§ CHAPTER ELEVEN §
Christmas Day. At that moment, Berlin’s Spandau district would be lit with fairy lights. Its Christmas market would feature Scandinavian flame-salmon, Ukrainian Christmas tree decorations, and the obligatory mulled wine. Snowflakes as big as a vase doily could be lacing the frosty air.
Outside Berlin, years before the Nazis had come into power, swarthy gypsy men had stamped and clapped, while raven-eyed women swirled their long, brilliantly-colored, flounced skirts and danced around caravan fires in honor of the birth of Jesus.
Like the Gypsies, He was a wanderer and had chosen to rely on whatever pickings He could get. Romy, a wanderer, also, was doing the same essentially. Relying on whatever pickings she could get.
In weather that was doubtlessly like the Holy Land’s, what with Texas’s kicked-up dust clogging her nostrils and smarting her eyes and scouring her skin, she and Glen straddled the corral’s top rail.
“Hot as a Billy goat in a pepper patch,” he bemoaned.
“Hot enough the hens are laying hard-broiled eggs,” Jock quipped, perched on the railing on the other side of her.
They were watching Skinny Henry grip the flat braided rope in an attempt to stay astride the brawny bull about to buck from the chute. The dry, heated wind blasted her ringlets, billowing below the sun-bleached red handkerchief, knotted at her nape.
Sally, accompanied by her pistol-packing father, Sam, also perched atop the corral’s railing, across from Romy and Glen. Where Sally was willowy, her father was rangy. Plagued with arthritis, he had moved like a puppet with all its joints hinged when he had delivered a bottle of tequila into Duke’s hands an hour before.
It was obvious even to the most unknowledgeable that the old man wanted Duke for a son-in-law.
But what did Sally want? Romy was having a hard time reading the horsewoman. She was both a composite of the old world and the new one. Charging determinedly as Duke was into the future, she was what he might need.
But, more importantly, what did Duke want?
Well, this Christmas Day dinner might well unfold that for him.
“So, what do you think, Romy?” Glen asked, his Adam’s apple climbing up and down the flimsy ladder that was his throat.
“Me thinks Skinny Henry is in for the ride of his life.”
As she was. Hiding out from the Nazis’ long-reaching tentacles – hopelessly yearning for her Irish ancestral land and her Irish Traveller clan – and all the while fecklessly locked in a duel to her death with Big Guy there, manning the chute gate that festive afternoon.
Well, locked in a duel to the death with both Duke and Moe, if they had their way -- to see her on her way.
One could never have too many friends – or foes.
“Naw,” Glen bemoaned, with his nasal Chicagoan accent. “I’m not asking what you think about Skinny Henry’s upcoming ride – I mean, what do you think about Graciela?”
Graciela was the plump sister of Sally’s ranch foreman. “Does, she make ye happy, Glen?” Romy fudged.
He stalled, fiddling with his coil of rope. “Well,” he said, at last, “a bird in the hand is – ”
“ – is going to crap on ye. Think about what ye really be wanting, Glen Thornton. If ye want it badly enough, it will come to ye.” And speaking of crap, what a load of crap that advice was. “Ye can count on that.”
She swung one leg back over the railing, prepared to jump. “Meanwhile I have to check on our scrawny turkey Duke shot.”
Beneath his floppy tan hat, Glen’s mouth waved a loopy grin. “Better the scrawny turkey than you.” All the ranch hands sensed the red-hot tension that electrified a room when she and Duke were in it together. Like her, they might be illiterate, but they were not stupid.
At that moment, the bull launched from the chute, and Sally, cupping her hands over her mouth, yelled, “Ride ‘em cowboy!”
Beside Romy, Glen shouted, “Yeeeee-HAW!”
She chuckled, shaking her head, at a loss with this peculiar Texas lingo, and twisted her torso back onto the railing to watch Skinny Henry duel it out with the bull. However, a lash of wind-driven sand stung her eyes. With both her fists, she went to rub the sand away, and another gust of wind caught her off balance.
