Eye of the Beholder

by Jackie Weger

  “You sound like you’re getting an attack of asthma.”

  “An attack of something. Keep still.”

  “I can’t. I can feel the hairs on your legs ticklin’ me. I wish I could explain how I feel inside. Everything is circlin’, rockin’.” Like a tempest, she thought, when she could think, for his hand was moving slowly at her waist, over her hip, back to her waist. Phoebe held her breath, expecting a comment about her bones, how little flesh covered them. He applied some slight pressure that drew her closer. His lips were at her brow. They felt warm, so soft on her, like new cotton. She didn’t dare move, and yet, she felt as if she were floating.

  His lips moved down her face, touching her eyelids, her nose, the edge of her mouth, her lips. He put his tongue in her mouth. Shock gave way to a wave of blissful pleasure. She strained against him, but still she could not get close enough. Her hands explored where he had forbidden. A moan escaped him, the sound as if he were being tormented, tortured. Then he was atop her.

  She could feel him thrusting into the center of her being as if a floodgate had been opened. Thrusting, attempting a deep invasion. Strange heats burst inside her, little fires. Her body seemed to know just what to do. Her hips rose up to meet his, to accept him fully. She cried for him to press her harder.

  Gage stopped in midthrust, a moment’s bewilderment pulsing through him. Clarity dawned and he felt perspiration break out on his arms and face.

  “You haven’t ever…” he began, tight-jawed.

  “Please don’t stop,” Phoebe pleaded, arching her hips, flexing muscles that she had not known existed to keep him within her.

  “You should’ve told me.” He began to withdraw.

  Phoebe threw her legs about him, locking him inside her. “I told you I was limber. Besides—”

  “Phoebe…”

  “It’s the natural way between a man and a woman.”

  “I’ll hurt you.”

  “You feel good!” she said with ferocity against a mounting panic that she had no feminine power with which to hold him to her.

  Gage could feel his willpower unraveling itself. He lowered his head and pressed his lips to her cheek, her earlobe. “Tell me if it hurts and I’ll stop.”

  “I will,” she promised, sighing as he again began to rock with an erotic rhythm that reached to every sinew and inch of flesh she owned. Her virtue was now an alien and unwanted part of her body. When the sharp pain came, she bit her lip.

  The eagerness of her body hung suspended for an instant, then a sudden release of abundant happiness welled up in her. She was out-and-out a woman now. It could never be undone. She closed her eyes and gave her entire being up to unmasking the heretofore mystery of sensual love.

  — • —

  Gage was lying with his elbow over his eyes. Phoebe’s body was aligned to his. She was hugging herself, partly because the air seemed now to be unreasonably cool and partly because she didn’t want to let any of the good feelings out. She was going over in her mind all that had happened. Discovering to her dismay she couldn’t recall every minute detail.

  “When do you reckon we’ll do that again?” she asked, eager to fill in the gaps of recall.

  Gage turned toward her, gently put his arm across her abdomen, wondering how he could have ever thought her skinny, when delicate was much the better description. “Too soon for you, I think.”

  ‘‘Well, what’s proper?”

  “Proper would have been not doing it at all.”

  Phoebe snuggled beneath his arm, glad of the warmth, of the way his body shielded her from the icy blast of the air conditioner. She was aware of dampness between her legs, but ignored it in favor of lying next to Gage. She turned so that they lay face to face, hip to hip and ran her fingers through the hair on his chest. She discovered his nipples. She had an uncommon urge to take one in her mouth. She put the shameful thought aside, swirling over the tips with her fingers instead.

  “Stop that.”

  “I was just seein’ if they’re bigger than mine.”

  “They aren’t.”

  “They’re gettin’ hard!” Suddenly, taking one into her mouth didn’t seem shameful at all. She pressed her face to his chest, flicked her tongue out.

  “For crying out—”

  “Ooooo, your tallywhacker’s gettin’ hard again, too.”

  “Phoebe, that’s enough. I’ve got to think, figure out where all this is leading. I’ve got to get some sleep. You do, too. Don’t you have to take your crabs to Hank’s? Phoebe… Stop…”

  “I just want to catch up on the parts I missed.”

