Finding Home Read online

  Dorie laughed.

  “Shhh,” Phoebe cautioned. “Or you’ll have the whole house stirrin’. I’ll be half the night fixin’ cocoa.” She told another story and when Dorie’s head began to droop Phoebe held still, allowing the child to drift into slumber.

  A shadow fell across the table. She looked up into Gage’s face, his expression a patchwork of curiosity and fear.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Dorie stirred but didn’t come awake. “She was missin’ her mother.” Gage pulled out a chair and sat heavily. “What’d she say?”

  “She’s not used to her being gone.”

  “She looks a lot like Velma.”

  “You holdin’ that against Dorie?”

  Gage recoiled. “No.”

  “That’s what you say on the outside. Dorie sees it different. You can’t hold her up to the light of Velma. She’s loyal to her mother, she doesn’t understand about...about that other thing.”

  The blood drained from Gage’s face. “Don’t you ever—”

  “You asked and I told. Fact is, some understandings work, some don’t. Yours with Velma didn’t. I ain’t judgin’ one way or another. Don’t go holdin’ it up to me that I am. I got enough on my plate with my own worries.”

  A muscle leaped in Gage’s jaw. During the past year he’d been adapting to a world that had turned itself upside down. He sensed that he hadn’t been adapting as well as he’d thought. He exhaled, his anger collapsing in dull melancholy.

  Phoebe noted his look of distress. “Dorie needs somethin’ to occupy her mind. Kids always get bored in summers. Why don’t you get her some baby chicks? I could fix up that shed back yonder to hold ‘em.”

  “And when she gets tired of them or goes back to school?”

  “Why, by September they’d be big enough to scratch around on their own. You wouldn’t have to do nothing but gather an egg when you wanted it.” By then, Phoebe thought, Erlene would be in Bayou La Batre and have those chickens following her around like she was the Pied Piper.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Well, you’re her pa, you know best.” She slid her arms beneath the sleeping Dorie. “I’d better get her back to bed.”

  Gage insisted upon carrying Dorie himself. He moved around the table and lifted his daughter from Phoebe’s arms. “I’m...I appreciate you comforting her. Truth is, I never could think of what to say to her after Velma died.” In the taking up of Dorie, his fingers brushed Phoebe’s breasts. His eyes suddenly shifted to hers.

  Phoebe grinned, and whispered, “More there than you figured, ain’t it?”

  “Shameless hussy,” he snapped. But there was more smile than bite in his voice.

  The night wind began to creak in the eaves, forecasting the onset of more inclement weather. To Phoebe it was the cheerful sound of her future.

  ~~~~

  Phoebe discovered she was too anxious to eat a morsel of breakfast. While she served up toast and grits she checked items off her mental to-do list. She had a pork roast defrosting for Sunday dinner, a can of beer sitting out to get room temperature for beer biscuits, which was the only good use she saw of the brew, and was practicing what to say to Gage to get the use of her tag. As she moved around the table she kept bumping into Willie-Boy’s elbow.

  “Put your arm down. How can you eat like that?”

  “I’m eatin’.”

  “You have a headache?”

  “No. I like my hand on my head.”

  “This is no time for games. Put that towel on your lap lest you spill food on your good pants.”

  He put down his fork and one-handed and awkwardly spread the towel. Phoebe grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away from his head. She glared at the wad of gum with dismay. “Willie-Boy, I told you to throw that gum out before you went to bed.”

  “I forgot.”

  “After you finish eating I’ll cut it out.”

  “I ain’t goin’ to church with a hole in my hair. People’ll make fun.”

  “You can go to church with a hole in your hair or stay home with a blistered fanny.”

  Maydean and Dorie snickered.

  “Same for both of you,” Phoebe warned. She eyed Maydean’s chest over which was draped the new knit shirt. “You got underwear on under that?”

  “My strap broke.”

  “Then wear one of mine.”

  “They’re too small.”

  “Then find a safety pin. You ain’t goin’ into the Lord’s house floppin’ like a jelly fish.”

  It was Willie-Boy’s turn to snicker. Dorie went to the fridge for more milk. Phoebe looked at her feet. “Dorie, your shoes don’t match.”

  “I know. The night elves hid the mates.”

  Phoebe stalked into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind her. The loud report made Gage stick his lathered face out of the bathroom.

  “What in hell was that?”

  “That was a bunch of heathens makin’ me think unChristian thoughts before I go to church!”

  “Well, you made me take a chunk out of my jaw.”

  Seeing him without his shirt, smelling the shaving cream altered and changed the direction of Phoebe’s thoughts. “What’re you shaving for?”

  “Guess I’m going to church.”

  “With us?”

  “You got any objection?”

  Phoebe could think of only one. “We can’t all fit in the cab of your truck, not in Sunday clothes.”

  “We’ll take the car.”

  “Car? What car?”

  “The one I keep in the boat shed.”

  Phoebe leaned against the wall. “Gage, are you rich?” She meant rich as in really rich outside of junk. It would put a different complexion on things.

  He laughed. “Hell, no.”

  “How come you never mentioned you had a car?”

  “It’s one I bought for Velma. I run the motor now and then to keep the battery up. Dorie likes to ride in it.”

  All of a sudden Velma was becoming a household word. It was healthy, but it made Phoebe feel constrained.

