Free Finding Home by Jackie Weger Page 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 wha t 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 keep in’ an eye on you. Don’t you reckon she’d like to see you brushin’ your hair of a mornin’ and