Eye of the Beholder Read online

  Phoebe got out of the tub, toweled off, and stared at her reflection in the steam-misted mirror hanging on the bathroom door. She couldn’t go much wrong by knowing what she had to work with—smart women used what was available.

  Her brain was her best feature. But it was invisible to the naked eye. Gage Morgan didn’t appear the type to be interested in a brain.

  Wet, her hair clung in tight curls to her head. She fluffed it out. There were those who paid money at the beauty parlor to match it in color and style. She had it for free. That was one good point. Her neck was long and creamy, especially on the nape where the sun didn’t get to it. All things considered, she had a nice neck. That was a second good point. Not counting her knees, her legs were shapely and strong. That made three good points.

  Phoebe’s gaze dropped to her torso. The only failing she had, if a body could call it such, was below her neck and above her thigh. If it wasn’t already, it ought to be a sin for a man to judge a woman by what she had or lacked, from nipple to thighbone.

  Best thing she could do was to convince Gage Morgan just how much of a sinner he was.

  She took a big shuddering breath and began to pull on clean jeans, a faded shirt, tying the tail in a knot at her ribcage.

  Best thing she could do was to attack Gage Morgan at his purse line. Seems like, she thought, pinching her cheeks to give them color, everything a woman wanted and needed about a man was below his belt. The thought made her feel less sure of herself.

  In the kitchen Dorie and Maydean were playing at doing dishes. Willie-Boy, they said, was watching TV.

  On the back porch the crabs were blowing bubbles and warring among themselves. On the path to the welding shed, Phoebe stopped and admired a pair of gulls, wings spread wide, skimming the canal.

  The sea gull knew all about its life from the moment it was hatched. Instinct told it everything it needed to know. The bird managed life without ever having a thought. The closer Phoebe got to the welding shed, the harder she wished she wasn’t having the thoughts she was having. She was thinking about sex. She had always been above such things. Up until she laid eyes on Gage Morgan she had thought that sex was the least of it. She foresaw now that she might have been misguided. She wished she couldn’t count every one of her ribs.

  Emerging into the welding shed, Phoebe looked almost pretty. The blouse knotted at her ribcage made a brave show; still bath-damp, her hair was frizzed into corkscrews, her unseemly thoughts kept her cheeks pink. Not wishing to be accused of sneaking, she hallo’d in her clear musical voice.

  Gage pushed his welding goggles atop his head which had the effect of making his hair bristle wildly. He watched Phoebe approach. He had mixed emotions about the situation in which he found himself. He’d taken in and fed a stray cat or two, but taking in stray humans was altogether a different matter. He was having trouble acknowledging that he had actually done such a thing. But he liked having his clothes washed, his food cooked, his house cleaned, Dorie looked after and kept from pestering him. Velma had never done that, but a man couldn’t speak ill of his dead wife. Any bad saying about Velma had to be slyly done by others, or he was put in the position of defending her.

  Gage didn’t like being put into any position that cost him money or loose words either. He leaned against the giant propeller he was repairing and waited to see which it was going to be with Phoebe Hawley.

  “I worked up a storm at the crab house,” she said by way of greeting. Gage looked good, she thought. Work sweat beaded on his brow and wet his arms, highlighting the thick corded muscles. If he was making-do with a woman, she thought, he’d sure have to take care to be gentle.

  “Seventy dollars worth?”

  “You’re a man what knows the value of a dollar, ain’t you, Gage?”

  “I am. Better than most.”

  “I figured that. A man owning all you do, keeping it up the way you do. Working hard. I said to myself, a man like Gage Morgan sure does know about a dollar.”

  Agreeing, but growing skeptical, Gage nodded. Phoebe thrust out her hand.

  “So, here’s a dollar on account. That leaves me owin’ you sixty-nine. Pickin’ crabs is some different from pickin’ cotton, but I got the hang of it now. Tomorrow I expect to double what I paid you today.”

  Surprise made a whole rush of words leap to Gage’s tongue. “A dollar is all you earned today!”

  “Nope. Made a tad more, but I got to keep some back for Willie-Boy’s medicine. Howsomever, if you want it—” He was looking as if he did. “Now that I got a job, I’ve got to find us a place to live. That don’t come for free. Most folks ain’t like you, lettin’ me charge room and board against housework and the like.”

