§ CHAPTER FIVE §
Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus, and all the saints!
Romy stood next to the rusty green pickup, one hand clutching Irina’s purse, the other the old Ford’s door handle for support. The pickup was backed up to a paint-peeling red barn, its roof partially caved in.
Her mind reeling with disbelief, she next stared at the ranch house, hunkering a hundred meters in front of her. Early October’s warmish wind kicked up a dust cloud that, unfortunately, did not hide the abysmal adobe abode.
The ranch house, with its crumbling chimney, looked slapped together like a cairn. A dismal pile of rocks it was. Like its owner, it had clearly battled the weather and the elements. Behind it a little distance, against the dying sunlight, a lazily spinning windmill and metal tank were silhouetted.
Aye, the place was larger than her confining vardo. But her vardo had been cozy and colorful. This rock dwelling was as about as appealing as . . . as a concentration barrack. No better were two out-buildings of native stone, their timbered roofs in various stages of reconstruction – one, an even smaller house of stone, and the other, judging by its blackened rocks, most likely a smokehouse.
So much for her wish-upon-a-shooting-star for a lush green and pungently peat-smelling countryside. But of such were fairy tales made.
From the pickup bed, Duke hefted a card board box beneath one arm. “Well? Are you coming?” Leaving her standing, he strode on toward the ramshackle, screened-in front porch.
Drawing back her shoulders, she started to catch up with him – and stopped abruptly.
With ear-deafening rapidly firing barks, a large black dog leapt from the top porch steps and charged across the stretch of fried grass. Fear electrified her. Her body rocketed to cremation temperature. Instantly sweat blistered her pores.
When the dog, a Labrador Retriever, stopped short to slobber in adoration all over Duke’s outstretched, fondling hand, Romy nearly sagged with relief.
He glanced around at her. Beneath his hat’s shadowy brim, his eyes narrowed in disbelief. “You’re afraid of old Ulysses? Why, hens have more teeth than he does.”
“Dogs and meself aren’t the best of buddies.” It could be worse. She could be back at Sachsenhausen. Her toes a mass of oozing blisters, she began to hobble forward again on Irina’s one good high heel.
“Oh, hell!” He dropped the cardboard box, and books spilled out of it. He strode back toward his pickup.
She stopped. “What?” Had she forgotten something? Was he angry with her about her fear of his mutt?
Without even pausing in his long strides, he scooped her up under one arm like she was a parcel and headed again toward the porch.
Her wits were scattered. She twisted her neck to look up at him and screeched, “Put me down, ye rotter, ye clapperclaw, ye shitehead!”
His mustache twitched suspiciously. Its narrowed ends traced the long pleats at either side of an equally long mouth set in an unrelenting line.
His boots thudded up the porch’s three stone steps. The screen door grinded as he hooked it open with one finger. She could hear Ulysses panting excitedly at the rancher’s heels as they crossed the stone porch, and then the weathered front door moaned.
Inside, resinous air wafted memories of the Black Forest. Next, pine boards creaked as he negotiated semi-dark rooms. And then he was setting her on her feet. All too quickly. As if she were too heavy for his monumental strength. Crikey! Clearly, he bloody well hated having her here.
He moved away to switch on a lamp.
Her eyes darted around the sparse room – an ironwork double bed covered by a shabby quilt made of what appeared to be shirt fragments, a nightstand with its lamp naked of a shade, an old pine armoire – and what looked to be a sea chest. Straw beach matting and a fisherman’s net curtained the single window. So, a seafaring man he had been?
“The bathroom’s to the left, between here and the other bedroom, my office now. Parlor’s just ahead. Kitchen’s to the right. Rustle up something for us to eat, while I get the box of books and check on Lucy.”
“Lucy?”
“The mama cow that’s calving.”
“Oh. Uhh, what do ye want to eat?”
“Whatever. Throw together something quick and easy like. It’s late. Fry up some eggs and bacon. And toast. And, oh, yeah, coffee.” He looked anxious to be as far away from her as possible. Did she smell that badly? She had tried to make do with washing from the ship cabin’s tiny sink.
She sighed, shrugged out of Irina’s soiled coat and tossed off her hat. Espying on the nightstand a red-and-black paisley kerchief meticulously folded, Romy nabbed it and knotted it about her head.
Then, she kicked off the crippling heels. Flexing her freed toes with pure delight, she made her way across the parlor’s creaking, uneven floor boards, one that nearly tripped her, toward the kitchen. At last, she felt a stone floor cool beneath her feet.
Pulling on the light chain, she stared stupefied at the large room, clearly the center of activities. Beneath a kitchen window was a wide and deep, rust-stained porcelain sink. On one side, squatted a huge copper tub, plugged into the wall. What in God’s name was that for? On the other, resided an oven-range such as she had ogled from a Paris restaurant’s alley door.