This time, unlike the day before on the stool, she was unable to right herself, and, arms flailing, she toppled backwards into the corral. Her shoulders and spine took the brunt of the fall. Her breath exploded against her ribcage.
First, she heard the clanging of the metal gate and, next, Jock’s warning yell. She struggled into a hunkered position on her knees, her palms braced in the dirt for support. On the opposite side of the corral, an already thrown Skinny Henry sprawled, as dazed as she.
Next, her gaze encountered the bull’s fuming red one. Dust sprayed from its pawing hooves. Its enraged snorts competed with the ranch hands’ frantic shouts. She sprang upright.
Diverted by her stance, the bull flipped its hind end around and charged toward her. Its razor-sharp horns aimed for her midsection. With but a tick of the heartbeat to spare, she dodged, latching hold of one lethal horn. Her arms felt yanked from their sockets. Violently, the bull swung its head. Saddle oxfords digging in, she fought to keep from being dragged under.
In the dusty haze kicked up, she saw Glen cast his lariat at the bull’s tossing head. At that same moment, she was shoveled sidewise by what had to be a German Panzer tank. Over and over she was rolled. A cedar post halted abruptly her tumbling. Simultaneously, violent, excruciating pain reverberated through every single bone in her body.
Beset with brilliant sparks of purple light, her vision gradually cleared, and she stared up into eyes as stunned as she felt. An eternity seemed to pass. She could feel Duke’s powerful heart beat slamming against the small mound of one breast. Feel his huge frame weighting her minuscule one, his mighty arms encompassing her.
Painstakingly, as if her features would hold the answer to world peace or life on other planets, his puzzled gaze searched her face – her glazed eyes, her dust-coated lips, her quivering chin – and returned to her eyes.
Micah, Bud, and the others rushed to them.
“Oh, no!” Sally cried. “Poor girl!”
As abruptly as Romy and Duke’s interlocked bodies had collided with the fence post, his expression transmuted, as if he had been poleaxed by some revelation. From there that expression just as rapidly went livid.
He spat to one side a mouthful of dirt. “You don’t have the common sense that God gave a goose, Romy Sonnenschein.” His palms splayed to either side of her shoulders and bench pressed his weighty body into a push-up off her flattened one.
She floundered to a sitting position, at which he bent over her and ran short-circuiting, examining fingers across her collarbones, along both her arms, around her rib cage, and down her thighs and calves. Every particle of her splintered, as if lightning-struck.
Before, having being subjected to other impersonal examining hands, she should feel only numbness at this inspection. His impassive face was reminiscent of the indifferent one of the German doctors. She should have withered beneath his touch, yet, contradictorily, her body quivered like a strummed guitar string.
From behind, Sally asked. “Is she okay, Duke?”
“Yeah, she’ll pass muster,” he grunted. He retrieved his battered hat, giving it a brutal dusting against his thigh, and crushed it low on his head.
Romy stood shakily. Feeling ignominious, she focused on brushing the dirt from Bud’s old denims that she wore. She had learned to laugh things off, had learned that laughter was the best defense; but Duke’s countenance, as usual, quite ably decimated that normally reliable defense.
The brute. The bloody bugger.
Nevertheless, his actions – they spoke louder than his words. He had put himself in harm’s way for her this afternoon.
He stalked back to the corral chute, and on wobbling legs she walked back to the ranch house. Inside, she passed the scrubby mesquite Christmas tree that mocked the season with its expectations of good cheer.
The smell of the roasting turkey, the aroma of sage and rosemary and celery dressing, should have been a balm to her lacerated spirit and body. They weren’t. Still, she told herself she could do this. She could carry off this Christmas dinner and its attendant festivities.
Yet, she was not sure how much longer she could stave off this burgeoning awareness of desire her untutored body was feeling . . . stave off this unwarranted elemental lust she was feeling for her employer.
She was getting better at wielding the stove’s contrary knobs and gauges. She primed the kitchen pump to wash her hands and began dicing the garden’s onions . . . and sniffling.