  “I never said—”

  “I know you ain’t,” Phoebe rushed on. “Most good-hearted folks find words difficult. My ma’s like that. She’d give her house over to any stranger that pecked on the door and be so overcome with pity for the poor thing, she’d like as not speak two words from supper to bed. I noticed last night you’re a lot like that,” she added, making sure the corner she butted him into didn’t have any sideways leaks.

  His face was turning red. Embarrassed, Phoebe thought, slacking up on her misdirected charm. “I’ll let you get back to weldin’. Seems like the kids caught enough crabs to cook up a mess of gumbo. After it’s to boilin’ I thought I’d clear out a patch behind the house for a kitchen garden. That is, if you ain’t got no objection. Not that I’d be here to see it a-growin’, but those potatoes I peeled yesterday had some good growing eyes. Seems a shame to let ’em go to waste when they’re just itchin’ to sprout.”

  Gage had so much objection he choked on it. She was taking over his house, his land, his daughter, his… He surveyed Phoebe from under half-lowered lids. One dollar. She thought she had the upper hand. Thought she was fooling him. He was smarter than she was. He had to be. He was a man. A learned man, especially when it came to women. Velma had ripped him up one side and down the other with her ways. He hadn’t balked then, but he was balking now.

  “I don’t care if you stick peelings in the ground from here to Mobile. What I do care about is the seventy—”

  “Sixty-nine,” Phoebe put in since he’d pocketed the dollar.

  “Sixty-nine bucks you owe for denting my truck.”

  “I guess I could give you another dollar. Then mayhap we could call it even. The way you weld and bang an’ all, you could fix your truck yourself.”

  “I aim to. Seventy dollars’ worth.”

  “You sure are stuck on that figure,” Phoebe said with malevolent geniality. “What’re you gonna do, line them raggedy fenders with fur?”

  Gage flushed darkly. “I know the value of a dent. Get out of my shop. I’ve got a living to make. I want you out of my house. Taking in transients is for the Salvation Army.”

  Phoebe’s lips went numb.

  Her dream was crumbling. She was expending energy making her chest heave and flutter and Gage Morgan was oblivious to it. A romantic-minded man would notice, endowments or not.

  “We ain’t transients. You’re holdin’ us hostage by stealin’ my bumper smack off my truck. You think I like being here? Cleanin’ and scrubbin’ and cookin’ in the middle of a junkyard! You’re lookin’ at a body who was made for better things.”

  Gage snorted. “I’m looking at a body that’d have to put on two pounds to make it as a toothpick.”

  Phoebe’s heart tripped. He had noticed her heaving chest—and took it wrong. “You’re a vile-mouthed man, Gage Morgan. Hell-bound, certain.” Oh, but she was in the company of a man who needed educating. “I can’t wait until tomorrow,” she said, giving him a full blast of scorn. “I hope I make enough money to pay you triple on that blamed bumper. But if you keep aggravatin’ me, callin’ me names, I’m liable to get on the road, bumper or no. And if Willie-Boy goes to dyin’, it’ll be on you.” She drew a breath to go on speaking, paused and shut her mouth.

  Gage passed a hand across his for
ehead, smearing the sweat and smut. “Willie-Boy could’ve died all over this junkyard today. I had to run him out of here twice. He looks about as sick as an overfed puppy.”

  Phoebe decided she was getting used to Gage Morgan’s good looks. So much so she was starting to see his flaws, things about him that could irritate. It wouldn’t take much for her to start thinking penny pinching was a bad thing. Then there were his eyebrows—they were all spiky. Not to mention that he was using up all her good points getting her angry at him.

  “If he came in here it was to get outta the sun. You should’ve made him sit still instead of chasin’ him out. Anyway, you can’t see his sickness. You got to listen for it.”

  “What I’m listening for is you to say goodbye.”

  “Hand over my bumper and I’ll holler it loud and clear.”

  “I was taken to the cleaners once by a woman. Made out a fool. It won’t happen a second time. Seventy dollars for that bumper or it can sit over there and rust to nothing.”

