Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(58)

She nodded with a distracted smile and went back to pumping the dish water, but paused, feeling his eyes still upon her. She half turned from the waist. “Aye, Glen?”

His Adam’s apple corked repeatedly. “I . . . uhh . . . was wondering if you could do . . . uhh . . . one of those quick readings. You know, those fortune cards tricks.”

She faced him fully and folded her arms. “Tricks? That sounds as if ye dunna believe in what the cards say.”

“Well, you know . . . just for fun.”

“Now?” When you should be about your morning duties, she wanted to add.

He crimped the floppy and soiled felt hat between his hands. “If you don’t mind, Romy.”

What was throwing him for a loop? “To be sure. Let me find me deck.”

Five minutes later, she located the Bicycle box tossed haphazardly at the bottom of the laundry basket, nestled among Duke’s long, white woolen socks and mingling lustily with her knickers. The musty, personal items smelled of dirt and sweat and raw desire.

She returned to the kitchen and seated herself catty-corner from an obviously agitated cowpoke. He had removed his work softened gloves. Glen took note of the missing bandana that usually corralled her wild curls. “Jeez, Romy,” he gestured at her hair, “I didn’t realize your . . . how, uhh, comely you look, what with your hair all loose like that.”

She smiled and nodded at the cards. “So, what ye be wanting to know, Glen?”

He fingered his bristly chin. “Hmmm, looks like I may have whelped me a babe. I’m a traveling man, you know? If I were to settle down, would I be . . . you know, just saying, making a mistake?”

Immediately, her thoughts hopscotched to her and Duke’s midnight tryst. That was one thing she should never have to worry about – begetting a bairn. This child, Glen’s, she felt had to have been conceived with Graciela.

Romy shuffled, all the while her mind whirling, and passed him the deck. What would a wise person advise? “Why are ye a traveling man, Glen?”

“Well, with the Depression, my folks couldn’t feed me, you understand. I was one of thirteen children. There were so many of us, I don’t think I went immediately missed. So, from Hebron, Nebraska, I hitchhiked, hopped boxcars, and ended up working the slaughterhouses in Chicago, where I met Skinny Henry. From there, it was only another hop, skip, and jump to cowpunching. Been on the road since I was fifteen. But I don’t want any kid of mine going through what I had to.”

There you had it. Nevertheless, for the sake of drama, she flipped out the cards she had collected from his three cut piles into random spreads of five or six. She scanned these spreads she had fanned out: Her eye was caught by the multitude of hearts – the Eight, Seven, and Three of Hearts, specifically, in one clump.

“Ye have an unexpected gift coming, tis true,” she said, fingering the Eight. That at the pinnacle of its spread. “What it is, the cards don’t say.” She glanced at another card. “And this Seven indicates someone whose interest in you, you could depend on. And this Three,” she said, glancing yet at the other card, “it shows your wishes comes true.”

He eyed her doubtfully, then challengingly. “And jest what are my wishes?”

She let her gap-toothed grin sum up her reading. “For yuir own family, Glen. The one that knows when ye go missin’.”

A smile stretched the width of his face. Tugging on his gloves, he grabbed his supposedly forgotten hat and nodded happily at the cards. “Well, head ‘em up and move ‘em out, Romy. You’re one hell of a card reader – and a friend!”

Half an hour later, Sally appeared at the kitchen’s screen door. “Hey, how did your gig go last night?” she asked, letting herself in. She tugged loose her chin strap and hung her peaked, wide-brimmed hat on one of the wall pegs.

Drying her hands on the dish towel slung over one shoulder, Romy tried to keep her expression pleasant enough. The horsewoman wanted something of her. But what? “Well, ye could say the gig was not a standing-room-only performance.”

“Oh? That’s too bad. Can you spare a cup of coffee?”

Romy bowed up an arrow-straight brow. “Ye’re telling me ye rode three miles for a cup of coffee?”

Sally pulled out one of the chairs and, twisting it around, straddled it. “No, I am telling you I need a friend. A friend whose advice I trust.”

At that, Romy did a double-take. “Ye mean meself?

“Will you do a reading for me? I’ll pay you.”

“Let me get the coffee first,” she said, thinking rapidly, “then the cards.” She would have to be careful. Sally was quick on the uptake, she would more readily detect what Duke called bull-shit. “Coffee and the card reading are on me.”

Serving up a cup of stale, warmed-over coffee was easier than locating the playing cards. Criminy, now where had she stashed them, only a half hour before? She found them in the pie safe, where she had stored the left-over bacon strips, well burnt and beyond appetizing. Bleh!

For a second time that morning, she peeled open the ragged box and slid out the equally worn cards. For a flashier effect, she shuffled them thrice in her hands, rather than on the table, and ended up with an impressive bridge finish. She then passed the cards to Sally. “Cut them into three piles.”

Sally complied, and Romy asked, “What is it ye wish to know?”