The hood came off and the first thing you saw was a purple head of hair going past you at a stroll.

Hardy Pell circled the chair with a barbed-wire bat balanced across the back of his neck, both wrists hooked over it.

Guthrie said from the wall.

Hardy stopped in front of you and bent at the waist, close enough that you could see the split in his lip, the earrings, the blood drying in a dark line down his stomach where somebody else's had come off on him. Purple-tinted hair fell forward into his eyes and he did not push it back.

Concrete floor. Tarps. Chain against corrugated metal. Four men, and not one of them had been to the house, and not one had stood at the funeral, and you had never seen a single one of them before tonight.

Otho's voice came from behind the chair, flat as a closed door.

Hardy straightened up, grinned at the ceiling, and swung the bat down off his shoulders. Then he did the strange thing: he stepped back and gave you room.

he said, tipping his chin at the man moving around the front of the chair.