by Jackie Weger
Phoebe put Willie-Boy on the back porch, propping him against one of the supports. The terrible sucking sounds he made trying to draw in oxygen made her wince. His face was red and sweat was pouring off him. Hesitantly, the girl came out of the house and stood beside Phoebe. Interest had replaced her sullen expression.
“What’re you doing? What’s wrong with him? You’re not supposed to be back here.”
“I need a bowl of ice and a rag,” Phoebe told her. “A clean rag,” she added recalling the state of the kitchen.
“My daddy won’t like—”
Phoebe glared at the child. “You get me a bowl of ice and a clean rag. What your daddy might not like is my brother dyin’ right here on his back porch. Quick now,” she said more gently when the child’s eyes flared with fear. Maydean brought the inhaler. Phoebe shoved it in Willie-Boy’s mouth. It took him a half dozen good gasps to get the medication into his throat and down into his lungs. The terrible sucking sounds abated.
“What’s your name?” Phoebe asked when the girl returned bearing ice cubes and a rag, gray and musty smelling.
“Dorie Morgan.”
“Well, you done good, Dorie Morgan.” Phoebe began to wipe Willie-Boy down with rag-wrapped ice. When he began to take interest in his surroundings, when she saw his gaze go curiously to the girl, she handed him the rag and told him to keep at it himself.
“I almost died, didn’t I Phoebe?”
“You didn’t even come close. But when I whollop you for running and scampering in the sun like that, you’re gonna wisht you hadda died.”
“What the hell’s going on here?” G. G. Morgan came out the screened door, letting it slam behind him.
Phoebe’s heart sank. All her advantage lost. She stood tall and glowered at him, sloe-eyed.
“You said to meet you here to get my bumper back. I’m here.”
The junkyard owner looked at his daughter, at Maydean, at Willie-Boy before settling once again on Phoebe. “You turned up seventy dollars that quick?”
“Ain’t turned up nothin’ but here.”
“This is private property. When you get the money, come to the front. That shed by the gate.”
“Can’t,” said Phoebe, latching onto a blameworthy reason to give her some leverage. “When you hit us that lick this morning the excitement made Willie-Boy come down with a spell of asthma. After we got here, like you told us to, invited us practically, he knocked himself out on a piece of your junk. He can’t be moved unless it’s to a hospital. Reckon you want to pay the hospital bill?”
“Pay! Lady, I’m not paying for a damn thing. Your careless driving caused that wreck. And there’s a sign on the gate that I’m not responsible for accidents.”
“A sign don’t mean nothing except that you know your property ain’t safe. Willie-Boy’s the proof of that I reckon. Anyhow. It’s your word against mine. And the word of a Hawley is as good as you can get. You want to call it even and give me back my bumper, we’ll just be on our way.”
— • —
Gage was aware that he didn’t know a lot about handling women or children. It seemed to him that the caustic-tongued redhead didn’t fit either category. She was too old to be a child, and in his book, too rail-thin to be called a woman. What he did know was the bottom line. He spoke it. “Seventy dollars or no bumper.”
“Ain’t got seventy dollars.”
Phoebe watched his mouth get thin-lipped. The thinner it got, the deeper became the frown between his eyes. The frown didn’t hurt his looks any. But now wasn’t the time to study on the man’s looks. Still, her eyes strayed to the laundry-made creases in his shirt, his tanned, muscled arms, the balled fists propped at his belt line. She had the notion that a virtuous woman never stared at a man below the waist, so she dragged her eyes back to his face.
“You’ll have to leave,” said Gage. “When you get the money to repair my truck, you can have your bumper.”
Phoebe heard him, glared at him, and thrust her chin out. She knew the set of her jaw didn’t make her look her best; Ma always said a body could set a nickel on her chin when Phoebe’s dander was up. Well, her dander was up. She could feel bile racing through her veins. And she aimed to stay mad. When a woman got mad, a woman could get anything she wanted—if she just had the gumption to stay mad and not let up.
Phoebe believed she had so much gumption at the moment it threatened to spurt out her ears.
