GYPSIES, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES

by Parris Afton Bonds

  Not likely though for Sally and Arturo. He was finishing off a corncob dripping butter, while casting a longing, coal-hot gaze at the horsewoman. Romy doubted Sally would have the courage to buck her father openly, and could only hope her intuition was wrong.

  These people had become like a clan to her and leaving was going to be harder than she would have imagined.

  Twilight was settling into night, and fireflies were darting around the partiers. “Going to replenish my plate,” Sally said, rising.

  The men were busy talking and paid no attention, but Romy watched with envy of Sally’s long, Levi’s-encased legs, as the horsewoman strode across the yard, past the collection of parked pickups and cars, toward the kitchen’s back door . . . and then watched as Arturo ground out with his boot a just-lit cigarette and stalked in the same direction as Sally.

  Meanwhile, beneath the table, Johnson splayed a large hand atop Romy’s thigh, distracting her. “Hey, lil’ darlin’, what’s say you entertain us with some guitar music.” It was not a request but an order.

  There was no way Duke could have seen Johnson’s hand; nevertheless, Duke stood with a dragon’s fire-breathing look and, taking her hand, drew her to her feet. “That’s not going to happen, Congressman.”

  Johnson scowled. His eyes squinted; his lips compressed.

  Warding off the looming showdown, she said, “I’d be delighted to enter – ”

  “No,” Duke said in a tone that brooked no interference. “Right now, Johnson, I’ve got a send-off for Romy.”

  Gratefully, she pressed against his side. Mayhap, she was wrong. Mayhap, the cards and the stars held promise for them. “A send-off?”

  He nodded up. “Watch. Jock and Bud are setting it up.”

  She glanced skyward, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sam also rise with his empty plate and start toward the house. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Not another looming showdown.

  Suddenly, the black velvet sky burst with a thunderous explosion of light after light. Stars were falling deep in the heart of Texas. She could feel her body melding with Duke’s, as if two were becoming one, as they had done, lo, those many magical nights. As if he were her everything. And she, his.

  And then between the glorious burst of fireworks’ explosions far overhead came two more – each much nearer.

  § CHAPTER EIGHTEEN §

  Coffee cup in hand, Duke stared unseeingly at the kitchen window. A reluctant first morning’s light petered between the curtains. Romy’s shoddily made curtains. The kitchen he had rebuilt with pride by the sweat of his brow and a huge dent in his wallet, now seemed lackluster. It lacked the brilliance of her incandescent smile. It was dismally quiet. No radio blaring. None of her tap-dancing chatter.

  The shouting silence. A cavernous emptiness he still could not comprehend. Her absence drew the air from his lungs. Extinguishing a Havana cigar on his tongue would have been a far less debilitating pain.

  Even the ranch hands wore glum expressions and moped about.

  “I can catch the bus on me own,” she had explained the morning before, following Sally and Arturo’s doleful funerals. She had stood there in front of him, Micah’s suitcase in her one hand, Arturo’s guitar case in the other, and her purse tucked under her arm. She looked like Little Orphan Annie.

  How could he selfishly discount the skyrocketing career that awaited her in Nashville? “I thought you were finding me a wife?” When all he could think of was the way she held her chin high and met his questioning stare with a fierceness he found damnably admirable and irresistible.

  “I did. I found Charlotte for yuirself.”

  “Ahh, yes. You were right. The perfect one, bar none.” What a stupid, disastrous thing to say. “But you don’t have to go.”

  Romy’s lopsided smile contained a painful twist. “Even fairy tales have to come to an end.”

  At the back of his eyes, he felt a hot, prickly feeling.

  § § §

  “Yuir Florsheims, sire.”

  Upon hearing Romy’s lilting voice as she handed over his repaired and spiffily buffed shoes, the middle-aged businessman beamed, as did most of Weise’s Shoe Repair patrons. “Thank you.” He tipped the brim of his Panama Straw Boater.

  With work so scarce, she figured she had landed the coveted job because the old Jew, Weise, found her brogue appealing.

