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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:
    “If you only had a thumb you could rule the world.”
    COWGIRL INTERLUDE (BONANZA JELLYBEAN)
    She is lying on the family sofa in flannel pajamas. There is Kansas City mud on the tips and heels of her boots, boots that have yet to savor real manure. Fourteen, she knows she ought to remove her boots, yet she refuses. A Maverick rerun is on TV; she is eating beef jerky, occasionally slurping. On her upper stomach, where her pajama top has ridden up, is a small deep scar. She tells everyone, including her school nurse, that it was made by a silver bullet.
    Whatever the origin of the extra