The Fortuneteller
2

And the mother went away still laughing at herself for coming there but with a mixture of pride and skepticism in her eyes.

As the small predictions began to come true more people showed up at Tom's door. Some still went away laughing but others hurried out crossing themselves.

One woman brought a child of three who sat still and white in the chair, and her hand was whisper-frail.

"We've taken her to so many different doctors--specialists--but they all say the same thing. Mr. Michaelson--could you tell me--"

He turned away from the pleading in her eyes, from her asking him to have a power he did not possess, and clasped the little girl's hand. The images were few, the sequence short.

"Is there any--"

"Get her the puppy she wants," he said. "The white one with the brown spots."

There was so much senseless death. People who would be killed in their prime by stupid accidents, early heart attacks, incurable diseases, suicides. Tom had seen two or three who would live to a relatively old age but there was no indication of the thing he looked for.

And then one day, all of a sudden, it was there.

It was Thursday of his third week of "fortunetelling," and he had been holding the hand of a congenial red-headed baby boy. He watched as the child became a man and felt with him the wonder of first love. Tom became aware of a sureness, a solidness that this individual would possess. An ability to keep in perspective his own existence and the existences of those around him.

The child became a grandfather, old and white-haired. Tom saw him sitting in a porch swing somewhere in farm country, and there was a sense of worry about him. Something that greatly disturbed the equilibrium of his life.

And then--a great white blindness in the distance filling the sky and--nothing.

Tom stepped back and let go of the boy's hand as though he himself could be annihilated by what he had seen.

"What?" The child's mother was on her feet. "What is it!"

"Nothing," he said.

"You saw something!" She snatched her son. "He's going to die!" Her eyes were saucers of fear.

"No, ma'am. Not until he's an old, old man--a grandfather. He will own a farm. In Iowa, I think. He'll be happily married to the same woman for at least 45 years, even longer," Tom rattled on.

"I saw your face."

"No, no--it had nothing to do with your son. It was something else, really. I'm telling the truth. Believe me. Look, sometimes I get impressions of other things that aren't related to what I'm doing."