“You got a phone I can borrow? I want to call an ambulance for Willie-Boy, seein’ as how I ain’t got no bumper or tag, I can’t drive him there myself. Seein’ as how you ain’t got the heart to let him recover afore you run us off. I imagine the folks at the hospital’ll want to know how he come to be so bad off. Don’t think I won’t tell them. How you run into us, how you wasn’t concerned about nothin’ but your old truck and gettin’ money outta poor folks.”
Maydean started to cry. “I want to get outta here, Phoebe. We’re gonna be in big trouble. We could go to jail. Welfare’ll get us and separate us. You know what Ma said—”
“Go sit in the truck until you can get your wits about you, Maydean. This minute!” Maydean shuffled a few backward steps, refusing to budge farther.
“You’re trying to lay a scam on me,” said Gage Morgan. “It’s not going to happen. People like you are always sniffing around for a hand-out. You came to the wrong place this time.”
Phoebe skewered him with her see-all look, pondering the quality of G. G. Morgan, trusting to her backwoods instinct. Stubborn and tight-fisted, she figured. One thing she knew about a tight-fisted man: he craved an image of being generous in spirit while keeping his purse strings double-knotted. The mill owner back home had been exactly the same way, oozing nice words to Ma’s face, when behind her back he was asking the sheriff to evict them. That picture recalled, Phoebe carried on, all acting fury.
“Since the beginnin’ of time, a Hawley never accepted no charity. We always give fair value for anything we get. So you can just take back what you said about us grovelin’ for a handout. It appears to me that you’re so used to sellin’ junk you think you can grab what belongs to other folks and sell it back. You think—”
“I’m going to throw up,” said Willie-Boy.
Phoebe let up on G. G. Morgan. She tucked her skirt between her legs and knelt down beside her brother, holding his head over the side of the porch. Glancing slyly at the junkyard owner over her shoulder she watched his face go pale. It was something, she thought, how a man could bear up under a show of blood and fair faint at the sound of a dab of gagging. One thing she knew certain. She aimed to perch right here until Willie-Boy got better and she got her bumper back.
“If you’re not up to paying the hospital for Willie-Boy, I reckon I can nurse him like I always done,” she said. “That is, if you got a quiet place I can lay him down.” She wiped Willie-Boy’s mouth, then picked him up. His head lolled weakly against her shoulder, his legs draped over her arm, twitching. Expressions were fleeing across Gage Morgan’s face. Phoebe could see him deciding about a sure thing—in favor of his purse.
“How long will it take him to recover?”
Phoebe thought: Until I find a job and make seventy dollars. “An hour, maybe two,” she said.
Scowling, Gage opened the screened door and waved her through. Sharp-eyed, Phoebe took in the kitchen, the wide central hall beyond, the doors leading off it. “Where can I put him?” she asked.
Gage pointed. Phoebe went. It was a cramped and musty little room with spider webs draped and barely hanging on in the corners. It had a dresser and a double bed with the mattress rolled up exposing old iron springs. The dust was terrible, not at all good for Willie-Boy. The room’s only redeeming feature was the butter-yellow sunshine shining through the window. Phoebe called to Maydean.
“Lay out that mattress.”
“You reckon it has bedbugs?”
Phoebe shot a look behind her but Gage Morgan was gone, in his place stood his daughter. “Don’t look
a gift horse in the mouth, Maydean.” She lay Willie-Boy down on the bare ticking, stretching his legs out. To Dorie she said, “You want to show me where you keep a bucket and soap? And a sheet?”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Clean this room. If I don’t, Willie-Boy won’t get well.”
“This was my mama’s room.”
Phoebe’s pale brows shot up. “Your pa’s, too?”
“No, just my mama’s. She didn’t like my daddy.”
“Marriage can be a terrible trial if you ain’t married to the right person,” Phoebe agreed.
“Mama liked me, though.”
“You miss her, don’t you? It’s a sad thing when a mother is taken up and leaves younguns behind.” She followed Dorie into the kitchen. The child pointed out the pantry.
“If Mama had taken me with her that day, she wouldn’t’ve drowned. I can swim real good. I could’ve saved her.”
“I’ll just bet you could’ve.”
Phoebe didn’t know where all this was leading. That the girl was troubled was plain. Later she could worry on the child. Just now, getting settled was the main thing. She looked up at the ceiling. Lor, but having a roof above one’s head was a precious thing.
From somewhere at the other end of the rambling old house, Gage Morgan called for his daughter. Before the child went to answer his summons, Phoebe saw the way Dorie’s face tightened. A hornet’s nest, that’s what she’d stepped into, Phoebe thought. Digging around in the pantry for the things she needed, she amended the thought. Dern dirty hornet’s nest! She put her hand around the mop handle and sighed happily.
— • —
Standing at the foot of the bed Phoebe turned slowly and admired her work. The small room gleamed clean and cheerful. Not even a vagrant dust mote hung in the air for the sun to illuminate. Maydean was polishing the mirror on the dresser with newspaper and vinegar. What with Maydean’s love affair with her mirror image, Phoebe figured that’d keep the twelve-year-old content and out of harm’s way for an hour or two. What was pressing down on Phoebe now was hunger.
She could feel the pangs, stabbing and fixing to get noisy.
“I feel good now, Phoebe,” said Willie-Boy from the bed. He was lying on a clean pink sheet and propped up on a pillow they’d discovered in the closet. “I can get up now.”
Phoebe was thinking hard. Everything she had in mind—survival, for today anyway—depended upon Willie-Boy being ill. And staying that way. Looking at the five-year-old, she struggled with her conscience. She had to decide between Hawley scruples and dire need. Need won out. She sat on the bed and touched Willie-Boy’s forehead. “You’re not better yet, Willie-Boy. I can see it in your eyes.”
“You can?”
“Sure I can. You know anybody with better eyesight than me?” She put her face right up to Willie-Boy’s. “I can look into your eyes and see everything that’s going on inside you.”
He squeezed his eyes closed. “Don’t look inside me, Phoebe. I got secrets. You’re not supposed to know secrets.”
“I have to look inside you so I know when you’re well. But when I’m looking you can put your hand over your heart. That way I won’t come upon anything you got to hide.”
“You’re sure?” Childish skepticism layered each word.
“Course I’m sure. You put your hand over your heart and it makes a dark shadow in there. You know how hard it is to see into shadows.”
“Lemme get up, Phoebe. I feel okay. My chest don’t hurt none.”
“That’s because it’s numb. When the feelin’ comes back I reckon I’ll have to sit up with you all night.”
“Here?”
“Right here in this room. Would you like that?”
“I like layin’ on a mattress. It’s softer than the back of the truck. But what about Mister Morgan?”
“I’ll handle him,” Phoebe said, wondering how. One thing was certain. Every word spoken to the man had to count. She suspected Gage Morgan had a fair amount of sense. Her idea was to not let him catch on that she knew it. With a word of caution to Maydean not to leave the room, she went to find the man who was her reluctant host.
The hall was wide, high, and dim, the windows at each end so fogged with grime little light found its way inside. Of the six doors along its length one was slightly open. Phoebe peeked in. The bathroom. It needed a good scrub down. Another door was gaping. Dorie lay upon an unmade bed, coloring. Phoebe stood on the threshold.
“Where’s your pa?”
Scowling, the girl looked up. “Out to the shed.”
“What shed?”
“The welding shed. He fixes boat motors, propellers.”
“Where is it?”
Dorie raised up and pointed out a window hung with once-white curtains gone gray and limp. “It’s on the other side of the junkyard, facing the canal.” Her eyes stayed hard on Phoebe for a few seconds then returned to the coloring book.
Phoebe ignored the child’s dismissal. “How long’s your ma been in heaven?”
The narrow face went dark. “Since last summer.”
“Who does the cooking and cleaning for you and your pa?”
“Daddy does it.”
Thinking on the state of the kitchen, Phoebe thought: No, he don’t. Ideas raced so rampant in her head she was out the back door and across the junkyard before she had any good speaking words fixed solidly in her brain.