Beer bottle in hand, Jock shuffled into the kitchen. She swiped the sleeve of Duke’s shirt across both cheeks and went back to dicing.
“That no-good saddle tramp Duke McClellan gotcha crying, Romy?”
She shook her head, not daring to look at the Scotsman. “Tis the onions. Do ye mind setting the table for me, Jock?”
She heard the cabinet door hinge’s groan, the clacking of the platters on the long table, and then his saying, “Aye, that Duke McClellan is a desperado trying desperately to make good.”
“Well, he has a stretch to go to get to good.” She kept her gaze and her attention on the cutting board.
Then came the clanging of the flatware. “After riding the high seas, instead of a bronco all these years, he’s used to things being ship-shape, ye understand.” Most assuredly, the robust whiff of beer was responsible for Jock’s slightly slurred brogue. “Yuir arrival at the S&S blew ship-shape all to hell and back.”
Her mouth compressed. She looked over her shoulder at the gray-haired, wiry man, now doling out glasses with a distinct clanging. “Listen, Jock, I know I am not the neatest per – ”
“Neat? Neat has nothing to do with it, lass. No need to borry trouble.”
She grimaced and said drily, “Tis sure I am that ye want to enlighten meself.”
“Organized has everything to do with it. After a life of wandering the Seven Seas, Duke came back to Texas to establish an organized life.”
“An organized life?” She rubbed a damp cheek once more with the back of her wrist. “What in God’s good name does that mean?”
“Ye’re the fortune teller, lass.”
She thrust the knife point into the cutting board and turned to face the old geezer. “Then, I’ll tell ye, Jock. Organized for Duke means the proper home, the proper wife, and two bairn – one of each sex, the male being first born – and the proper wife being someone like Charlotte or Sally.”
“Sally’s father might have it in his noodle that as a yoked pair his daughter and Duke could tame Texas. But Duke McClellan is not for the faint of heart, mind ye.”
“Nay, Duke McClellan is for the hard of heart – to match his.”
And while Sally would not be numbered among the faint of hearts, she would never be able to dominate him, which might make her drop out of the running.
The screen and front doors banged consecutively, and the interspersed clinks of spurs cut a path for the kitchen.
“Bud,” she told the first to show up, “bring in the pan of rolls I set to rising on the stoop.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning and heading for the kitchen’s back door. The kid had taken to following her footsteps with adulation in his eyes. “And dunna eat any of the dough,” she called over her shoulder. “And the rest of ye lunkheads, wash up.”
“Like Pilate, I have already washed my hands,” came an amused voice behind her.
She turned to find Gideon standing in the kitchen’s parlor doorway. She had not really expected him to come and, inexplicably, felt a gladness of heart.
Slightly to one side of him and behind, posed a dark-haired, attractive woman. Possessing intelligent eyes, she wore a white tailored blouse and gray suit that enhanced her olive skin tone.
“Meet my friend Miriam Müller, a professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas,” Gideon told those already assembled in the kitchen. “She volunteered to drive me out to the S&S.”
“I hope you do not mind,” Miriam said with a polite smile set on a firm mouth. She stepped forward and slipped her hand in Gideon’s. “I am new to UT’s faculty, and both of us were left adrift.”
“Of course, not,” Romy said and scrambled to place another setting at the already crowded table. “Tis glad we are that the both of ye could come.”
The standing ranch hands were casting sheep eyes at yet another female in their midst and by turns nodded their enthusiastic greetings.
“Take off your hat,” Romy nudged Glen, who promptly capped it on the wall peg.
“I brought a bottle of wine,” Gideon added, holding it aloft. “Alas, not a bottle of Germany’s fine Riesling.”
Wine glasses were nowhere to be had, and she trotted out additional water-spotted, mismatched ones and parceled a meager amount of the Riesling into each.
By that time, Duke, along with Sally and her father, joined them. Romy hastened to introduce Gideon and Miriam before Duke could turn his inquiring frown upon her presumptuousness to issue an invitation on her own.