‘Roper’ she read. But she had no idea what all its knobs did. She knew nothing about electric cooking.
Nor did she have a clue about the room’s other bewildering appliances, all looking brand spanking new. Placed precisely upon a Mexican-tiled counter was a small, shiny metal box with two narrow slits atop it and an electrical wire attaching it to the wall socket. What did that contraption do?
The wood box mounted on the wall, alongside a peg rack, was a telephone, of course – but she had not a clue as how to use it.
Against another wall stood a heavy, white metal cabinet on legs not much longer than hers, which, granted, were short. It made an ominous humming noise, and, warily, she opened it. Her breath caught at the cool air that rushed over her face. Not an ice box, but one of those new-fangled refrigerators.
Aha! Inside, was brown paper-wrapped bacon and a basket of eggs.
A lengthy and rustic trestle table, its slat top looking as if it had been ripped from a dock, did double duty as both a dining and a work table, judging by its knife notches.
Another noise, this one a thumping one, alerted her. Cautiously, she peered underneath the table. Stretched out on the flagstone, Ulysses watched her. His tail beat a syncopated, begging tattoo.
“As long as ye’re not planning on having me for dinner,” she mumbled, “we’ll get along fine.”
No choice but to dig in and begin. She pushed up her blouse sleeves and with the sink’s cake of lye soap lathered to her elbows, drying them on a dish towel. Oh, Sweet Baby Jesus, she longed to soak for hours in that bath tub her sponsor had mentioned.
She went to work, doling out the coffee grinds. Next, she flopped the thick-sliced bacon strips in the cast-iron skillet. And bread? The bread box yielded – pre-sliced bread? Imagine that!
She found a baking pan to layer the slices on, shoved the pan into the oven, and flipped the oven knob as far as she could. Lastly, her mouth ricked to one side, she rotated the knobs beneath the coffee pot and the skillet all the way.
Good to go. Easy as falling off a log. But nature called, and she turned in search of the bathroom. She got no further than the parlor’s rock fireplace, when she smelled smoke. And it wasn’t coming from the fireplace.
Pivoting back, she saw the smoke roiling from the oven. There, as well, from atop the burner with its sizzling bacon. Immediately, she dashed back into the kitchen and started ratcheting knobs. One way, then another.
“Looks like Arturo has Lucy under – what the shit?”
She whipped around to confront Duke McClellan. He had paused in dusting his hat against his thigh to glare at the smoke-hazed kitchen.
In one swift stride, he grabbed the dish towel and snatched the blackened pan with its smoking bread from the oven. Then his hands swiftly spun knobs on the range and jerked the frying pan from the stove top to plop on the broken tiled countertop.
He tossed the burnt-black bread in the trash under the open sink. “You’ve never used a toaster?”
Whatever that was, obviously, she hadn’t. She bit her lip, then shook her head.
“Or an electric stove range before?”
Again, she shook her head, unable to summon her usual repertoire of retorts.
He jerked open a counter drawer and tossed upon the counter some kind of pamphlet. Stunned, she stared at it, unsure at what she was supposed to be looking.
“It’s an oven-range manual.”
“Oh. Of course.” Eyes glazed by both smoke and embarrassment, she began leafing through blurred pages.
Braced on a back leg, his fists jammed on his hips, his gaze scanned her. From her bare feet past her bedraggled, flounced skirt, next her begrimed, yellow peasant blouse, then up to her kerchief-bound hair. “Is that my bandana?”
“Uhh, I thought since you weren’t using – ”
“Sunnufabitch.”
“About the manual – ”
“You can’t read, can you?”
Slowly, she hung her head, painfully ashamed. One bare foot overlapped the other, as if to hide all her deficiencies. She struggled to proffer a smile. “Och, I do read a little, enough to get by.”
“Well, it didn’t ‘get you by’ here, did it? Have you never heard ‘The pen is mightier than the – ‘”
“ – mightier than the pigs.” she chirped in.
His groan could have been a damning expletive. “I’ll fix the dinner tonight. But you’re out of here come Christmas, do you understand?”
“I am not hungry.” She had been. But though her stomach protested loudly her lie, she turned on her heel and marched into his bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She flopped on the edge of the spring box mattress, hands clasped between her knees, and tried to figure out what she needed to do next.
She was a wild beast out of place in civilized society. She was ashamed of her ignorance. But by now she knew it would do no good to weep for all that she had lost. For her combative parents and irascible Old Duke. For her twin brother, Luca. And for the unfettered life of her childhood, traveling rarely explored roads and encountering exciting adventures beyond imagination.
