GYPSIES, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES

by Parris Afton Bonds

  Heading for the door, she paused and turned to blow him a kiss.

  He should feel even more remorseful. Whether as Gypsy Romy Sonnenschein or Jewess Irina Klockner, she was headed not only for the door but for annihilation.

  Ten minutes later, his overwhelming sense of remorse immediately vanished in the taxi cab, careening around curves on its dash to the airport. He groped into his suit jacket for the requisite paperwork to be filled out, then glanced at a frowning Moishe. “The papers, the visas – they’re gone!”

  § CHAPTER FOUR §

  Nothing had prepared Romy, either for America – or for her National Youth Association sponsor. Not even all the Western moving pictures she had watched avidly.

  In truth, her entire trip was like one of those moving pictures – an alternate reality. Flying above clouds in that soaring airplane – like a canary freed of is cage; and next, peering from the ocean liner Europa’s deck out onto an infinity of water, sparkling with buttery sunlight and silvery moonlight.

  And at each stop – the Berlin airport, the port of Bremen, and then Veracruz, she expected her ruse to be revealed, that she would be turned away, sent back to Germany to be confined in one of its political concentration camps until her time came to be turned into a soap bar.

  That morning, leaving the Port of Galveston’s holding room for the medical examiner’s office, where she could still have been found unfit and sent back – if for no reason than she was illiterate – she was cleared.

  Half dizzy with relief, she tottered on Irina’s high heels – well, on one heel, the other had broken off – with the rest of the crowd making its way through a maze of roped aisles to exit into a larger area. Apprehensively, she scanned the mob waiting in the stifling warehouse to greet the arriving passengers.

  A short, elderly man, his black skullcap contrasting with white hair springing from beneath it, hailed her. With him stood a tall, rawboned man in a gray pinstripe suit and cowboy hat and boots, no less.

  Aye, she was really in Texas. She was tempted to pinch herself. For once, tis not the wretched luck of the Irish.

  “Rabbi Harold Hickman of Temple B'nai Israel,” the man in the yarmulke said, an open smile parting his short, white beard. “So glad you made it, Miss Klockner. Although our Bremen contacts alerted us regarding your arrival, I almost did not recognize you. You do not look at all like your newspaper photos.”

  She brightened a struggling smile. “Uh, it has been a long and uncertain trip.”

  She did not need a mirror to know how bedraggled she looked. A portion of her red-and-maroon skirt’s seam had come unstitched at the bottom flounce. Irina’s expensive white coat was a filthy gray. Her white beret looked like a dollop of dirty snow. And her soiled purse, with its previous nappy white suede, had lost its natural fuzzy appearance.

  “Well, you are safe now, young lady” said the homely man in cowboy boots. He had a stentorian boisterousness that nigh vibrated the warehouse walls. White cowboy hat in his left hand, he thrust out his other and shook hers heartily, all the while eying her up and down. Did he suspect her charade? “Representative Lyndon Johnson. My Operation Texas has arranged to place you in a work camp here.”

  “A ranch, really,” the rabbi said. “But we go too fast. Only yesterday, your fiancé and his companion arrived on the S.S. Carousel.”

  She could feel her eyebrows shoot up. Just in time, she suppressed her brogue. “My fiancé?”

  “Why, yes. When they missed the Berlin flight, they drove to Warsaw and caught the next flight out. See, here they come now,” he nodded over his shoulder.

  Gunter’s facial scar was red with fury. And Moishe’s glower clearly indicated he was going to gut her at the first opportunity.

  Her mind riffled through her predicament as rapidly as her fingers did her cards. Aye, the attorney Gunter Wagner had reason to hold a grudge for the caper she had pulled – pinching the remaining two sets of traveling papers when she had given him that farewell hug.

  So, from where had he and Moishe Klein nabbed additional sets? And so quickly? But then Klein’s kind was like a cat, always landing on all fours.

  Cat?

  Nay, dogs!

  Now, she remembered where she had seen the dwarf. With Klauffen, the first time – the day the SS officer had spotted her and Luca at the Berlin street fair. Only then Klauffen had been in possession of both his eyes.

