Free The Road Virus Heads North by Stephen King Page B

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."
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    The Road Virus Heads North
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    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