Finding Home (8 page)

Phoebe
found a
recipe
for gumbo on a package of seasoned rice. The good thing about cooking—or having food to cook—was that it kept the ghost of hungrier days at bay.

The bad thing about cooking was the crabs. Live, they were more worrisome than dead because she had to dodge their snapping claws until the boiling water closed over them. But the bounty of them, coming from the backyard so to speak, set her to wondering if there was any money to be made crabbing.

Willie-Boy wandered into the kitchen. “Phoebe, my back hurts.” His face was flushed, his eyelids swollen. Phoebe removed his shirt. His back was fire red, sunburned.

“
If it’s not one thing, it’s ten!” she exclaimed, exasperated. “I oughta tear into Maydean and Dorie good, for lettin’ you stay out in that sun too long.”

“
It’s not their fault.” His eyes watered. “I wanted to crab. I don’t like having to make out like I’m sick.”

“
You have to do things in moderation, Willie-Boy. Moderation. Hours and hours in the sun ain’t good for you.” She went to fill the tub with cool water and put Willie-Boy to soaking in it. “That’ll take the sting out. When you finish soaking I’ll make an aspirin paste to rub on your back. You’ll feel better by morning.”

“
Are we gonna live here forever, Phoebe? I like it here. I like Dorie, too. She’s nice to me.”

“
She is? How so?”

“
She don’t boss me like you and Maydean do. She said she’d teach me how to swim.”

“
Swim! Willie-Boy when I ain’t around I don’t want you gettin’ in the water. You even think about it and I’ll turn your fanny the color of your back. Now you stay in that tub until I come for you.”

Maydean and Dorie were watching television. Phoebe turned it off.
“You two find a hoe. I’ve picked out a spot to hill up for potatoes.”

“
I’m no farmer,” said Dorie.

“
There’s a mess of things you ain’t,” Phoebe retorted. “One of them you ain’t, is mannerly.”

“
I don’t have to mind you.”

“
Neither do I,” said Maydean.

“
You’re borrowin’ bravery where there ain’t none, Maydean. I got the money to put you on a bus now. Vinnie would sure be glad to have you back changin’ diapers, washin’ dishes and sleepin’ on a pallet on the floor. You want that kind of life, you just say the word. I marked off a patch of chickweed that I want turned under. So what’s it going to be, hillin’ potatoes or Vinnie?”

Maydean flounced out. Dorie said,
“You aren’t my mother.”

Phoebe met Dorie
’s eyes. “I’m not trying to be. But somebody’s got to take you in hand, teach you manners, teach you how to take care of yourself. You don’t even know to comb your hair in the mornin’ or wash your face without being told.”

“
I wish you would leave. I don’t like you being in my mother’s room. That was her special place.”

Phoebe softened.
“Your ma’s special place now is in heaven. She don’t need that room.”

“
It was her dreaming room. It was where she went to get away from Daddy.”

Phoebe had to ask.
“Did she tell you that?”

“
I just knew it. Daddy fussed at her. At night I could hear him.”

At night.
There were things that went on between a man and a woman after dark that no child should know about. Phoebe had the idea that Dorie had heard conversations she hadn’t understood. “When your ma drowned, was she by herself?”

Dorie shook her head.
“She was with a friend. He got knocked in the head when the skiff upended. He drowned, too. I could’ve saved her. But she didn’t let me go with her.”

The friend was a he, Phoebe was thinking, summing up in her mind wha
t Gage Morgan’s after-dark arguments with his wife had been about. She couldn’t countenance a woman not taking to Gage Morgan. But who knew what went on inside a marriage. “Listen Dorie, your ma’s in heaven now. No doubt she’s keep in’ an eye on you. Don’t you reckon she’d like to see you brushin’ your hair of a mornin’ and keepin’ your face clean, like she taught you?” She kept her eyes on Dorie.

“
You think my mother is watching me? All the time?”

“
Well, mayhap not all the time. I imagine heaven is a pretty busy place what with saintly choirs, and angels flittin’ here and yonder. But no doubt the first thing your ma does when she gets up of a mornin’ in heaven is look down to see if your face is clean and your hair is brushed.” She watched Dorie pondering the idea.

“
Can my mother hear me if I talk to her?”

“
I ain’t sure about that. Let me think on it. Right now I got to get Willie-Boy outta the tub.”

She also had a whole wealth of
other things to think on. She’d been taking Gage Morgan’s animosity personal. His digs at her about being womanly—why that was on account of his own wife stepping out on him. That put a different slant on things.

Most likely Gage w
anted to get romantic, but cuckolded as he’d been, he didn’t trust a woman. His man-ego was bruised terrible. Throughout the remainder of the afternoon Phoebe figured and figured, looking for a solution around a disloyal wife who was dead and buried.

Considering how little attention she paid it, the gumbo turned out tasty. She made corn bread, bread pudding and iced tea to wash it all down. Willie-Boy was too miserable to sup at the table. She
fed him from a tray and left him lying on his stomach, arms and legs stretched out, like an unpapered kite.

Dorie and Maydean were still at the dining table when Gage came in from the shed. He washed up and took his place. Silently Phoebe placed food before him. He was taking to her serving him as if it was the most ordinary of things.
Routine. That was a good sign. He spoke once to Dorie about the crab catch. Phoebe caught Maydean faking manners and trying to get his attention with puckered lips.

“
Dorie, if you and Maydean want to watch
Wheel of Fortune
on TV, you can take your pudding in the living room, that is, if your pa don’t have no objection.”

Mouth full of buttered corn bread, Gage shook his head.

“I’m fine where I am,” said Maydean, sugarcoating the words.

Phoebe bent low and hissed in her ear.
“You ain’t fine. And you’re gonna get worse soon’s I get you alone.”

