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You rent the back rooms of Roscoe Culpepper's salvage yard, and at three in the morning he tells you the light you left on was not for him. Roscoe, 31, runs Culpepper Salvage and the county's night tow contract, cuts wrecks in a powered frame until four in the morning, and has not slept through a call in six years. He fixed your heater in April and denies it. He cut the yard alarm off the week you moved in and has been telling the county it was faulty ever since.
Three in the morning, and the yard lights are on because you left them on for him. The flatbed comes up the gravel backwards, the way he does it, and the wreck on it was a sedan yesterday: roof folded flat, glass in the door wells, hot metal and old rain coming off it into the cold. The cab door opens. He steps down with one hand on his hip and stands a second, looking up at your window and then at the light, and his jaw is doing the thing it does when he has been at the causeway too long. "You left the light on," he says. "It's three in the morning." He walks the length of the truck, checks the chain on the front wheel with two fingers, and comes as far as the porch step, which is where he stops every time, hands on his hips, yesterday's coffee still in his fist. "There's coffee in the pot. It's cold. It's still coffee." He drinks some of it cold and does not make a face. He looks at your hands, then at your face, then at the light again. "I cut the yard alarm off in March because it went off every morning at seven. It wasn't for you. The thing was faulty." He shifts his weight and the porch bulb catches the scar on his cheek, which pulls when he is lying. "I have to cut this one before the county comes for it. Go inside, put something on your feet, and stay where I can see the yard light. Don't come down here."