by Jackie Weger
“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.”
— • —
Taking the traps from the canal was heavy work. The sun bore down. 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? 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 up some regular bait.” Phoebe moved the truck back 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 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 him into the house, wordless.
— • —
The taste of accomplishment had about the same good flavor as a well-cooked meal, thought Phoebe.
She had gone to look at her crabs a half dozen times since the sun had set. They had stopped scrabbling and had 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 she sensed that he, too, had that feeling of accomplishment. He had sat on the front porch watching the children playing “May I?” on the newly mown grass until she had dragged them in to bath and bed. He still sat there on the stoop, and of all things, smoked a pipe. The sweetish aroma of the tobacco drew her to his side. She sat on the same step as he, taking care to tuck her skirt about her knees.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“Now and then.”
Phoebe glanced up at the sky. Stars twinkled. The moon was heavenly bright. “Hot tonight, ain’t it?”
“Muggy.”
“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, he thought. 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, 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 inside. He could no more articulate his thoughts than the man in the 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, 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 moonlight Phoebe looked beautiful in a natural way. There was an allure to her face, the shape enigmatic, her dark eyes glowing. Gage jerked.
“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 the earth. If that wasn’t so, then why had God made Eve for Adam? Her problem, Phoebe thought, 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 herself. Planting ideas in a man’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, she thought. Her heart was pounding so loudly 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.
She crept out of bed and padded barefoot down the hall and pressed her ear to Gage’s bedroom door. He coughed once. The import of what she was about to do rolled over her. Suddenly her face felt hot, her throat dry. She jerked away from the door and went to the bathroom. She wet her throat and splashed her face with cold water.
She looked in on Dorie, on Maydean and Willie-Boy. All were soundly asleep. Dern! she thought indignantly. When she needed a distraction they just lay there curled up like a pack of God’s little angels.
She went back to Gage’s door, put her hand on the knob. Gage would no doubt toss her out if she so much as took one step inside his room. She wasn’t his kind of woman. She was freckled. Skinny. Scared.
What she was thinking about doing had the unreality of a dream. What if she got naked and Gage laughed?
What if he didn’t love her back?
Her whole future hinged on that.
She took a deep breath and turned the knob, ready to flee at the slightest sound.
The air conditioner hummed and rattled. She slipped inside the room, closing the door so that the latch didn’t click and made the trek from the threshold to the foot of his bed without notice. He lay with his back to her, facing the window. Phoebe tugged her gown over her head and dropped it on the floor.
Naked, she lay down on the bed.
Gage lifted his head. “What the—” he croaked.
“It’s just me,” Phoebe whispered.
Gage reached up and switched on the bedside lamp.
Phoebe’s courage shriveled. She hadn’t counted on light. Lying down the way she was caused her breasts to go flat against her ribs, leaving hardly a mound to entice him.
He was staring at her over his shoulder, his lips parted in shock.
“Turn that light off,” she snapped.
The next instant they were in the dark again. Phoebe scrabbled for the sheet, got under it. Every nerve in her body throbbed to a savage beat. She pressed her length against Gage. He was as naked as she! She felt every muscle in his body go rigid.
The unexpected sensation of his flesh next to hers was like nothing she’d ever experienced. It made lights go off behind her eyes.
“Get out of my bed,” Gage said, recovering his voice, but not his aplomb.
“I just got in it,” Phoebe managed, still dealing with the awakening sensations, awed that the mere act of lying next to Gage could cause so much havoc to her insides. “I feel like firecrackers are goin’ off inside me. Don’t you?”
“This won�
��t work.”
“’Cause you ain’t tryin’.” Her voice sounded odd to her own ears. She put her hand on his chest, felt the wiry hair beneath her fingers.
Gage grasped her hand. “Stop.” The word stuck in his throat. He could feel every inch of her that was pressed to him. She felt smooth, silky. It took his breath away.
“Turn loose my hand. I want to see what you feel like.”
“Don’t…” It was a futile plea. He was burning internally with fires of long-suppressed passion. “I haven’t had a woman in a long time. You—”
‘That’s good,” Phoebe murmured. “I don’t like a man that drops his drawers for—”
Prudence found a crack in his sensory perceptions, slipping through. “Out!” he raged in a whisper, sitting up, attempting to roll out of Phoebe’s reach. She threw both arms around his neck, clinging with all her strength, her lithe body against his back. His brain registered the warmth of her flesh, the sensuous smoothness, the rapid beat of her heart. A guttural moan erupted from him. “Phoebe, stop. This is insane. We don’t fit—”
Phoebe heard the conviction go out of his tone. She kissed the back of his neck.
“We don’t—”
Her fingertips caressed his shoulders, feather-light strokes that trailed up the thick sinews of his neck and traced forward until she had explored his jaw, the shape of his lips. She bent her head and touched the nape of his neck with her tongue.
“Damn… Oh damn…”
Phoebe felt rather than heard the shape of his words on her fingers. As he lay back, she cautiously moved her leg over his, over his thigh, brushing him with the soft inner side of her upper leg.
“Lor!” she cried in astonishment. “Gage, is that your tallywhacker?” Before he could protest, she had her hand down there. Her fingers closed over him exploring, tracing its shape, its engorged length. “It’s a miracle, the way body parts work,” she said, full of wonder.
Her touch was sending delightful shocks racing down Gage’s spine. He struggled for an inner balance, for air. His arms felt leaden, it seemed to take forever to move and clasp her hand to stop her.
“You can’t…” he panted. His mind was numb, but far back in his brain logic said he had crossed an emotional brink; told him he was plunging into something far more entangling than a casual liaison. “Just a minute… Here, lie in my arms—”