Though the rubble of a ranch house might be larger than her vardo, open spaces called to her. In less than a minute, she had the bedroom’s single window jimmied open and was wedging her way through it. The grass, sparse though it was, felt wonderfully cool beneath her feet. Twilight’s cool air woke up her lungs and dried her damp eyes.
She was off and running. The gloaming distorted scraggy trees and underbrush that scratched her calves. Stickers pierced the soles of her feet. Did not matter. At last, she ran out of fury at the same time she realized she had run out of options. Her running gradually slowed to a jog, then to a fast walk, and finally she came to a halt and bent over, hands braced on her knees while she caught her breath – and mulled over her plight.
She had no other place to go, and the silence of the faint silver stars just emerging from the deep blue above offered no help.
She would have to go back. Duke McClellan might not want her, but he had complained he was stuck with her until Christmas. Less than three months. She would have to use all her yarn-spinning skills to delay her return. Until she could afford the voyage fare to Ireland – to her people, the Irish Travelers, and a way of life, a freedom, that was rapidly being stamped out across Germany.
However, on her journey back to the ranch house, strummed music coming from the lit barn, sidetracked her footsteps. Curious, she approached the opened, double-wide doors. One tilted crazily from only its top hinge.
Inside, his back against one slatted stall door, a swarthy young man sloped on the straw-layered ground and cradled a guitar against one raised knee. He idly plucked at the strings. As she drew nearer, she could see that his tired face held the handsome stamp of conquistadores of old.
“Lucy,” he sang softly, “Ya es hora de que dé a luz.”
“Lucy’s calf will come when it is ready,” she said, startling him, “but yuir guitar playing is far from ready.”
He scrambled to his feet, shod by cowboy boots that had seen better days and made him appear taller than he was, topping her by mere inches. “Senorita, mil pardones, pero – ”
“Romy is me name.”
“Y mi nombre es Arturo.”
She was accustomed to Castilian Spanish, not this hidalgo-inflected Spanish, but, apparently, he understood her English well enough. She waved him to sit again and pulled up a milk stool for herself. “Here, give me yuir guitar.”
The tilt of his head, the hunch of his bony shoulders, the way he met her less than half the distance between them to hand over his guitar, told her that he was clearly skeptical.
More than a month had elapsed since last she had played. She preferred a flat pick but used her fingers. Adept as well at banjo and violin, she improvised, starting with the non-traditional Gypsy swing she had learned outside Paris’s Bal-musette music halls that were fused with American jazz. Any fret, any string, as long as it was minor oriented. She settled on a scale, which she knew to the nines, and let her fingers take flight.
For what seemed a timeless passage, she soared above the lapping waves of Portugal’s rugged coast; wandered over the rolling hills of northern Spain’s Basque region, despaired over images of Rome’s beggars, danced naked in the summer sunlight of Finland’s midnight sun; and wept as the Angel of Death moved among the SS’s experimental studies on twins.
Exhausted by feelings her heart was forever reprising, she let her thumb slip from the still quivering string. Slowly, reluctantly, she returned to the present. She opened her eyes to find Arturo’s liquid brown eyes shimmering.
“Usted . . . you play la guitarra,” he whispered, “like . . . like one who ees possessed.”
“Indeed,” she said with a ready smile, “I am, mi amigo.”
§ § §
As he watched the hellion play the guitar with such abandon, Duke’s gut wrenched. Unrefined and undisciplined, she repelled him. He had seen enough of her kind – thieves, cutthroats, and prostitutes – in ports across the world. Calais. Bombay. Shanghai. Tripoli. Liverpool.
He stomped to the rear of the ranch house and plopped on the kitchen stoop’s top stone step, his legs so long, his boot heels nicked the dirt three steps below. He bit off the end of his cigar, nicked a match head, and lit up.
Overhead the glory of the star studded, black velvet sky mocked his measly efforts at making something out of the S&S’s nothing. And he couldn’t blame Romy Sonnenschein for trying to do the same. But to use her flimflammer skills and relentless cheer to manipulate people rubbed him the wrong way.
She reminded him of a past he was determined to put behind him.
He had finished with that vagabond life. Having traveled the world and when off duty read a plethora of books during the interminable stretch of hours at sea, he had acquired an eclectic education worthy of a Rhodes scholar. Furthermore, he was passably conversant in several languages.
Driven away by his pa’s often brutal tirades, he had struck out to drift hither and thither, to the far ends of the earth, returning, at last, with the determination to put down roots.
Now, he wanted a wife and children to make those roots grow into a sheltering tree, of which there were damnably few on the S&S, mostly those banking the Blanco River in the far distance behind the ranch house.
And the nomadic and illiterate Irina or Romy or whatever her name was – the painfully slender girl was definitely below his sights. She might possess a dichotomy of street smarts and unbelievable naivete, but settle, he would not.
Nope, his sights were set on the stars.