  “You’re a lucky man,” said Phoebe, grasping the impact of what he’d said, “if all that keeps you from dunce and fool is seventy dollars. I’ll get it up, never you mind about that. Even if I got to hang around here and put up with your un-Christian ways till doomsday.” Which would suit her just fine and then some. She turned away from him and sashayed out. Not caring if he was watching, not caring if she had mastered the hip rolling yet.

  Chapter Four

  Phoebe found a recipe for gumbo on a package of seasoned rice. The good thing about cooking—or having food to cook—was that it kept the ghost of hungrier days at bay.

  The bad thing about cooking was the crabs. Live, they were more worrisome than dead because she had to dodge their snapping claws until the boiling water closed over them. But the bounty of them, coming from the backyard so to speak, set her to wondering if there was any money to be made crabbing.

  Willie-Boy wandered into the kitchen. “Phoebe, my back hurts.” His face was flushed, his eyelids swollen. Phoebe removed his shirt. His back was fire red, sunburned.

  “If it’s not one thing, it’s ten!” she exclaimed, exasperated. “I oughta tear into Maydean and Dorie good, for lettin’ you stay out in that sun too long.”

  “It’s not their fault.” His eyes watered. “I wanted to crab. I don’t like having to make out like I’m sick.”

  “You have to do things in moderation, Willie-Boy. Moderation. Hours and hours in the sun ain’t good for you.” She went to fill the tub with cool water and put Willie-Boy to soaking in it. “That’ll take the sting out. When you finish soaking I’ll make an aspirin paste to rub on your back. You’ll feel better by morning.”

  “Are we gonna live here forever, Phoebe? I like it here. I like Dorie, too. She’s nice to me.”

  “She is? How so?”

  “She don’t boss me like you and Maydean do. She said she’d teach me how to swim.”

  “Swim! Willie-Boy when I ain’t around I don’t want you gettin’ in the water. You even think about it and I’ll turn your fanny the color of your back. Now you stay in that tub until I come for you.”

  Maydean and Dorie were watching television. Phoebe turned it off. “You two find a hoe. I’ve picked out a spot to hill up for potatoes.”

  “I’m no farmer,” said Dorie.

  “There’s a mess of things you ain’t,” Phoebe retorted. “One of them you ain’t, is mannerly.”

  “I don’t have to mind you.”

  “Neither do I,” said Maydean.

  “You’re borrowin’ bravery where there ain’t none, Maydean. I got the money to put you on a bus now. Vinnie would sure be glad to have you back changin’ diapers, washin’ dishes, and sleepin’ on a pallet on the floor. You want that kind of life, you just say the word. I marked off a patch of chickweed that I want turned under. So what’s it going to be, hillin’ potatoes or Vinnie?”

  Maydean flounced out. Dorie said, “You aren’t my mother.”

  Phoebe met Dorie’s eyes. “I’m not trying to be. But somebody’s got to take you in hand, teach you manners, teach you how to take care of yourself. You don’t even know to comb your hair in the mornin’ or wash your face without being told.”

  “I wish you would leave. I don’t like you being in my mother’s room. That was her special place.”

  Phoebe softened. “Your ma’s special place now is in heaven. She don’t need that room.”

  “It was her dreaming room. It was where she went to get away from Daddy.”

  Phoebe had to ask. “Did she tell you that?”

  “I just knew it. Daddy fussed at her. At night I could hear him.”

  At night. There were things that went on between a man and a woman after dark that no child should know about. Phoebe had the idea that Dorie had heard conversations she hadn’t understood. “When your ma drowned, was she by herself?”

  Dorie shook her head. “She was with a friend. He got knocked in the head when the skiff upended. He drowned, too. I could’ve saved her. But she didn’t let me go with her.”

  The friend was a he, Phoebe was thinking, summing up in her mind what Gage Morgan’s after-dark arguments with his wife had been about. She couldn’t countenance a woman not taking to Gage Morgan. But who knew what went on inside a marriage. “Listen Dorie, your ma’s in heaven now. No doubt she’s keepin’ an eye on you. Don’t you reckon she’d like to see you brushin’ your hair of a mornin’ and keepin’ your face clean, like she taught you?” She kept her eyes on Dorie.

