Serpentine In Body And Voice

There was an oracle in Nacogdoches, or so we heard--Robert and I made the trip over spring break, disguised, hoping to hear what she had to say...

I had a dream the night after we crossed the state line. I was in love with a blind girl, beautiful as anything but no sight to speak of. I remember it being tough, she'd always kiss my shoulder and I'd be forced to wonder if she was actually kissing my shoulder or if she had been trying to kiss my face or chest but had somehow missed.

She was always surprised and alarmed when I tried to get to second base. I guess you'd normally have a number of visual cues that something like that was coming.

Like I said, it was tough.

I'd always feel really self-conscious about her in the dream. Like it made me seem somehow less, like people would be talking behind my back about how I was only getting a girl as beautiful as all this because she was blind and couldn't see how--I'm not ugly, okay? I'm not, but I'm no Matthew Broderick or anything.

She was always wearing a tank top that said "Breathe" on the front in white letters. I think.

I was quiet the rest of the trip. Robert told me later that he'd had a dream that I would and that he wasn't supposed to say anything or turn up the radio real loud, even when his favorite songs came on, and I have to credit him with that. That's why I asked him along. Most people don't keep from blasting Duran Duran out the windows just because they had a dream that their best friend needed some thinking time and didn't want to know exactly how Hungry Like The Wolf Simon Le whoever-his-name-is is.

I needed it, the driving and the time. I had to pull the blind girl back out of dreams and into memory. I had to frame her, name her, because I knew that loving her in the dream meant something and I didn't know what and I knew that's what I had come to ask the oracle of Nacogdoches even though I didn't know it until just now and I kept wondering what she'd say if she'd name names or just bullshit me like all those other oracles or if we'd even find her or maybe we'd go to her house and her son would walk to the door and tell us she died three years ago and get off my lawn thank you very much and what if what if what if

Breathe.

The theme from View To A Kill came on, there was a marathon on the Top 40 station in town, some sort of 80's thing.

Robert sighed, and clicked off the radio.

We navigated a maze of stucco and streets named after saints I was sure didn't really exist but made mental notes to look up later. We had to go to the library and look up the address on the internet, eventually, after three solid hours of prowling residential districts we weren't welcome in.

As the sun was setting, I found her door. I knocked timidly. She answered the door. Everything was different.

I've been to every oracle within driving distance of the tri-county area, and some that weren't but came highly recommended. That body of experience had prepared me for a crone with a crock full of chicken entrail--oracles are nothing if not true to the stereotype--and by this I was sorely unprepared for 25 and gorgeous.

"Come in," she said testily. "I've been waiting since you crossed city limits, and I've got appointments that won't wait for some dream and his best friend who wants the lotto numbers."

"How'd you--" Robert began, standing behind me awestruck.

"Twenty-eight, thirty-four, twelve, seven, fifty-six, nineteen and no I'm not giving you the powerball have fun with your hundred grand and shut up I'm busy," the oracle replied, leading me by the hand past a beaded curtain and into the back room.

"Now," she said after we had sat facing one another across a card table, "this girl. Obviously, she's a representation. Duh. I might be able to say what of but that's going to take some time which kills my schedule for the night which means that this is going to run into serious money. Ten thousand dollars," she said, with all the ceremony of somebody asking me to go pick up a case of Coronas.

I was crushed. To come this far for nothing but a dream I couldn't interpret, it felt worse than nothing. Of course I didn't have ten thousand dollars, and said as much.

"That's the talk of somebody whose best friend didn't just get lotto numbers from me," she said, grinning fiercely. "I'll expect the check two months from now."

I looked up at the ceiling and whistled. This woman was something else, putting on loopholes like lesser women wore earrings.

"Go for it," I said.

She took my hands and I felt the room fill and shrink and change somehow, everything close and far away at the same time, contradictions blooming to life and dying out and coming back again faster than I could blink.

"She comes running," she said, eyes closed, "a full and true Daughter of God,"

"Wait."

"What?" The room died.

"Aren't they all?"

"All what?"

"All Daughters of God. It's the same as calling someone 'girl' or 'woman'. He's omnipotent, right? They're all His daughters."

The oracle smiled, not at all kindly. There was menace in her eyes, and the flash of a fresh memory.

"That is something, my dear man, that the majority of your gender seems to forget at the most inconvenient times. Now be quiet and stop asking questions."

After a pause to re-center herself, the oracle began anew.

"She comes running, a full and true Daughter of God, blind-eyed and mad from exhaustion, running up to you in your weak strength to take shelter from the sirocco. Your world will become hers, your beautiful words painting color into her blind eyes. You will write her the stories that tell her what the seasons are--you will name for her the trees and oceans. The words of your mouth will become her sight, and the strength of your shoulders will become her direction."

As the oracle slowly opened her eyes, I slumped back in my folding chair, trying to drink it all in. Looking impatiently at her watch, the oracle was the first to break the silence.

"This is prophecy, Tobias. We write this stuff down."

I did, and I carried that sheet of notebook paper folded in my wallet all the way back home, telling Robert everything. He was my best friend, after all.

When we got back, he took some of his powerball money and threw a kegger so he could invite every blind girl in the tri-county area. That wasn't what the oracle was talking about per se, but God bless him for trying.