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been transformed into a bleeding grin.
"Yes, I am," he said, smiling back.
Her eyes dropped to the picture. "I should have known you'd go
right to that," she said, simpering. "It's so You."
"It is, isn't it?" he said, and smiled his best celebrity smile. "How
much would you need for it?"
"Forty-five dollars," she said. "I'll be honest with you, I started it at
seventy, but nobody likes it, so now it's marked down. If you come
back tomorrow, you can probably have it for thirty." The simper
had grown to frightening proportions. Kinnell could see little gray
spit-buds in the dimples at the comers of her stretched mouth.
"I don't think I want to take that chance," he said. "I'll write you a
check right now."
The simper continued to stretch; the woman now looked like some
grotesque John Waters parody. Divine does Shirley Temple. "I'm
really not supposed to take checks, but all right," she said, her tone
that of a teenage girl finally consenting to have sex with her
boyfriend. "Only while you have your pen out, could you write an
autograph for my daughter? Her name is Michela?"
"What a beautiful name," Kinnell said automatically. He took the
picture and followed the fat woman back to the card table. On the
TV next to it, the lustful young people had been temporarily
displaced by an elderly woman gobbling bran flakes.
" Michela reads all your books," the fat woman said. "Where in the
world do you get all those crazy ideas?"
"I don't know," Kinnell said, smiling more widely than ever. "They
just come to me. Isn't that amazing?. "
The yard sale minder's name was Judy Diment, and she lived in the
house next door. When Kinnell asked her if she knew who the
artist happened to be, she said she certainly did; Bobby Hastings
had done it, and Bobby Hastings was the reason she was selling off
the Hastings' things. "That's the only painting he didn't bum," she
said. "Poor Iris! She's the one I really feel sorry for. I don't think
George cared much, really. And I know he didn't understand why
she wants to sell the house." She rolled her eyes in her large,
sweaty face - the old can-you-imagine-that look. She took
Kinnell's check when he tore it off, then gave him the pad where
she had written down all the items she'd sold and the prices she'd
obtained for them. "Just make it out to Michela," she said. "Pretty
please with sugar on it?" The simper reappeared, like an old
acquaintance you'd hoped was dead.
"Uh-huh," Kinnell said, and wrote his standard thanks-for-being-a-
fan message. He didn't have to watch his hands or even think about
it anymore, not after twenty-five years of writing autographs. "Tell
me about the picture, and the Hastingses."
Judy Diment folded her pudgy hands in the manner of a woman
about to recite a favorite story.
"Bobby was just twenty-three when he killed himself this spring.
Can you believe that? He was the tortured genius type, you know,
but still living at home." Her eyes rolled, again asking Kinnell if he
could imagine it. "He must have had seventy, eighty paintings, plus
all his sketchbooks. Down in the basement, they were." She
pointed her chin at the Cape Cod, then looked at the picture of the
fiendish young man driving across the Tobin Bridge at sunset.
"Iris-that's Bobby's mother - said most of them were real bad, lots
worse'n this. Stuff that'd curl your hair." She lowered her voice to a
whisper, glancing at a woman who was looking at the Hastings'
mismatched silverware and a pretty good collection of old
McDonald's plastic glasses in a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids motif.
"Most of them had sex stuff in them."
"Oh no," Kinnell said.
"He did the worst ones after he got on drugs," Judy Diment
continued. "After he was dead-he hung himself down in the
basement, where he used to paint-they found over a hundred of
those little bottles they sell crack cocaine in. Aren't drugs awful,
Mr. Kinnell?"
"They sure are."
"Anyway, I guess he finally just got to the end of his rope, no pun
intended. He took all of his sketches and paintings out into the
back yard-except for that one, I guess - and burned them. Then he
hung himself down in the basement. He pinned a note to his shirt.
It said, 'I can't stand what's happening to me.' Isn't that awful, Mr.
Kinnell? Isn't that just the awfulest thing you ever heard?"
'Yes," Kinnell said, sincerely enough. "It just about is."
'Like I say, I think George would go right on living in the house if
he had his druthers, " Judy Diment said. She took the sheet of
paper with Michela's autograph on it, held it up next to Kinnell's
check, and shook her head, as if the similarity of the signatures
amazed her. "But men are different."
"Are they?"
"Oh, yes, much less sensitive. By the end of his life, Bobby
Hastings was just skin and bone, dirty all the time-you could smell
him - and he wore the same T-shirt, day in and day out. It had a
picture of the Led Zeppelins on it. His eyes were red, he had a
scraggle on his cheeks that you couldn't quite call a beard, and his
pimples were coming back, like he was a teenager again. But she
loved him, because a mother's love sees past all those things."
