GYPSIES, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES

by Parris Afton Bonds

  The contention in the kitchen was hot enough to melt a birthday candle. Not that her twenty-first birthday was of any import. Well, the SS had been interested in her birthday – or, more to the point, the fact it was shared by a twin, her brother. How was Luca celebrating tonight . . . if he was even alive?

  Drying her hands on the damp dish towel slung over her shoulder, she held her ground. “She’ll try to ride ye, Duke. Ye may want to see what the cards have to say. She may not be for the likes of yuirself.”

  “And you are?”

  Head tilted, she considered this. “Well, as a matter of fact, aye, that may be. Not that I want to be a candidate, mind ye now.”

  He stared down at her incredulously. That look hurt but not as much as his next words. “I may be a lot of dastardly things, but one thing I am not is desperate. At least, not that desperate.”

  She bridled. “Well, I am desperate. Teach me to read those books ye read at night in yuir office – and how to fashion me letters better, and I’ll tend the kitchen garden for ye. Overgrown with weeds, it is.”

  His slow smile told her he knew he had the upper hand. “Pitch in doing the weekly laundry, and you have yourself a deal, Sunshine. Not that you could learn very much in the two months or so you have left till Christmas rolls around.”

  § § §

  Flashbacks, nightmares, yanked Romy from her sleep. Unbelievably in October, even though the Hill Country’s sparkling nights were cooler, her pillow, Duke’s pillow, was overly warm for her liking.

  Aye, its pillowcase smelled of soap, sunlight, and the clothes line’s fresh air, yet it still retained the redolence of his particular scent. Male. Invigorating. Arousing. Evocative of feelings she might have encountered in the mist of time long past.

  She flipped the pillow over to its cooler side and flipped her body onto her back. To no avail. She guessed it had to be close to three in the morning.

  Sleepy she was not. Tired, yes. Exhausted by the long, physically demanding days, starting at sunup, something to which her unconventional life had been unaccustomed. Gypsies did not like to be bound by the set hours or rules of a master and for that reason preferred the roving life.

  She shoved aside the confining covers and slid her feet into the huaraches. Among the donated apparel was a tatty nightdress, but she much preferred sleeping in Duke’s soft muslin shirt she had purloined from his closet.

  In the hallway outside his office door, she had to tiptoe around a jutting, creaking floorboard in order not to wake him. The house was a rambling wreck, with only the kitchen updated, modernized beyond her medieval culinary skills. Granted, however, the six ranch hands were doing their best to adapt to her cooking.

  The parlor’s fireplace was still alit with embers, illuminating her navigation between the stool she had resorted to using in order to pull on the overhead light’s chain, a spatula she had resorted to in swatting a horse fly, and the empty milk crock she had appropriated as a door stop.

  The front door’s hinges squeaked as if they had not been oiled in ages. The front porch’s screen door bellowed in protest, as well. And – shite! – her head collided with the porch’s dinner bell, setting up a clanging that her hands at once stilled. The noise would wake up the dead, including Duke . . . not that she cared.

  Her footsteps left imprints in the light frost tipping the scant grass, but, at last, she reached the barn. Sliding aside the barn door, she tugged on the single lightbulb’s chain string.

  Here were comforting memories of her youth – Irish cobs and self-sufficient Gypsy men, barbarous, mythical centaurs, who were as much a part of her as were her mum’s ridiculously fabled fortune telling.

  Romy meandered from one stall to another, her eyes adjusting to the muted light. A piebald here, a chestnut there, and in another, a roan – all belonging to the ranch hands. And which one was Duke’s?

  And there it was – the great bay. It had to be his.

  At her approach, the horse stamped and pawed its fragrant hay-strewn stall. “Easy boy,” she murmured, opening the stall gate and slipping inside, just out of reach of its tap-dancing hooves. Tossing its head and snorting, its eyes and nostrils flared.

  Using her Gypsy’s sing-song gentling whisper, she step-by-step moved forward. “Ahh, tis a beautiful horse, ye be.”

  The thickly muscled stallion quieted somewhat. Watching her warily from those great bark-brown eyes, it stood still, as she laid her cheek up alongside its muzzle. Horses were intrinsically considered sacred animals in Gypsy mind. “Tis all right. I merely want to spend some time with ye.”

