Eye of the Beholder

by Jackie Weger

  “I aim to,” Phoebe answered forcefully, lest he pick up on the idea she meant to plop down like an old-time squatter spying the unprotected edge of a fine stone-free meadow.

  Her feet itched to move but she didn’t want to turn her back and allow him to watch her leave the shed. She knew she didn’t have a hip-swaying walk that men kept on about. She pretended interest in her surroundings, gazing about the shed, above her head, along the walls until she spotted the bumper lying against some machine parts. Her eyes narrowed.

  Tracking her gaze, Gage was alert to the instant her eyes alighted on the bumper. It was in her face, the way her mind worked. “Don’t even think it,” he said. “When I’m not working in here, this shed is locked tighter than an unopened drum. You want that bumper you come up with some cash.”

  Phoebe knew it wasn’t in her nature to give up the last word; she allowed it on purpose. Let Gage Morgan think what he wanted. If he was so loose-minded he couldn’t see that returning her bumper would turn her out of his house, she wasn’t about to disabuse him.

  She filled up her face with belligerence to hide her elation and let him get a good glimpse of it before she turned and exited the shed. On the off chance that taking mincing steps was how a woman achieved the hip rolling men admired, Phoebe tried it. She stumbled over her own feet. Behind her, Gage Morgan snorted.

  Picking herself up, she shot a comment over her shoulder. “A body could break her neck on the clutter you keep.”

  Gage grinned. Phoebe was taken aback. Lor! He looked wonderful when he smiled.

  “The only clutter in your path is at the end of those sticks you walk on,” he said.

  Phoebe drew herself up so still and tall she gained two inches. Gutter-minded man, she thought, smile or no. Inspecting her legs like that. Just went to show what kind of woman Gage Morgan would hook up to, if he got the chance. Which no doubt he wouldn’t, considering how insufferable he was. Aggravation and mean thoughts occupied her all the way across the junkyard to the house and into the pantry.

  The potatoes were Idaho, the prettiest Phoebe had held in her hand in many a week. She took them to the sink and cleared out a place to peel them. Gage Morgan’s words had stuck in her craw. If ever she’d met a man who needed undoing, he was it. He needed to be unlaced so severely that everything he was just spilled out at her feet. Not feet. She didn’t want to think about feet. There were a few things besides hip rolling that could set a man to thinking right about a woman. One of them was the smell of good food cooking. No doubt she’d figure out others as opportunities arose.

  A closer inspection of the pantry shelves revealed condensed milk, sugar, packets of yeast, corn meal, dried beans, crackers and all manner of canned goods. Phoebe frowned at all the manna. It was just sitting there getting dusty and going to sinful waste. For shame. A woman trying to live right in God’s eye wouldn’t tolerate such. Phoebe grouped together the makings of a rich thick soup, corn fritters and fried potato doughnuts. If a body looked on it right, she was undoing sin and waste. God was probably looking down on her right this minute and beaming His approval.

  Once the potatoes were boiling and the sugar yeast rising, she called Maydean and ordered her to clean the bathroom.

  “Do the mirror last, Maydean, lest it get a hold on you.”

  “I ain’t in the mind to clean somebody else’s house. How long we gonna stay here?”

  Phoebe looked out the kitchen window and saw prosperity: Ma weeding bean and tomato plants that marched in neat rows down to the canal. She saw Erlene scattering corn to chickens, Pa in his rocking chair on the back porch.

  In the real world she spied the top of Dorie Morgan’s head just beneath the windowsill. The scamp was eavesdropping. At the behest of her own pa no doubt.

  “Just until Willie-Boy’s well enough to travel,” she posed with studied casualness.

  “He’s almost that now,” claimed Maydean.

  Phoebe could’ve throttled her. “He’s not. He’s weaker than I’ve seen him in a month of Sundays. If I was to move him now it’d have to be to a hospital.” She shoved a bucket and a can of cleanser at Maydean. “Get in that bathroom and make it shine.” Louder, she said, “I wonder where that Dorie got off to? Like as not, bedridden as he is, Willie-Boy’d like some company.” She turned away from the window and began to clear the table. The screened door squeaked. “Oh, there you be,” Phoebe said. “I was just—”

  “My daddy said to stay away from you.”

