Eye of the Beholder

by Jackie Weger

  “Then watch out for snakes.”

  He stopped running and began cautiously to make 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 jobs. 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,” said Phoebe 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 up. Working traps did sound more reasonable than trying to nab the crabs in 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 back and forth into the water, setting the traps several yards apart on the canal’s sandy floor.

  “Imagine. While I’m cleanin’ and cookin’, those old crabs’ll be gettin’ themselves caught. Just settin’ 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 she decided to annex 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 coloring book.”

  “You’re gettin’ socks,” Phoebe said. “I ain’t squanderin’ my money. 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—for what, she didn’t know. 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 get to tidyin’ your room.”

  “We don’t have any cake.”

  “That’s what you know. I aim to bake one to celebrate going into business for myself. If your room was to get cleaned up, 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 fixed. 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 stiffly.

  “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 and took a mile. Phoebe had already tucked her inch away for safekeeping. “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. “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 door. Phoebe followed onto the front 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 had 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. He sipped his coffee. “Now and then. Not so you’d notice.”

  He did miss being married! Even if it was to Velma, no matter what she’d done to him. Phoebe didn’t know where to take the conversation, but some words, a comment seemed in order. She searched for one that would be truthful. “I do, too. 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, its fineness, 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. 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 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 that reflected in Phoebe’s mind dimmed. “Don’t come out here Willie-Boy. It’s too 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 is trapped and gnawin’ at 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.”

  — • —

  Sounds of 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. The 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 had changed since she’d invaded his life. He was beginning to feel generous again. That alarmed him. He was enjoying having her around. That scared him.

  He’d suffered the ordeal of Velma. He could admit it to himself. The only good thing coming out of that marriage had been Dorie. But he didn’t know how to tend to Dorie’s emotional needs. He feared she was too much like her mother. Since Phoebe’s arrival Dorie had become neater, mannerly, less moody. As if Phoebe had put a spell on her.

  He admired a woman who knew the value of money, how to earn it. Phoebe appeared to have an inside track on that knowledge as Velma had not. Velma had put his back to the wall, charging and spending money as if it were a never-ending flow like the tide. Velma had gone off and got herself drowned while in the company of another man.

  Gage looked down at his big callused hands. He couldn’t go on without a woman indefinitely, but Phoebe Hawley? She wouldn’t take up the space between two button tucks in his mattress. Though it had been restrained, he had a healthy appetite for sex. It seemed to him that Phoebe had a fragility of flesh, that she was held together only by discipline and nerve. He couldn’t see her having sex without wafting away.

  Not that he was considering it.

  He looked down at his hands trying to recall the last time he’d touched a woman.

  He was considering it.

  Best thing all around, he told himself, was to send Phoebe on her way. Force her against her pride to take the bumper. He’d be decent about it, he’d wait until she’d sold her crabs.

  The rain stopped. Inside the shack there was no sound at all, except the noise of water dripping off the tin roof and t
he muttering in Gage’s brain that said he was being a fool.

  A truck came through the gate and stopped. The driver hung out the window. “Hey, you open for business?”

  Gage tugged the string that turned on the light. “I’m open.”

  — • —

  At noon Phoebe thrust her head in the door. “I brought your lunch. Fried chicken sandwich and a thermos of coffee.”

  Not once had Velma ever thought to bring him lunch while he was working away from the house. He didn’t mean to be making comparisons, but there it was. “Thanks. I am a bit hungry. Haven’t had time to take a break.”

  “You got to quit stalkin’ outta the house mad of a mornin’. Eat a good breakfast. Business good today?”

  “Fair.”

  — • —

  Phoebe had scrounged a pair of galoshes from the laundry room. They came up to her knees. She had a towel pinned around her waist to serve as an apron and her hair was covered with a scarf. Controlling her curls was always a problem and in the damp air, an impossible task. The chicken sandwich had just been an excuse. Inside her was a force driving her to be near Gage. She’d fought it all morning. Now she was near him. More near than she’d hoped. The shack barely had room for his huge bulk. She cleared her throat twice, felt her stomach climbing into her chest cavity. “Gage…”

  “What?”

  “You reckon this weather’ll hold the crabs back?”

  He peeled the waxed paper from the sandwich. “Wouldn’t hurt to leave the traps down a couple more days. You couldn’t sell them this late in the day anyway.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  He ate the sandwich. Phoebe had the urge to be seductive. She moved closer and brushed his arm with her own, then she opened the thermos, pouring coffee into the lid that served as a cup. She was so giddy her hands shook.

  “You’re spilling that.’’

  “Won’t hurt this floor.”

  “Guess it won’t.” The red cup disappeared into his thick hand. Phoebe liked his hands. He did heavy, dirty work, yet the nails were clipped, clean. She had to put her own hands behind her back to keep from reaching out, to keep from placing her hand on his.