His legs felt trembly and untrustworthy, but they seemed to
support him all right. just ahead, close to the belt of trees at the rear
of the service area, was a pretty young thing in white shorts and a
red halter. She was walking a cocker spaniel. She began to smile at
Kinnell, then saw something in his face that straightened her lips
out in a hurry. She headed left, and fast. The cocker didn't want to
go that fast so she dragged it, coughing, in her wake.
The scrubby pines behind the service area sloped down to a boggy
area that stank of plant and animal decomposition. The carpet of
pine needles was a road litter fallout zone: burger wrappers, paper
soft drink cups, TCBY napkins, beer cans, empty wine-cooler
bottles, cigarette butts. He saw a used condom lying like a dead
snail next to a torn pair of panties with the word TUESDAY
stitched on them in cursive girly-girl script.
Now that he was here, he chanced another look down at the
picture. He steeled himself for further changes even for the
possibility that the painting would be in motion, like a movie in a
frame - but there was none. There didn't have to be, Kinnell
realized; the blond kid's face was enough. That stone-crazy grin.
Those pointed teeth. The face said, Hey, old man, guess what? I'm
done fucking with civilization. I'm a representative of the real
generation X, the next millennium is tight here behind the wheel of
this fine, high-steppin' mo-sheen.
Aunt Trudy's initial reaction to the painting had been to advise
Kinnell that he should throw it into the Saco River. Auntie had
been right. The Saco was now almost twenty miles behind him,
but...
"This'll do," he said. "I think this'll do just fine."
He raised the picture over his head like a guy holding up some
kind of sports trophy for the postgame photographers and then
heaved it down the slope. It flipped over twice, the frame caching
winks of hazy late-day sun, then struck a tree. The glass facing
shattered. The picture fell to the ground and then slid down the dry,
needle-carpeted slope, as if down a chute. It landed in the bog, one
comer of the frame protruding from a thick stand of reeds.
Otherwise, there was nothing visible but the strew of broken glass,
and Kinnell thought that went very well with the rest of the litter.
He turned and went back to his car, already picking up his mental
trowel. He would wall this incident off in its own special niche, he
thought ... and it occurred to him that that was probably what most
people did when they ran into stuff like this. Liars and wannabees
(or maybe in this case they were wannasees) wrote up their
fantasies for publications like Survivors and called them truth;
those who blundered into authentic occult phenomena kept their
mouths shut and used those trowels. Because when cracks like this
appeared in your life, you had to do something about them; if you
didn't, they were apt to widen and sooner or later everything would
fall in.
Kinnell glanced up and saw the pretty young thing watching him
apprehensively from what she probably hoped was a safe distance.
When she saw him looking at her, she turned around and started
toward the restaurant building, once more dragging the cocker
spaniel behind her and trying to keep as much sway Out of her hips
as possible.
You think I'm crazy, don't you pretty girl? Kinnell thought. He saw
he had left his trunk lid up. It gaped like a mouth. He slammed it
shut. You and half the fiction-reading population of America, I
guess. But I'm not crazy. Absolutely not. I just made a little
mistake, that's all. Stopped at a yard sale I should have passed up.
Anyone could have done it. You could have done it. And that
picture
" What picture?" Rich Kinnell asked the hot summer evening, and
tried on a smile. "I don't see any picture."
He slid behind the wheel of his Audi and started the engine. He
looked at the fuel gauge and saw it had dropped under a half. He
was going to need gas before he got home, but he thought he'd fill
the tank a little further up the line. Right now all he wanted to do
was to put a belt of miles - as thick a one as possible - between him
and the discarded painting.
Once outside the city limits of Derry, Kansas Street becomes
Kansas Road. As it approaches the incorporated town limits (an
area that is actually open countryside), it becomes Kansas Lane.
Not long after,, Kansas Lane passes between two fieldstone posts.
Tar gives way to' gravel. What is one of Derry's busiest downtown
streets eight miles east of here has become a driveway leading up a
shallow hill, and on moonlit summer nights it glimmers like
something out of an Alfred Noyes poem. At the top of the hill
stands an angular, handsome barn-board structure with
reflectorized windows, a stable that is actually a garage, and a
satellite dish tilted at the stars. A waggish reporter from the Derry
News once called it the House that Gore Built ... not meaning the
vice president of the United States. Richard Kinnell simply called
it home, and he parked in front of it that night with a sense of
weary satisfaction. He felt as if he had lived through a week's
worth of time since getting up in the Boston Harbor hotel that
morning at nine o'clock.
No more yard sales, he thought, looking up at the moon. No more
yard sales ever.
I "Amen," he said, and started toward the house. He probably
should stick the car in the garage, but the hell with it. What he
wanted right now was a drink, a light meal - something
microwaveable - and then sleep. Preferably the kind without
dreams. He couldn't wait to put this day behind him.
He stuck his key in the lock, turned it, and punched 3817 to silence
the warning bleep from the burglar alarm panel. He turned on the
front hall light, stepped through the door, pushed it shut behind
him, began to turn, saw what was on the wall where his collection
of framed book covers had been just two days ago, and screamed.
In his head he screamed. Nothing actually came out of his mouth
but a harsh exhalation of air. He heard a thump and a tuneless little
jingle as his keys fell out of his relaxing hand and dropped to the
carpet between his feet.
The Road Virus Heads North was no longer in the puckerbrush
behind the Gray turnpike service area.
It was mounted on his entry wall.
It had changed yet again. The car was now parked in the driveway
of the yard sale yard. The goods were still spread out
everywhereglassware and furniture and ceramic knickknacks
(Scottie dogs smoking pipes, bare-assed toddlers, winking fish),
but now they gleamed beneath the light of the same skullface
moon that rode in the sky above Kinnell's house. The TV was still
there, too, and it was still on, casting its own pallid radiance onto
the grass, and what lay in front of it, next to an overturned lawn
chair. Judy Diment was on her back, and she was no longer all
there. After a moment, Kinnell saw the rest. It was on the ironing
board, dead eyes glowing like fifty-cent pieces in the moonlight.
The Grand Am's taillights were a blur of red-pink watercolor paint.
It was Kinnell's first look at the car's back deck. Written across it
in Old English letters were three words: THE ROAD VIRUS.
Makes perfect sense, Kinnell thought numbly. Not him, his car.
Except for a guy like this, there's probably not much difference.
"This isn't happening," he whispered, except it was. Maybe it
wouldn't have happened to someone a little less open to such