  She and her brother had been harmlessly singing and playing the guitars – not yet engaged in their more lucrative activities – when the black clad Klauffen had ordered their arrest. Flee though they did, he had set his dogs to follow their scent, like sharks followed blood, and corner them.

  A couple of times later, on those closely escorted trips between Sachsenhausen barracks and its experiment lab, she had seen the dwarf with Klauffen and his dogs.

  Moishe Klein a collaborator with the Nazis?

  She could call Moishe out. But, no. In America, it would be her word, a Gypsy’s, against his, a volunteer agent working benevolently in behalf of Berlin’s American Jewish Joint Distribution Center.

  Besides, better to lay low than call attention to herself. Yet, Holy Mother, it seemed she invariably did so. Called attention to herself.

  The best she could hope for was that Moishe’s recall was faulty, which was likely in this case, since his memory of her, if it existed, would have been of long ago and only in association with her twin brother, the SS doctors’ prime lab experiment samples – two of Dr. Mengele’s many twins who had seen unspeakable horror.

  Perfectly creased new felt hat in hand, Gunter crossed the short concrete expanse and met her with that perpetual smirk. “Well, my beloved, better late than – ”

  “ – than pregnant,” she retorted with false bravado.

  The politician, Johnson, slapped his trousered thigh with his big hat and emitted a guffaw of laughter.

  But the fine hairs on her skin stood on ends, like antennae, perceiving yet another menace beyond the realm of these four men.

  “Under the auspices of the National Youth Association, the three of you will be relocated to the Austin area,” the rabbi was saying. “Miss Klockner, you’ll be working for the rancher, Duke McClellan.”

  “Come,” Senator Johnson said, cupping her elbow and steering her to the row of nearest seats, a few feet away. “Let’s introduce you to your sponsor. Your life will be in his hands”

  The last held the lighthearted, folksy tone of a jest, but her instincts warned differently. Duke? She shivered. Not a good omen. Not with Old Duke most likely counting worms. Not that she was superstitious.

  The sinewy, sun-weathered man with the black broom of a mustache took his time rising to his full height, made even more extraordinary by scuffed boots. His holey jeans were so old, they shined.

  Nevertheless, his stature exuded confidence – and a strength bent on outlasting whatever or whoever opposed him. His blue eyes burned hotter than a solar flare. Clearly, he was not happy about this. She would have to tread carefully.

  He tipped his sweat-stained cowboy hat that must have once been black, in deference, however briefly, to the female species in his presence. “Ma’am.” He shoved lengthy fingers through unruly hair, the burnt brown of a lightning-struck oak, that was matted to his pale forehead by the hat’s sweat band.

  “Now you three understand,” Congressman Johnson was confiding, “what Operation Texas is doing – hiding you Jews in our government NYA’s program – is not officially condoned by the Feds and could get me in a shitload of legal trouble, not to mention sending you back to Germany if word of this gets around.”

  The cowboy settled back his hat to shadow irregular, saturnine features made somehow and impossibly attractive. “Harold,” he told the rabbi, “this is not what I had in mind – dodging the law.”

  “Think of it this way,” the congressman said with a clap on the rancher’s back, “we are helping Jews dodge the bullet.”

  Her sponsor’s flinty eyes were u
ncompromising sparks. The iron-set of his jaw proclaimed he was not going to give her a chance.

  “Now, Duke, you know you need a cook,” the rabbi rebuked. “As a cook, Miss Klockner here will fit your needs admirably.”

  “A cook?” she squeaked.

  “You’re really thinking, Harold, this . . . this . . . ” the cowboy’s hand gestured dismissively at her, “ . . . could cook for seven men?” His voice was the low rumbling sound of a funeral caisson. Her funeral.

  “Seven – seventy,” she beamed, “does not matter. Even those Frenchie chefs have not seen the likes of my cooking.”

  Black eyebrows lowered over heavily-lidded eyes that could melt a polar ice cap. He was not amused by her play to the gallery. Squint lines that fanned from the corners of his eyes suggested he was well beyond youth’s callowness, and his mannerisms suggested a rugged stubbornness that time would not tame.