The woman who had been looking at the silverware and the glasses
came over with a set of Star Wars placemats. Mrs. Diment took
five I dollars for them, wrote the sale carefully down on her pad
below "ONE DOZ. ASSORTED POTHOLDERS & HOTPADS,"
then turned back to Kinnell.
They went out to Arizona," she said, "to stay with Iris's folks. I
know George is looking for work out there in Flagstaff-he's a
draftsman-but I don't know if he's found any yet. If he has, I
suppose we might not ever see them again here in Rosewood. She
marked out all the stuff she wanted me to sell-Iris did - and told me
I could keep twenty percent for my trouble. I'll send a check for the
rest. There won't be much." She sighed.
"The picture is great," Kinnell said.
"Yeah, too bad he burned the rest, because most of this other stuff
is your standard yard sale crap, pardon my French. What's that?"
Kinnell had turned the picture around. There was a length of
Dymotape pasted to the back.
"A tide, I think."
"What does it say?"
He grabbed the picture by the sides and held it up so she could read
it for herself This put the picture at eye level to him, and he studied
it eagerly, once again taken by the simpleminded weirdness of the
subject; kid behind the wheel of a muscle car, a kid with a nasty,
knowing grin that revealed the filed points of an even nastier set of
teeth.
It fits, he thought. If ever a title futted a painting, this one does.
" The Road Virus Heads North," she read. "I never noticed that
when my boys were lugging stuff out. Is it the tide, do you think?"
"Must be." Kinnell couldn't take his eyes off the blond kid's grin. I
know something, the grin said. I know something you never will.
"Well, I guess you'd have to believe the fella who did this was high
on drugs," she said, sounding upset - authentically upset, Kinnell
thought. "No wonder he could kill himself and break his mamma's
heart."
"I've got to be heading north myself," Kinnell said, tucking the
picture under his arm. "Thanks for-"
" Mr. Kinnell?"
"Yes?"
"Can I see your driver's license?" She apparently found nothing
ironic or even amusing in this request. "I ought to write the number
on the back of your check."
Kinnell put the picture down so he could dig for his wallet. "Sure.
You bet."
The woman who'd bought the Star Wars placemats had paused on
her way back to her car to watch some of the soap opera playing on
the lawn TV. Now she glanced at the picture, which Kinnell had
propped against his shins.
"Ag," she said. "Who'd want an ugly old thing like that? I'd think
about it every time I turned the lights out."
"What's wrong with that?" Kinnell asked.
Kinnell's Aunt Trudy lived in Wells, which is about six miles north [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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been transformed into a bleeding grin.
"Yes, I am," he said, smiling back.
Her eyes dropped to the picture. "I should have known you'd go
right to that," she said, simpering. "It's so You."
"It is, isn't it?" he said, and smiled his best celebrity smile. "How
much would you need for it?"
"Forty-five dollars," she said. "I'll be honest with you, I started it at
seventy, but nobody likes it, so now it's marked down. If you come
back tomorrow, you can probably have it for thirty." The simper
had grown to frightening proportions. Kinnell could see little gray
spit-buds in the dimples at the comers of her stretched mouth.
"I don't think I want to take that chance," he said. "I'll write you a
check right now."
The simper continued to stretch; the woman now looked like some
grotesque John Waters parody. Divine does Shirley Temple. "I'm
really not supposed to take checks, but all right," she said, her tone
that of a teenage girl finally consenting to have sex with her
boyfriend. "Only while you have your pen out, could you write an
autograph for my daughter? Her name is Michela?"
"What a beautiful name," Kinnell said automatically. He took the
picture and followed the fat woman back to the card table. On the
TV next to it, the lustful young people had been temporarily
displaced by an elderly woman gobbling bran flakes.
" Michela reads all your books," the fat woman said. "Where in the
world do you get all those crazy ideas?"
"I don't know," Kinnell said, smiling more widely than ever. "They
just come to me. Isn't that amazing?. "
The yard sale minder's name was Judy Diment, and she lived in the
house next door. When Kinnell asked her if she knew who the
artist happened to be, she said she certainly did; Bobby Hastings
had done it, and Bobby Hastings was the reason she was selling off
the Hastings' things. "That's the only painting he didn't bum," she
said. "Poor Iris! She's the one I really feel sorry for. I don't think
George cared much, really. And I know he didn't understand why
she wants to sell the house." She rolled her eyes in her large,
sweaty face - the old can-you-imagine-that look. She took
Kinnell's check when he tore it off, then gave him the pad where
she had written down all the items she'd sold and the prices she'd
obtained for them. "Just make it out to Michela," she said. "Pretty
please with sugar on it?" The simper reappeared, like an old
acquaintance you'd hoped was dead.
"Uh-huh," Kinnell said, and wrote his standard thanks-for-being-a-
fan message. He didn't have to watch his hands or even think about
it anymore, not after twenty-five years of writing autographs. "Tell
me about the picture, and the Hastingses."
