Finding Home Page 18

  “None! And you well know it.”

  “That was probably one of your tricks, too.”

  Wounded, Phoebe’s face flamed. “If I was bigger’n you I’d beat you up for sayin’ that.”

  He turned over, faced the wall. “You’re misdirecting the famous Hawley pride. It doesn’t affect me one way or another anymore.”

  Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes. “If I was Velma, I’d go out and drown myself, too!”

  He tugged the bedspread up over his head. “Don’t let that stop you.”

  A door slammed. Phoebe went to the window. Her family was back from church. “You can vex me Gage Morgan, but you better not be mean to my folks!” She lifted the bedspread off his face. His eyes were closed, his mouth parted, his breathing soft and regular. Phoebe leaned down and sniffed. He hadn’t been drinking.

  In her heart she was certain that he hadn’t flown into the arms of another woman either. She was beginning to think sex was a trial to Gage. When they’d stepped from the shower yesterday afternoon his legs wouldn’t hold him.

  All wasn’t lost. She wouldn’t let it be. It was a matter of Hawley pride butting heads with Morgan pride. Pride was a good thing. Pride went before a fall. Pride... A sharp dart of misery enclosed her heart. Why hadn’t anybody ever told her that pride got in the way of love?

  ~~~~

  “We can’t stay?” Annabelle looked from Phoebe to the chicks. They were scratching in the rich sandy loam as Elmo turned up each shovelful.

  “I got a business now, Ma. I can help you. There’s just too many of us Hawleys for Gage to accept all at once.”

  “But you said in your letter—”

  “I wrote out of turn. And...I may have to move with you.”

  “Look at Pa,” Annabelle said. “Even on his knees he can turn a fair garden.”

  “Ma, you’re not listenin’ to me.”

  “There’s room aplenty for us here.”

  Phoebe shook her head. “It’s not the room—”

  “You just have to tell your man. I allus told Pa.”

  “Because you had to. Gage ain’t like that. I can’t...I want to be a Morgan.”

  “Once a Hawley allus a Hawley.”

  “You weren’t a Hawley before you married Pa.”

  Annabelle lifted her head. “You’re sayin’ I misrendered Hawley pride? Ain’t it allus got us—”

  “I don’t want backbone, Ma. I want Gage Morgan.”

  Phoebe was struggling with a new kind of angle on pride. But the words wouldn’t court her tongue, and Ma was steeped in her ways. She could see now that Hawley pride had been conjured up out of thin air.

  “You’ll give up your family to git him?”

  “I’ll never give you up. I’ve got to find a way for us all to fit.”

  “We ain’t goin’ back to Vinnie’s. She’s mean to Pa and Erlene. If it was just me, I’d stick it out, but it ain’t.”

  Phoebe could now see some things about the Hawleys from Vinnie’s point of view. But it wouldn’t do to mention it. “You won’t have to. There’s work in Bayou La Batre. Tomorrow we’ll find a place to live and Tuesday I’ll take you over to the crab house.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about crabs.”

  “It’s easier than pickin’ cotton or windin’ bobbins. I got to cook dinner now. You want to choose somethin’ out of the freezer?”

  “Lor! I like just standin’ there staring into it. Will your man sup with us?”

  The answer was, no. Gage didn’t make an appearance the reminder of the day or night. Phoebe found a hundred excuses to sashay up and down the hall, slowing to mincing steps at Gage’s bedroom. Once she tried the knob and found the door locked. After that discovery, worry tied her stomach into knots and the least mention of his name by Dorie or Willie-Boy during supper squeezed her heart to the size of a walnut.

  TEN

  Phoebe awoke before dawn on Monday feeling so lethargic she couldn’t fathom where she’d get the energy to cook breakfast much less harvest crabs and haul them to Hank’s. She padded barefoot into the bath and made quick work of her ablutions. Now that it was short, her hair just went awry instead of wild, which made no nevermind since Gage had turned against her. She might as well be bald.

  She stepped into the hall to find the kitchen light illuminating the dark hall. Gage was up! Phoebe’s hand flew to her chest to stop the sudden frightful pounding behind her small breasts. But the kitchen was empty, the back door ajar and no coffee perked on the stove. She stood by the old porcelain sink, uncertain and for the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to do next.