  And if she knew anything, she knew mannerisms. Survival meant the ability to read latent intentions that other people’s bodies telegraphed. Obviously, the man ruled his passions stringently. Self-contained and strong willed, aye, that he was. She would have her hands full convincing him he needed her.

  “You, Mr. Klein,” the rabbi continued serenely, ignoring the cowboy’s scowling challenge, “will continue to work with our American Jewish Joint Committee in Austin. They could use your knowledge and expertise of Europe’s Jewish communities.”

  The dwarf rubbed his paws expectantly. “About finances, Rabbi?”

  “Of course, each of you will receive a salary. A small one, albeit. And, of course, you will be provided with food and shelter. Mrs. Lavinia Spiegel, the chairwoman of Austin’s Jewish Relief Volunteer Program, is our coordinator.”

  “And as for you, Wagner,” Johnson said, “I have arranged a position with my Austin office’s Archives Department, beginning tomorrow.”

  “It requires a vast amount of clerical work,” the rabbi told Gunter, “and Congressman Johnson thinks it will suit your legal background admirably.”

  In a conspiratorial hush, Johnson explained, “We’ll have drawn up new papers with falsified names prepared by the Rabbi’s office tomorrow morning.” He had an affable, bumpkin manner, but she knew better than to take a politician at face value.

  Before Duke McClellan could make any further objection to his sponsorship, she said with unceremonious haste, “Make mine, my falsified name, Romy, if ye please. Romy Sonnenschein.”

  “Morris – Moe – Keller mine will be,” the dwarf said with just as much haste.

  “And mine, Gideon,” Gunter finished. “Gideon – uhh, Gideon Goldman.”

  The cowboy was having nothing to do with the plans. “I’m telling you, Harold, I’m not pleased as punch about taking on this girl,” he said, drawing out his few edgy words so they sounded to her like ocean waves pounding and galaxies colliding.

  But it was also something more, an undertone she heard. Naturally, she had to strain more than most to catch nuances and was therefore more attentive than most. But proficient as she was with languages, she could detect sound distinctions that escaped others.

  The man’s cadence, his articulation, the way he rolled his r’s and made the ‘th’ sound – she would bet he purposefully slowed his voice to hide a stuttering. That gravelly rumbling of trained speech would guard him – and he most likely succeeded with all but those with the most finely attuned ears.

  Or, in her case, ear.

  From beneath wrinkled and droopy lids, the rabbi’s eyes turned their warmth toward her sponsor. “Give it a go, Duke. For old times’ sake.”

  “I don’t have time, old times’ sake or not, to argue the case, Harold. It’s a five-hour trip back to the S&S, and I’m burning daylight.”

  “And be sure to take Miss Klockner– er, Miss Sonnenschein – into Austin tomorrow,” added the rabbi, as if the cowboy had already agreed to keep her on. “Mrs. Spiegel should have a box of donated clothing suitable for her size and gender – as well as, for you two gentlemen – along with all the paperwork.”

  “Be looking for another sponsor for her,” the rancher warned. “I mean it. Meanwhile, I’ve a prime Angus cow ready to birth any time now, so if you don’t mind, Harold – Congressman Johnson – we’d best be on our way.”

  The Big Guy turned to her. At once, his brows jacked low. A muscle in the high stone wall that was his cheek flickered. Not good signs. “Miss Sonnenschein?”

  He was already pivoting on his rundown boot heels, and she fast-peddled to catch up with him.

  A hand clamped her wrist, and Gunter spun her around. “We have some catching up to do, my love. I shall be in touch.” His arms encircled her waist, and the hearty kiss he bestowed on her mouth bordered dangerously on being impudent.

  Her fingertips flew to her lips. It had been so long since she had been kissed. Not since she was fourteen. Not since . . . better to not venture there.

  But Gunter’s kiss, what was that all about?

  § § §

  He must be off his nuts. Pure loco. Overdrawn at the memory bank.

  Sure, Rabbi Hickman had bailed him out more than once. Giving him a square meal after he had run away from home as a fourteen-year-old to become a saddle tramp, trailing a cattle herd to the Galveston port.

  Sure, Harold Hickman had found a better job for him aboard a tramp steamer.