  ~~~~

  There was no thigh rubbing on the way to church. Dorie sat primly between her father and Phoebe. Before the service Phoebe met Essie and sat with her. Dorie and Maydean sat with the Sunday school class. Gage kept Willie-Boy company in the back pew so there’d be nobody behind the boy to see the gap in his hair.

  The preaching and singing of hymns restored Phoebe. She felt an affinity with her far-away family members. No matter what, Ma and Pa and Erlene would be in church right this minute, same as she. It was almost like visiting.

  Gage knew a lot of people and while he spoke with them, Phoebe went to wait in the car. She couldn’t figure how he’d introduce her and she didn’t want to spread the lie about being cousins on sacred ground. The sun was beginning to shine through the clouds. She put her mind off Gage and onto her crab traps.

  ~~~~

  Sunday dinner was a success; the roast just right, the rice fluffy, the biscuits light, the gravy smooth. There was laughter and no bickering. Everyone changed out of their Sunday best. Phoebe put on the shorts she’d bought. Gage came out from behind the Sunday paper to eye her up and down.

  “Don’t say nothin’ smart. These are my working clothes. I’m going now to haul in my traps. I can’t wait another minute.”

  “Better wait until morning,” Gage suggested. “You can’t let crabs stay in the hot sun. They’ll die.”

  “I aim to clean out the back of my truck, keep ‘em in the shade, like. Hank said he wants crabs early in the mornin, by six, so he can have ‘em boiled by eight when the pickers come in. At that hour I won’t have to worry about driving without a tag.”

  “Don’t listen to me then.” He went back behind the paper.

  Phoebe picked her way through the tall grass to the canal, stood in front of a marking stick and walked straight out into the water. It was cooler than she remembered. She found the first crab trap, tried to lift it and couldn’t
. The import of that struck her. Full! She raced back up to the house.

  “Maydean, put on those sinful shorts of yours and come help me. There’s so many crabs in my traps I can’t lift ‘em. Gage, did you hear that?”

  “Me and everyone clear into the next county. You want my help?”

  “For free?”

  “I never work for free.”

  “Fifty cents then, that’s what I promised the kids.”

  “Are those my traps you’re using?”

  She was at once wary. “I’m just borrowin’ ‘em.”

  “What about the bait?”

  “I’m gonna replace it.”

  “I get half.”

  Phoebe was thunderstruck. “That ain’t fair!”

  “My equipment, your labor. Half. That’s the way it’s always worked.”

  “I figured you for stingy,” she charged, attempting to recapture lost ground. “But I didn’t figure you unfair.”

  Gage tilted his head, his lips curving, hinting at a smile just out of sight. “You’ve spent a week educating me on Hawley pride. If I allowed you the use of all my equipment and bait, why, that’d be like charity. Now that I know you better, I couldn’t do that to you.”

  Phoebe choked on crow. “I’ve never been of a mind to admire a man who let a woman make his livin’ for him.”

  “Me, either.” Gage tossed aside the Sunday paper and hauled himself to his feet. “Think I’ll see if that grass is dry enough to mow. I like the idea of improving my property.”

  Fried crow! “I ought to charge you for housekeeping,” Phoebe said, searching haphazardly for a way to regain the upper hand.

  Gage slapped a cap on his head and pulled the bill low. “How much?”

  “Forty dollars a week at least.”

  “Okay, if you insist. But room and board’ll cost you forty-five.”

  Phoebe recanted before something terrible and irrevocable happened, like the loss of all her as-yet-unearned cash. “I didn’t say I would. I just said ‘I ought to.’“

  “Oh, I misunderstood. We’ll keep on as usual then?”

  Phoebe swayed on her feet. Victory had the unmistakable sour taste of gall. “I reckon.”