  A mewling sound caught her attention. Some critter was after the baby chicks. A possum or a cat. Probably a cat. There were two or three that wandered the junk yard, feral things, but they shied away at the first human footfall. Phoebe looked through the screened door into the shadowed dawn and saw Maydean, hunched over on the steps, face buried in her hands.

  “Maydean! You sick?” Phoebe let herself out the door, catching the screen before it slammed and woke the household.

  Maydean hiccuped. Phoebe sat beside her on the dew-wet step. She put her arm around her sister’s shoulder and Maydean began to sob in earnest. Phoebe sighed. Her whole world was collapsing in on itself. It if wasn’t one thing, it was ten.

  “Hush that lollygagging, Maydean and tell me what hurts.”

  “You don’t care.”

  “I care if you wake the whole house and coffee ain’t even perked.”

  “That’s what’s wrong.” Maydean sniffed. “You talk funny. I talk funny. Ma and Pa talk funny. I’m never gonna win a beauty contest. Becky said if I get on stage and answer them questions they ask the contestants, everybody in the audience will laugh at me.”

  “What’s wrong with the way we talk? Everybody understands, don’t they? We ain’t speakin’ in tongues or a foreign language, are we? Hold your head up, Maydean, you’re a Hawley.”

  “I’m sick of being a Hawley. I’m sick of bein’ six generations out of the damn Okefenokee swamp and I’m sick of you preachin’ Hawley pride. We’re just plain nobodies. White trash!”

  Phoebe’s jaw dropped. “White trash? Where did you get that notion?”

  “Becky said.”

  “Tell me where to find that girl, I’m gonna talk to her momma. An’ if you ever say another cuss word you won’t have to worry about talkin’ funny nor a’tall, ‘cause I’ll yank your tongue out by the roots.”

  “No! I don’t want you saying nothing. Keep your trap shut or I’ll never have any friends.” Maydean put her head down on her knees and went to sobbing again.

  Stumped, Phoebe put her hand on Maydean’s back. Then she had it. “Maydean, we ain’t white trash. We come from good stock, all the way back to Cuthbert Hawley—”

  Maydean’s head shot up. “I’ve heard that story a thousand times, Phoebe!” Maydean minced, “Cuthbert Hawley indentured himself to James Oglethorpe to Georgia in 1733 and worked seven hard years for a bed rug, a fellin’ axe, a bag of oatmeal, three shirts an’ a fiddle. Then he got a woman and went to live in the Okefenokee swamp ‘cause he was an independent thinker and didn’t like British rules and laws. And the Hawleys didn’t come outta that swamp for two-hundred years! I’m not telling any of my friends such as that. Becky’s daddy drives a shiny blue convertible.”

  Phoebe chuffed. “Convertibles ain’t where it’s at, Maydean. The next time you see Becky ask if any of her kin folks ever got their picture in National Geographic. Ask if they ever set foot on a piece of land name for a king? Ask if anybody ever said her folks come from the purest Anglo-Saxon stock in the entire United States?”

  Maydean sniffed. “You don’t even know what that means, Phoebe. I’m not asking Becky anything! Anyway, all of those people are dead!”

  A shadow fell across Phoebe, striking out light that poured onto the back porch from the kitchen. She glanced over her shoulder. Gage! And here she was in her tatty old night shirt, hair unbru
shed, cheeks unpinched for color and breakfast makin’s still in the fridge!

  Phoebe stood. “Quit your snivelin’ and go back to bed Maydean. I can’t sort your life until I get mine sorted.”

  Phoebe lingered on the porch watching dark change into dawn until the solid fragrance of coffee perking drew her into the kitchen.

  Gage stood near the stove, staring out the window or pretending to. The sun was only just beginning to cast a faint light through the glass.

  Phoebe breathed deep. “We’re getting out today.”

  He turned to face her. Phoebe didn’t like the expression he wore. It was longer than a stretched out sock. He wasn’t giving in. Her shoulders sagged, but out of long habit, she straightened.

  “The sooner the better.”

  “What do I tell Dorie?”

  “You don’t have to tell her anything.”

  “What about the crab business? You takin’ it back?”

  “Have it. Last thing in the world I want is to be accused of starving the Hawley clan. Might ruin my image in the community.”

  Phoebe almost buckled under his sarcasm. “Are you ever gonna get over bein’ mad?”

  “What I’m going to get over is you.”

  “I was wrong. Hidin’ my motives from you.”

