Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(47)



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.

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