  ~~~~

  Hauling the traps from the canal was heavy work. The sun bore down. Humidity thickened the air. The canal bank steamed. Maydean panted and complained every step of the way.

  “Pull the truck up closer,” she urged.

  “It’s as close as I dare. You want me to get stuck in mud or drive the blamed thing out to every trap? Then where’d we be?”

  “I want more than fifty cents. In Sunday school there was a girl who talked about a teenage beauty contest they have every year in Bayou La Batre. You have to get good grades and look pretty and have talent. I can sing and I can get good grades, but I can’t look good on fifty cents a day.”

  “No amount of makeup can cover up a black eye, Maydean. You’re fixin’ to get two.”

  “When Ma gets here I’m gonna tell her how mean you’ve been.”

  “Ma ain’t never gonna get here if we don’t make enough money to send bus fare. Now shut up and lift.”

  Two hours later all the traps were emptied. The truck bed was covered and piled high with blue-green crabs clawing and scooting sideways, every one of them trying to bury itself beneath its neighbor. Phoebe raised the tailgate and leaned against the truck taking joyous note of her harvest. “I bet there’s double any fifteen dollars that I’d get for pickin’ the things,” she said with weary satisfaction.

  “Are we going to bait the traps and set them out again?” Dorie wanted to know.

  “No. Whole chicken is too expensive. After I get paid for this mess of crabs, I’ll buy some regular bait.” Phoebe moved the truck into the shade and as an extra precaution, covered the crabs with an old tarp. “Dorie, you find me a waterin’ hose. If they get to lookin’ peaked, I’m gonna hose ‘em down with cool water.”

  The crab harvest had been accompanied by the distant hum of the lawn mower. The sound had stopped, as if Gage had timed his work to end with hers. Willie-Boy came racing around the side of the house. When he saw Phoebe he slowed to a walk. “Guess what I did. Mr. Gage let me paint the fence!”

  “Did he pay you?”

  “No, but he hung a tire swing from the tallow tree and it goes high.”

  A stream of water came their way amid whoops and laughter. Phoebe turned and was squirted in the face. Dorie threw down the hose. “Maydean told me to do it!” she yelled and both girls beat a hasty giggling retreat into the jumble of the junkyard.

  “Wipe that grin off your face, Willie-Boy.”

  “I’m not grinning. Honest.”

  Gage came out of the kitchen on to the back porch. “An inspiring sight,” he said.