  “Makes my heart swell with Morgan pride hearing you confess the error of your ways.”

  Hawley vainglory may have been conjured out of thin air, but gumption within Phoebe was solid as good concrete. It was so hard and thick in her she could taste it. She saw Gage through the haze of recent memory, their love and loving slowly disintegrating, breaking into hundreds of tiny fragments. The kitchen was warm. She was cold and she gambled it all.

  “I ain’t grovelin’. I ain’t beggin’.” She was holding herself stiff as a metal rod, her fists clenched. “I ain’t beggin’ anyone for anything! You don’t want me, ever. Say so. Say it plain without soakin’ your words in meanness. Just plain up and say goodbye. I won’t even speak to you on the street.”

  “Phoebe!”

  The voice came from behind her and was filled with panic.

  Phoebe didn’t take her eyes from Gage. “Go back to bed, Maydean. Now!”

  “Erlene’s gone.”

  For a moment everything went out of focus. Phoebe felt scared. But Gage was standing there, looking at her, seemingly holding his breath, his mouth so close to shaping words she didn’t dare move.

  “I’ll help you look for your sister,” he said. “If she’s slipped outside she could get hurt in the yard.”

  “Check all the bedrooms, Maydean.”

  “I already did. An’ the living room and the bathroom. She ain’t in the house. I thought she was in here with you and Gage. That’s why—”

  Gage went out the door.

  Shaken, Phoebe untensed all in a rush. “Go wake Ma and Dorie. They can help us look.”

  Two hours later the sun was full up, pouring heat and humidity all over the South and there was still no sign of Erlene.

  “She’s drowned!” wailed Annabelle. “She walked off the land into the water and just kept on walkin’ till the ocean swallowed her up.”

  Phoebe stroked her mother’s arm. “She wouldn’t do that, Ma. She don’t hardly like to take a bath.”

  “Erlene wanders off and wanders back,” put in Elmo. He crabbed on his walking sticks to the kitchen table and sat down. “In between times, can we eat?”

  “Maybe she got snakebit and—”

  “Shush that, Willie-Boy.” Phoebe glanced up as Gage entered the kitchen. He shook his head.

  “I searched the far reaches of the yard. The gate was open—”

  Phoebe gripped the back of a chair to steady herself. “I didn’t lock it last night, and you—” Gage had been in his room. The thought brought all that was unsettled between them rushing into her mind. “That’s what Erlene’s done. Wandered outside the yard. I’ll take the truck—”

  “Willie-Boy and I can ride our bikes and look,” said Dorie. “We can go down to the point.”

  “If it’s all right with your pa,” Phoebe said, watching Gage for his reaction. He nodded.

  Phoebe hated laying out her sister’s shortcomings in front of Gage. But Erlene couldn’t help being simpleminded. “I’ll take all the side roads. We may have to knock on doors. Erlene will follow a cat or dog...”

  “Or them funny lookin’ birds,” put in Annabelle, looking out the door as a flock of pelicans skimmed the surface of the estuary.

  “I’ll start up at the main road and work my way back,” Gage said.

  “What about work?”

  “It’ll keep.”

  “Did we look under beds?” asked Annabelle distractedly. “I recall that once—”

  “We did, Ma. Make some coffee and sandwiches, why don’t you?”

  Annabelle brightened. “I will. I’ll fry bacon. Bacon frying allus brings Erlene quick as a flea.”

  “I can’t put in no garden on an empty stomach,” said Elmo.

  Phoebe looked at Gage over the heads of her family. She wondered what he thought of them all, what thoughts he had of her. She wondered most of all what his answer would’ve been had Maydean not burst in on them. He walked beside her to where their trucks were parked. Phoebe was careful their arms didn’t brush or touch. “I’m sorry about the trouble with Erlene,” she said.

  “It’s not your fault. Or anybody’s that I can see. I’ll check back about every twenty minutes.”

  “Erlene’s the reason I can’t leave Ma and Pa to their own devices,” she stated, feeling that her words were assuring her of lifelong separation from Gage. She couldn’t fault him for that. Erlene was a responsibility no man would be willing to take on. And Erlene would need a lookout until the day she died.

  Phoebe saw the frown on Gage’s brow deepen, saw the pained look he gave her. Words couldn’t have said more.

  Woeful, she turned away and climbed into her truck. He was never going to forgive her. She’d just have to live with it.

  ~~~~

  Hours later, heartsick and weary Phoebe plopped down on the porch stoop. “Mayhap now we’ll have to call the police.”

  Ma hovered. Pa sat in a straight-backed chair he’d hauled to the front porch. Dorie and Willie-Boy were riding their bikes in circles in front of the junkyard gate. Watching them made Phoebe dizzy.

  “The police might have already picked her up,” said Gage. “We should’ve called them earlier.”

  Phoebe gave Gage a thankful look. He was being polite, helpful, not taking the anger he held against herself out on her folks.

  “The police might send her away!” cried Annabelle.

  Phoebe got up and consoled her mother. “No they wouldn’t, I don’t think. But sometimes Erlene can’t recall she’s a Hawley. Why, she might be sittin’ in the station this very minute havin’ herself a high old time. I’ll go call. And Ma, why don’t you fix some lunch?”

  “Won’t do no good. Bacon didn’t call Erlene in, won’t nothin’ now.”

  “I worry better on a full stomach,” said Elmo.

  Dorie and Willie-Boy came racing up to the porch. “Erlene’s comin’!”

  Erlene came skipping through the gate, holding the hand of—Phoebe thought her eyes were deceiving her. It was Stout’s hand that Erlene was swinging with gay abandon.

  “This is my new friend,” Erlene said, including everyone in one of her wonderful smiles. “Her name’s Marianna.” She looked at Stout. “That’s right, ain’t it?”

  Stout’s red face blossomed a deeper shade. “That’s right, honey.”

  “I never thought to ask at the crab house,” said Phoebe.

  “She did just fine,” said Stout.

  “Fine at what?” chorused Phoebe and Annabelle.

  “I learned a new game, didn’t I, Marianna? Anybody can play. You get in line, then you have to sit down and the one who fills up the pots first gets money. Look.” Erlene held out a handful of bills. “Oh! I lost my quarter.
I had a quarter. I have to find my quarter.”

  Phoebe took hold of Erlene. “I’ll send Willie-Boy and Dorie to find it. You just stay here and tell us—”

  “Hank put her to work,” said Stout. “I picked up right away that she was...was...she was so eager, I just let her pick. Lord, can she pick. She told Hank she was Erlene Hawley. Hank said he’d put a Hawley to work any day of the week. He says she can work all she wants.” Stout appeared suddenly embarrassed. “I’ll look after her. It ain’t no trouble to me.” Her face kept blooming. “I got to get back. My husband’ll be by to pick me up any minute.”

  Erlene started to cry. “Stay and play with me.”

  “In the morning,” Stout said, retrieving her hand, then apropos of nothing she said, “I had me a daughter once. Lost her to rheumatic fever when she was six.” She patted Erlene on the shoulder. “You be ready at seven o’clock, I’ll come get you.”

  Confused, Erlene pleaded. “I don’t know seven o’clock.”

  “I’ll have her ready,” said Phoebe. “And, Stout—I mean, Marianna—thank you.” They all watched for a moment as the heavyset woman shuffled off. Phoebe sighed. “I see what happened. Erlene saw the pickers waitin’ to go to work out in front of the crab house. Her curiosity did the rest.” Phoebe handed Erlene’s money to Annabelle. “We’ll add this to what I already got, Ma. It’ll rent us a nice place.”

  “Imagine! Erlene earnin’ money.” Annabelle glowed. “Maybe Erlene ain’t as loose-minded as we first suspected.”

  “Maybe not. Maydean, you help Erlene get a bath. I got to get us packed up.” Phoebe shot a glance at Gage, but his expression was unreadable. Probably glad he was escaping the Hawleys. Marry one and you married them all. She could see now that was asking too much of any man. Her heart wrenched, but she smiled at him anyway.

  He didn’t smile back.

  ELEVEN

  Phoebe held up the eyelet-trimmed dress and inspected its lines against her body. She’d pack it last. That’d make it seem as if she were holding onto her dream—and Gage—a little longer. Her throat was closed up so tightly, she couldn’t even cry.