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his face profiled over his work; the half she could see was as lump-sugar white as his hands, and ruggedly beautiful, like a weathered marble statue, scarred and pocked as it was from a past battle with acne.
    Then he turned toward her.
    She knew, of course, what she would see. But she could never entirely escape the shock. The other half of Barry’s face was mottled a livid bruise red varying from plum to purple grape to strawberry to screaming raspberry pink. The birthmark started above Barry’s hairline somewhere and spread downward like spilled jam, taking in eye, temple, cheek and jaw, as well as one nostril and the corner of his stoical mouth. It made him a man of two faces, one pleasing, the other hideous.
    â€œI still ain’t got it the way I want,” Barry said, but he stepped back to show Cally what he had been doing.
    Fine caskets (never called “coffins”) came with pastel-colored linings of tufted silk, and most often with a thin, soft blanket of matching dinner-mint hue to be laid over the “sleeper” within. Barry was slow of intellect if not actually retarded, but like many less-than-gifted people he possessed one inborn talent, and his was the knack of arranging these blankets. More than knack or talent: his was a genius and an obsession. With stubborn, relentless hands he formed the limp fabric into tucks, pleats, intricacies that let go into folds and draperies worth weeping over. He took hours about it, and Mark did not mind paying him for as many hours as cared to spend.
    The present sample of his work lay over the still form of a middle-aged woman with a ghastly hairdo, courtesy of Wobbles Enwright, the only hairdresser in Hoadley who would work on dead people. She made all her late lamenteds sport pompadours stiff with perfumed spray, regardless of what their former style had been. It took Cally a moment to shift her gaze from the horror of that rigid hair to the marshmallow-pink blanket, softly puckered and pleated à la Barry Beal.
    â€œLooks good to me,” she said. But though it was, in fact, impressive by any ordinary standards, she knew it was not quite up to the level of Barry’s best work. He had not been able to concentrate very well for the past week or two. Ever since the Musser girl had run off, in fact, he had been quietly, doggedly unhappy.
    His misery showed only in the quality of his work and in the question he asked every time he saw her. Which he asked now.
    â€œMrs. Wilmore, you heard anything about Joanie?”
    Joan Musser. His girlfriend since high school. Cally had seen her a few times, and to her chagrin had found herself wincing away and staring back again, repelled and fascinated, just like a Hoadley yokel. Joan was incredibly ugly, far uglier than Barry, and all the more freakishly so because she was female. From the town grapevine Cally had found that Joan had been called “Frog Face” (mostly behind her back) almost since she was a baby. The consensus of Hoadley opinion was that she and Barry Beal had ended up a couple because nobody else wanted either of them. Maybe. Maybe she hadn’t cared for him. But it certainly seemed as if Barry had really loved her.
    â€œNo, Barry,” said Cally, keeping her tone gentle and civil even though she had answered the same question a dozen times before. What could the poor innocent do but ask his gods, the adults in full possession of all the regulation smarts, to help him? “I haven’t seen her since I took you and her out to the stable that time.”
    At Barry’s request. He had said Joan wanted to see the horses. And Cally had been astonished when placid Dove had kicked at Barry’s girlfriend. What in the world had the frog-faced woman been doing to the mare while Cally’s back was turned? Even when she was in heat, Dove was usually trustworthy.
    As Cally spoke to Barry, she faced the head of the pompadoured corpse, the dead woman; he faced its feet.