  “Missed? What’re you talking… Stop sucking… No… Stop… Damn, you’re making me crazy.”

  “Can I get on top?” She pushed him back, and dragging the sheet with her, mounted him, loving the delicious slick and smooth feel of him sliding into her; joyous that it now met no barrier. “Gage, is this proper or wanton, what I’m doin’?”

  How could he tell? His blood had stopped circulating. “Wanton…”

  Phoebe had a sudden constricted feeling in her breast. She leaned forward, her elbows digging into his chest. “Are you certain?”

  “No,” he gasped. “It’s proper. Your elbows are killing me.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” She sat back, balancing herself, experimenting with the newly discovered muscles at the core of her femininity. The activity elicited from Gage moans of pleasure. “What do I do now?” she asked after she was satisfied that she truly did have control over so intimate an area.

  “I’m not going to have the strength to get out of bed in the morning,” Gage lamented, arching to press himself deeper, to plunder the velvety sheath.

  Phoebe sighed. “I have so much strength, I could clean this house from top to bottom and paint it besides.” Exalted, she flexed her muscles. “Can you feel that?”

  Gage placed his hands on her slender hips. “Phoebe,” he ground out, “shut up.”

  — • —

  Phoebe was evermore grateful that after Gage had gone to sleep she’d crept back to her own bed. She had overslept. The sun was well up and she could hear the faint sounds of the television, of Maydean and Dorie arguing. Lor! What if they’d found her in Gage’s bed! She hurried to the bathroom and showered quickly.

  Dispensing with toweling dry, she yanked on pants and shirt. She ached from scalp to toe. She wasn’t certain if anybody looking at her could tell what she had done last night, but she had to face Hank and Stout at the crab house. She covered her body from head to toe, buttoning her shirt at neck and wrist.

  Her face reflected in the mirror looked the same. The mirror was lying, Phoebe thought. She was different, she glowed inside.

  She ran fingers through her tangled mass of hair, pinning it up as she hurried into the kitchen. Dorie and Maydean sat at the table, cosmetics of every description spread out before them, much of it layered on Maydean’s face.

  “Get that stuff off your face!”

  “But I’m practicing how to put it on,” Maydean protested . “I told you, I want to enter that beauty contest.”

  “You have to find a sponsor,” Dorie said.

  “Throw that mess away.”

  Dorie slapped her hands protectively over the treasure trove of lipsticks, eye shadows and tubes of mascaras. “No! This belonged to my mother. Daddy threw it out. I snuck it out of the garbage. You won’t tell him, will you, Phoebe? He’ll be mad. I keep it hidden under my bed.”

  “I won’t tell him, but you can’t keep it hid if it’s splattered all over Maydean. Where’s your pa, anyway? I got to get over to the crab house.”

  “He went somewhere. Willie-Boy went with him.”

  “Who’s watching TV?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Wastin’ electricity. Go turn it off. Then clean up this kitchen. There’s milk and cereal spilt from corner to corner.” She went out the door, headed to check on the crabs.

  “Daddy said to remind you to wash bed linen this morning,” Dorie c
alled.

  Wash bed linen? Phoebe’s face flamed. The remains of her virtue were on those sheets. Lor! She raced back into the house. Gage had rolled the sheets down to the foot of the bed. Phoebe yanked them off. In the laundry room she started the washer and stuffed the linens into it, thankful she didn’t have to stand there with a pounding stick or run them through a wringer.

  “I’m goin’ to sell my crabs now,” she hollered as she made her way across the backyard.

  “Don’t forget my fifty cents,” Maydean yelled.

  Anxiety rippled through Phoebe as she backed the truck up to the rear door of the crab house where the crabs were shoveled into baskets and weighed. She must really be late. Usually there was a line of crabbers, waiting their turn. She banged on the door which brought Stout. The supervisor looked Phoebe up and down and frowned.

  “What’re you doing here, Hawley?”

  “Came to sell my crabs to Hank,” Phoebe replied. “I think I got about eight baskets worth.”

  “He ain’t buying today.”

  “He is, he told me.”

