Strong Cold Dead by Jon Land

let Cort attend, in a potter’s field for inmates who didn’t have any relatives left to claim the body. He’d been the only one standing at the graveside, besides the prison chaplain, when Mexican laborers had lowered the plank coffin into the ground. Cort Wesley tried to remember what he’d been thinking that day, but it was hard because he’d done his best to erase those years not just from his memory but also from his very being. One thing he did remember was that the service was the first time he’d smelled the talcum powder Leroy Epps had used to hide the stench of the festering sores caused by the diabetes that ultimately killed him.
    Cort Wesley looked back toward the passenger seat, half expecting Leroy to be gone. But he was still there, sipping from the bottle of root beer clasped in a thin, liver-spotted hand. His lips were pale pink and crinkled with dryness. The thin light radiating from the truck’s dashboard cast his brown skin in a yellowish tint. The diabetes that had planted him in the ground had turned Leroy’s eyes bloodshot and had numbed his limbs years before the sores and infections set in. As a boxer, Leroy had fought for the middleweight crown on three different occasions. He’d been knocked out once and had the belt stolen from him through paid-off judges’ scorecards two other times. He’d been busted for killing a white man in self-defense and had died three years into Cort Wesley’s four-year incarceration, but ever since he always seemed to show up when he was needed the most. Whether a ghostly specter or a figment of Cort Wesley’s imagination, Cort Wesley had given up trying to figure out. He just accepted the fact of Leroy’s presence and was grateful that Leroy kept coming around to help him out of one scrape after another.
    â€œAs I was saying ,” old Leroy resumed, “you sure know how to pick ’em . ”
    â€œAs in…”
    â€œFights, bubba. I don’t know what was more fun, watching you mix it up with that principal lady at your youngest’s school or frying the grits of those side busters fixing to turn your oldest into mashed potatoes.”
    â€œYou sure have a way with words, champ.”
    â€œWhat do you expect, you being the only live person I’m on a speaking basis with and all? No different now than it was back in the Walls, I suppose, the thing being a man’s gotta know when it’s time to choose his words carefully.”
    â€œThere a message in there somewhere meant for me?”
    Cort Wesley watched old Leroy swirl the remnants of his root beer about the bottom of the bottle, wanting to savor the last sips. “Not of my making, bubba. But now that you mention it…”
    â€œOh boy…”
    â€œI find myself agreeing with you.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œWhat you told the Ranger lady, about something spurring those workmen to action when it did. Men like that don’t do nothing unless somebody’s telling them to do it.”
    â€œAny more pearls of wisdom to cover the price of the Hires, champ?”
    â€œI apologize for drinking your last one, bubba , ” Epps said, swirling the last of the root beer about the bottle again as he fixed his gaze out the windshield. “Always darkest where the road bends, like it’s hiding what’s around the next curve. What do you think it’d be like for a man if he could see around those curves instead of just straight ahead?”
    â€œI imagine he’d be prepared for anything.”
    â€œâ€™Cepting that goes against the grain of nature on both sides of the plane, bubba. See, I can tell you where it’s darkest, but I can’t see through the paint no better than you can.”
    â€œIs there a point in there somewhere?”
    â€œJust this: what happens when you shine your high beams into a Texas fog bank?”
    â€œThe light bounces back at