He wore filth-encrusted jeans and a dirty, wool-lined distressed leather vest without a shirt. At the end of each muscle-corded long arm was a huge hand with hairy-knuckled fingers like sausages. On his feet were immense white sneakers, loosely laced and with their tongues hanging out as if they were exhausted just from transporting him around all day. As he stepped farther into the office, Carver saw that he wasn’t wearing socks. “Help you?” Carver asked. The man laughed, almost a giggle. The shrill sound, so incongruous coming from such a mountain, made the flesh on the nape of Carver’s neck crawl. Carver stood up, not quite leaning on his cane, keeping his weight balanced and his grip tight so he could lash out with force with the hard walnut if the man meant him harm. The man did mean him harm. His wide face, guileless as a child’s and marked with blackheads and a smudge of grease on the bridge of his nose, broke into what appeared to be a mindless smile. His eyes were so pale they could hardly be called blue or gray; they were almost one with the whites so that Carver couldn’t even be sure they were trained on him.