  The smell of horseflesh, of stable, and hay and manure . . . all was well with the world.

  Until, she heard the rumble of Duke McClellan’s voice. “Better your time be spent elsewhere.” Clad only in those low-slung Levi’s and barefooted, he closed the stall gate behind him and sauntered to the bay’s other side. His long hands stroked its mighty barrel chest.

  After the ruckus she had raised, she wasn’t surprised to see him, yet she tensed, nevertheless. “Like where?” she asked, waiting to see if he was the kind of bloody bloke to come back with some suggestive remark, when instinct told her he wouldn’t.

  “Like pickpocketing the honest in Austin.”

  At that, her shoulder muscles relaxed. “Ahh, but tis here I’d rather be, watching ye flounder with yuir courting.”

  His eyes fired blue salvos across the bay’s muzzle. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Nay, but me cards do.” Not for this man a self-absorbed, materialistic, and snobby young woman with a nagging voice for a love interest. No,he was different, unique. “The cards whisper that the years of yuir youth stole away yuir heart’s power of speech.” A hunch, granted from what her ear detected, but a good one, if only because of how easily she picked up mannerisms and intonations.

  “I could say you’re certifiably crazy, but I’m the one certifiably crazy, agreeing to take you on.”

  “Tis only until I save me enough to get to Ireland.”

  “Ireland? Not back to Germany?”

  “Ye’ve head of the phrase, la querencia?”

  He shook his head, and she could almost hear his exasperated sigh. “If it’s not Tex-Mex Spanish, no.”

  “It means to desire. La querencia describes a place where ye feel safe, where ye feel at home – a place where yuir strength of character is drawn from.”

  “A Gypsy has strength of character?”

  She ignored his jibe. “For meself, la querencia would be Ireland.”

  “Sounds like a damn fairy tale.”

  “Do ye not believe in fairy tales?” she whispered, as if gentling a wild horse. “Believe in True Love, and Soul Mates? Ye know, Duke, me cards can help ye find yuir heart’s desire.”

  “And you really do,” he asked, “you really do believe in all this hogwash?”

  Avoiding his derisive stare, she caressed the bay’s mane. “Ye desire that happy ending so badly ye’d take on the world, Duke McClellan.”

  It was as if she had landed a solid punch in his stomach. “Remember, your days here are numbered,” he said, and swung away, stalking toward the gate.

  “Good night,” she called after him. “Sleep tight.”

  § CHAPTER EIGHT §

  The next day, a buzzing-ringing sound drew Romy’s attention from parboiled collard greens and garlic she was sautéing to the wall telephone. Not sure what to do, she simply stared transfixed at it.

  The kitchen’s back door squeaked open, and sunbaked Skinny Henry entered. He glanced from her to the ringing phone and back to her. She shrugged sheepishly.

  His stilt-like legs crossed to the far wall, and he picked up the cork-like receiver. “Yeah, Mamie? He’s out at the cow dip. Yup, tick infestation again.” A pause. “The Austin library, you say? Yeah, put her through.”

  With fascination, Romy listened, much as she had when Lavinia Spiegel had conversed through the telephone. Romy was perplexed how voices traveled through
that wire. Likewise, the parlor’s radio. And even more so the mesmerizing moving pictures into which she and her grandfather would sneak.

  Telegraphing and Morse code she could understand, but moving pictures, radios and telephones were an endless source of fascination.

  As were the rifle and pistols above the parlor’s fireplace. One day soon she just knew Duke would take down one of the weapons and shoot her out of sheer annoyance.

  “Uh-huh,” Skinny Henry drawled “I’ll let him know the book is in, Miss Charlotte.”

  When he replaced the receiver, Romy crossed to him and, eyes aglow, asked, “Do ye mind showing me how ye do that, Skinny Henry? Talk to another place?”

  His Chicago background would know a lot of things outside her limited experience in cities, and those had been Europeans ones with different customs and ways of doing things.

  His big ears on his two-by-four-narrow face reddened with pleasure. “Hell, I mean shucks,” he preened, “it ain’t nothin’, Miss Romy.”