  Disappearing from the S&S immediately after Sally and Arturo’s funerals, coming one upon the other, Romy had nabbed a ticket on the first Greyhound bound for Nashville for a savings-draining seven dollars.

  The remainder of her S&S pay she plunked down on a flat at the dingy Vauxhall. Its two buildings originally had been part of Dr. Price’s College for Young Ladies, but, with the passing years, the buildings had gradually converted to apartments noted for low rents and transient clients.

  The hours at nearby Weise’s Shoe Repair were long and paid little more than a street beggar might garner, but, at least, they covered her meager meals and might make – or might not – another month’s rent, if she penny-pinched. Although she did not know how much more she could squeeze out of her Lincolns. Watered-down coffee and Skippy’s peanut butter did not make for the best dietary fare.

  She could try her hand at card reading again for additional income, but she did not feel good about it. Not because she felt like she was scamming her customers; on the contrary, she lately worried that she was actually beginning to interpret things – things she shouldn’t be knowing, mayhap.

  Like Sally’s death. Romy remembered seeing in Sally’s spread the Ten of Clubs, which could be interpreted as a trip, but it had lain alongside the Ace of Spades . . . the death card . . . well, the two juxtapositioned next to one another could also have meant a longer journey. A journey beyond this lifetime? It spooked Romy.

  Between that and Johnson’s continual advances, she had known that her presence at the S&S could only make it worse for Duke. If he didn’t end up killing the congressman, she would.

  As if Sam’s murder of his own daughter had not been bad enough.

  At Sally’s burial on the family ranch, her father had looked a shattered man. An inquest had been ordered after that fateful night of the Fourth, when he had drawn his gun on Arturo . . . and Sally had thrown herself in between him and her father. And still, like a madman, old Sam had continued firing.

  And since then . . . Romy had known only pure, intense brilliant pain at leaving the S&S . . . and Duke. Like walking barefooted over flaming charcoal with a two-inch nail embedded in each of her heels.

  And then there was the loss of leaving the guys without even a goodbye. Would Glen marry Graciela? Would Bud make something of his tennis skills? And Micah, she wondered with a wrenching smile, would he become a card shark, with that face, and a tongue, that didn’t give away anything? Jock and Skinny Henry, all the men had become like family to her.

  “Could I invite you to dinner tonight?” the businessman asked Romy, his fingers playing nervously with his straw boater’s brim.

  She started, her surprise causing her to slam shut the cash register drawer. Her gaze took in the man – medium height, serious gray eyes, a short nose, and a mouth that wanted to smile.

  Aye, nice looking he might be, but he was not Duke. Duke of the soulfully piercing blue eyes and a mouth that danced with humor at her wackiness . . . and suckled with such fervor at her pencil eraser-stubbed nipples.

  Duke, with his seductive West Texas drawl that hid his speech impediment to all but her. Duke of the flexing biceps and washboard stomach and questing, then lingering, fingers that played her body far better than she ever had a guitar.

  “Sorry tis I am, but I already have a date for tonight,” she told the male customer.

  And it was true – her date that night was with other businessmen – in fedoras and homburgs.

  For the Grand Ole Opry audition, she teamed her one good donated house dress, more of a funeral black, with Miriam’s genuine pearl necklace. In fact, Romy had worn the out
fit to Arturo and Sally’s funerals. Since Romy could not afford rayons, she artfully drew a seam line up the center back of each of her legs with a Maybelline pencil.

  With trepidation, she walked the five blocks to the War Memorial Auditorium, near Tennessee’s capitol. Looking somewhat like the Greek Parthenon, the auditorium was noted for its near perfect acoustics.

  The three businessmen greeted her at the courtyard’s fountain and introduced themselves, but all she could think of was that these were the Three Wise Men, who were searching for a star.

  Let it be me.

  “Nothing to be nervous about, Miss Sonnenschein,” the elderly Stanley Davenport said, doffing his hat. “We’ve heard mighty good things about your talent, so we want to make this audition as pleasant for you as possible.”

