"The county won't touch it." Ruthie's voice goes flat with grievance. "Private ground, place of worship. We're on our own out there, so a few volunteers are heading over now to clear the Devil's mess by hand, and I'll be supervising and making sure nobody puts their back out, and then—" she brightens "—then I'm opening up the diner for everyone. Coffee and cake, on the house."
"That's kind of you," I say.
"It's the least I can do. He sent the dark over, Maggie, but he is not getting his claws into my church. Not today."
I'm already composing the polite version of no — we're exhausted, we've got our own mess, another time — when Sloane speaks.
"I'll come and help."
I turn and look at her. She glances at me, then back at Ruthie. "If you need an extra pair of hands."
"If we—" Ruthie presses both hands to her chest now, fully overcome. "Thank you, Sloane. Oh, the others will be beside themselves."
Sloane laughs it off, but I'm still processing. She's shaking with exhaustion — I can see the slight tremor in her, she's running on nothing. And now she's just volunteered to go and shovel sand off a church she has no reason to care about.
She turns to me. "We're done here, aren't we? The worst of it's done."
"Yeah," I manage. "The worst of it's done." And what comes out of my mouth next surprises me. "I'll come too." I'm not sure if Sloane's just inspired me or if I just want to be near her, but either way I'm not letting her go and do this alone.
Ruthie claps her hands together. "Well, glory. Look at the pair of you." She's already turning back toward the Buick, talking over her shoulder. "I'll see you there! Bring gloves and water — it'll be hot work even when the sun's going."
She gets in, fires up the Buick, and rolls back down the drive.
"You don't have to come," Sloane says. "You're dead on your feet. I can go on my own."
"You're just as exhausted," I say. "Besides. Somebody has to keep you away from Dennis Hurley."
55
SLOANE
We finish the church just as the light goes. The drift really was up past my knee, packed hard against the doors, and it took eleven of us the better part of two hours to clear it — shoveling, sweeping, hauling it away in wheelbarrows that a teenage boy named Cody kept tipping over. By the end there's a clear path up the steps and the doors swing again. Doris has gone at the windows with a hose, and a kind of giddy satisfaction has settled over the whole group.
We all stand back and look at the cleared steps, and somebody says well, the Devil can kiss our backsides. Everybody laughs, and then Ruthie claps her hands and announces that the diner is open and the coffee is on and nobody is to argue.
There's a scramble for vehicles in the half-dark. Cody and his friend pile into the back of Maggie's truck without asking, and Maggie jerks her head at me to take the cab. We drive down the Cawley road toward town in a loose caravan of dusty vehicles.
I'm covered in dust, there's grit in my mouth, my hair is a total disaster, and I have never in my life wanted a coffee, a glass of ice water, and a slice of cake as desperately as I want them right now. The thought of all three is almost erotic.
Maggie looks sexy when she's driving. One hand loose at the top of the wheel, the other resting on the gearstick between us, her arm brown and dust-streaked, a muscle moving in it every time she shifts down. She drives like the truck is just an extension of her and there's nothing to think about. I glance at her forearm for slightly too long and have to make myself stop.
Today has been one strange thing after another and if this were a movie, I'd tell myself to jump out of the car. The haze, the caravan, the wholesome church goers welcoming the outsider into the fold. This is the bit before the city woman realizes the friendly townspeople have been planning to harvest her organs the whole time, or that she's slowly being sucked into a cult, or that nobody who comes to Duster is ever allowed to leave. The music would curdle and the camera would push in on Ruthie's smiling face and you'd think, oh no, Sloane, run, get out, it was a trap all along.
"You've gone quiet," Maggie says, not taking her eyes off the road.
"I'm planning my escape. Everyone has been nothing but lovely, which is exactly how it starts. I'm worried I'm about to be sacrificed."
Maggie throws her head back and laughs. "You're safe. We only sacrifice people who can't shovel." Her hand leaves the gearstick and finds mine on the seat between us, the briefest press of fingers, hidden below the window line where Cody and his friend can't see.
The diner glows up ahead, the only lit building in sight. Larry's got the door propped open and the smell of coffee comes out to meet us.
Inside, it's chaos in the best way. Ruthie's commandeered Larry and the girl with the braid and they're moving between tables with pots of coffee and sweating jugs of ice water. There's pie — apple, cherry, something with meringue gone slightlyweepy — and a tray of Doris's cinnamon muffins. There's also a sheet cake with HAPPY RETIREMENT GARY iced on it in blue, which Ruthie explains was for a party that got canceled by the storm, and Gary's not here, so we might as well.
I get a coffee that's exactly as bad as I've come to love, and a glass of ice water that I drink in one go. I also help myself to a big slab of Gary's retirement cake and sit in a booth next to a man whose name I keep forgetting, with Maggie across from me. It's loud and everyone's pleased with themselves, talking over each other about the storm.
The cake is, against all odds, fantastic — moist and buttery under the lurid blue icing, nothing like its sad retirement-party styling.
"Ruthie, this is incredible," I say when she swings past with the coffee pot.
