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1947--Reynolds Photographic Studio--Clarksville, Montana It was stamped in a black oval. I looked at the face again, carefully, dispassionately this time, taking in the pearl-buttoned shirt and string tie, but still it was true, a sure likeness. "This is Web Olson?" "Yes," Beulah said. "I'm sorry." "It can't be. It's--" In '47 Whitman would have been a child-- "The assassin, the mass murderer," Beulah said. "The picture in Life magazine." "Blair knows," I said. "He told you." I looked up and Beulah nodded. I could see now how the nose was slightly different, more finely drawn, and the set of the eyes half an inch wider. My eye was like a ruler. I'd kept the magazine 
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in my room, hidden from my mother, rolled inside a cardboard tube. As a boy, I'd studied Whitman's picture over and over, searching for a secret clue, some overlooked reason, but the face remained inscrutable, blank as God's. It was God who had given him the brain tumor, the abusive father who harangued him to earn his Eagle Scout's badge and join the Marines. "What do you make of things like this?" Beulah asked when I didn't speak. The likeness was unreal. It was as if Whitman had a secret twin or had faked his own death and escaped to Montana. The resemblance didn't make sense, it was gratuitous, a random addition to an already contorted story. "I don't know." I kept looking at the photo, expecting it to suddenly talk, to explain. "It happens to me sometimes. Not like this but it  |
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