Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(35)

While not exactly taking him to task, her tone of voice expressed displeasure about today’s outing with Lyndon. “You must keep in mind, Gideon,” she said, her voice lowered companionably, “how common he is. Ever the skirt-chaser.”

Not that he gave any credence to Romy’s card reading, but she had seemed to pick up on Lavinia’s more irritating personality traits. As an attorney, he was trained to do just that, read people – and that simply was all that Romy had done.

But then a carping voice from his cerebellum demanded why at the outset had he not picked up on Lavinia’s more grating habits?

The late afternoon was one of those sparkling autumn days, and the drive along the meandering ranch road, with its view of rolling hills and panoply of red-and-orange-leafed trees, bordering the Blanco in the distance, might have been scenic but for a broken-down tractor, a busted-out chicken coop, a fallen barbed wire fence – all of which signaled years of neglect.

Swerving sharply to avoid the abandoned hay wagon that had lost a wheel, the 1934 Ford Phaeton’s heavy iron chassis careened down a ravine.

“Oy gevalt!” Moe exclaimed from the sedan’s back seat.

In the passenger’s front seat, Gideon knuckled a death grip on the door handle.

The sedan rocketed up the ravine’s far side to regain the graveled road leading to the S&S. Lyndon Johnson drove with the same gusto he did everything else, including pursuing females; this, despite his recent marriage.

Spraying grit from the open windows stung Gideon’s s eyes, but when his vision cleared, Johnson’s face with its rather long nose and protruding ears was turned to him in elation.

“Hot damn,” the congressman shouted over the roar of the Ford engine, responding to his foot’s acceleration on the pedal, “that’s almost as fun as riding a wild horse or a horny woman.”

Moe was the first out of the sedan, banging open the porch screen door even before Johnson had unfolded his lanky frame from behind the steering wheel. The house’s front door itself was ajar. Gideon knocked on the door frame.

Moe called out, “Anyone home?” and charged on through.

“The little pecker on a mission?” Johnson quipped behind Gideon.

He shrugged and, pushing wider a front door that groaned on its rusted hinges, followed Moe inside.

In the parlor, the dwarf stopped short before a wooden wall-box display. Rubbing his palms, he exclaimed, “Ay-yay-yay, a gold mine.”

Gideon peered inside the box. War medals, many of them gold. Well, at least, McClellan’s father had amounted to something. If the ranch was anything to go by, the son was definitely not a chip off the old block.

Removing his fedora, he stepped on past and glanced into the kitchen. From beneath the sink, shapely legs protruded, ending with a pair of small and dusty bare feet. The hem of a floral-print dress had ridden up at the thighs.

“Rat shit,” came the young woman’s voice.

“Uhhh, Romy,” he murmured.

“Tis a bloody rat shit I need,” she spat again, apparently unaware she had three men in the kitchen viewing her gam display.

He had forgotten what a fascinating specimen of perverseness she was. Fascinating, unpredictable, and irrational.

“Uhh, little lady,” Johnson said, flicking back his coat panels to hunker down and tap her knee.

Romy’s body jackknifed, and a “Jesus Christ!” was heard as her head collided with the piping above.

Chuckling, Gideon said, “Allow me, Congressman.”

Johnson scooted back, and Gideon reached down and grabbed her ankles, gently tugging her out from beneath the sink, while she struggled to tug down her ever-rising dress hem.

Glaring up at him and Moe, she rubbed the crown of her head with its red-and-purple paisley handkerchief. “Ye two!” A spitting cobra looked friendlier. Then she spotted Johnson. Springing to her feet, she brushed her dirty hands against each other and had the grace to look embarrassed.

The grin, spreading from one corner of Johnson’s rubbery mouth to the other announced his delight. “Rat shit? You don’t give a rat shit?”

Gideon sighed. “I think the scamp means she needs a ratchet.”

“The wench needs a wrench,” McClellan said dryly from the doorway, his weight braced on his back boot and a muscle-strapped shoulder abutting the door frame. Mouth flattening, he eyed the opened canning jar on the stove top then cut his withering gaze to Romy. “I reckon you poured the bacon grease down the sink?”

She gulped, then her mouth crimped a grin. “Ye’ve heard of greasing the wheels, have ye not?”

His jaw flexing, McClellan transferred that stare of extreme displeasure to Johnson. “I don’t know why you’re here, Congressman, but it’s just as well, ‘cause we need to talk about this – ” he gestured at Romy, “ – this foolery of an arrangement I let myself in for with Operation Texas.”

“The puir man has been upset ever since he lost his prize cow Lucy,” she explained with false sympathy.

“Not to mention giving up my bed for a couch, finding your hair clogging my bathroom sink, discovering you were using my mustache clippers, toothbrush and shaving brush, stepping on dog bones in the middle of the night, watching you bulldoze S&S’s front gate with my pickup, and, what’s more, realizing you can’t boil water without burning it.”