Chapter 6: Smoke and Coffee

Alister's POV

The grain elevator burned for fourteen hours.

By the end of it I had water in my boots and a cut on my forearm I didn't remember getting.

Nine volunteers were asleep on the engine's running board.

I sent them home at four-thirty.

Nobody had been inside, and nobody was hurt. That was all I let myself think about.

I drove the truck back to Fairview Street with the windows down to stay awake.

The sky over the river was going from black to gray.

There was a light on in the Eckert house.

I parked in my own drive and sat for a moment with my hands on the wheel, and then I saw someone on my porch.

She was sitting on the top step in her mother's gray coat with a thermos between her knees.

I got out.

My legs didn't want to hold me.

"They said on the scanner it was out," Odalys said. "I didn't know when you'd be back, so I just came."

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

"Since three," she said.

"You'll freeze."

"I brought coffee." She held the thermos up. "It's strong. The way you drink it."

I had not been brought coffee by anyone in a long time.

I went up the steps and sat down next to her.

She poured the coffee into the lid and put it in my hands.

I drank it black and too strong.

It tasted exactly like my mother's kitchen.

"Your hands are shaking," she said.

"It's the tiredness."

"It's not only the tiredness."

I put the lid down.

She had her hair pulled back and no color on her mouth.

She looked at me with the steady look of someone who writes down what people say.

"Come in," I said. "Please."

My house was neat because I was alone in it. I had never been ashamed of that before.

She stood in the kitchen and took it in.

There was one plate in the rack and one chair pushed in.

The calendar from the power company on the wall had every date crossed off.

"You live like a monk," she said.

"I live like a man who works," I said.

"Alister."

"What?" I said.

"Take your boots off. You smell like a burned barn."

I laughed. It hurt.

I took the boots off in the hall and left the coat on the hook.

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