  “He ain’t. He sent the pickers home.”

  Phoebe felt dread begin to work its way up through her gut. She wanted to accuse Stout of lying, but no sound of laughter or radios came from the picking room, and she could see beyond Stout that the big steam vats were idle.

  “Why? Did he say why?”

  “He don’t have to say why, he’s the boss. You want to sell your crabs, you come back in the morning. Early.”

  “I got to sell ’em today. Who else buys crabs?”

  Stout glanced over at Phoebe’s catch. “None of the bigger houses are gonna mess with buying just that dab you’re hauling. And anyway, you want to sell to Hank, you got to sell to him exclusively. He hears you sold elsewhere, he won’t buy from you and you’ll have to go clear across the bridge to sell.” Stout glanced past Phoebe to the crabs. “You better get some ice on those, some of ’em are starting to go belly-up. Hank don’t buy dead or dying.”

  “Don’t worry, I aim to.”

  She’d get Gage to take her wherever ice was to be had. At the junkyard she parked the truck in the shade, sprayed cool water over the crabs and went to find him.

  “He’s not home yet,” said Dorie.

  Phoebe went to the welding shed to see if she could get her tag. She’d find the ice house by herself, she decided. The shed was padlocked on both ends. She discovered the windows nailed shut from the inside.

  She returned to the truck, tossed aside more dead crabs. Those alive didn’t try to pinch her even when she reached past them. She hung out the wash, waited for Gage, sorted dead and dying crabs, fixed lunch, and went back outside. She’d try to find the ice house, tag or no tag, she decided. She started the motor. It sputtered. The gas gauge read empty. She wasn’t defeated yet. She’d siphon gas from the car.

  Both ends of the boat shed were locked. It had no windows. The whole world was conspiring against her, Phoebe thought, dejected.

  When the sheets were dry she made Gage’s bed. Then she let down the tailgate of the truck and sat on it.

  She was finished. Up and finished before she even got started. She tossed another dead crab onto the pile.

  Fate wasn’t abstract, she thought, it was something good, tangible, physical, her place in the world. Fate meant escape from poverty. It meant good-smelling soaps, regular meals, having her family at her side. She didn’t see how she was going to deal with an absence of good fate. Only last night she had become a woman. She thought she had become invincible. It must’ve been a sin even if she hadn’t done it on a Sunday. She was being punished.

  A one-clawed crab scooted over the tailgate, landed belly up and didn’t move. She wished she knew how to keep crabs from dying.

  It was a balmy afternoon, not a cloud in the sky. A breeze flicked at Phoebe’s hair, the sun bore down. She swatted at a swarm of humming gnats and gazed out at the junkyard which held Gage Morgan’s treasures.

  The huge pile of dead crabs had begun to smell.

  Miserable, Phoebe sniffed and contemplated her future.

  — • —

  Phoebe saw Gage approaching. Light-headed with loss and defeat, she didn’t stir.

  The odor stopped him several feet from the truck. He eyed the pile of crabs over which flies buzzed and flitted. Phoebe’s cheeks were taut, the flesh made translucent by the sun. She appeared so dejected Gage was taken aback. Before him was not the Phoebe Hawley he’d come to know. That Phoebe wouldn’t let herself be caught sitting in the middle of crab rot with her blouse buttoned up to her gullet and no feistiness in evidence. He paused long enough to take a deep breath. “What happened?”

  “You can see what happened. In case you’re wonderin’, half of nothin’ is nothin’.”

  Something twisted inside Gage. “Regardless of what you may think, I’m not the piper coming to collect too soon. Are those tears I see?”

  “You see sweat!”

  “Oh. Go in the house and wash up, why don’t you? I’ll bury that mess.”

  Phoebe didn’t budge. “I can’t pay any on the bumper, either.”

  Gage rocked on his heels, his eyes mocking. “Well, I’d offer to take it out in trade, but between Hawley pride and Hawley elbows, I might end up like Hawley crabs.”

  ‘This ain’t no time for jokes! If you’d been here when I needed you, this wouldn’t’ve happened.”

  “You needed me?” His eyebrows rose. “That’s a departure from Hawley independence.”