Judy Diment folded her pudgy hands in the manner of a woman
about to recite a favorite story.
"Bobby was just twenty-three when he killed himself this spring.
Can you believe that? He was the tortured genius type, you know,
but still living at home." Her eyes rolled, again asking Kinnell if he
could imagine it. "He must have had seventy, eighty paintings, plus
all his sketchbooks. Down in the basement, they were." She
pointed her chin at the Cape Cod, then looked at the picture of the
fiendish young man driving across the Tobin Bridge at sunset.
"Iris-that's Bobby's mother - said most of them were real bad, lots
worse'n this. Stuff that'd curl your hair." She lowered her voice to a
whisper, glancing at a woman who was looking at the Hastings'
mismatched silverware and a pretty good collection of old
McDonald's plastic glasses in a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids motif.
"Most of them had sex stuff in them."
"Oh no," Kinnell said.
"He did the worst ones after he got on drugs," Judy Diment
continued. "After he was dead-he hung himself down in the
basement, where he used to paint-they found over a hundred of
those little bottles they sell crack cocaine in. Aren't drugs awful,
Mr. Kinnell?"
"They sure are."
"Anyway, I guess he finally just got to the end of his rope, no pun
intended. He took all of his sketches and paintings out into the
back yard-except for that one, I guess - and burned them. Then he
hung himself down in the basement. He pinned a note to his shirt.
It said, 'I can't stand what's happening to me.' Isn't that awful, Mr.
Kinnell? Isn't that just the awfulest thing you ever heard?"
'Yes," Kinnell said, sincerely enough. "It just about is."
'Like I say, I think George would go right on living in the house if
he had his druthers, " Judy Diment said. She took the sheet of
paper with Michela's autograph on it, held it up next to Kinnell's
check, and shook her head, as if the similarity of the signatures
amazed her. "But men are different."
"Are they?"
"Oh, yes, much less sensitive. By the end of his life, Bobby
Hastings was just skin and bone, dirty all the time-you could smell
him - and he wore the same T-shirt, day in and day out. It had a
picture of the Led Zeppelins on it. His eyes were red, he had a
scraggle on his cheeks that you couldn't quite call a beard, and his
pimples were coming back, like he was a teenager again. But she
loved him, because a mother's love sees past all those things."
The woman who had been looking at the silverware and the glasses
came over with a set of Star Wars placemats. Mrs. Diment took
five I dollars for them, wrote the sale carefully down on her pad
below "ONE DOZ. ASSORTED POTHOLDERS & HOTPADS,"
then turned back to Kinnell.
They went out to Arizona," she said, "to stay with Iris's folks. I
know George is looking for work out there in Flagstaff-he's a
draftsman-but I don't know if he's found any yet. If he has, I
suppose we might not ever see them again here in Rosewood. She
marked out all the stuff she wanted me to sell-Iris did - and told me
I could keep twenty percent for my trouble. I'll send a check for the
rest. There won't be much." She sighed.
"The picture is great," Kinnell said.
"Yeah, too bad he burned the rest, because most of this other stuff
is your standard yard sale crap, pardon my French. What's that?"
Kinnell had turned the picture around. There was a length of
Dymotape pasted to the back.
"A tide, I think."
"What does it say?"
He grabbed the picture by the sides and held it up so she could read
it for herself This put the picture at eye level to him, and he studied
it eagerly, once again taken by the simpleminded weirdness of the
subject; kid behind the wheel of a muscle car, a kid with a nasty,
knowing grin that revealed the filed points of an even nastier set of
teeth.
It fits, he thought. If ever a title futted a painting, this one does.
" The Road Virus Heads North," she read. "I never noticed that
when my boys were lugging stuff out. Is it the tide, do you think?"
"Must be." Kinnell couldn't take his eyes off the blond kid's grin. I
know something, the grin said. I know something you never will.
"Well, I guess you'd have to believe the fella who did this was high
on drugs," she said, sounding upset - authentically upset, Kinnell
thought. "No wonder he could kill himself and break his mamma's
heart."
"I've got to be heading north myself," Kinnell said, tucking the
picture under his arm. "Thanks for-"
" Mr. Kinnell?"
"Yes?"
"Can I see your driver's license?" She apparently found nothing
ironic or even amusing in this request. "I ought to write the number
on the back of your check."
Kinnell put the picture down so he could dig for his wallet. "Sure.
You bet."
The woman who'd bought the Star Wars placemats had paused on
her way back to her car to watch some of the soap opera playing on
the lawn TV. Now she glanced at the picture, which Kinnell had
propped against his shins.
"Ag," she said. "Who'd want an ugly old thing like that? I'd think
about it every time I turned the lights out."
"What's wrong with that?" Kinnell asked.
Kinnell's Aunt Trudy lived in Wells, which is about six miles north [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]