of the Maine - New Hampshire border. Kinnell pulled off at the
exit which circled the bright green Wells water tower, the one with
the comic sign on it (KEEP MAINE GREEN, BRING MONEY in
letters four feet high), and five minutes later he was turning into
the driveway of her neat little saltbox house. No TV sinking into
the lawn on paper ashtrays here, only Aunt Trudy's amiable masses
of flowers. Kinnell needed to pee and hadn't wanted to take care of
that in a roadside rest stop when he could come here, but he also
wanted an update on all the family gossip. Aunt Trudy retailed the
best; she was to gossip what Zabar's is to deli. Also, of course, he
wanted to show her his new acquisition.
She came out to meet him, gave him a hug, and covered his face
with her patented little birdy-kisses, the ones that had made him
shiver all over as a kid.
'Want to see something?' he asked her. 'It'll blow your pantyhose
off.'
'What a charming thought,' Aunt Trudy said, clasping her elbows
in her palms and looking at him with amusement.
He opened the trunk and took out his new picture. It affected her,
all right, but not in the way he had expected. The color fell out of
her face in a sheet-he had never seen anything quite like it in his
entire life. 'It's horrible,' she said in a tight, controlled voice. 'I
hate it. I suppose I can see what attracted you to it, Richie, but
what you play at, it does for, real. Put it back in your trunk, like a
good boy. And when you get to the Saco River, why don't you pull
over into the breakdown lane and throw it in?'
He gaped at her. Aunt Trudy's lips were pressed tightly together to
stop them trembling, and now her long, thin hands were not just
clasping her elbows but clutching them, as if to keep her from
flying away. At that moment she looked not sixty-one but ninety-
one.
' Auntie?' Kinnell spoke tentatively, not sure what was going on
here. 'Auntie, what's wrong?'
'That.' she said, unlocking her right hand and pointing at the
picture. 'I'm surprised you don't feel it more strongly yourself, an
imaginative guy like you.'
Well, he felt something, obviously he had, or he never would have
unlimbered his checkbook in the first place. Aunt Trudy was
feeling something else, though ... or something more. He turned
the picture around so he could see it (he had been holding it out for
her, so the side with the Dymotaped title faced him), and looked at
it again. What he saw hit him in the chest and belly like a one-two
punch.
The picture had changed, that was punch number one. Not much,
but it had dearly changed. The young blond man's smile was wider,
revealing more of those filed cannibal-teeth. His eyes were
squinted down more, too, giving his face a look which was more
knowing and nastier than ever.
The degree of a smile ... the vista of sharpened teeth widening
slightly ... the tilt and squint of the eyes ... all pretty subjective
