d is as near accentless
and pure as American English ever is. It branded her Ozark twang 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.

"Show me," I said, turning on her. "Heal me!"

"I'm to have a sign!" she wailed.

Well, she got one. I took her to my room, pointed at the dresser. One of
the glasses on the tray beside a pitcher rose, floated into the bath
and, after we had both heard the water run, came back through the air
and tilted to trickle a few drops of water onto her head.

Her words gave her away--she was no mystic. She swung her eyes back to
me: "TK!" she gasped. She recoiled from me. She'd had a viper to her
bosom.

"Heal me!" I snapped at her. "You've had your sign, and I'm your darlin'
Billy."

"I got to find it," she said desperately. "The weak place."

I flopped on the bed, stretched my arm out against the counterpane. She
ran her fingers over it--the old "laying on of hands." If she were the
real thing