

Hank shook his head.
“That was a tragedy, Velma drowning. Gage took it hard.”

“
He ain’t recovered yet,” said Phoebe, looking properly sad.

“
I pay ninety-five cents a pound white, sixty-five cents a pound for claw. That satisfy you?”

Why, picking crabs was just like picking cotton, thought Phoebe, feeling reassured. You got paid on what you picked.
“Yessir, I’m used to pound work.”

“
Okay. Through there. Stout will show you where to sit.”

Stout was just that; she had a big square torso below a short neck that held up a round face that displayed a permanent frown crease between her brows. Stout put Phoebe at a long metal table on which w
ere piled hundreds and hundreds of boiled crabs, backs off. When Phoebe sat down she couldn’t see over the mountain of seafood to the worker on the opposite side who shared the table with her. She picked up a crab and looked at it. It didn’t resemble any picture she’d ever seen in
National Geographic.
In the first place it was dead. It wasn’t the kind of creature a sensible person would eat.

She got up and went around the table. Her table mate had a pleasant face. Phoebe cleared her throat. The woman looked up. Phoebe said,
“You got children?”

“
Got seven.”

“
I got two. One’s sick, I need money and I ain’t never picked a crab before in my life. I only picked cotton and shucked corn.”

The woman laughed.
“Better not let Stout hear that. You got a picker?” Phoebe said no. The woman reached into her apron pocket and handed Phoebe a set of nut pickers. “Use them like this.” She demonstrated, breaking open a crab and plucking out the meat. “White meat goes in the clear plastic tubs, claw in the brown. Stout’ll come around and collect your full tubs and give you a chit for every pound. You turn in your chits to Hank and he pays you at the end of the day.”

“
What time do we get off?”

“
When all the crabs are picked.”

“
Lor! I got to be home before dinner.”

“
You will be. This here is a short run.”

Phoebe couldn
’t imagine ever wanting to see a long run. “How many pounds does a good picker pick?” she asked.

“
The best pickers? Forty, fifty pounds a shift. That’s when the crabs are running. You’d better get started. Stout’s looking this way.”

Phoebe learned about crabs. Cooked, they were juicy, sticky, sharp-edged and often hot as they came to the picking tables direct from the huge steam pots out back. They had a sweet, fishy smell that got into her head and stayed there. No sooner was the pile down to where she could see her table mate,
Essie, Stout came and dumped another huge bucket atop the table. The crabs that fell to Phoebe seemed to get smaller, the meat more difficult to reach. At two o’clock the last crab had been picked. She turned in her chits and collected thirteen dollars and seventy-five cents. Hank counted out the money.

“
Had an off day, did you?” he asked.

Phoebe listened for displeasure in his tone. There wasn
’t any. She smiled wearily.

“
I been away from pickin’ for a while. My fingers are rusty. Reckon I’ll have a better day tomorrow.” She folded the bills into her change purse. It was the first money she’d earned in weeks. She didn’t want to have to hand it over to Gage Morgan. That’d just put her closer to getting out of his house. All the way back to the junkyard she examined first one plot then another.