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  Her breathless run-on speech gave Gage time to regain some composure. “‘You could have a fatted calf and a tub of gold and you wouldn’t appeal to me.”

  Phoebe clenched her teeth. He was still harping on body parts. He was paying her back for what he considered an insult, but she couldn’t just let it pass. “You can’t hurt my feelings. You know why? You’re scared of me. I can tell.”

  His jaw dropped.

  “I used to think you had kissin’ lips. Now I don’t. Now I think you got flycatchers.”

  Gage closed his mouth, sputtering. “Get...get out of my shop. Stay away from me.”

  Phoebe gave another toss of her head. “I’m more than happy to oblige you.”

  She sashayed toward the door, arms swinging and hips swaying.

  “You can twitch your fanny all you want,” he called in loud hectoring sarcasm. “It won’t change my mind about you.”

  Phoebe was at once fettered by excitement. She stopped dead in her tracks. Practicing hip swaying had paid off! Warm with delight, she spun about, her face alight with a high-voltage glow. “I ain’t aimin’ to change your mind on any account. I’m allowin’ for your opinion.” She put one hand on her waist and cocked a hip forward like she’d seen Vanna White do on Wheel of Fortune. “Supper’ll be late,” she sang out loftily. “I got to set out crab lines.”

  “Wrap one around your neck and use it for bait, why don’t you?”

  Phoebe laughed. “Why, ain’t you the witty one.” She lifted a hand. “See you at supper.”

  Willie-Boy popped from around a stack of weathered lumber and joined Phoebe on the path. “You mad at me?”

  “I should be, but I ain’t. I feel too good. But listen, Willie-Boy, you don’t carry tales about Vinnie or Ma or Pa or Erlene to outsiders. Family stuff stays family.”

  “Ain’t Gage family?” Willie-Boy slipped his hand into hers.

  “No.” Not yet.

  “But you said we was cousins. You said the Bible—”

  “I can feel myself gettin’ mad at you Willie-Boy.”

  He jerked his hand loose and ran ahead. “You’re gettin’ just like Ma! Always undoin’ what you say and mixin’ me up. Next time Mr. Gage says you’re a nag, I ain’t takin’ up for you.”

  “Willie-Boy, wait! Don’t run like that.”

  “I don’t care if I get sick. I don’t care if I die!” He scooted off into some weeds where a boat was stored upside down on wooden supports.

  “Then watch out for snakes.”

  He stopped running and cautiously made his way to the shade afforded by the upturned boat.

  Phoebe smiled. Gage Morgan would make a fine upstanding role model for Willie-Boy. That was, once she got Gage’s rougher edges smoothed out. Thinking that, she didn’t mean in any way to be disloyal to Pa or Joey. But neither Pa nor her brother seemed to be able to hold down regular jobs. Pa used to. Before his knees gave out he ran the same gamut of work as early Hawley men—hunting, trapping sawmill to papermill. Mostly it was the Hawley women who worked in the cottonmills. Still, boy and man needed work, needed to feel worthwhile. Having a trade did that for a man.