He tipped the brim of his hat in deference to Miriam. “Welcome to the S&S,” he said with a cordial smile that never once, Romy noted, had he accorded herself. He and her father hooked their hats onto free wall pegs, and Duke pulled out a chair for Sally.
“Thanks for having us, Duke,” her father said in a voice rusted by age, his long, graying mustache drooping with the loose flesh of his jowls.
As everyone seated themselves, Romy set the last steaming platter on the table.
“Ejoli,” Arturo said, “thees smells delicioso!”
“Smells like mah mammy’s cooking,” Micah mumbled, which, coming from a man who rarely spoke, she construed as a compliment.
Her blaa, the tender dollops of baked salted dough and butter, vanished immediately. Her Christmas cooking turned out to be a success, with nothing over-heated or undercooked. Mayhap, she could still convince Duke to keep her on as the S&S cook – beyond the year’s contract. At least, until she stashed away enough for life in Ireland.
But, of course, Duke’s decision might, also, depend on whom he took to wife.
The topics of conversation ranged from the mediocre, Skinny Henry’s enthusiasm over Chicago cardinals, redbirds or whatever they were – to the horrific, Miriam’s introducing the heart-wrenching subject of the recent Krystallnacht.
Six weeks earlier, on November 9th, Nazis had attacked Jewish businesses throughout Germany. At the end of it all, thousands of Jewish businesses had been looted and tens of thousands of Jews arrested.
The discussion revived memories that chilled Romy, and she quickly interjected, “Scalloped potatoes, anyone?”
But Gideon wouldn’t leave it alone. Eyes as ice gray as Nordic fjords machine-gunned one person to the next around the long table. “I know you think it cannot happen here. But it can. To use your baseball vernacular, if people everywhere want to live safely, America has got to step up to the plate.”
She was not certain what the word ‘vernacular’ meant, but what the hell had happened to the convivial guest she had expected in Gideon?
His long legs stretched out to one side, Duke hooked an arm over his chair’s spindly ear. Surprisingly, he appeared at ease with the conversation. Mayhap, the wine had taken the edge off him. “You sound like Roosevelt stumping for office, Goldman.”
“If not Roosevelt, then who will take a stand?” Miriam asked, her expressive dark eyes challenging. “Will it take a Jewish U.S. president to say enough of these atrocities? And do you seriously think Americans are ready for a Jewish President?”
“No more than they are ready for a Catholic President,” Duke said amiably. “But the day could come.”
Romy noted he had said ‘they are ready’ rather than ‘we are ready.’ He was not one to be corralled with the others.
Gideon, his dueling scar a vivid lightning strike, eyed her accusingly, as if he expected her to speak up against Nazism, but why? Some Americans might take a stand in behalf of the Jews, but Gypsies – never would they.
Before the conversation could lapse into a discordant political note, she said, “Arturo, play yuir guitar for us, will ye? Christmas songs?”
While he retrieved his guitar from the bunkhouse, she cleared the table and dribbled out the last of the wine, then broke out Sam’s tequila.
The ranch hands joked among themselves, and Miriam and Sally discussed the latest in hosiery, the sheer nylons. With Micah listening avidly, Sally’s father shared the ballyhoo over the recent world heavyweight boxing championship title won by Joe Louis, of poor negro roots, over the German Max Schmeling, with ties to Hitler.
Meanwhile, Romy sliced her Christmas carrot cake, made with stubby carrots she had gleaned from the kitchen garden. She could feel Duke’s gunsight narrowed on her. Had she gone too far in inviting Gideon?
Arturo returned with his battered guitar and, hunkering a hip on the kitchen stool, began strumming the chords for “Jingle Bells.”
Surprising Romy, Sally softly chimed along with the lyrics. Romy kept waiting for an off-note screech but unwillingly had to admit Sally’s singing voice was pleasantly mellow enough.
Next came Silent Night, Adeste Fidelis, and other Christmas carols. A few of the ranch hands’ voices joined in. Bud’s young face held a wrenching nostalgia. Jock’s was made mournful with the beer, wine and tequila. Skinny Henry and Glen’s were jocular, and Micah’s wistful. Duke’s, of course, was inscrutable.
