Free Heat and Light by Jennifer Haigh Page A

you’re peaceful or troubled; if you got a good night’s sleep or sat up half the night with a sick child; if your husband made love to you or fell asleep on the couch. Whichever happens to be true, she looks at you with compassion and deep understanding, as though your worst transgressions are already forgiven; as though grace is something you actually deserve.
    The service ended, she helps Lois Fetterson at the refreshments table. The social runs from ten to eleven—for Shelby, an anxious hour. She helps herself to coffee but skips the doughnuts. Chewing in public unnerves her.
    â€œDoesn’t Olivia look sweet?” Lois says with her mouth full. “Where’s your boy this morning?”
    â€œRich took him fishing.” Shelby’s tone discourages further questions. Lois Fetterson is a notorious gossip. Shelby’s life is in no way gossip-worthy, and yet she feels a strong urge to conceal facts from Lois, for the simple pleasure of denying her.
    â€œWally saw Rich last night at the Commercial. He’s a good son, helping Dick like that.”
    Shelby ignores the comment. It’s just like Lois to remind her that her husband is a bartender. Never mind the fact, well known in town, that Wally Fetterson spends every evening in one beer garden or another. Rich, at least, was helping his father. Lois’s husband has no excuse.
    This Sunday, as on all others, a small crowd surrounds Pastor Jess. Shelby approaches, carrying the yellow carnations. “For Pastor Wes. I thought we could go together.”
    Pastor Jess looks confused. “Oh, the cemetery, ” she says at last. “For Memorial Day.”
    Shelby stands there awkwardly, holding the flower arrangement, which she left in the minivan during the service. It looks a little wilted from the heat.
    â€œThat’s kind of you, Shelby, but I can’t leave just yet. You go on without me. I hate to keep you waiting.”
    Shelby says, “I don’t mind.”
    TO EXPLAIN PASTOR WES you have to start at the beginning. In the beginning Shelby’s mother worked at the Moose. In Bakerton a moose is not an animal but a tavern, smoke-filled, where men shoot pool or play cards in the back room or stare at the television above the bar.
    For most of Shelby’s childhood they lived in the upstairs apartment, Roxanne’s answer to babysitting: Shelby and Crystal could, in theory, come find her in case of emergency. Of course, they neverdid. Because what, for Roxanne, would constitute an emergency? About nightmares and scraped knees, she was unfailingly casual. In case of fire or a masked intruder, Shelby would have called the police.
    Roxanne was not a motherly name. Even as a child Shelby knew this, in the same way she knew that bartending was not a normal job for a woman.
    The hidden life of the bar, its daily rhythms. In the morning trucks idled out front, painted with familiar logos: Pabst Blue Ribbon, Iron City, Stroh’s. With the front door propped open, the Moose exhaled its sour beer breath, sharpened by the pine-scented cleaner Roxanne used to mop the floor.
    In the afternoon the jukebox played sad men, George Jones and Merle Haggard clearly audible in the upstairs apartment, the slow thump of the bass like a heartbeat in the floor. The bar’s TV tuned, always, to some sports match. In a faraway stadium a crowd cheered. An announcer explained the action in a scolding tone, insisting that you care.
    When dark fell the music changed, guitars screeching and wailing. Between songs Shelby heard snatches of conversation, pool balls colliding with a dry crack. A comforting noise as she lay waiting for sleep next to her sister, on the foldout couch in the living room.
    Their mother came home long after midnight, tiptoeing around furniture. She was so quiet that Shelby might have stayed asleep, if not for the smell—cigarette smoke, the deep fryer—Roxanne wore like perfume. It was a more concentrated