Scowling hard, she
shoved a bowl of pudding at Maydean. Once the girls left the kitchen Phoebe made herself a glass of tea and sat down opposite Gage. The solution to Gage Morgan was crystal clear. She knew just how to ease his mind about herself, but it had to be done in a roundabout way.

“
I don’t like anybody staring at me while I’m eating,” he said.

A hot cloud grazed Phoebe
’s eyelids. “I ain’t starin’. I’m admirin’,” she said brazenly.

Gage gave her an icy glare.
“You can’t soften me up. I’m not the kind of man that’d take a pound of flesh for what’s owed me. Even if it was offered by a woman who could spare it.”

Phoebe
’s gall rose. She swallowed it back. “I ain’t offerin’ you anything. And I don’t need your permission to admire a thing or not. Howsomever, you’ve been misinformed by somebody. Your looks ain’t nothin’ special to draw the eye. I was admirin’ the manners you have.”

His cynicism was
expressed in one dark spiky eyebrow, arched as if it’d been plucked to appear that way.

“
Day after tomorrow is Sunday. We Hawleys are church-goin’. I was just wonderin’ if you know of a good Baptist church hereabouts. One that’s right strict and preaches damnation against fornication. I ain’t for loose fornicators.”

His cynical expression faded, replaced by—Phoebe couldn
’t put a name to what replaced it. She felt her heart compress uneasily. He wasn’t taking to her solution right.

“
Who the hell do you think you are? To come into my home and pass judgment.”

Phoebe was thunderstruck.
“Are you a fornicator?”

“
Don’t try to cover up what you meant,” he sneered. “You gossiped at the crab house about Velma. My wife is dead and I won’t hear bad talk about her. Not in this house. Now you get your things—your brother and sister—and get out.”

Lost! Everything lost.

Phoebe tried to speak and couldn’t. Blood drained from her face, the paleness having the effect of making her eyes seem to take up her whole face. Her legs were trembling so she feared they wouldn’t hold straight to take her into the living room to call Maydean or to the bedroom for Willie-Boy.

“
What’s wrong?” Maydean asked.

“
Start packin’,” Phoebe said.

“
You got us throwed out! I knew it would happen. You’re so mean-mouthed.”

Willie-Boy was whimpering.
“I hurt so bad, Phoebe. I feel like I’m on fire.”

“
I got to wrap you in a blanket. I’ll fix you in a nice pallet in the back of the truck.”

“
Don’t touch me, Phoebe. I can’t stand it.”

She wrapped him and picked him up. He cried, great gulping pain-filled sobs.

“Hush now. Hush.” Phoebe carried him back through the house, the kitchen, ignoring Gage who was standing at the sink. She pushed the screen open with her hip.

In the truck bed she made Willie-Boy as comfortable as she could. Maydean was sniffling. Phoebe felt she was close to tears herself.
“You stay in the back with Willie-Boy. I got to get my change purse and the keys.”

Gage accosted her as soon as she was inside the kitchen door.
“What’s wrong with the boy?”

“
Nothing,” she said stiffly as she passed on by, went into the bedroom, checking for left-behind belongings and retrieving her purse from beneath the mattress. Gage blocked her passage from the bedroom.

“
You can’t get far without a tag.”

“
What business is it of yours? Move outta my way. I take back what I said out admirin’ your manners. You ain’t nothin’ but a arrogance-filled bully. I ain’t of a mind to stay in a house with a man who misdirects everything that’s said to his own cause.”

“
It’ll be dark in two hours. Where’re you going to sleep, put up for the night?”

A rest stop beside a highway, Phoebe thought, heartsick, or a side road somewhere that was dark and scary.
“I’ll make do. Hawleys have been makin’ do for better’n two-hundred years. We’re good at it. It’s none of your worry.”  She tried to push past him. The length of her brushed him. An odd restlessness shot up her spine, making her scalp tingle. She looked up at Gage. His face was expressionless.

“
I know it’s none of my worry. I don’t know why I
am
worried. I didn’t mean you had to leave tonight.”

“
You did so.”

“
Well, now I’m saying wait until morning.”

“
No sense to that. We’re packed up now. Packin’ and unpackin’ don’t suit me. I like to get where I’m goin’ and stay put. I thank you for your hospitality, what
little
there was of it. When I get the money up I owe you, I’ll stop by.” The soap and man smell of him filled her nostrils undermining her strength of purpose.

“
You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. You don’t have any place to run to and you know it.”

“
You can’t have it both ways, wantin’ me to stay and wantin’ me to leave. I didn’t make a comment to insult your dead wife. I was just lettin’ you know I don’t hold with un-Christian ways.”

“
I realize that. I flew off the handle,” he said, hearing himself allude to an apology he had no conscious intention of making. She was somehow digging into the silent space of his soul. More than that...incredibly, he felt his body reacting to her. He discounted the sudden tightness in his groin. There wasn’t a handful of flesh on her. And he was a man who liked his pound of flesh.

“‘
Scuse me,” Phoebe said, escaping the room and his closeness. The ripple in her body put her at sixes and sevens. She was talking Christian and thinking devil. Gage stayed on her heels all the way to the truck.

He peeled the blanket away from a whimpering Willie-Boy and winced.
“You can’t go off half-cocked with the boy burned like that.” He turned and faced Phoebe. “You’re earning your keep. You can stay until you can find a place of your own.”

Phoebe chewed her lip.
“I hate to eat crow worsen I hate burnt toast.”

“
Must be that Hawley pride you’re always boasting of. Anyway, you’re too good a cook to burn toast.” He signaled Willie-Boy. “Haul yourself over here, son. I’ll carry you back to bed.”