Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(29)
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.