  “Why?”

  Dorie shrugged. “He just said, is all.”

  “If you lived in Cottontown where we come from, you’d be proud to associate with a Hawley. We got the reputation for being law abidin’ and church goin’. Howsomever, I don’t want you to go against your pa’s word. So you can just clear outta this kitchen. I got floors to scrub, dishes to wash, and doughnuts to fry.”

  Dorie hesitated. “Are you cooking for me, too?”

  “You and your pa, if he’s so-minded.” Which Phoebe reckoned he would be once he got a whiff of her crisp-fried doughnuts. A right-minded man appreciated a woman who could cook. Phoebe didn’t hold with all the other things men appreciated, mostly because she knew she was so thinly endowed with any of them. If she ever found a man who could look beyond body parts she’d latch on to him so quick…

  “Daddy eats at the restaurant in town.”

  “What about you?”

  “He brings me hamburgers. I like hamburgers.”

  “Maybe tomorrow I’ll make you a hamburger,” Phoebe said. “That is, if Willie-Boy don’t recover well enough to travel by dinner time. Howsomever, there’s one thing I don’t tolerate. That’s a dirty face at my table. Once Maydean’s got that bathroom clean, you scrub up.”

  The child bristled. “That’s our table, not yours. I can sit any way I want.”

  “You can sit at it. You can own it. But I won’t put no fried doughnuts on it lessen the faces around it are scrubbed and hair’s combed. That’s my final word.”

  Dorie stalked out. Phoebe started to call her back, but stopped. She didn’t know what more she could say, or how much saying she could get away with. Anyway, at the moment the refrigerator needed her attention. It was big and solid and a light flashed on when the door was opened.

  On the first shelf were good-quality milk, butter, cheeses, and jellies. The lower shelves were crammed with bits and bowls of food gone rock hard or growing things. Lor! But this house needed constant seeing to by a woman. Most especially it needed a fine upstanding, hard-working woman who had lots of patience, a strong back, nice teeth, and a frugal outlook to match its owner’s. Phoebe thought she had all of that and a good heart to boot.

  She had more than a good heart. It was ready to be filled with love. Though she had no evidence to support the idea, Phoebe told herself the junkyard owner appeared to need seeing to as much as his house. The bold thought sent a tingling up her spine. Having a house, having a man to call her own, especially a man as powerful and worthy of admiration as Gage Morgan… She shook her head as if to clear it of such foolishness.

  But her good heart went to pounding like a jack-hammer, speeding so that she felt compelled to clutch her chest to slow it down. The idea of pairing up with Gage Morgan wouldn’t go away. It entertained her until she went to rummage for a sick-bed tray and dished up soup and corn bread for Willie-Boy.

  — • —

  “Are you gonna make me stay in bed the rest of my life?”

  “Nope,” replied Phoebe. “After you eat you’re gonna get a nice hot bath.”

  Willie-Boy made a face. “I don’t feel dirty.”

  “You don’t feel sick, either, but you are. Don’t go stubborn on me, Willie-Boy. I’m gettin’ enough of that from the Morgans.”

  “I wanna go fishin’. You said if we got anywheres near water I could go fishin’. There’s water every which way here.”

  “Phoebe!”

  “Maydean, don’t come up yellin’ in my ear like that.”

>   “There’s a color television in the living room. It works.”

  “I told you to clean the bathroom, not to go snoopin’ into closets and such!” Phoebe was saving the prying and poaching of the house for herself. She could do it better. She didn’t like Maydean breaking ground first.

  “It ain’t in no closet. It’s sittin’ on a table, big as life. Dorie turned it on. Can I sit with her?”

  Phoebe debated silently. She wanted to view the rest of the house. Just a look-see for now. The place she wanted her imprint on first was the kitchen. If she got her aura set there, why it’d just naturally follow her into every other room. But she had to be delicate about it. If Maydean was in the living room, why it stood to reason, she’d have to look in on her there. To make sure Maydean wasn’t getting into anything she shouldn’t.

  “If you can get Dorie to the kitchen table with her face washed and hair combed to eat some soup then I reckon the both of you can watch television.”

  “If I can’t go fishin’ I wanna watch TV,” announced Willie-Boy.