  Having a trade could do it for a woman. Phoebe had it in her mind to be so worthwhile the joy of it would be unbearable.

  ~~~~

  “This is what we’re gonna do,” Phoebe said, once she had the kids lined up. “We’re gonna go into the crabbin’ business. Every day we make a good catch I’ll give you fifty cents.”

  “How much will you get?”

  “Don’t fret that, Maydean.”

  Dorie frowned. “You won’t catch enough crabs to sell with just lines and chicken necks.”

  “I will. You wait and see.”

  “You have to use crab traps.”

  “You just show me how to bait these lines.”

  The child shook her head. “We have some traps. Daddy took them in trade. Then you don’t have to stand over the lines. Besides, you can catch more if you leave the traps in the canal overnight. We can’t crab with strings all night.”

  Phoebe straightened. Working traps did sound more reasonable than trying to nab crabs with a string and a net. “You know how the traps work?”

  “Everybody knows how crab traps work.”

  “You’re so smart, you can show me.”

  There were thirteen traps, each a two-foot contraption of coated chicken wire built with a bait pocket that could be filled with fish heads or chicken necks. There were small openings through which the crabs could swim toward the bait, but the openings didn’t allow for retreat.

  Phoebe studied the traps and decided upon twelve. Thirteen was a bad-luck number. Having no fish heads or chum she baited the traps with chicken from the freezer. She couldn’t bear to use the best parts so carved out the breasts to be fried later. She tied her skirt up around her waist and waded beyond the shallow estuary into the canal, setting the traps several yards apart on the canal’s sandy floor.

  “Imagine. While I’m cleanin’ and cookin’, those old crabs will be gettin’ themselves caught. Just sittin’ there waitin’ for me to haul ‘em up and sell ‘em.”

  “The best crabbing is out in the bay,” Dorie said. “You have to use a boat for that.”

  “This suits me just fine.” Phoebe went along the bank to mark each spot where she’d entered the canal. From the waist up she was sweating, waist down she was drenched. “I’m goin’ in the house to change. You kids stay away from that water. You scare off one crab and you won’t get nothin’.”

  It felt so fine to be in business Phoebe decided to forego the threat and be generous. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I got enough put by that we can go into that Shambeau’s Dry Goods. I’ll buy you each a new pair of socks to wear to church.”

  “Socks!” Maydean flounced. “I want mascara.”

  “I want jawbreakers,” said Willie-Boy.

  “I’ve got socks,” put in Dorie. “I’d rather have a Dora the Explorer coloring book.”

  “You’re gettin’ socks,” Phoebe said. “I ain’t squanderin’ my money on frou-frous. Maydean, you get onto that ironin’. Willie-Boy, you water the potato hills. Dorie—”

  “I don’t have to do what you say. You’re not my boss.”

  Phoebe sighed. Dorie ran hot and cold, one minute she was nice as pie, the next as ornery as a mule. It was almost easier dealing with Maydean who could always be depended upon to be her same old selfish self.

  “It’s my natural state to be bossy. You just take it wrong.” Since bribes worked on children, especially Dorie, Phoebe bribed. “You want a slice of chocolate cake for dessert tonight, you go tidy your room.”

  “We don’t have any cake.”

  “That’s what you know. I aim to bake one to celebrate going into the crabbin’ business. If your room was to get cleaned, I was thinkin’ you could have seconds.”

  Willie-Boy had been hanging back, listening. “Can I lick the icing bowl?”

  “You and Dorie both, if you help clean her room.” Phoebe picked up the pot of chicken breasts and left it at that. After a bath, she dressed in freshly ironed slacks and blouse and took special care with her hair, pinning it extra tight atop her head.

  ~~~~

  There was a good bit of traffic in and out of the junkyard all during the afternoon. Some folks stopped at the house. Phoebe directed them to the welding shed. A flatbed truck came and hauled off two of the great propellers Gage had repaired. When he came up to the house to do some book work she evinced not the slightest interest in him.

  While he sat at his desk in the living room, she dusted and plumped sofa pillows.

  “You want something?” he said, sounding irate.

  “Nary a thing.”

  “Do you have to do that while I’m working in here?”

  “Am I botherin’ you?”

  “You’d like to think you were, wouldn’t you?”

  Some folks got an inch, took a mile and walked it around the corner ending up right where they started.
Phoebe had her inch tucked away for safekeeping. She didn’t aim to go backwards or around any corner she’d already cleared. “This room’s a fair mess. It needs to be taken apart and aired good. Maybe even painted.”

  “You’re not bothering me. I don’t let women get under my skin.”

  She gave him a wide-mouthed grin that set her teeth flashing, illuminating her whole face. Life was going her way for a change and her entire body seemed to vibrate with the smile and good feeling. “You tryin’ to pick another fight?”

  “I’m just telling you.”

  “I’m just listenin’.”

  “You’re up to something.”

  “Just earnin’ my keep.”

  “You’ve been flaunting yourself at me, bones and all.”

  Oh! He was flinging trumpery of the lowest order. “I most certainly have not.”

  “I saw you out there in the canal with your skirt up around your neck, showing your underwear.”

  Insouciance replaced indignation. “Where were you peepin’ from?”