  Phoebe brushed her wet and dripping hair out of her eyes. The old T-shirt she wore clung to her body. She grasped it at nipple level and pulled it away from her bosom. Lips tight, she stalked past Gage into the house, wordless.

  ~~~~

  Phoebe felt grand. The taste of accomplishment had about the same good flavor as a well-cooked meal.

  She had gone to look at her crabs a half dozen times since dusk. They had stopped scrabbling and settled down, folding their claws and blowing air bubbles. It amazed her that a creature so ugly fit so well into the scheme of things; amazed her even more that a creature so ugly would be the salvation of her purse and pride. God sure did work in mysterious ways when he was looking out for Phoebe Hawley!

  Gage didn’t appear to have any amazement working in him, yet Phoebe sensed that he, too, had a feeling of accomplishment. She sat next to him on the stoop, elbow to elbow, both watching the children playing “May I?” on the newly mown grass. Somewhere on the vast acreage Gage had run over a patch of wild mint and the fragrant sharp odor lay on the rain-freshened air along with the good clean smell of rich soil and wet seaweed. Phoebe noted Gage didn’t appear of a mind to chat, but the silence was companionable and she didn’t goad him into conversation. When dark fell hard and the moon a sliver in the sky, she herded all three of the children to bath and bed.

  An hour later Gage was still on the stoop, and of all things, smoking a pipe. The sweetish aroma of the tobacco drew Phoebe out the screened door. She sat on the same step as he, taking care to tuck her skirt about her knees against mosquitoes and the off chance Gage might skitter a glance. Her knees were not her best feature.

  “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “Now and then.”

  Phoebe glanced up at the sky. Stars twinkled, but the moon hadn’t made any headway. “The air is just right tonight, ain’t it?”

  “Almost, a little muggy. Tide is turning, we ought to get a good breeze in a few minutes.”

  “Yard looks good.”

  “I shouldn’t’ve let it go so long.”

  “Why did you?”

  He knocked the coals out of the pipe and ground them with his heel. “Lots of reasons.” Velma, for one. Misery, for two.” With her death, the manner of it, he’d lost his sense of well-being, the direction a man needed to see where he’s been and where he’s going. Seeing the place through Phoebe’s eyes, those old feelings were stirring again. He was beginning to feel whole again, not as if his heart had been cut out.

  “Name one.”

  Gage cringed. He could no more articulate his thoughts than the man in that sliver of moon. “You’re nosy along with everything else.”

  “You’re always callin’ me names. Don’t you like me one little bit?”

  He laughed. “Can’t make up my mind. I like your cooking. I can’t get over how I just let you come in and take over.”

  “That’s easy to figure. Your house needed a lot of soap and water. So did Dorie. No doubt that was in the back of your mind,” Phoebe said, hopefully. “No doubt you took one look at me and decided I was good and strong and—”

  “Nope, that’s not what I thought.”

  “Oh. What did you think?”
/>   “That you were the scrawniest, tattered-looking human being I’d seen since folks came out from under the last hurricane.”

  Scrawny? Tattered? Phoebe went rigid. “You must not think that now. You’re always trying to feel me up.”

  “The hell I am!”

  Phoebe registered the set of his jaw. “You like touchin’ me. You just won’t admit it.”

  He turned his head, facing her. “If I touched you, you’d know you’d been— Hell, you’d break in two.”

  Her want of Gage came from a primitive urge. It took on an intense quality, an urgency. If she could talk him into...”I wouldn’t. I’m limber. Size don’t make no nevermind.”

  For a moment they stared at one another. In the starlight Phoebe looked beautiful in a natural way. There was an allure to her face, the shape enigmatic, her dark eyes glowing. Gage jerked.

  “Phoebe, get away from me. Go to bed.” He took a tobacco pouch from his pocket and began to refill the pipe. He fumbled with it and dropped it. “I said, go in the house.”

  Phoebe went, her mind moving faster than her feet. He wanted to do it. He wanted to and was scared to. She was scared herself. But it was in the natural order of things, of life, the reason why Woman was put on earth. If that wasn’t so, then why had God made Eve for Adam? Her problem was that unlike Adam, Gage didn’t have anybody telling him Phoebe Hawley was the right woman for him. Lor! She had to do everything—even think for the man. Planting ideas in Gage Morgan’s head and getting them to grow had about as much chance of success as getting a rose to sprout in the desert.

  She put on her night dress and lay down on her bed. Waiting.

  I’m going to do it.

  Her heart pounded so loud she could hear no other sound.

  ~~~~

  It was long after midnight when Gage made his way down the hall and closed the door to his room. After midnight suited Phoebe. It was no longer the Sabbath. She had gotten through the Lord’s Day without committing the sin of fornication and if she had her way, come next Sunday, why, she and Gage would be well into their understanding. God favored understandings. So did Ma.