Velocity

hitched a ride that far.” Billy must have looked skeptical, for Cottle added, “A lot of people know me around these parts. They know I’m harmless, unkempt but not dirty.”
    Indeed, his blond hair looked clean, though uncombed. He had shaved, too, his leathery face tough enough to resist nicking even with the razor wielded by such an unsteady hand.
    His age was difficult to determine. He might have been forty or sixty, but not thirty or seventy.
    “He’s a very bad man, Mr. Wiles.”
    “Who?”
    “The one who sent me.”
    “You’re his associate.”
    “No more than I’m a monkey.”
    “Associate—that’s what he called you.”
    “Do I look like a monkey, either?”
    “What’s his name?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”
    “What’s he look like?”
    “I haven’t seen his face. I hope I never do.”
    “A ski mask?” Billy guessed.
    “Yes, sir. And eyes looking out of it cold as snake eyes.” His voice quavered in sympathy with his hands, and he tipped the bottle to his mouth again.
    “What color were his eyes?” Billy asked.
    “They looked yellow as egg yolks to me, but that was just the lamplight in them.”
    Remembering the encounter in the church parking lot, Billy said, “There was too little light for me to see color… just a hot shine.”
    “I’m not such a bad man, Mr. Wiles. Not like him. What I am is weak.”
    “Why’ve you come here?”
    “Money, for one thing. He paid me one hundred forty dollars, all in ten-dollar bills.”
    “One-forty? What—did you bargain him up from a hundred?”
    “No, sir. That’s the precise sum he offered. He said it’s ten dollars for each year of your innocence, Mr. Wiles.”
    In silence, Billy stared at him.
    Ralph Cottle’s eyes might once have been a vibrant blue. Maybe all the alcohol had faded them, for they were the palest blue eyes that Billy had ever seen, the faint blue of the sky at high altitude where there is too little atmosphere to provide rich color and where the void beyond is barely concealed.
    After a moment, Cottle broke eye contact, looked out at the yard, the trees, the road.
    “Do you know what that means?” Billy asked. “My fourteen years of innocence?”
    “No, sir. And it’s none of my business. He just wanted me to make a point of telling you that.”
    “You said money was one thing. What was the other?”
    “He’d kill me if I didn’t come see you.”
    “That’s what he threatened to do?”
    “He doesn’t make threats, Mr. Wiles.”
    “Sounds like one.”
    “He just says what is, and you know it’s true. I come see you or I’m dead. And not dead easy, either, but very hard.”
    “Do you know what he’s done?” Billy asked.
    “No, sir. And don’t you tell me.”
    “There’s two of us now who know he’s real. We can corroborate each other’s story.”
    “Don’t even talk that way.”
    “Don’t you see, he’s made a mistake.”
    “I wish I could be his mistake,” Cottle said, “but I’m not. You think too much of me, and shouldn’t.”
    “But he’s got to be stopped,” Billy said.
    “Not by me. I’m nobody’s hero. Don’t you tell me what he’s done. Don’t you dare.”
    “Why shouldn’t I tell you?”
    “That’s your world. It isn’t mine.”
    “There’s just one world.”
    “No, sir. There’s a billion of them. Mine’s different from yours, and that’s the way it’s gonna stay.”
    “We’re sitting here on the same porch.”
    “No, sir. It looks like one porch, but it’s two, all right. You know that’s true. I see it in you.”
    “See what?”
    “I see the way you’re a little like me.”
    Chilled, Billy said, “You can’t see anything. You won’t even look at me.”
    Ralph Cottle met Billy’s eyes again. “Have you seen the woman’s face in the jar like a jellyfish?”
    The conversation had suddenly switched from the main track to a strange spur line.
    “What woman?” Billy asked.
    Cottle knocked back another slug from the pint. “He says he’s had her in the jar three years.”
    “Jar? Better stop pouring down that nose paint, Ralph. You’re not making much sense.”
    Cottle closed his eyes and grimaced, as if he could see what he now described. “It’s a two-quart jar, maybe bigger, with a wide-mouth lid. He changes the formaldehyde regularly to keep it from clouding.”
    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