The long tables stood on the bare concrete where the trucks should have been. The paper turkeys hung from the poles. The little television was still on in the corner, showing the evening news to no one. The cat came out from wherever it had been hiding and sat in the middle of the floor and washed its face.
Behind her, Nora heard Mrs. Pruitt put her feet down off the bucket.
"Well," said the old woman. "Come and sit down, dear. This is the part nobody tells you about."
*
There was a scanner radio on the shelf above the kitchen table, a gray box with a row of red lights that flickered from channel to channel, and Mrs. Pruitt reached up and turned the volume knob, and the kitchen filled with static and voices. Nora sat across from her at the table with her hands around a cup of coffee she didn't drink. Outside the window the stars had come all the way out, hard and bright over the drill yard. The clock over the stove said five-forty.
The voices on the scanner were calm, almost bored. That was the thing Nora had forgotten, or had never known — how calm they sounded. Engine Two on scene. Two-story frame, heavy smoke showing from the second floor. Ladder One on scene. One occupant reported still inside. Ladder One, going in. Then nothing for a long time. Static. A dispatcher in Coudersport calling another unit about a car in a ditch on Route 49. Static.
"Ladder One," Nora said. "That's —"