“Don't let anyone rope you into the role of consulting swami, John. Give no encouragement and they will forget. It may seem heartless to you at first-most of them are misguided people with too many problems and only the best of intentions-but it is a question of your life, your privacy. So be firm. “And so he had been.
The Ford pulled into the turnaround between the shed and the woodpile, and as it swung around, Johnny saw the small Hertz sticker in the corner of the wind-shield. A very tall man in very new blue jeans and a red plaid hunting shirt that looked as if it had just come out of an L. L. Bean box got out of the car and glanced around. He had the air of a man who is not used to the country, a man who knows there are no more wolves or cougars in New England, but who wants to make sure all the same. A city man. He glanced up at the porch, saw Johnny, and raised one hand in greeting.
“Good afternoon,” he said. He had a flat city accent as well-Brooklyn, Johnny thought-and he sounded as if he were talking through a Saltine box.
“Hi,” Johnny said. “Lost?”
“Boy, I hope not,” the stranger said, coming over to the foot of the steps. “You're either John Smith or his twin brother.”
Johnny grinned. “I don't have a brother, so I guess you found your way to the right door. Can I do something for you?”
“Well, maybe we can do something for each other. “The stranger mounted the porch steps and offered his hand. Johnny shook it. “My name is Richard Dees. Inside View magazine.”
His hair was cut in a fashionable ear-length style, and it was mostly gray. Dyed gray, Johnny thought with some amusement. What could you say about a man who sounded as if he were talking through a Saltine box and dyed his hair gray?
“Maybe you've seen the magazine.”
“Oh, I've seen it. They sell it at the checkout counters in the supermarket. I'm not interested in being interviewed. Sorry you had to make a trip out here for nothing. “They sold it in the supermarket, all right. The headlines did everything but leap off the pulp-stock pages and try to mug you. CHILD KILLED BY CREATURES FROM SPACE, DISTRAUGHT MOTHER CRIES. THE FOODS THAT ARE POISONING YOUR CHILDREN. 12 PSYCHICS PREDICT CALIFORNIA EARTHQUAKE BY 1978.
“Well now, an interview wasn't exactly what we were thinking of,” Dees said. “May I sit down?”
“Really, I…”
“Mr. Smith, I've flown all the way up from New York, and from Boston I came on a little plane that had me wondering what would happen to my wife if I died interstate.”
“Portland-Bangor Airways-” Johnny asked, grinning.
“That's what it was,” Dees agreed.
“All right,” Johnny said. “I'm impressed with your valor and your dedication to your job. I'll listen, but only for fifteen minutes or so. I'm supposed to sleep every afternoon. “This was a small lie in a good cause.
“Fifteen minutes should be more than enough. “Dees leaned forward. “I'm just making an educated guess, Mr. Smith, but I'd estimate that you must owe somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars. That roll somewhere within putting distance of the pin, does it?”
Johnny's smile thinned. “What I owe or don't owe,” he said, “is my business.”
“All right, of course, sure. I didn't mean to offend, Mr. Smith. Inside View would like to offer you a job. A rather lucrative job.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“If you'll just give me a chance to lay this out for you…
Johnny said, “I'm not a practicing psychic. I'm not a Jeanne Dixon or an Edgar Cayce or an Alex Tannous. “That's over with. The last thing I want to do is rake it up again.”
“Can I have just a few moments?”
“Mr Dees, you don't seem to understand what I'm-”
“Just a few moments?” Dees smiled winningly.
“How did you find out where I was, anyway?”
“We have a stringer on a mid-Maine paper called the Kennebec Journal He said that although you'd dropped out of the public view, you were probably staying with your father.”
“Well, I owe him a real debt of thanks, don't I?”
“Sure,” Dees said easily. “I'm betting you'll think so when you hear the whole deal. May I?”
“All right,” Johnny said. “But just because you flew up here on Panic Airlines, I'm not going to change my mind.”
“Well, however you see it. It's a free country, isn't it? Sure it is. Inside View specializes in a psychic view of things, Mr. Smith, as you probably know. Our readers, to be perfectly frank, are out of their gourds for this stuff. We have a weekly circulation of three million. Three million readers every week, Mr. Smith, how's that for a long shot straight down the fairway? How do we do it? We stick with the upbeat, the spiritual…”
“Twin Babies Eaten By Killer Bear,” Johnny murmured.
Dees shrugged. “Sure, well, it's a tough old world, isn't it? People have to be informed about these things. It's their right to know. But for every downbeat article we've got three others telling our readers how to lose weight painlessly, how to find sexual happiness and compatibility, how to get closer to God…
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Dees?”
“Actually, I don't,” Dees said, and smiled his winning smile. “But we live in a democracy, greatest country on earth, right? Everyone is the captain of his own soul. No, the point is, our readers believe in God. They believe in angels and miracles…
“And exorcisms and devils and Black Masses…
“Right, right, right. You catch. It's a spiritual audience. They believe all this psychic bushwah. We have a total of ten psychics under contract, including Kathleen Nolan, the most famous seer in America. We'd like to put you under contract, Mr. Smith.”
“Would you?”
“Indeed we would. What would it mean for you? Your picture and a short column would appear roughly twelve times a year, when we run one of our All-Psychic issues. Inside View's Ten Famous Psychics Preview the Second Ford Administration, that sort of thing. We always do a New Year's issue, and one each Fourth of July on the course of America over the next year-that's always a very informative issue, lots of chip shots on foreign policy and economic policy in that one-plus assorted other goodies.”
“I don't think you understand,” Johnny said. He was speaking very slowly, as if to a child. “I've had a couple of precognitive bursts-I suppose you could say I “saw the future”-but I don't have any control over it. I could no more come up with a prediction for the second Ford administration-if there ever is one-than I could milk a bull.”
Dees looked horrified. “Who said you could? Staff writers do all those columns.”
“Staff…?” Johnny gaped at Dees, finally shocked.
“Of course,” Dees said impatiently. “Look. One of our most popular guys over the last couple of years has been Frank Ross, the guy who specializes in natural disasters. Hell of a nice guy, but Jesus Christ, he quit school in the ninth grade. He did two hitches in the Army and was swamping out Greyhound buses at the Port Authority terminal in New York when we found him. You think we'd let him write his own column? He'd misspell cat.
“But the predictions…
“A free hand, nothing but a free hand. But you'd be surprised how often these guys and gals get stuck for a real whopper.
“Whopper,” Johnny repeated, bemused. He was a little surprised to find himself getting angry. His mother had bought inside View for as long as he could remember, all the way back to the days when they had featured pictures of bloody car wrecks, decapitations, and bootlegged execution photos. She had sworn by every word. Presumably the greater part of inside View's other,999,999 readers did as well. And here sat this fellow with his dyed gray hair and his fortydollar shoes and his shirt with the store-creases still in it, talking about whoppers.