Virgil smiled. He said, “All told I’m appreciative of the time I’ve spent here. As a black man I’ve been so fortunate to watch my race go from slaves to heads of state. I’ve seen men walk on the moon and pictures from the surface of Mars. I’ve helped many people and I’ve delivered justice to others.

“I can go as far as Pinhook creek. After that I begin to age with each step. And to tell the truth I’ve never really made an effort to leave. Over the years I’ve lived in a house or an apartment for a while, but I usually end up back on this mountain. The undercut you and your children found is where I like to spend fall. I used to stay in Three Caves for winter, but the roof’s falling in. Aint no good for an immortal oracle to be buried neath a hundred tons of limestone for an eternity.”

“But Mr. Sanders,” I asked, “Who knows you’re here? Who would know there’s an oracle on the mountain? In this day and age?”

He smiled at me, said, “You can call me Virgil,” then put a big hand on my shoulder. “People for the most part are good to the poor and indigent. They might see me and believe me to be a bum or a hobo. They will leave food for me, sometimes clothes. I can offer them some advice simply from my life on this planet. Sometimes I have visions without the mist and I can relate that to those that seek me out.

“Friend, across this planet there are many, many like me. I am not the only one. There are many secret societies that are well aware of me. There are men in high places of authority, they are wealthy. They come to see me on occasion and bring very, very expensive offerings. For these people I will bring out the stone stool and speak to the mist, the breath of A’pulu. 

“The Sun God does not offer up the future in a clear language, so someone must always be there to record the verse I speak while in my trance. It is up to the seeker to take the verse and make of it what they want.

“I remember in the fall of 1929 a man named Askey sought me out. The stock market crashed on a Friday and men of wealth around the word were scared. Led to me by members of the oldest secret society, the “Secret Sons of Dawn”, Askey wanted to know how drastic the market would fall. He ran a train car company and was looking to hedge his bets, to make sure he’d stay rich. He offered me a car as payment for word ‘of the future.

“I had no use for a car! I lived in a crack in the mountain! I was born into slavery – I had no idea how to drive!

“I told him I’d take his pocket watch – this one,” and Virgil produced a beautiful old pocket watch from within his torn jacket. Ornate, with a locomotive and buildings engraved in the gold. He opened it to reveal an ivory face, a beautiful moon and sun on front, the movement of golden gears driving onyx hands slowly around what appeared to be a diamond.

“Askey wasn’t a nice man. I remember him telling the other men he wasn’t giving up his watch to some negro living in the woods. They insisted. One of the men promised to replace the watch with one even more fine.

“I remember how hard his hand was. I didn’t have to pry it out or anything, but I could feel how tight the muscle and tendons of his hand was. Hard tendons, hard as bones themselves.

“You see friend, an oracle really doesn’t need anything of value. We don’t die, can’t leave this mountain, what do we really need? What we can do, tho’, is take something of value from the petitioner. A car meant nothing to this man. Maybe if I took something of real value to him he might take the verse serious.

“I did the ritual and I spoke the verse given to me. Many times the verse isn’t clear in its meaning. He was told:

thin sheets of rail and steel become cheap then

to he that marks not paper line for sure

“Askey took that to mean steel was going to be cheap and kept right on building luxury railroad cars. That crash lasted 10 years or more, friend. No one was buying luxury rail cars. I believe the verse meant lack of customers made the cars worthless. He did not.

“He lost everything. His company lost everything. Their employees lost everything.

“Askey shot himself in the chest late one night in the fall of 1931. The fall.”

And Virgil shook his head.