  The three gave her a tour, beginning with the 2,200-empty-seat auditorium and its intimidatingly large stage, then finishing with the control room that was banked by a bewildering array of audio equipment and a control board with more switches and dials than Duke’s Roper stove or Ford pickup.

  Through the studio window, she peered down at the spot-lit stage. She might feel like a freak in circus sideshows on that stage, but, Jesus Jehoshaphat Christ, could it be any worse than being a Nazi specimen?

  Aye. There were a lot of things worse. Like being unloved.

  Still, she felt that old Gypsy’s surging impulse to go on the lam.

  § CHAPTER NINETEEN §

  Finishing with “Lost in Your Smile”, Romy, costumed in Sally’s Charro outfit, rose from her stool before the WSM microphone stand and, guitar in hand, made a slight curtsey to deafening applause and standing ovation.

  Offstage, behind the curtain, the insurance man Stanley Davenport nodded vigorously. The dapper gentleman was farfetched from the hillbilly image of the Grand Ole Opry. Some Opry backup singer had told her that dreams might come true onstage, but they were formulated behind the curtains by men like Stanley.

  He was that fairy godfather, working behind the curtains. From frenzied last-minute rehearsals to makeup transformations to monitoring the Saturday night gate money, a lucrative .25 cents per person – and, importantly it would seem – to changing her Teutonic surname to its anglicized Sunshine, that was Stanley.

  “Keep this up,” he told her, greeting her offstage with her guitar case, “and in a year you will be able to afford to move out of the Vauxhall into Belle Meade Plantation.”

  Coming off her first month with the shindig was putting a little strut in her walk. However, by now she knew that the ultra-swank Bell Meade community would not be where she wanted to move should she even be able to afford such an upscale community. “Stanley, I was thinking of – ”

  “Look at this,” he said, handing her a folded newspaper. He took her by the elbow and ushered her toward the dressing room shared by one and all. At the moment, it was blessedly empty. “’Fire-hose Intensity’ one reviewer said of your performance last week. And another, this one – well, read it for yourself.”

  She set the guitar case on the sparkly green Formica counter, banked by mirrors. The smell of grease paint mixed in the small room with human sweat and dying bouquets.

  She acted as if she were reading the column at which his finger tapped. Unprotected as she now was by either the National Youth Association or the American Jewish Joint Committee, she risked being deported back to Germany by the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization if, for nothing else, a failure in literacy requirement imposed for immigrant entry.

  “There,” his finger tapped the page again, “where the reviewer says he was ‘. . . permanently transfigured by Sunshine’s distinctive singing style and idiosyncratic guitar accompaniment.’ And you are all the talk of radio. Nothing like you since Kate Smith.”

  She set the newspaper alongside her guitar case. “Tis the radio I want to talk of, Stanley.”

  “The Grand Ole Opry is getting the foremost air time – ”

  “Nay, tis not that.” She spread wide her palms in supplication. “Stanley, I give it me all. These performances. But they strip me down to build up somebody I dunna know.” Her hands swiped at her rouged checks and lips, and reflected in the mirror she saw someone she did not recognize. “And the price of that. I canna retreat to me place, wherever ‘tis, to renew meself.”

  He stared at her as if she had lost her mind. “You want to go back to cooking for a bunch of Texas ranch derelicts? Is that what you are telling me?”

  Aye, that she did. But that would never work. She had known that from the beginning, and yet she had still, foolishly, let herself become besotted with Duke – that cinema poster’s rugged male persona that was the hero of all legends and lore told amid the caravans’ vardos, sleeping dogs, and wailing babies of her gypsies´ nomadic forefathers.

  Forceful presence mixed with virile masculinity. The stuff real men were made of. An iron will combined with genuine caring . . . and, oh, his slow, sure, and sexy walk and talk. That was the S&S Duke.

  That iron will, that determination to find a proper wife, most likely Charlotte it would be, that was Romy’s death knell. Not that she wanted to be his wife. Not after watching her parents murder each other.

  Liar, liar, pants afire.

  Bugger! She was merely in a romantic delirium. Smitten and nothing more.