  “You don’t have any modesty.”

  In spite of his attack, Phoebe’s buoyancy refused deflation. “Didn’t figure I needed any around you.”

  “That’s right, you don’t. I’m not interested.”

  “Course you ain’t,” she cooed, testing. “An upstandin’ community man like you, in business for himself and all. It ain’t likely you’d be taken with the likes of me.” She fluffed another cushion.

  Gage’s brows knitted together. “You’re a hard worker, I won’t take that away from you.”

  Phoebe kept silent, waiting to see if he’d add more good things to what he’d just said. He didn’t. “Which is the best windows to open in here to line up a breeze for the kitchen? I got some bakin’ to do.”

  He went from his desk to open windows shaded by the great old tallow tree. In spite of his size, he wasn’t awkward. He moved fluidly. Phoebe kept her eyes on him. The cool, shaded air swept in and caressed her. The breeze, his nearness made her more aware of her body than she had ever been in her life. Made her think about what she could do with it, uses to which she’d never put it—like sex. With Gage. She was amazed that she could hang on to thoughts like that and talk natural at the same time. “You want some iced tea?”

  “Not now, I’m going to the bank.”

  “You reckon you could pick up some chocolate? I promised the kids I’d bake a chocolate cake.”

  For an instant he looked stern, forbidding. Phoebe thought he was grappling with the expense, with the idea of parting with cash.

  “Anything else you need in the kitchen?”

  “Eggs and milk. But I planned to—”

  “I’ll get them.”

  “Thank you.”

