Vigorish Part 4

"I figured you should handle our money, Billy Joe," she said. "Anyway, can't take money for my gift."

She had me shaking with excitement. "You have a gift?" I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

"Just some nights. Since I broke my vow, I've lost most of my prophecy.

My real gift is healing. Lost _all_ of that," she concluded, not bitterly. "G.o.d is punis.h.i.+ng me."

Gravel crunched as she came slowly across the roof toward me. The f.a.g end of her cigarette made a spinning arc in the night as she snapped it over the side of the roof. Now there was no way to see her at all.

Perception is nice in the dark. I tracked her automatically.

"What was the vow you broke?" I said.

She sighed, near me. "I divorced my husband, my own darlin' Billy," she said. "There's no divorce in Heaven."

"Tough," I said. I thought _I_ was her darlin' Billy. Talk about Double-think! "Will you miss never having a man again? I mean, once you've been a wife--" I added, letting it drift off.

"G.o.d has been good to me," she said out of the dark. "He let me see my own future, that he would give me a husband again."

That was a curve. "Isn't that an even worse breaking of vows?" I said.

"I mean, if in G.o.d's sight you're still married to Billy Joe?"

"Would be," she conceded from the black, now right next to me. "But He told me that the man I should seek _would be_ Billy Joe--hit's a miracle worked for me." Her voice lowered. "A miracle that come to pa.s.s tonight, my darlin' Billy." A s.h.i.+ver ran its fingers up my spine. She meant every word of it. I _was_ her darlin' Billy.

I wasn't in any mood to get married, and least of all to a seeress.

Precognition is the least understood of the Psi powers, and the most erratic. But of all people, I could least afford to sneer at the power of Psi.

For the first time, I guess, I realized the awful helplessness that comes over the Psiless when a TK invokes his telekinetic power. I wanted no part of the future this corn-fed oracle had conjured up. But it might be the only future I'd ever have.

I tried to recall her looks. Thinking about them, they really added up to no more than hysterical sniffles, not enough to eat, and the pathetic evidence that there hadn't been any money for orthodonture. Fatten her up, straighten her teeth and--Talk about _religious_ rationalization!

I snapped out of it. Maybe she could call the turn of dice. But I'd be d.a.m.ned if she could call the turn of people. Let her try _me_.

I sat up on the parapet, swinging to put my feet on the gravel of the root. "So tonight you found the husband G.o.d's been going to give you?" I asked.

"Yes," she said softly.

"And I'm the one?"

"Yes!"

"Not that again!" I growled, grabbing her thin shoulders and shaking her. Her gla.s.ses bobbled on her nose. "I'm _not_ your darlin' Billy, and you well know it. Admit it!"

She closed her lips over her buck teeth and sniffled. "I reckon not,"

she said, raising her head and looking at me without flinching. "I lied to you."

"Why?"

"Kind of made me feel more decent about bein' divorced."

I gave her a last shake for the lie. "Let's have it," I went after her.

"How much of what you've been feeding me is just window dressing?"

She shrugged, but stayed silent.

"_Have_ you been married?" I insisted.

"Yes, Billy Joe."

"_And_ divorced?"

"Oh, darlin' Billy," she sighed. "I jest shouldn't never a _done_ that.

But I did," she added.

"Talk English," I snapped. "This chitterlin's and corn pone are just more window dressing, right?"

Her face was solemn behind the gla.s.ses. "When you are a smart girl, and you know the future, too, they hate you and try to hurt you," she said.

"They don't seem to mind it so much if it comes from a piece of white trash that never could be 'no account.' By the time I was twelve or so I had learned to act just a little stupid and corn-fed."

This, her longest speech, she delivered in quiet, Neutral American, the speech that covers the great prairie states and is as near accentless and pure as American English ever is. It branded her Ozark tw.a.n.g as a lie, and a great many other things about her. But it added something very solid to her claims of prophecy.

"All this," I said. "Because you see the future?"

"Yes, Billy Joe."

"And this talk about losing your prophecy because of divorce was just that, talk?" I insisted.

Her mouth worked silently. "I talk like trash, and sometimes I start to think like it," she confessed. "I even act like it. I've tried not to see things acomin'. But," she added, drifting back into her Ozark lingo.

"Always I knowed I was to find you. I knowed I was to go and search in spots of sin, for there you would be. And it kept getting stronger on me where to seek. This night I knew it was the time. I never got a dress and all before."

The chilly fingers touched me again. Still, what she was saying made some weird kind of sense. "What about the healing?" I tried, feeling a trap slowly descending over me.

She smiled at that. "I guess I put that punishment on myself for what I done," she said.

"Then you can still heal the sick?" I asked. She shrugged. "I want you to try," I added.

"Not till I get a sign," she said, moving uneasily. "I'm to get a sign."

I waved my hands in disgust and turned away from her. "There had to be some fakery in it somewhere," I said. "You couldn't heal a hang-nail!"

"Not a fake!" she said hotly. "I _have_ healed the sick!"

"Don't get uppity," I said. "So have I. You see," I told her. "I'm a doctor. Not much of a one," I admitted, pointing to my weak right arm.

"I can't heal myself."

"Oh, yore pore arm," she said.