Tom Robbins - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

An electric toaster, which shared the table top with the forearms and hands of the palmist and her subject, and whose shiny chrome was dusted with the crumbs from the morning's slices much as cathedrals are dusted with the crumbs from eternity's pigeons, an electric toaster, manufactured in Indiana (for in those days Japan was still flat on her tatami ), an electric toaster, whose function it was to do to bread what social institutions are designed to do to the human spirit, an electric toaster reflected — like a cynical impersonation of the crystal ball Sissy thought would be there and wasn't — the tremors that ran through this little scene.

“Now, as to the shape of your thumb, it is, I'm not pleased to say, rather primitive. It's broad in both phalanges, attesting to great determination, which can be good; and the skin is smooth, attesting to a certain grace. Because, furthermore, its tip is conic and the nail glossy and pink, I'd say that you have an intelligent, kindly, somewhat artistic nature. However, Sissy, however , there is a heavy quality to the second phalanx — the phalanx of logic — that indicates a capacity for foolish or clownish behavior, a refusal to accept responsibility or to take things seriously and a bent to be disrespectful of those who do. Your mama tells me that you're pretty well behaved and shy, but I'd watch out for signs of irrationality. All right?”

“What are the signs of irrationality,” asked Sissy, rationally enough.

For reasons known only to her, Madame Zoe chose not to elaborate. She pulled the young girl's thumb to her breast once more, breathing with relief as Sissy sweated and swallowed, unable to pursue her questioning. The palmist's house trailer was neither wide nor tall, but oh it was rich in odors that day.

“Your thumbs are surprisingly supple, flexible. .”

“I exercise 'em a lot.”

“Yes, well, um. The flexible thumb personifies extravagance and extremism. Such people are never plodders but achieve their goals by brilliant dashes. They are indifferent to money and are always willing to take risks. You, however, have a pretty full Mount of Saturn and, here, let me see your head line; hmmm, yes, it's not too bad. A long sharp head line and a developed Mount of Saturn — that's the little pad of flesh at the base of the middle finger — will often act as a sobering influence on a flexible thumb. In your case, though, I'm just not sure.

“I guess the most important aspect of your thumbs is the, ahem, overall size. Uh, what was it, do you know, that caused. .?”

“Don't know; doctors don't know,” called Mrs. Hankshaw from the couch, where she'd been listening.

“Just lucky, I guess,” smiled the girl.

“Sissy, dang you, that's what Madam Zoe means when she tells you about 'irrational.'”

Madame Zoe was anxious to get on with it. “Large thumbs denote strength of character and belong to persons who act with great determination and self-reliance. They are natural leaders. Do you study science and history in school? Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz had very large thumbs; Voltaire's were enormous, but, heh heh, just pickles compared with yours.”

“What about Crazy Horse?”

“Crazy Horse? You mean the Indian? Nobody that I've ever heard of ever troubled to study the paws of savages.

“Now, I must tell you this. You have the qualities to become a really powerful force in society — God, if you were only a male! — but you may have such an overabundance of those qualities that they. . well, frankly, it could be frightening. Especially with your primitive phalanx of logic. You could grow up to be a living disaster, a human malfunction of historic proportions.”

What had she said? With some effort — for they seemed to hold her even as she held them — Madame Zoe let go of Sissy's thumbs. She wiped her palms on her kimono: they were red like the sign. It had been years since she'd given such a deep reading. She was more than a little shaken. The toaster, for toasterly reasons, sat with endlessly bowed back, its flank mirroring her wig, which now hung slightly askew.

“So accurate a revealer of personality is the thumb" — she was addressing Mrs. Hankshaw now—"that the Hindu chiromancers base their entire work on it, and the Chinese have a minute and intricate system founded solely on the capillaries of the first phalanx. So, what I've given your daughter amounts to a complete reading. If you want me to consider the palms separately, it'll cost you an extra three-fifty.”

Confusion had the better of Mrs. Hankshaw. She wasn't sure whether too little had been revealed or too much. Her eyes looked like a fire in a Mexican nightclub. She felt she should be outraged but she wanted more information.

“How much for one question?”

“You mean one question answered from the palm?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if it's simple, only a dollar.”

“Husband,” said Mrs. Hankshaw, withdrawing a bill from her ratskin bag. ( The blaze, which started in a pot of paper flowers, spread quickly to the dancers' costumes .)

“Beg your pardon?”

“Husband. Will she find a husband?” ( The bandleader bravely led the orchestra in “El Rancho Grande,” even as his pet Chihuahua was being trampled in the panic .)

“Oh, I see.” Madame Zoe took Sissy's hand and gave it the old tall-dark-stranger squint. But she was in too deeply now to be deceptive. “I see men in your life, honey,” she said truthfully. “I also see women, lots of women.” She raised her eyes to meet Sissy's, looking for an admission of the “tendency,” but there was no signal.

“There is most clearly a marriage. A husband, no doubt about it, though he is years away.” And feeling expansive, she added at no extra charge, “There are children, too. Five, maybe six. But the husband is not the father. They will inherit your characteristics.” Since it is impossible to tell these last two things from the configurations of the hands, Madame Zoe must have been operating on psychic powers long dormant. She might have said more, but Mrs. Hankshaw had heard plenty.

Mother ushered daughter from the trailer as if she were leading her from the burning El Lizard Club. ( At the height of the inferno, a battery of overheated tequila bottles began to explode in the flames .)

The elder Hankshaw female had difficulty speaking. “I'm gonna take the bus on out to Mabel's, sweetie,” she said, giving Sissy a rare embrace. “You can catch a ride home iffen you want, but you promise me, word of honor, you won't git in a car with no man alone.” Then she thought to add, “And no lady alone, either. Just a married couple. You promise? And don't you worry none about the stupid stuff that woman said. We'll talk it over when I git home.”

Sissy wasn't worried at all. Confused, maybe, but not worried. She felt somehow— important —in an obscure, off-center fashion. Although she knew nothing of such things then, she felt important in the sense that the clockworks is important. The clockworks is a long way, in every way, from the White House, Fort Knox and the Vatican, but the winds that blow across the clockworks always wear a crazy grin.

Inside the house trailer, behind the red palm, where once again only jasmine incense and boiled cauliflower battled for olfactory supremacy, Madame Zoe crouched at a window, watching her young subject hitch a ride.

(The conic tip led the way, cutting through the atmosphere like the bowsprit of a ship, pulling after it the slightly bent phalanx of logic, followed by a fairly gliding phalanx of will and, quivering and rolling at the end of the procession, the ever-voluptuous Mount of Venus.) Suddenly, Madame Zoe recalled a sarcastic saying, a bon mot, that she had not heard in years. It made her laugh pointedly and with little humor; she bit her lipstick and shook her wig. The saying concerned the first or most preaxial digit of the human hand, although it had nothing to do with palmistry. It went like this: