The Continuing Saga of:
”ICICLE BILL and Tommy Two-Head”

Chapter Ten: The Lonely Watch

”She had hair, sort of like yours. Long and thick and wavy. She had olive skin, like yours. And dark, piercing eyes, just like... ”Oh my God! In my incapacitated state had I really overlooked the obvious? The fortune teller mother, the potions and mysterious beauty. Even a moron could’ve put these things together. The Gypsy was Molly’s mom! Recognition and realization hit us both at once. Molly was apoplectic, she demanded, ”You know the Gypsy? You know where she is? Is she near? How do you know her? Take me to her! Take me to her and I’ll get him to let you go!” Molly was quite serious and I completely believed her. But I still had to consider the consequences of leading Bumperjack Joe there… was that the right move? And where was Tom? I suppose if he managed to disappear out there near the Indian’s shack he might have been able to survive, surely the Indian would take him in. Everything was happening too fast and my brain was muddled.

Molly had scampered off to Bumperjack and was speaking to him animatedly. He approached. ”You know her ma?” My suspicions were right, I suppose in the scheme of things, the fact that the woman who’d saved me from certain death by nursing me to health after being snake bitten, turns out to be the mother of a beguiling midget girl (who turned out to not actually be a midget), who was the reason Tom was tied to the tree, who had lead me to the Gypsy woman in the first place, wasn’t so incredibly surprising. In fact, it was par for the course. I’d begun to realize that I was having less and less control over any of the circumstances that were increasingly becoming more dangerous and bizarre. I’d just have to follow my instincts from here on out, and they were telling me that Molly and her ma were close and I didn’t think any harm would come of re-uniting them. In fact, it may lead to my getting out of this mess alive.

”I’ll take you and Molly to her Joe, not them.” I nodded toward him gang. Bumperjack turned his massive head on his too large shoulders and sighed. ”I’ll send the others away. You take us to her, you live.” To me, not a terrible deal. ”I need your word no harm comes to the Gypsy.” Joe was completely earnest, ”She’s Molly’s ma, I’d soon as die as see her hurt. But you and me still got business after.”

The route back to the Gypsy’s trailer was over sandy, at times rugged terrain. For the most part I knew if I kept towards the southeast and avoided the bluffs and creek beds, long dried up, that eventually I’d be able to spot her location. After all, it was the only dwelling out here that I knew of, once you hit level ground you could see for miles. As we drove, Molly and Joe in tow and following at a reasonable distance to avoid the dust clouds kicked up by my tires, my mind wandered on what it must have been like for the first settlers to the west.. Crossing the barren wasteland in covered wagons with their life’s possessions and a couple of mules, not even knowing if the hell on Earth would end. And what did this present scene look like? An aging tank of a car barely managing the crags and gullies, an ancient out of stock motorcycle with a grizzly driver and luscious moll crossing the desolate plain to where and what for? Unending wanderlust through time.

My head was still ringing and my thoughts turned once again to Tom. I wondered if he’d made it. If I did manage to get out of this I’d have to go back to the Indian’s and check. Poor Tom, the guy’d sure had a time of it. I didn’t even know that much of him but he seemed like a decent guy. In my reverie I almost thought I could hear him calling to me, off in the distance, perhaps his dying soul crying out one last time. ”Bill.” So softly and weak, I felt he may have met a dire fate. ”Billl!!!” But I sense I actually do hear him, calling to me. Maybe his only friend in the cruel world. BILL!!! Holy sheep-dip! I almost rolled the car. From the backseat, Tom was actually calling me. ”Are they gone?”

”What the...” Apparently Tom had managed to crawl into the space between the fold down armrest in the middle of the backseat. It’s like a five by five inch space that leads to a nook between the backseat and the trunk. He hid there all day after spying Bumperjack. The guy does have an incredibly tiny head and he’s skinny as a jack rabbit, he must be double-jointed as well. ”Stay down Tom, they’re right behind us, I’m taking them to the Gypsy’s...she’s Molly’s mom.”

”I know.”

”Jiminy Crisco, I thought you were a goner for sure!”

”Yea, when I saw ole Bumperjack coming I thought so too.”

”Look Tom, just stay out of sight, I’m gonna try and smooth things over and get us out of here. I know it must be tight in there, can you manage a little longer?”

”I’ll manage, just watch him...he’s mean as an alley cat.”

As we pulled up to the Gypsy’s trailer, Molly jumped off the bike and ran inside. Joe leaned up against his bike and rolled a cigarette. I figured this was as good a time as any, I approached.

I explained to Joe how I’d lost my way and happened upon Tom tied to the tree and freed him. How I got snake bit how Tom had taken me to the Gypsy and how she’d healed me. I left out the part about burying Gangster G, but told him that Tom and I’d parted company at the highway. He seemed to be taking it pretty well, far from the rabid killer I’d thought him to be, he seemed sedate. I suppose when you think about it, even killers have their soft side. Joe’s seemed to center around Molly, and me being the one re-uniting her with her mom might have been an act that opened the door for all kinds of kindness.

Joe spoke deliberately, ”Just as well, I didn’t really want to kill the guy anyway. I only meant to teach him a lesson. It weren’t his fault anyway, ain’t nobody can resist Molly.” He seemed torn up inside saying that.

”You know Joe, a woman like that can never be owned or possessed. The more you try to control them, the more they’ll pull away or act out. If she chooses to be with you it’s because she wants to be. And Joe, a woman like that… even if it’s only for awhile...that’s a time you’ve got to make the most of. These are the times you’re never gonna forget.” He was a huge man, but compared to his love of Molly, at that moment he seemed very small.

”I ain’t never had no woman even come close to that one there. I ain’t never loved nobody or no thing, ‘cept my bike and my old dog. When I seen that scrawny circus freak buddy of yours with my Molly, I wanted to die myself right then and there. I woulda kilt him, for damn sure I woulda kilt him ’cept Nolly wouldn’t allow it. He got one pass mister, one pass. You tell him that.”

”If I see him, I’ll tell him. Joe, I know it ain’t my place but I also
know what it’s like to love a beautiful woman. There’s something you should be wary of.” I had his full attention. ”Loving somebody more than they love you never winds up with a happy ending.” Joe looked me straight in the eye and answered icily, ”No good story ever does.” It was time to go.

Once again, Tom and I drove across the desert as we left Molly, Joe and the Gypsy behind. A sad giant watching over the Gypsy Queen and Princess. He, the last bastion of protection between them and the world. I felt certain they’d be just fine.

We passed Vulture Flats for the last time. When I thought about Ganster G, the boy I’d buried there in that dead place with scattered leaves and dried weeds blowing over the sandy ground...I imagined how the rare rain drops would beat upon the hollow earth, how the moon would make ghosts from the shadows of that lone Mesquite tree as it kept solitary watch at night.

When I thought about that abandoned, desolate place, it seemed to me that everything I’d known before it was dead too. Everything connected with my memories before it was fading...fading silently into the dark. As quiet as vulture’s wings on the dry wind high above the desert.

End Part Two