heard her shriekings and carryings-on, thank the Lord; she and Joe lived far out on the Nista Road, and their nearest neighbors were the Brodskys, who lived in that slutty trailer. The Brodskys were half a mile away. That was good. Anyone had heard her would have thought there was a crazywoman down at the Paulsons'.
Well there is, isn't there? If you think that picture started to talk, why, you must be crazy. Daddy'd beat you three shades of blue for saying such a thing - one for lying, another for believing it, and a third for raising your voice. 'Becka, pictures don't talk.
No ... nor did it, 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. You made that picture of Jesus talk your own self, like Edgar Bergen used to make Charlie McCarthy talk on the Ed Sullivan Show.
But somehow that idea seemed more frightening, more downright crazy, than the idea that the picture itself had spoken, and she refused to allow it mental house-room. After all, miracles happened every day. There was that Mexican fellow who had found a picture of the Virgin Mary baked into an enchilada, or something. There were those miracles at Lourdes. Not to mention those children that had made the headlines of one of the tabloids - they had cried rocks. These were bona fide miracles (the children who wept rocks was, admittedly, a rather gritty one), as uplifting as a Pat Robertson sermon. Hearing voices was just nuts.
But that's what happened. And you've been hearing voices for quite a while now, haven't you? You've been hearing his voice. Joe's. And that's where it came from. Not from Jesus but from Joe
'No,' 'Becka whimpered. 'I ain't heard any voices in my head.'
She stood by her clothesline in the back yard, looking blankly off toward the woods on the other side of the Nista Road. They were hazy in the heat. Less than half a mile into those woods, as the crow flew, Bobbi Anderson and Jim Gardener were steadily unearthing more and more of a titanic fossil in the earth.
Crazy, her dead father's implacable voice tolled in her head. 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 the picture. If it was the picture, it was a miracle, and miracles came from God. A miracle could drive you nuts - and dear God knew she felt like she was going nuts right now - but it didn't mean you were crazy to start with. Hearing voices in your head, however, or believing that you could hear other people's thoughts ...
'Becka looked down, and saw blood gushing from her left knee. She shrieked again and ran back into the house to call the doctor, Medix, somebody, anybody. She was in the living room again, pawing at the dial with the phone to her ear, when Jesus said:
'That's just raspberry filling from your coffee-cake, 'Becka. Why don't you just cool it before you have a heart attack?'
She looked at the Sony, the telephone receiver falling to the table with a clunk. Jesus was still sitting on the rock outcropping. It looked as though He had crossed His legs. It was really surprising, how much He looked like her father ... only He didn't seem forbidding, ready to be angry at a moment's notice. He was looking at her with a kind of exasperated patience.
'Try it and see if I'm not right,' Jesus said.
She touched her knee gently, wincing, anticipating pain. There was none. She saw the seeds in the red stuff and relaxed. She licked the raspberry filling off her fingers.
'Also,' Jesus said, 'you have got to get these ideas about hearing voices and going crazy out of your head. It's just Me, and I can talk to anyone I want to, any way I want to.'
'Because you're the Savior,' 'Becka whispered.
'Right,' Jesus said. He looked down. Below Him, on the screen, a couple of animated salad-bowls were dancing in appreciation of the Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing which they were about to receive. 'And I'd like you to please turn that crap off, if you don't mind. We can't talk with that thing running. Also,