Chapter Two
The welding shed was a great barn of a building constructed of metal. It was open at both ends so that standing at the landward end Phoebe could look straight through to the canal bathed in the sky’s yellow haze. She slipped inside the yawning opening and stood there, giving her eyes moments needed to adjust.
Propellers, large and small, lined the walls or hung suspended from ceiling beams on pulleys and chains—chains as thick as Gage Morgan’s biceps. Phoebe could make the comparison because he was working on a propeller hung from just such a chain. He’d changed from his laundry-creased clothes into oil-stained khakis and a shirt with the sleeves cut out. The muscles in his arms rippled as he bore down on a bolt with a wrench.
Watching him caused a good-feeling sensation to spread warmth inside her. Lor, but it was fine to see a man work! Leastways, she now knew the source of those calluses on his palms. They’d be fair scratchy on a woman’s tender skin, though. She paused on the thought and caught herself running her hands up her arms.
Her midsection began to actively protest its hunger. The borborygmus issuing from her lower regions caught her off guard. The growling quaked so in her ears she misplaced the words she’d rehearsed. She cleared her throat as loud as she could.
Gage Morgan spun around. The expression he wore didn’t come anywhere near being kindly.
“Don’t ever come sneaking up on me like that!”
“I’m no sneak.” Offended, Phoebe regretted her good thoughts and the admiring of his body. “It’s what’s in your mind that makes a sneak. If I was aimin’ to be sly, I could’ve slipped in and been here hours afore you discovered me.”
“I’ll give it to you that you’re a sly one,” he said acidly. “What do you want now?”
Pride went racing up and down Phoebe’s spine looking for a way out. Before it got loose and did damage she said, “I just came to tell you Willie-Boy is some better.”
“You’re clearing out?”
He sounded so much like he wanted her to that Phoebe had to bite back the urge to say yes. “Willie-Boy’s not up to bein’ moved yet. He’s fair weak what with throwin’ up his breakfast and all.” She paused, waiting to see how much sympathy that elicited. None! All the calluses in the world couldn’t make up for a hard heart in a man. The dark, tightly wound knot under her ribcage that harbored hope shrank painfully.
“I came to see if I could buy a can of beans off your shelf or a couple of those near-to-rotten potatoes in that bag in the pantry. I figured some soup’d give Willie-Boy back his strength.” For good measure and to
jolt his conscience, she added, “If it comes to having to take Willie-Boy over to the hospital I want to be able to say you done all you could for him.”
Gage made a noise in his throat. His gall was rising. He could taste it. “There’s some women who can drive a man to drink or worse,” he said, his jaw muscles going so tight his words hung in his throat. “You’re one of them. Sly-tongued, manipulative harridans like you ought to be tarred and hung up to dry. Know this: there’s not a woman in the world that can best me. Not after all I been through with a woman. You can just quit trying.”
Phoebe had a flash of clarity. He was telling on himself without knowing it. No doubt a woman had gotten to Gage Morgan where it hurt the most—his purse. She tossed her head, which had the effect of making her curls fly.
“I don’t take to slurring on my person. God made me a woman. You got problems with that, you take it up with Him. You gonna sell me a potato or not? I got to get some food in Willie-Boy lest he goes to faintin’ with weakness.”
Gage’s fist tightened on the wrench. He waved it in the direction of the house. “Take what you want from the pantry. And the potatoes aren’t rotten. I just bought them.”
“Just did?” oozed Phoebe, ignoring the easy manner in which he was flailing the heavy tool about. Calling her names like that was unjustified. She wasn’t going to back down just because she had brains and the man didn’t like that. She ought to leave well enough alone. She had what she came for, but gumption overrode her practicality. “Well, the market put one over on you, mister. Those potatoes are sproutin’.”
“No one puts anything over on me,” he reiterated.
Phoebe ducked her chin and shoved her hands into her skirt pockets. “I reckon they don’t,” she crooned so smoothly, the sarcasm didn’t catch. “You appear to be about the smartest man I ever met.” On the outside. On the inside, he appeared to own a lacking she couldn’t put a name to—yet.
His pupils dilated. “I’m not giving over to flattery from the likes of you. Get your brother up and about and get off my property. The sooner the better.”