  And, sure, Harold had helped him to swing an improvement loan for the ranch, after he had returned from a dozen years at sea and found his old man had kicked the bucket.

  Last year, Harold had even bargained for fencing supplies for the S&S from an Austin lumberyard going out of business.

  But this . . . this . . . Duke glanced askance at the wretched piece of calico who sat on the far side of his battered pickup as if she were merely out for a Sunday drive, scoping out the lay of the land. Her head swiveled left to right and back again like a tennis match observer. And he already had his hands full with the fourteen-year-old Bud’s obsession with tennis.

  Taking on a Jewish refugee as a cook at the rabbi’s beseeching, when old Jock’s hen-scratched serve-ups got the men by just fine – well, it was plumb crazy.

  Especially when the new cook looked like Irina Klockner did – or Romy Sonnenschein – or whatever the hell her name was. Eyes too wise. A rosebud mouth too smart. And a lightly freckled face far too puckish. She would be hell on wheels at his place. Have the men riled up and randy. He had enough headaches trying to run his piece-of-shit ranch without having a sexual stampede on his hands.

  Worse, when he got around to courting a wife, she would be none too pleased to find another woman had run of his home.

  A home. A wife. Children.

  Sure as shit, the S&S was more a ruin than a home. But he wanted to settle down. He was weary of wandering the earth’s far reaches. And his idea of a wife in no way matched the foreign floozy he was saddled with for a cook.

  He wanted respectability. Something he nor his family had ever possessed, if small town gossip was anything to judge by. The small town had died off in the Depression years, but, by God, he hadn’t.

  And he wanted a wife. One with his ma’s gentle spirit. Those reassuring childhood fairy tales she would read him had made family life more bearable those youthful years. His pa, already short-fused, returned from the Great War a shell-shocked tyrant and with nothing but a box of medals to show for it.

  Already tongue-tied during his old man’s carping, Duke had found himself stuttering wildly in the face of his pa’s increasing rages that came out of nowhere.

  Eventually, Duke had mastered his stuttering. In control of his words, in control of his world.

  Facilely, the girl switched that observant green gaze from the draught-stricken countryside toward him. “What kind of ranch is this – this Essence?”

  He blinked, then understood. “S. And. S. Sagebrush and Sidewinders. A cow ranch. With a ranch house not much larger than its chicken coop.”

  And not much better. And he m
eant to have better.

  Growing up, he could remember prairie dogs trying to push up through loose floorboards. At his age, scary. And he remembered walls layered with newspaper and gypsum-and-water paste for insulation and how, when the temperature changed drastically, stucco chips littered the floor like chicken feed.

  And those war years, when, still wet behind the ears, he along with his ma had tried to run the ranch in his old man’s absence. Chamber pots to be taken out. A cow to be milked. A plow to be pulled in lieu of a horse. Eggs to be collected. Fences to be mended. The cattle, few heads that they were, to be driven periodically from an overgrazed pasture to a greener one.

  Of course, the word ‘green’ was debatable when it came to its various shades these drought-stricken years. A smart man would surrender the impossibly winless fight against nature; but then his old man had always called him hardheaded – that, accompanied by those hardy cuffs on the head, until he had outmatched his pa in height.

  “You’ll have to take the bedroom for the time being. Meanwhile, I’ll camp out in my office.”

  Only until he could figure out a way to unload the gal. And it had better be damned soon. How old was she? With those otherworldly eyes, she could have passed for fifteen or twenty-five.

  “You’ll have Sundays off. Austin – and the Beth Israel Synagogue – is almost an hour away by bus. Its nearest stop is seven miles down the road.”

  “Uhhh, . . . I am not a practicing Jew.”

  His brows nearly collided. “And yet the American Jewish Joint Committee still arranged to harbor – ”

  “Does the S&S have a bathtub?”

  He took his gaze off the long and empty stretch of single-lane road to really look at her. A yearning he would not have expected deepened those pupils to a green paler than the rain-starved grass. “Installed two years ago.” A clawfoot one he had scrounged up from the Austin city dump.

  Which reminded him that they’d have to share the bathroom. He had expected a Jewish man for a cook. A man who could bunk with the rest of the hands in the only outbuilding that was inhabitable.