Odell looked at me a long time with those pale unused eyes.

And then this man who does not speak said, in a rusty voice I’d heard maybe four times in eleven years, “Who’s going to know if I’m dead, then?” And walked back inside.

And I sat in my truck outside Odell Prewett’s for a while, because he had said, in seven words, the thing the whole route was too polite or too proud to say.

Who’s going to know if I’m dead, then.

That was the question the cluster box couldn’t answer.

That was the question I couldn’t answer either.