  “I needed ice to save my crabs.”

  “Ah. Let me know when you need me for my own sake,” Gage heard himself saying. “Things might take a turn for the better.” And before she discerned that he’d laid his soul bare he rushed on. “I might consider fronting you the money for more bait, and a hundred pounds of ice should you need it. I know a bit about crabbing, if you’re willing to learn.”

  “I’m not eating any more crow on account of you. Besides, there probably ain’t a blamed crab left in that canal.”

  “If you’re interested, I’ll show you how to use the skiff, sink traps along the bay side of the marsh.”

  Phoebe’s spirits lifted. “Get the bait and show me now.”

  “Can’t. I’m expecting a flatbed with a propeller that needs repair. I’ve got to open the shop.”

  To that Phoebe applied the only bribe she owned. “Then you won’t find me in your bed tonight.”

  “Suits me. I haven’t recovered from last night.”

  Phoebe was unwilling to accept that she did not yet have a fixed and solid perch in the universe. “You appear recovered to me.”

  “Do I?” He recalled Phoebe’s ravenous sexuality, the way she had arched above him, the delicate veins in her breasts. He shook himself as if to shrug off a momentary enchantment. “Looks can be deceiving as I well know.”

  “If you’re so wobbly, how can you dig a hole?” She leaped from the truck bed with offhand bravado. “I’ll dig it. It’s my mess.”

  “Suppose we do it together?”

  Phoebe was conscious of a sudden need for him. She drew back from it as if drawing back from a chasm. “I don’t want any help from you. Where’s the shovel?”

  Rebuffed, Gage kept his eyes fixed on Phoebe. Last night she had given him an extraordinary gift. Now she was acting as if they’d shared little more than a breakfast together. Because of Phoebe the discipline he’d exercised in staying celibate had evaporated. The power she had gained over him in so short a time activated his ego and gave rise to an acid tongue.

  “Use your elbows, why don’t you?” he sneered sweetly. “It’ll go faster. If anybody wants me, I’ll be in the shop.”

  — • —

  Every time she dumped a wheelbarrow full of crabs into the trench she’d dug in the soft ground near the canal edge, Phoebe mourned. It was like burying gold that had gone bad.

  When finally she went into the house, she met with a racket that could have caused deafness. Gage had fo
llowed one of her suggestions. He’d bought Dorie a dozen chicks. The chicks were cheep-cheeping all over the house. Doing other things, too. Yelling and laughing, Dorie and Willie-Boy chased behind the yellow fluffs, enthralled. Phoebe grabbed at Dorie when she scooted out from under the table.

  “Get the mop and clean up behind those animals. This kitchen looks like a barnyard. Then put them in their box and out on the porch.” Willie-Boy was rasping for air. Phoebe made him lie down.

  Maydean was above chicks. She was parading around the house with a book on her head.

  “Phoebe, has my posture improved?”

  “Books are for the inside of your head, not the outside.”

  “You’re just jealous. You’d never win a beauty contest. They wouldn’t even let you enter!”

  “They won’t you, either, not with a pair of shiners.”

  It was an empty threat. The palms of Phoebe’s hands were sore, with blisters rising. She couldn’t even make a fist to wave in the air. Maydean was right, she thought. Her mind touched on all of the proud and beautiful things she would never be. Being clever had no beauty. Work might have a kind of beauty, but it took its toll on the worker. Love was supposed to be beautiful, but Gage had scorned it. Between his appeal and his menace, she was trapped. Love was on the side of the devil. She slid into a chair, folded her arms and laid her head upon them.

  The book slid from Maydean’s head. “Phoebe! What’s wrong?”

  “I’m tired. Tired of worry. Tired of work. Tired. Tired. Tired.”

  Maydean wrinkled her nose. “You stink, too.”

  A sob escaped Phoebe.

  The cry so startled Maydean she blurted: “You go take a bath and lie down. I’ll cook supper.”

  In her frame of mind, the suggestion held too much appeal for Phoebe to resist.

  — • —

  “How much flour do I use to make biscuits?”

  Drowsily, Phoebe came half out of the pleasant dream she was having. “Two cups.”