When Arturo traded his guitar for a momentary respite and a refill of tequila, Miriam took the opportunity to say crisply, “Gideon tells me you read people’s fortunes, Romy. Would you mind doing it for us?”
“Yeah,” Bud begged, “How about a round for each of us?”
Romy caught the flare of exasperation in Duke’s heavy-lidded eyes. Her mouth screwed to one side. Dare she antagonize him? He was both her charm and her curse. After all, he held the key to her salvation. Or her damnation.
She could not afford to get deported. But could she afford to open herself to those feelings of caring that battered her natural defenses? Feelings of caring that she had not felt since as a fourteen-year-old she had found herself gobsmacked with the lusty Giorgio.
Lately, she could not trust herself even to glance in Duke’s direction. With her trepidation came a pall that was like a bite of a fairy tale’s poisoned apple. He could never commit to one such as she. His dreams were notched on a far grander scale. Bed her, he might – and of that vague incomprehensible image she nervously circumvented – but wed her, never.
Infatuation, that was exactly what she felt. Infatuation derived from her Old West moving picture values of a cowboy hero. She had magnified Duke’s image to something grand, when he was nothing but a dirt-poor cowboy trying to make good.
Just as she was trying to make the best of her own slippery situation. Better she find a way to return to her roots . . . and soon.
With an apologetic spread of her palms, she turned her gaze on one dinner guest after another. “Christmas caught me a wee bit short on gifts, but me fortune telling – aye, tis a gift I’d be glad to entertain ye with tonight.”
Now where had she last left her cards? In her purse? Atop the radio? On the bedroom’s nightstand?
When she returned with the deck, found, at last, in the NYA’s cardboard crate of donated clothes, it was as if her absence had syphoned the energy from the room. Now, all eyes watched her eagerly. Well, all eyes, but Duke’s. His blistering blue ones were baleful.
What were these people expecting from her? Magic? A miracle? Being Jesus’s birthday, they would expect a healing. Well, step right up, folks, to the greatest show on earth. Emotional healing performed for one and all.
“With so many, t’will be a shortened version of a reading.” She shuffled the cards and passed them to her left, to Micah, with the instructions to shuffle and cut the deck three times.
Never raising those eyes, a melted chocolate brown, he shuffled and cut and, almost reluctantly it seemed to her, passed them back.
She glanced at the bottom three cards she turned over – a Four of Hearts, a Three of Hearts, and a Ten of Spades.
She tried to recall the meanings her mum had given the cards. And remembered her advice that an inquirer sought to be forewarned about imminent disaster in health or wealth or heartbreaking betrayals – and to be reassured that all would resolve with providence.
“Love and happiness abound, Micah, when you establish a home of your own and stop caring about what others think.” That sounded good enough, didn’t it? Micah looked comforted, at least.
Jock’s three-card layout turned up the Five of Spades, the Ace of Diamonds and the King of Clubs. “Jock, the Five of Spades,” she improvised, “represents only temporary obstacles, because by now you have surmounted life’s hardest ones. And all the years that the locusts have eaten will be returned to you through your service to a spirited ruler.”
Now where did that malarkey come from?
He took another swig from the remainder of his chipped cup’s tequila. “Sounds good ‘nuff to me, lass.”
And so it went, one ranch hand after another – Bud, Glen, Skinny-Henry, and, Arturo, until she came to Sally and Sam – and Miriam and Gideon.
Sally’s spread turned up a Ten of Clubs, which, according to Romy’s mum, signified travel; next an Ace of Spades – definitely not a good card – and a Jack of Hearts.
“Hmmm, I see an ill-timed trip here, but when positioned next to this card – ” Romy tapped the Jack, “ – there is a deepening attraction with a knave, a younger man, who is quite the chatterbox. The knave should offset all yuir heart’s earlier preoccupations.” That should be cheery enough.
Sally looked pleased.