  “Romy. Just Romy.”

  He pushed his hat back, revealing the white of his high forehead. “See, you give this handle here on the side a couple of whirls, then, once you pick up the receiver, the switchboard operator – that’s mostly Mamie – she will put you through. You gotta give her the name and number of where you want. But just so you know, other parties on the same line as ours can also listen in on your – ”

  The kitchen’s back door swung open again. Duke, with Ulysses padding behind, ducked his head, his hat just barely missing the lintel. Nostrils flaring, he squinted at the range.

  Shite! She had forgotten the collard greens.

  She rushed back to yank the smoking cast iron skillet from the burner. “Shite!” she yelped aloud this time, releasing at once the searing hot handle. Grease and greens splattered over his boots and her huaraches. She hopped from one burning foot to the other.

  Immediately, Ulysses wedged between her and Duke to lick up the mess, then turned up his wet nose at it. Well, so much for her shredding meat for the practically toothless old Labrador.

  Taking her by surprise, Duke swept her up to plant her on the sink counter. Rapidly pumping the sink’s handle, he flushed cold water over her feet, huarache sandals and all.

  Anxiously, she glanced up at his suntanned face, expecting to see his fierce expression smoldering, but she was stunned by the upward tilt of the ends of his mustache, the color of aged whiskey. “Now that’s what I call hotfooting it, Sunshine.”

  Continuing to splash her feet with water, he told the gawking Skinny Henry, “Clean up the mess, dude.”

  Turning a deadly earnest gaze back on her, Duke said, flatly, unequivocally, “If these past few weeks are an example of your culinary abilities, Thanksgiving, not Christmas, could well be your last day on the job.”

  Thanksgiving? What was that? “But – but – you agreed to sponsor me.”

  “Rabbi Hickman can find you another sponsor . . . maybe . . . and God help that poor fool.”

  She could feel her chest tighten and tried to swallow back the desperation gorging her throat.

  “Uhh, your book – The Travels of Marco Polo – is ready to be picked up at the public library,” Skinny Henry interjected, as if to deflect the tension. He was kneeling, scraping the food snippets into the big galvanized pail beneath the open sink.

  She thought quickly. “Take me with ye – when ye go to the library.”

  The slashes of brows nearly collided across the bridge of Duke’s strong nose. “What?!”

  With her Irish gift of the gab, the trip would buy her the time to convince him otherwise. She nodded at the window over the sink. “Yuir kitchen window needs curtains. And your shirt cuff, tis missing a button. Right handy I am with thimble and thread.”

  “Forgive me if I scoff,” he lathed the cold water around her heels and ankles, “but that’s what you said about your cooking skills.”

  His stroking hands forged an intimacy that disconcerted her. Focusing on her point, she looked up into his face, trying to catch his eye. “All I be asking is the chance to better me mind.”

  He left off with her feet and, stepping back, planted his fists on his hips in that challenging, characteristic gesture of his. “The way you flim-flam, your mind doesn’t need bettering, Sunshine. Your ethics do.”

  “What?!”

  “You’ve been here sixteen days – sixteen days too long. The kitchen garden has yet to be tended and the laundry wash boiler has not been fired up. Your word is as worthless as your fortune telling skills – or your cooking, for that matter. And most likely your sewing ones.”

  She bestowed him a smile of superiority. “And there ye have it, Duke McClellan, because ye have yet to keep yuirs, either – not one lesson yet, teaching me to read!”

  § § §

  Gypsies were said to guard carefully their ancient knowledge acquired throughout the ages and throughout their travels. It was whispered the Romanies continued to practice their magic through their spells, their charms, and their fortune-telling. Famed for their psychic and hypnotic powers, they were alleged to possess the ability to bring good luck or a curse to those who crossed their paths.

  And while Duke didn’t consider himself among the ignorant mystified by Gypsy spells, he certainly considered himself cursed. Cursed with Romy Sonnenschein for two more months. And he would hardly call her presence that afternoon as hypnotic, much less enchanting.