  And, alas, Duke’s moral convictions were as strong as his male magnetism. For all his indestructability, there was still something alone and lonely about him, something distant and cynical . . . and yet, ironically, lovable – with his devastating smile that would haunt her forever. And forever, she would recall that urge to lean against him, like leaning against a strong tree.

  If she allowed herself to lean against anyone, it would be Gideon. They were two of a kind. Shared the same background. Understood one another. She owed him a lot for helping give her a chance with America’s entertainment industry. But, alas, he too, was headstrong on having a proper bride. And was not Miriam perfect for him?

  “Nay, I dunna want to go back to Texas, Stanley. I have been trying to tell you I heard on the radio that, what with Britain expecting Luftwaffe air raids, its Ministry of Health is seeking nurse assistants. It is guaranteeing a salary of £40 to nursing students in training. Double what hospitals are paying. I am applying.”

  “Why?” Stanley asked with a stupefied expression. “When you have the potential of making millions? That makes no sense.”

  Well, she had never been sensible.

  “Because I dunna want potential. I want now. And now will take me one step closer to Ireland.” And farther from Duke and Gideon – and catastrophe in the form of Johnson, or worse, Moe Keller.

  “But the Grand Ole Opry has a contract with you,” Stanley pointed out in an attempt at reasonableness.

  The anguish of a trapped wild creature glistened in her eyes. “With Romy Sunshine. Someone who doesn’t even really exist. Not on paper – nor in me spirit.”

  § § §

  “Rising Local Star Nixes Opry”

  Gideon choked on his morning’s office coffee. His gaze jumped from The Austin Statesman headline down to the brief one-paragraph article.

  “According to Grand Ole Opry officials, their newest Texas vocal star, Romy Sunshine, yesterday traded her contract for country. Just which country is anyone’s guess, as the spirited Spanish guitar player charmingly claimed, when recently interviewed, ‘The world is me country.’”

  Cracked. Capricious. Complex. Romy was all that – and more. An exquisite shamrock with atrocious manners. But, hell, Gideon figured he must be cracked too, because . . . because . . . oh, hell!

  He snatched up the desk phone and asked the Capitol’s switchboard operator to put in a call to the S&S. While Gideon waited, rain sluiced down his office window, which lent hope Duke might be confined by the inclement weather to his own office.

  “S&S,” the big man growled.

  “Gideon here – and by the graveyard tone of your voice, I take it Romy is not at the S&
S?”

  A pause, then, “She’s not in Nashville?”

  “Not since three days ago. Today’s Austin Stateman reports she has left the Grand Ol’ Opry.” Gideon fingered his scar, then asked, “If not back to the S&S, where do you think she would go?”

  Another pause, then Duke drawled, “As unpredictable as Romy is, she could be anywhere.”

  “Listen, I am going to ring a contact at the Opry, Stanley Davenport, and find out what he might know. I’ll get back with you.”

  “You can find me through Rabbi Hickman.”

  Now it was Gideon’s turn to pause. “Rabbi Hickman?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, Romy could be anywhere, but I’d bet the ranch she’s on her way to Ireland – and most likely to ship out from the same place she shipped into. Soon as I arrange for Jock to cover for me here, I’m on my way to Galveston.”

  “Swing by and pick me up, will you?”

  And yet another pause. “Why should I?”

  “Because two heads are better than one.”

  A cynical sounding chuckle rolled from Duke. “Romy would twist that saying all around, given the chance.”

  “Let’s give her the chance.”

  § § §

  Once again, Romy presented herself at Galveston’s Port of Entry. Early that morning, its warehouse-like offices, musty and smelling of sweat, were congested with lines of people fleeing Nazi persecution, now that Germany was attacking more of its neighbors.

  A small number of refugees were being admitted under the quota system, but most were being turned away. For those poor wretched souls, she wanted to weep.

  Those seeking to voyage to Europe were scanty. Which made her present endeavor mind boggling to most.

  Irina’s purse placed primly atop Romy’s knees and the battered suitcase Micah had given Romy at her feet, she sat beside the Cunard White Star desk.