Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(50)
Further, she knew he would not stand for any disruption of his goals – and consummation of that hunger he would consider a disruption.
The jig was up as Jock would say. Sooner or later, she would find herself shipped back to Germany quicker than a ‘euthanasia’ patient to the Nazis’ new gas chambers.
Outside, she drifted toward the corral where a phalanx of male energy hovered. Apart from the S&S hands, Johnson’s personal photographer and aid were there to ensure Johnson’s virility was captured for prosperity.
As the Dust Bowl decade had broiled Texas, the extreme weather continued to make for an unseasonably warm New Year’s Day. It was most certainly not the natural breeding season for cattle. But that did not appear to deter Johnson’s prized bull.
Broad shouldered and slick, black haired, the stout bull approached with swaying testicles the shying, agitated heifer. She switched her tail from side to side over her swollen female part and skittered along the railing.
And so yet mating ritual, was underway at the S&S.
“Never you worry, McClellan,” said Johnson, parked atop the railing with Duke, “that young bull will hammer your heifer harder than a hermit will a whore.” He shifted on the railing and stuck out a beckoning arm. “Romy, gal, you’re missing the grand finale!”
The photographer’s camera clicked away and flash powder flared from the trowel as she laid her palm into Johnson’s paw, assisting her in climbing the slats to sit between him and Duke.
Johnson’s bull mounted and began plunging into the S&S heifer. Romy’s breath quickened. Her fingers dug into her jeans-sheathed thighs. She could not help but envy the coupling, the completion of the mating ritual that she was denied with Duke. Next to her, he gripped the railing with white knuckles.
Later as everyone trooped into the kitchen to take their fill of her traditional New Year’s Day supper, her hungering for him continued unabated. She circled the table that she and he had only recently abandoned in their frenetic drive toward completion, satiation, fulfillment, or whatever – and set a heaping plate before each man, including the boisterous congressman, flanked by his aide and photographer.
“You’ve heard of cow tipping,” Glen asked the officious young aide.
The suited man blinked rapidly. “Cow tipping?”
She noted how Johnson and Duke sat back with barely concealed smirks on their faces, prepared to watch the hands gig the citified aide and photographer.
“Yeah,” Skinny Henry said, “you sneak into a pasture and put a hardy shoulder to a cow taking a standing snooze. The man who tips the most cows wins.”
“You mean the yokel who believes thees,” Arturo grinned, amid the chuckles.
She had a strong suspicion that his recent good humor had to do with a speculative exchange of glances she had caught between him and Sally at Christmas the week before. Mayhap, Sally realized that Duke wouldn’t allow her to run roughshod over him; that she needed that position of dominance, after being dominated by her father all those years.
If true, that left only Charlotte in the running. For the present, at least. And if not her, if she wasn’t his choice, there would always be other lasses willing to wait in line for Duke McClellan.
No matter, Romy knew it was time to devise plans for her own future.
For those few moments, the tableau appeared like the extended family she had yearned for. As she yearned for Ireland, what seemed to her a refuge and familial heritage. Ireland represented security, identity, and the bountifulness of life she has never known.
If only she could be as bountiful in reproducing. Aye, every couple of months she spotted, as if the blood splotches still served to reaffirm that she was questionably a vital female. But yearn she did for a bairn of her own. Watching Charlotte with Clara at Thanksgiving only emphasized that aching maternal longing in Romy that would never be assuaged.
Midway through the supper, Johnson turned his ferreting, hooded eyes on her. “Romy gal, bang up supper you did.”
She smiled obligingly and nibbled on her cornbread while the other men chipped in their praise. All but the stonewall Duke. He was sitting back, guardedly watching the congressman . . . and her.
“You heard of Dessau Hall?” Johnson asked her. Before she could respond, he went on. “It’s a beer hall in a podunk town outside Austin city limits. But some popular acts appear there – like Glen Miller’s band and Hank William’s Drifting Cowboys.”
She had never heard of either of them but nodded in worldly wise acknowledgement.
Johnson leaned over his plate, his large hands grasping an ear of winter corn, dripping with butter. “I have contacts there. I could get you a gig, playing a guitar.”
Surprise flitted through her, followed by excitement – and, on its heels, serious misgivings. Johnson’s offer would most likely have strings attached.
She declined with the first inspiration that came to mind. “I seriously doubt me talent is good enough for the likes of them – ” she flicked her hand airily to indicate the unfamiliar names of the other musicians.
“You are guitar good,” Arturo urged, “and eef I know anything, eet ees guitars.”
“Well, li’l darlin’,” Johnson drawled, swiping the back of his hand across buttered-smeared lips. “What d’ya say? I can have Gideon get the ball rolling.”
“I – uhh – ,” she stalled, “ – I dunna have a way to get to Austin.”