  Freckles shimmering in the Indian summer’s hazy morning sunlight, she sat like a self-satisfied cat, dampened huaraches kicked off and bare feet tucked beneath her on the pickup’s bench seat.

  She was taking obvious delight in the forty-five-minute drive to Austin. Her gaze, traveling from one side of the road to the other, absorbed withered fields and abandoned houses, their limestone walls crumbling – even a bone-dry pond with a weathered posting that warned about swimming at your own risk.

  From one ear, hidden by his faded red handkerchief, dangled a singular pearl drop earring that glinted with the continual twist of her neck. “Did you lose an earring?” he asked, just waiting to hear what fascinating yarn she would next spin. He could imagine it now – a vivid explanation of how the earring had dropped into a magic potion she had been concocting or some other such nonsense.

  Those green, slumberous eyes slid slowly to him, and her smile was just as slow in coming. “Well, ye see, t’was at an art gallery in The Hague that I first saw the Dutch Golden Age paintings – and Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring.’ That painting convinced meself that I, too, needed only one earring. Not a gold one, mind ye, but a pearl one. And, Holy Mary, if Old Duke – me grandfather – didn’t go and buy me one.”

  An art gallery? He doubted she had ever seen the inside of one. But, God above, what a novel mind she had. “Get you that pearl earring – or swipe it from some unsuspecting and bemused female patron in the art gallery?”

  “Nay, t’was when we were doing the stint with the circus, and he was performing his trick riding stunts that he bought it. Ye see, he had been one sexy man in his prime. Afterwards, this lady, she had more feathers in her hair than a peacock, well, she sashayed up to Old Duke and –”

  Confounded, he cut off her spate of words. “You’re telling me you also performed at circuses, too? Well, you weren’t the dude who swallowed the swords or the fat woman with the beard. What did you do – besides steal purses?”

  She waggled her finger at him. “I can see,” she said huffily, “that you have no interest in me story.”

  But then, just as quickly, she dimpled a smile. “So, while we’re in Austin,” she said, striking out the conversation in an entirely different direction, “what say I find ye a wife to take?”

  He returned his attention to the two-lane paved road. “I say no, with a capital N and an exclamation mark.”

  “An exclamation mark?”

  “You really do need to learn to read and write, Sunshine.”

  “Well, settling down with
the proper wife – that is what ye told me ye wanted. But ye know, Duke, I dunna believe ye.”

  That remark yanked his gaze back to her elfin features. “And just what do you think I want?”

  “Tis as plain as that strong nose on yuir handsome face.”

  She thought him handsome? He had never given his looks that much thought. Thoughts of making a go at whatever circumstances currently beset him had taken up, it seemed, most of his life.

  “The clues are all around yuirself. The beach mat and netting covering yuir bedroom window. Yuir seafarer’s chest beneath it. The dock planking that ye call a kitchen table. Even yuir dog’s name – Ulysses. And that library book we’re picking up – The Travels of Marco Polo, isna it? Dunna all of it bespeak of yuir heart’s yearning for adventure and far horizons?”

  “Gawd Awmighty,” he groaned, “you’re full of more shit than a brick outhouse.”

  After putting up with her far-fetched imagination for forty-five minutes, he welcomed Charlotte’s calm thinking. It was as logical as the Dewey Decimal System.

  They both had attended the one-room school house for grades one through six. Two years older, she had befriended the bruised and knocked-about little boy and later the defiant, two-fisted kid, despite small town shunning. She had been his lifeline when he was fourteen and a stroke had taken his mother.

  Charlotte Burns had gone on to attend Baylor College for Women and get a teacher’s degree – and he had gone on to waste away his youth in wanderings. She had married some successful college athlete. Nine months ago, the guy had drowned, on an outing on Austin’s Guadalupe, and his insurance had left her and their daughter with adequate financial means.

  Like the public library, Charlotte possessed a quality of stability.

  Settling her eyeglasses atop her poof of abundant brown hair, she looked up at him from warm but somber dark brown eyes. “I was hoping you would make it in today, Duke,” she said quietly. Her lips were as pink and as full as they had been on that last day before he left home, when they had exchanged a simple kiss, a kiss that time had not tarnished. “I’m off duty this afternoon.”