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Cottle closed his eyes and grimaced, as if he could see what he now described "It’s a two-quart jar, es the for"
Beyond the porch, the sky was crystalline High in the clear light, a lone hawk circled, as clean as a shadow
"The face tends to fold into itself," Cottle continued, "so you don’t at first see a face It’s like soently shakes the jar, gently swirls the contents, and the face… it blossoreen across the lawn, then taller and golden where nature alone tends to it The two grasses produce distinct fragrances, each crisp and pleasant in its oay
"You recognize an ear first," said Ralph Cottle "The ears are attached, and the cartilage gives thee in the nose, too, but it hasn’t held its shape very well The nose is just a luhts, the hawk descended in a narrowing gyre, describing silent and harmonious curves
"The lips are full, but the mouth is just a hole, and the eyes are holes There’s no hair, ‘cause he cut only from one ear to the other, from the top of the brow to the bottom of the chin You can’t tell it’s a woman’s face, and not a man’s He says she was beautiful, but there’s no beauty in the jar"
Billy said, "It’s just a mask, latex, a trick"
"Oh, it’s real It’s as real as terminal cancer He says it was the second act in one of his best performances"
"Performances?"
"He has four photos of her face In the first, she’s alive Then dead In the third, the face is partly peeled back In the fourth, her head is there, her hair, but the soft tissue of her face is gone, nothing but bone, the grinning skull"
Froe, the hawk knifed toward the tall grass
The pint told Ralph Cottle that he needed fortification, and he drank a new foundation for his cru a fumy exhalation, he said, "The first photo, when she was alive, maybe she was pretty like he says You can’t tell because… she’s all terror She’s ugly with terror"
The tall grass, previously le place, where feathers thrashed the stalks
"The face in that first picture," Cottle said, "is worse than the one in the jar It’s a lot worse"
The hawk burst fro sled in terror, or didn’t At this distance, you couldn’t be sure
Cottle’s voice was a file rasping on ancient wood "If I don’t do exactly what he wants me to, he promises to put my face in a jar And while he harvests it, he’ll keep ht pellucid sky, the rising haas as black and clean as a shadow once h therh which it swa killed only what it needed to survive
Chapter 21
Rockless in the rocking chair, Ralph Cottle said that he lived in a rae by the river Two rooether in the 1930’s and had been falling apart ever since
Long ago, unknown rugged individuals had used the cottage for fishing vacations It had no electric service An outhouse served as the toilet The only running water hat passed in the river
"I think et away froet drunk It still is"
A fireplace provided heat and allowed si What meals Cottle ate were spooned from hot cans
Once the property had been privately owned Now it belonged to the county, perhaps seized for back taxes Like ed No bureaucrats or game wardens had bothered Ralph Cottle since the day, eleven years ago, when he had cleaned out the cottage, put down his bedroll, and settled in as a squatter
No neighbors lived within sight or within shouting distance The cottage was a secluded outpost, which suited Cottle just fine
Until 3:45 the previous , when he had been prodded awake by a visitor in a ski mask: Then what had see isolation
Cottle had fallen asleep without extinguishing the oil lamp by which he read Western novels and drank hiht, he hadn’t absorbed any useful details about the killer’s appearance He couldn’t estiht
He claimed the ured Cottle knew more but feared to tell The anxiety that now simmered in his faded blue eyes was as pure and intense, if not as iraph of the unknoo by the length of his skeletal fingers and the formidable bones in his knobby wrists, Cottle had once been equipped to fight back Now, by his own admission, he eak, not just emotionally and morally, but physically Nevertheless, Billy leaned forward in his chair and tried again to enlist him: "Back me up with the police Help me--"
"I can’t even help myself, Mr Wiles"
"You must’ve once kno"
"I don’t want to re I told you--I’ the pint to his lips, Cottle s a drink, said, "Haven’t you heard--the meek shall inherit the earth"
"If you won’t do it for yourself, do it forhis lips, which were badly chapped by the heat and by the dehydrating effect of the whiskey, Cottle said, "Why would I?"
"The meek don’t stand by and watch another man destroyed The meek aren’t the same as cowards They’re two different breeds"
"You can’t insult me into cooperation I don’t insult I don’t care I know I’ht with me"
"Just because you’ve come here to do what he wants, you won’t be safe out there in your cottage"
Screwing the cap on the bottle, Cottle said, "Safer than you"
"Not at all You’re a loose end Listen, the police will give you protection"
A dry laugh escaped the stewbum "Is that why you’ve been so quick to run to the
Emboldened by Billy’s silence, Cottle found a sharper voice that was less , but you don’t know it yet You’re nothing, I’, and as far as I care, if he leaves me alone, that psycho shithead can do what he wants to anybody because he’s nothing, too"
Watching Cottle screw open the pint-bottle cap that he had just screwed shut, Billy said, "What if I throw your ass down those stairs and kick you off my land? He calls me sometimes just to wear on my nerves What if when he calls I tell hi you said?"
Cottle’s sunburned and blood-fused face could not turn pale, but his sht with self-satisfaction after his rant, now loosened and poured forth the dull coins of a counterfeit apology "Mr Wiles, sir, please don’t take offense at my bad mouth I can’t control what comes out of it any more than I can control what I pour into it"
"He wanted to be sure you told me about the face in the jar, didn’t he?"
"Yes, sir"
"Why?"
"I don’t know He didn’t consult withto you, and here I am because I want to live"
"Why?"
"Sir?"
"Look at me, Ralph"
Cottle met his eyes