  “Maybe after a bit I’ll carry you in there,” Phoebe agreed.

  “I can walk.”

  Her mouth drew down at the corners. “You can’t. And that’s a fact. You want to watch TV, I’ll carry you.”

  Speaking of carrying reminded Phoebe of the suitcases still out in the truck. It might look alarming if she toted them all in at the same time. She’d have to condense to get toothbrushes, pajamas, and fresh clothes into the house. She picked up the bed tray. “You just let that food go down good, Willie-Boy. A nap won’t hurt you none. After that you can have a bath, fried doughnuts, and TV.”

  “You promise?”

  “No. It ain’t our house. I can’t promise nothin’. I’m just sayin’.”

  “If it was our house, would you promise?”

  “If it was our house, I’d let Ma answer your ever-lastin’ questions.”

  “I wish Ma was here. She loves me. I’m her best boy.” His eyes got wet, his mouth began to quiver.

  Homesick, Phoebe surmised. “I got an idea. While you’re restin’ you be thinkin’ of somethin’ to say to Ma. I’ll write it in a letter. Now, I got things to do.” Weighted with the tray and problems needing solving, Phoebe hurried back to the kitchen. Gage Morgan was standing at the stove, peering into the soup pot.

  Lor! The good cooking smells worked faster than she’d anticipated. “You set to the table,” she said, “I’ll fix you a plate.”

  Gage lifted his eyes to her, his expression bland. “This made out of my rotten potatoes?”

  Phoebe cleared her throat. “I cut the bad spots out. They weren’t so bad as I first supposed.”

  “I do my eating in town,” he informed her, seeming to peer beyond Phoebe as if she didn’t exist.

  Plans goin’ awry! Phoebe knew no way a woman could get a man if he wouldn’t set still. “Seems to me it’d be a fair waste of good money to pay for ready-cooked food in a restaurant when you got home fixin’s in your own clean kitchen.” She began setting the table with the dishes she’d washed. “Your daughter, Dorie, commented she liked doughnuts. I’m fryin’ some up soon’s the batter rises. It’s the least I can do for her, you lettin’ us stay here and all.” Moving around the table, Phoebe kept him in a corner of her vision. “Which is your chair?” She went to the stove, dipped up a bowl of soup. “Where you want it? There’s corn bread, too. In the oven, stayin’ warm.”

  Gage stared at her with a catlike stillness about his lean, hard frame. Grudgingly, he admitted to himself that Phoebe was right. He’d waste both time and money going out to eat. Even so, the girl’s insouciance was insupportable… On the other hand, he hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in months.

  Phoebe watched his mouth alter shape, losing its hard stern line as if to smile. She opened her mouth to speak, but Gage walked on through and out of the kitchen into the house proper. She put the bowl on the table. Dipping up another cup of soup, she stood at the sink sipping on it. The best she’d ever made, she thought, staring out the window. This time no mindscape of visions came to her. No pictures of Ma or Pa or Erlene. The best-tasting soup she’d ever made sank like lead into her stomach.

  Chair legs scraping the linoleum intruded upon her thoughts, grated on her nerves. She turned to chastise Maydean who had the bad habit of yanking chairs about and had to bite her tongue to keep the words from flying out.

  Gage Morgan had taken his place at the table and was pulling the brimming bowl of soup toward himself. His cap of dark curly hair had been wetted and combed, his hands washed. Phoebe approved. It showed he had respect for the cook. A body on the alert for such could do a lot with respect, she thought, reckoning her alertness to be greater than if she’d been anticipating the effects of a double dose of castor oil.

  “You like corn bread?” she asked, speaking up to cover the sudden quaking of nerve endings that were stimulating excitement in parts of her best ignored.

  “Sure do.”

  Phoebe sliced two generous pieces and put great dollops of butter on each. “Didn’t know about tea,” she said. “There’s ice water or milk.” He chose water. Once he was eating steadily, she left him alone. Most men didn’t like to be bothered when eating. Pa was like that. He hated having to swallow fast so as to make room for words.

