I Left Him at the Altar, So the Best Man Took Me Off the Island novel · Chapter 11 of 40

Chapter 11: The Rubble

The dump truck had already gone by the time we reached the Point.

It had left its load across the drive, a gray mountain of broken concrete, rebar and slabs the size of doors.

A hand-painted sign was stuck on top.

GOOD LUCK GETTING OUT.

I stood in the headlights of Ansel's truck with my chest heaving, and nobody said anything.

Behind us, on the road, a line of cars was pulling in.

The whole clambake had followed us.

"That's the old yard's retaining wall," Ansel said, climbing to the top of the pile. "They tore out a section this week. It's Pettengill Marine concrete."

"They dumped it on my drive."

"Yes," Ansel said.

"I can't get a car out."

"No," he said.

"I can't get an ambulance in," I said, and my voice cracked on it. "Or a fire truck."

The bearded lobsterman came up beside me.

"Morning," he said. "Eight o'clock. Bring coffee."

"What?"

"We'll have it cleared by noon." He looked at the pile. "Maybe sooner."

I didn't understand until I turned around.

Thirty people stood on the Point road in the dark, men in clambake shirts and women in cardigans, and a dozen of them had already brought out work gloves.

"That's not necessary," I said.

"It's not for you," a woman called. "It's for Armand."

I put my hand over my mouth.

*

They were there at seven forty-five.

I had barely slept, and I had made forty-two biscuits at five a.m. in a stove that belonged to a dead man.

By eight there were two flatbeds, a backhoe somebody's cousin had borrowed, and thirty-odd pairs of hands.

I stood at the edge of the drive with a coffee pot, and for two hours I watched my father's neighbors carry broken concrete down a muddy bank.

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