Well there is a crazywoman at the Paulsons', isn't there? she
thought. If you really think that picture of Jesus started to talk to you,
why, you really must be crazy. Daddy'd beat you three shades of blue
for thinking such a thing one shade for lying, another shade for
believing the lie, and a third for raising your voice. 'Becka, you are
crazy. Pictures don't talk.
No ... and it didn't, another voice spoke up suddenly. That
voice came out of your own head, 'Becka. I don't know how it could
be ... how you could know such things ... but that's what happened.
Maybe it had something to do with what happened to you last week,
or maybe not, but you made that picture of Jesus talk your own self.
It didn't really no more than that little rubber Topo Gigio mouse on
the Ed Sullivan Show.
But somehow the idea that it might have something to do with
that ... that
(hole)
other thing was scarier than the idea that the picture itself had
spoken, because that was the sort of thing they sometimes had on
Marcus Welby, like that show about the fellow who had the brain
tumor and it was making him wear his wife's nylon stockings and
step-ins. She refused to allow it mental houseroom. It might be a
miracle. After all, miracles happened every day. There was the
Shroud of Turin, and the cures at Lourdes, and that Mexican fellow
who had a picture of the Virgin Mary burned into the surface of a
taco or an enchilada or something. Not to mention those children that
had made the headlines of one of the tabloids children who cried
rocks. Those were all bona fide miracles (the children who wept
rocks was, admittedly, a rather gritty one), as uplifting as a Jimmy
Swaggart sermon. Hearing voices was only crazy.
But that's what happened. And you've been hearing voices for
quite a little while now, haven't you? You've been hearing His voice.
Joe's voice. And that's where it came from, not from Jesus but from
Joe, from Joe's head
'No,' 'Becka whimpered. 'No, I ain't heard any voices in my
head.'
She stood by her clothesline in the hot backyard, looking
blankly off toward the woods on the other side of the Nista Road,
blue-gray-hazy in the heat. She wrung her hands in front of her and
begun to weep.
'I ain't no heard no voices in my head.'
Crazy, her dead father's implacable voice replied. Crazy with
the heat. You come on over here, 'Becka Bouchard, I'm gonna beat
you three shades of blister-blue for that crazy talk.
'I ain't heard no voices in my head,' 'Becka moaned. 'That
picture really did talk, I swear, I can't do ventriloquism!'
Better believe the picture. If it was the hole, it was a brain
tumor, sure. If it was the picture, it was a miracle. Miracles came
from God. Miracles came from Outside. A miracle could drive you
crazy and the dear God knew she felt like she was going crazy now
but it didn't mean you were crazy, or that your brains were