  He shot a look at her, seemed as if he wanted to say more. Instead he grabbed up an old briefcase, felt his pockets for his keys, nodded toward her and swung out the front door. Phoebe followed onto the porch, watched him to his truck. He wanted to know her better. She could sense it. He just didn’t have the courage to ask her. Men were like that. She’d have to think up things to tell him.

  ~~~~

  Saturday arrived wet and windy. During the night, storm clouds swept in from the Gulf, the wind so strong there were whitecaps on the canal. Phoebe worried about her crab traps.

  Gage had gone to bed early the night before and had risen before Phoebe. When worry sent her to the kitchen in her night dress, coffee was perking and Gage was standing, staring out the screened door toward the bay, preoccupied.

  Worry drove Phoebe to interrupt his reverie. “I got my traps in the canal. Will the wind tote ‘em off?”

  He kept his back to her. “There’s not much of an undertow in the canal. Might turn them over, that’s all.”

  “Dern!”

  “You’re hoping too hard,” he said.

  Phoebe poured coffee. She took hers to the table and toyed with it. “Hope is extra. I count on work.”

  “Sometimes work doesn’t get it. Sometimes work is just a filler.”

  “I know what you mean.” She did, too. Mostly work was the only thing that could make time pass, keep a body’s mind off more worrisome things. She wondered what Gage had to worry about. He had everything—a trade, land, house, food to eat, a child of his own, money in the bank. He didn’t have a wife now, yet the one he’d had... Clarity struck. More than man-ego had been involved. His feelings had been hurt. Marriage meant stability, having a focus. It was hard to reconcile a man as big as Gage as having hidden feelings like that, of maybe having lost his focus. Phoebe gazed at his strong, wide back with new eyes. “Gage, do you get lonely?”

  He was a long time answering. The rain beat on the roof, water ran in thick rivulets off the eaves and dripped splatters into the stoop and porch. Yellow light fell in a pool upon the table from the light bulb hanging from the ceiling on a wire. The only other color in the rain-tinted gray air was in the faded green stripes in the shirt Gage wore. Phoebe was proud to see him in the shirt. She had trimmed the ragged edges where he’d ripped the sleeves out, sewed on a missing button, ironed it and left it on a hanger in the laundry room. Even if didn’t say a word about it, he had to know that button didn’t leap onto the shirt by its lonesome and the wrinkles disappear by magic. Phoebe considered he was ignoring her question about being lonely, but after another sip of coffee he said, “Now and then. Not so you’d notice.”

  Oh. He did miss being married! Even if it was to Velma, no matter what she’d done to him. Now, where to take the conversation? Some words, a comment seemed in order. She searched for one that would be truthful. “I do, too, but I notice. Even when I’m in the midst of Ma and Pa and Erlene, Maydean and Willie-Boy, I feel left out. There’s no accounting for feeling that way, I just do.”

  He moved away from the door and leaned back against the sink, one booted foot crossing the other. Phoebe sipped from her cup, suffering his probing inspection. She felt he was looking into her soul. Seeing what was there. She wanted him to see, to know. It was a moment of communion, silent, filled with tension and, to Phoebe, a thing magical.

  She knew Gage was seeing her profile, too. Its fineness and the way wisps of hair trailed on her neck. Her lips were parted. Hawley women had pillow lips.

  Out of the corner of her eye Phoebe caught the direction of his gaze. All he was doing was sizing up her body parts again! The smallest ones! Dern. The spell was broken. She drew her arms off the table. “What’re you starin’ at?”

  Gage jerked. “Nothing. You got anything to stare at?”

  “Seems like I do. Your eyes are about to bug out.”

  “Hellfire.”

  “You like cussing at me, don’t you?”

  He put his cup in the sink. “I didn’t aim it at you. I was merely expressing my opinion of where I’m at.”

  “Where you’re goin’, you mean.”

  “Right.” He stalked to the pantry, retrieved a gray slicker from a hook and thrust his arms into it. “Hell is where I’m going. Crazy is where I’m at.” He glowered at her, started to say something more.

  Phoebe held her breath, awaiting the threat, the order to pack and leave. But Gage strode past the table, out the door into the rain.

  Phoebe exhaled. The opportunity had been there to evict her and he hadn’t. He liked her. Appreciated her fixing his shirt. That must be it. He wanted her to stay. He must’ve gotten a look into her soul after all...that was, before he got sidetracked. She wouldn’t be so foolish as to hold the sidetracking against him.

  She poured a refill of coffee and slipped outside onto the porch. The wooden floor was damp, cold to her bare feet. Wind-driven rain spattered on her face. She peered toward the canal, wondering what nature was doing to the crab traps, wondering if crabs scuttled about and got hungry in such disagreeable weather. For long minutes she stared into the rain, restless, possessed of the distant, preoccupied gaze of a woman whose thoughts were catapulting into the future.

  “Can I have chocolate
cake for breakfast?”

  The images reflected in Phoebe’s mind dimmed. “Don’t come out here Willie-Boy. It’s cool. Where’s your shirt?”

  “It has skin all over it. I’m peeling.”

  “I’ll lather you up with calamine. That’ll stop it.”

  “Then can I have some cake?”

  “For lunch, not a minute before.”

  “Are we still going to Shambeau’s?”

  “With the rain and all, we’ll have to see.”

  “Mr. Gage can take us.”

  He can indeed, Phoebe thought, for life. “He has to work.”

  “But you’ll ask him?”

  “I might, if you be a good boy and don’t stir up trouble this mornin’.”

  “I’ll be good.”

  Phoebe glanced once more toward the canal then shifted her gaze to the kitchen. Her cleaning and living in it had made the room homey. “Everything is gonna be good for us now, Willie-Boy. I can feel it. I’ll bet every old crab in that canal is trapped and gnawin’ on chicken right this minute.”

  “So I can have jawbreakers and socks.”

  Phoebe laughed and balled up a fist. “Here’s your jawbreaker. Now go get dressed.”

  ~~~~

  Thunder rumbled through the walls of the gate shack. The building was little more than a freestanding closet from which Gage ran his business on Saturdays. From the door he could direct folks to what they wanted to look at, and collect for the purchase before they left the property. He sat on a stool in the half-light, leaving the single bulb unlit. Regular Saturday trade would be held back by the weather. He debated working in the welding shed, a thing he seldom did on Saturday. Truth was, he didn’t feel much like working at all. He wished he’d stayed in the kitchen drinking coffee with Phoebe.

  He was loath to admit it, but he liked the harmony Phoebe brought into his life and house. He was beginning to feel generous again. That alarmed him. He was enjoying having her around. That scared him.