  “You think my mother is watching me? All the time?”

  “Well, mayhap not all the time. I imagine heaven is a pretty busy place what with saintly choirs, and angels flittin’ here and yonder. But no doubt the first thing your ma does when she gets up of a mornin’ in heaven is look down to see if your face is clean and your hair is brushed.” She watched Dorie pondering the idea.

  “Can my mother hear me if I talk to her?”

  “I ain’t sure about that. Let me think on it. Right now I got to get Willie-Boy outta the tub.”

  She also had a whole wealth of things to think on. She’d been taking Gage Morgan’s animosity personal. His digs at her about being womanly—why that was on account of his own wife stepping out on him. That put a different slant on things.

  Most likely Gage wanted to get romantic, but cuckolded as he’d been, he didn’t trust a woman. His man-ego was bruised terrible. Throughout the remainder of the afternoon Phoebe figured and figured, looking for a solution around a disloyal wife who was dead and buried.

  Considering how little attention she paid it, the gumbo turned out tasty. She made corn bread, bread pudding and iced tea to wash it all down. Willie-Boy was too miserable to sup at the table. She fed him from a tray and left him lying on his stomach, arms and legs stretched out, like an unpapered kite.

  Dorie and Maydean were still at the dining table when Gage came in from the shed. He washed up and took his place. Silently Phoebe placed food before him. He was taking to her serving him as if it was the most ordinary of things. Routine. That was a good sign. He spoke once to Dorie about the crab catch. Phoebe caught Maydean faking manners and trying to get his attention with puckered lips.

  “Dorie, if you and Maydean want to watch Wheel of Fortune on TV, you can take your pudding in the living room, that is, if your pa don’t have no objection.”

  Mouth full of buttered corn bread, Gage shook his head.

  “I’m fine where I am,” said Maydean, sugarcoating the words.

  Phoebe bent low and hissed in her ear. “You ain’t fine. And you’re gonna get worse soon’s I get you alone.”

  Scowling hard, she shoved a bowl of pudding at Maydean. Once the girls left the kitchen Phoebe made herself a glass of tea and sat down opposite Gage. The solution to Gage Morgan was crystal clear. She knew just how to ease his mind about herself, but it had to be done in a roundabout way.

  “I don’t like anybody staring at me while I’m eating,” he said.

  A ho
t cloud grazed Phoebe’s eyelids. “I ain’t starin’. I’m admirin’,” she said brazenly.

  Gage gave her an icy glare. “You can’t soften me up. I’m not the kind of man that’d take a pound of flesh for what’s owed me. Even if it was offered by a woman who could spare it.”

  Phoebe’s gall rose. She swallowed it back. “I ain’t offerin’ you anything. And I don’t need your permission to admire a thing or not. Howsomever, you been misinformed by somebody. Your looks ain’t nothin’ special to draw the eye. I was admirin’ the manners you have.”

  His cynicism was expressed in one dark spiky eyebrow, arched as if it’d been plucked to appear that way.

  “Day after tomorrow is Sunday. We Hawleys are church-goin’. I was just wonderin’ if you know of a good Baptist church hereabouts. One that’s right strict and preaches damnation against fornication. I ain’t for loose fornicators.”

  His cynical expression faded, replaced by—Phoebe couldn’t put a name to what replaced it. She felt her heart compress uneasily. He wasn’t taking to her solution right.

  “Who the hell do you think you are? To come into my home and pass judgment.”

  Phoebe was thunderstruck. “Are you a fornicator?”

  “Don’t try to cover up what you meant,” he sneered. “You gossiped at the crab house about Velma. My wife is dead and I won’t hear bad talk about her. Not in this house. Now you get your things—your brother and sister—and get out.”

  Lost! Everything lost.

  Phoebe tried to speak and couldn’t. Blood drained from her face, the paleness having the effect of making her eyes seem to take up her whole face. Her legs were trembling so she feared they wouldn’t hold straight to take her into the living room to call Maydean or to the bedroom for Willie-Boy.

  “What’s wrong?” Maydean asked.

  “Start packin’,” Phoebe said.