22
Singing of Hands and the Man
1985

He is the first to journey down the grooves of my upturned palms.

“Your future is in your hands.” Sure, I always thought this clever phrase was a cute way to speak figuratively about, you know, self-determination, good solid Emersonian self-reliance, or Henry David Thoreau’s adage to listen to the drum beat with the rhythm of your individual destiny. And rows of soybeans and cheap planks of wood ready for constructing the perfect pastoral retreat. Yes, each beat of the heart reminds us of Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, the three sisters of Fate which we try to negotiate past, but who are inevitable companions nonetheless.

Not long ago this figurative phrase became literal as I sat in a pouch of green park in a suburban city west of Dallas, and there, amongst hefty hordes of mosquitoes with straw-sized siphons, rested my right hand, palm skyward, a landing pad for the buzzing zephyrs laden with the juices of previous victims. The earlier puncturees must by now be certainly anemic and staggering weakly for the protection of walls, screens, racing car engines. In the midst of these insects who threatened to take my life and blood, I had my lifeline read.

And so I sing, for a brief span of time, of hands and the man, and of palms made fugitive by fate. He is the first to journey down grooves of my upturned palms. I won’t divulge the man who performed the reading, nor offer any backdrop other than to say he is from out of state: Tennessee. He reads palms as a side line (there must be a pun squirming about here), and that I had known him for less than one hour before the reading.

We sat on a patch of sandy loam soil under a Texas mesquite tree by a dried river bank, sipped light beer from sweating aluminum cans, smelled the roasting chicken and chops hissing and angry over the indifferent white coals, and, well, anticipated the next few moments.

This stranger, who I did not know existed an hour before, began to squish gently together parts of my fleshy open palm so better to read, not between the lines but the lines themselves. My hand became dough under his kneading. “Here is your life line,” he began. “It is strong and curves steadily into your character line. I see in this character line,” he went on, describing in some detail my recent past—say 2 to 3 years, and the future—up to 2 years, the accuracy of which caused me in rather short order to call to my 5 year old son to break from kicking the soccer ball to bring me another, no, Steve, bring us 2 more cold ones from the Coleman ice chest.

My reader of palms reminded me in style and tone, as I observed him examine the palm, of how I imagine surgeons speak to one another when, stooping as one body over the exposed, confused, or festering viscera of a patient, see parts of the puzzle begin to make sense. “Yes, I see here a strong line of emotion. You have had a tough time in the last year, but have come to terms with it.”

“Uh—huh,” I said rather dumbly, as he became more specific. My beer grew flat in the can, warming to a temperature unfit to drink.

He went then to the lines which indicate intelligence, followed by the line pointing one towards the future, then to the area of the hand’s heel that indicates how much one cares about beliefs and others; these lines, he explained, tell something of how authentically one deals with oneself and those one expresses care for. The tiny, almost imperceptible zaggy strip running faintly between intellectual and emotional grooves he could not read clearly, so he cupped my palm with some force to allow for more definition. Here the text became more cryptic, more difficult to decipher. My suspicion of his telling me a line began to dissolve under some accurate statements that began to unnerve me.

The blockbuster arrived in 2 installments: one, he found an initial “B” and named a person who has been important in my recent past. He first posed the name to me quizzically in the form of a question. Out of nowhere.

‘Who is this B? What is the person doing here?” He then named 3 individuals, the 3rd. being that person’s first name. I shuddered, pulled my hand away and pop-phizzed another sweating can. He joined me, sitting cross-legged like a guru, back straight, with just a slight arch, breathing from the stomach, relaxed but intense, holding my hand once again, feeling it for its narrative imbedded in the flesh, its history, its future, its plenitude of time. He did not look into my face; all the contortions he needed were in the hand’s fleshy fiction.

Ah, the future—what we’ve all been waiting for. And so he told me of the events in time present which will end in time future: “about 2 years if I were pressed to put an actual time on it.” He spoke of some very specific incidents here that left no room for chance, guesswork, general statements that could apply to everyone and no one, like when you read the day’s horoscope narrative and say, “by God, that’s right,” even as in the next instant your eyes tell your mind that you have accidentally skipped down a sign and just read your younger brother’s or older sister’s cosmic number by mistake.

As my first palm reader meditated for an instant, then spoke, in fact, spoke almost constantly, with slight interruptions, for about 20 minutes, I kept hearing my skeptical sidekick question: “Couldn’t he say this to your wife, a close friend, with the same percent of-validity?”

No, I have to answer now. The detail was too clear to be just anyone’s generic story. Oh sure, I am certain there are some patterns squirreling around here. And thank goodness. I like to know I am part of some communal body.

To say we have time on our hands is now not enough. In that time that our hands reveal, there is imbedded as well some of the content of that time that reveals how it was spent, wasted, coveted, ignored, depleted. To read the palm is to see, by the trained or gifted eye, the confluence of lines, triangles, stars, and initials which expose how one has handled life, and how the open palm is a book whose history is nothing less than the autobiography of past and future. So it is not just time, in some moments of our lives that weighs heavy on our hands. How appropriate that our destiny may handle us in the lines of our hands. Quite a handy intelligence is at work here, fingering our disbelief.

“Hey Steve,” I call to my son playing on a swing nearby. “Come over here; this man wants to take a look at your hand.”