  She checked the plumpness of the sweet dough and set grease to heating in an iron skillet, moving from sink to pantry to stove as if being in G. G. Morgan’s kitchen was the most ordinary of things. She fried a test batch of doughnuts. When they were nicely browned she drained them on paper and sprinkled them with sugar. “Some folks aren’t up to sweets directly they’ve eaten,” she said. “Which is it with you?”

  “I’ll try one.”

  She placed several on a plate. Gage ate them every one. Phoebe was proud to bursting. She had to turn away lest he see the happiness overtaking her.

  “You folks on welfare or what?”

  Phoebe spun around. Her jaw dropped. “Welfare! I ain’t. We ain’t. And never will be. Hawleys don’t take to charity. We’re workers!” She felt like thumping him on his back to get the doughnuts up.

  “Don’t get riled,” Gage said, feeling mellow on account of his full stomach. “I was just curious.”

  “That kind of curiosity ain’t polite.”

  He arched a brow. “You’re in my house. I don’t know you from Johnny Appleseed. For all I know you could clean me out the minute my back’s turned.”

  Phoebe puffed up. “I come from good Christian stock. We ain’t never stole so much as a nickel. For people, you won’t find none better than a Hawley.” Her look dared him to counter the truth of that.

  “Where exactly do you come from?”

  “Cottontown. Up north.”

  “Where were you headed when we had the fender bender?”

  “I was headed for work,” Phoebe said adroitly. “Like as not the folks won’t save my job now, seeing as how I’ve been held up.”

  “You can use the phone in the living room to call if you want to,” Gage offered.

  “Better not. It’d be long distance. Thank you for offering.” She put another batch of dough to frying. “I could write ’em, though. If you got a stamp I could buy.”

  “There’s some in my desk.”

  Phoebe didn’t know where his desk was. But it seemed he was giving her rein and trust to hunt it up. “I set Maydean to cleanin’ the bathroom. You mind if I sponge Willie-Boy off? I’m worried he’ll take to gettin’ feverish if I don’t. And if you’ll tell me where you keep your wash tub, I’ll rinse out the sheets off the bed in the mornin’. Leave ’em fresh, like we found ’em.”

  Gage moved to the door. “There’s a washer and dryer in the storeroom off the back porch.”

  “Washer and dryer? You mean electric?”

  “Electric,” he said, studying her hard for a moment.

  Lor! Phoebe was thinking, dirt and all, the house was a treasure trove of good things. A color television, a refri
gerator with a light, a no-work washing machine, a pantry filled with food. “God has sure been good to you,” she said.

  “I could debate that. You cook whatever you want for supper.” He glanced around the kitchen. “Appreciate you cleaning up the mess.”

  From inside the screened door, Phoebe watched him step off the porch and onto the path to the welding shed. Cook whatever she wanted for supper! If she was the swooning type, she reckoned she’d’ve done it right then. She didn’t know what time Gage Morgan figured on eating supper, but it was plain he meant for her to be in his house to cook it. And tight-fisted as he was, he had manners, thanking her like that. Of course, the way he inspected and commented on a woman’s body was scandalous. But a woman of virtue could lift a man out of wicked thoughts. Like as not a woman of virtue could coax a man to keep all his thoughts above the neck. Phoebe counted herself among the most virtuous of women that God ever had a hand in creating. Absolutely. She had never once dropped her drawers for a man. Never would either, unless… Well, she would never be so stupid as to thwart the course of true love.

  She went onto the porch and stared up into the noonday sun until a kaleidoscope of colors blocked out true vision. Prudence, temperance, and fortitude swelled within her. Being noble was doing God’s work, certain, she thought. Ma would be so proud.

  “Whatcha doing standing out in the sun like that, Phoebe? You know it makes your freckles pop out.”

  What with feeling so fine spirited, Phoebe didn’t like being reminded of earthly flaws. “I was prayin’ over your food, Maydean, so you won’t choke to death. The way you gobble I figured I’d better get as close to God as I could.” Dorie was on Maydean’s heels. Her face and hands were clean, her hair brushed into some order. The smell of fried doughnuts worked wonders. “Dish up soup for yourself and Dorie. Afterward you wash dishes. Dorie can dry.”

  “I hate doin’ dishes. I’m tryin’ to let my fingernails grow.”

  “If you’re worried about your nails, Maydean, I can pluck ’em out.”