"She is alive. I'll show you."
He shoved a penny in the slot.
Nothing happened.
Douglas yelled across the arcade at Mr. Black, the proprietor, seated on an upended soda-pop crate uncorking and taking a swig from a three-quarters empty bottle of brown-yellow liquid.
"Hey, something's wrong with the witch!"
Mr. Black shuffled over, his eyes half closed, his breath sharp and strong. "Something's wrong with the pinball, wrong with the peep show, wrong with the ELECTROCUTE YOURSELF FOR A PENNY machine." He struck the case. "Hey, in there! Come alive!" The witch sat unperturbed. "Costs me more to fix her each month than she earns." Mr. Black reached behind the case and hung a sign "OUT OF ORDER" over her face. "She ain't the only thing's out of order. Me, you, this town, this country, the whole world! To hell with it!" He shook his fist at the woman. "The junk heap for you, you hear me, the junk heap!" He walked off and plunged himself down on the soda-pop crate to feel the coins in his money apron again, like it was his stomach giving him pain.
"She just can't--oh, she can't be out of order," said Douglas, stricken.
"She's old," said Tom. "Grandpa says she was here when he was a boy and before. So it's bound to be some day she'd konk out and ..."
"Come on now," whispered Douglas. "Oh, please, please, write so Tom can see!"
He shoved another coin stealthily into the machine. "Please ..."
The boys pressed the glass, their breath made cumulus clouds on the pane.
Then, deep inside the box, a whisper, a whir.
And slowly, the witch's head rose up and looked at the boys and there was something in her eyes that froze them as her hand began to scrabble almost frantically back and forth upon the tarots, to pause, hurry on, return. Her head bent down, one hand came to rest and a shuddering shook the machine as the other hand wrote, paused, wrote, and stopped at last with a paroxysm so violent the glass in the case chimed. The witch's face bent in a rigid mechanical misery, almost fisted into a ball. Then the machinery gasped and a single cog slipped and a tiny tarot card tickled down the flue into Douglas's cupped hands.
"She's alive! She's working again!"
"What's the card say, Doug?"
"It's the same one she wrote for me last Saturday! Listen ..."
And Douglas read:
"Hey, nonny no!
Men are fools that wish to die!
Is't not fine to dance and sing
When the bells of death do ring?
Is't not fine to swim in wine,
And turn upon the toe,
And sing Hey, nonny no!
When the winds blow and the seas flow?
Hey, nonny no!"
"Is that all it says?" said Tom.
"At the bottom is a message: 'PREDICTION: A long life and a lively one.'"
"That's more like it! Now how about one for me?"
Tom put his coin in. The witch shuddered. A card fell into his hand.