Her pistol-toting father was a sufficiently predictable person to read. She glanced at the Eight of Spades. Guilt? And the Two of Spades adjacent to it? “This Eight of Spades indicates on a delay any feelings of guilt you might have should lessen,” she tempered. “And the Seven of Hearts in this spread indicates, if you bide your time and ignore life’s irritations, a piece of good luck could be in store for you.”
“With the rampant tick infestation, I sorely need it,” grouched old Sam.
Observing Gideon and Miriam closely, the way their bodies were turned more to each other, as if shutting out the rest of the world, Romy thought their relationship had possibilities that she could playfully use in their card layouts.
She turned over Miriam’s three cards and tapped the Two of Clubs. “There is opposition to yuir desires.” The young woman appeared so stiff and starchy, she would probably resist any change as threatening, as fearful. Next, Romy noted the Three of Clubs, adjacent to the Deuce. “But another chance will be given ye – financially.” And then, the Three of Hearts. “This represents a favorable outcome to happiness,” she summed up with an iridescent smile.
Always keep the inquirer happy.
With Gideon’s card spread, she turned over the King of Hearts – what her mum called the Suicide king because of the sword behind his head, making him appear as if he were stabbing himself. Next, the Seven of Spades, and, lastly, the Two of Hearts. Her finger hovered over, first, the King of Hearts, a fair-haired man with a good nature. She could run with that.
“Ye will be a fair ruler, if you ignore others’ advise. However, this Seven of spades, indicates a dire warning card. There will be two relationships. Still, the Two of Hearts shows support coming from a partner, if ye choose wisely.”
What codswallop. And from his expression, the rolling of his eyes, he felt the same.
All these readings at one setting were taking much more energy than she had anticipated. And there was still to go Duke, with his tetchy visage. “Yuir turn, Duke.”
She passed him the deck, their fingers brushing in the transfer, and it was as if static electricity had prickled the fine hairs on her arms. Their startled gazes clashed above their clasped hands, cupping the deck.
He took control of it, shuffled and, riffling through the cards like a man long familiar with them, then cut them into three piles.
She waited until he had slouched back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, as if daring her, before she slowly turned the three piles over to view each card below.
All eyes were upon her, expectantly. As if this were some pivotal moment in each of their lives.
She dreaded what she might see unfolded before her – ridiculously dreading, needlessly dreading, because this was all a fabrication on her part, wasn’t it?
She addressed the Nine of Hearts, which caught her eye first. Restlessness. Then, the Ten of Hearts – someone who safe-boxed their strong feelings; still, there showed the possibility of wishes or dreams fulfilled. But the next one would factor in gravely with the Nine of Hearts. Lastly, she glanced at it. The fiery Queen of Clubs. What kind of story could she – should she – make of this spread?
She cleared her throat and tapped the Nine of Hearts. “All that ye have yearned for can be yuirs. All the restlessness vanquished from yuir life – if ye but risk sailing the High Seas every once and while, so to speak. But ye must heed the advice of the young woman with the fiery spirit in order for yuir dreams to come true.”
Duke’s cigar-brown mustache wobbled. “And I suppose you are the young woman with the fiery spirit?”
Around her and Duke, breaths audibly sucked in the remnants of the kitchen’s fragrant air.
She lifted one brow and grinned triumphantly. “But who else? Are ye not consulting me at this very moment?”
§ § §
Sally or Charlotte?
Which one?
They both could comfortably fit the hazy image that was Duke’s eternal longing for a home, a wife, a family.
But which woman?
A home. A wife. A clan.
So many past Christmases spent far from home. In New Zeeland’s squalid dives, with Algeria’s perfumed whores, and among Japan’s gaudy geishas.
Yet none of them in his wildest imagination, nor Edgar Allen Poe’s, for that matter, came close to this harridan, this creatively alive female, Romy Sonnenschein.
Not beautiful by society’s standards, but . . .
Later that Christmas night Duke’s hand gradually accelerated stroking his thick length for less than satisfying, relief . . .
. . . but, yet, he desired her. Desired her above the others.