Dot didn't panic. She hadn't panicked since 1986, and she wasn't about to start on Thanksgiving.
She climbed up on a chair behind the counter, which she had no business doing at seventy-one, and clapped her hands twice. The whole diner went quiet.
"All right," she said. "Listen up. We have three problems. We need heat. We need more ovens. And we need room. Who can fix what?"
For about five seconds, nobody said anything.
Then Hank Doyle raised his hand.
"The furnace just needs power for the blower," Hank said. "That's a small motor. I've got a generator in my garage that'll run it." He was already pulling on his gloves. "Outside, Dot. Generator goes outside, away from the doors and windows. Nobody runs a generator indoors. Not on my watch."
Twenty minutes later, a generator was rumbling in the alley behind the diner, well away from the building, and Hank and Mike Sorensen were in the basement hooking it to the furnace the right way. At 11:58, warm air started coming out of the vents.
People actually cheered.
"Turkeys," Dot said.
Clay Hollister took off his hat. "How about fried?"
Everybody looked at him.
"Turkey fryers," Clay said. "Propane. Big pot of oil. Out in the parking lot, away from everything. A twelve-pound bird takes about forty-five minutes." He shrugged. "I've got two. Every ranch hand I ever knew has one. Bet half the hunters in this county do too."
It turned out more than half did. By one o'clock, there were nine propane turkey fryers set up in the middle of the empty lot across Main Street, a safe distance from everything, every one of them run by a man in an orange hunting jacket who took it very seriously. Earl stood in the middle of them with a fire extinguisher and his sheriff's face on, and nobody did anything stupid.
The ovens did the rest. Ruth Ann organized the side dishes on the counter by type, like a library card catalog.
The last problem was room.
The diner had forty seats. Maple Grove had twenty-two residents, plus nurses. The town had shown up by the hundred.
Pastor Sam unlocked Grace Methodist next door. It had a gas furnace too. Hank ran a second line from the generator. Sam set up the fellowship hall, and Walt Brenner and Brandon Hale carried tables over from the church basement two at a time.
But it wasn't enough tables. Not even close.
That was when Grady Pruitt pulled up outside in his shiny pickup truck, the one that had hauled exactly one thing in its life, a sandstone corner marker he would rather not talk about.
The bed was full of folding tables. Sixty of them. And two hundred white folding chairs.
"Brandon's wedding barn," Grady said, climbing out. "He opens in the spring. Figured he wouldn't mind lending them."
Brandon Hale stared at him from the church steps. "I didn't say you could take those."
"You didn't say I couldn't." Grady dropped the tailgate. "Help me unload, would you? This truck isn't used to honest work and I think it's nervous."
Walt Brenner laughed so hard he had to set down the table he was carrying.
By four o'clock, the diner and the church fellowship hall were full of light from oil lamps and candles, and warm air from two old gas furnaces. Thirty-seven turkeys were carved. The Maple Grove residents sat at the best tables, closest to the heat, wrapped in blankets and eating mashed potatoes.
Arliss Combs said the grace. He was ninety-eight, and it went on a little long, and he forgot partway through what year it was. Nobody minded.
Clara Abernathy told her whole table about a boy named Tommy Murphy who finished *Treasure Island* on the library floor in 1961. Ada Pike put her hand on the table and said it smelled like her daddy's barn, though it was just a folding table. Abe Lindqvist sat between the Yoder brothers at the Liars' Table and told everyone about the ticket he wrote Pete in 1974.
And for the first time in forty-eight years, Dot Kessler wasn't in the kitchen on Thanksgiving.
She tried to be. Three different times. Each time, Tyler took her by the shoulders and steered her back out.
The fourth time, he made her sit down.
In the corner booth. Her own booth. Earl was there, and Walt, and Ruth Ann, and Hank and Lorraine, and Clay and Marlene.
Tyler set a plate in front of her. Turkey, fried by Clay. Stuffing, from Ruth Ann's recipe. Green beans from the Millers. Mashed potatoes Tyler had made himself, a little lumpy.
And a slice of sour cream raisin pie.
Dot looked at the plate. She looked at all of them.
"I don't know what to do with this," she said. "Nobody's served me Thanksgiving dinner since 1977."
"You eat it, Gran," Tyler said. "That's how it works."
Dot picked up her fork. Her hand shook a little.
At 11:48 that night, the power came back on.
All at once, every light in the diner and the church blazed on, bright and white and humming. The coolers kicked on. Tyler's fancy coffee maker beeped. Out on Main Street, the one stoplight blinked back to life.
Nobody moved.
The diner was still full. People were still sitting at the long folding tables, talking and laughing, with half-eaten pie and cold coffee and sleeping kids on their laps.
Dot Kessler looked around at all of them under the bright lights for a long moment.
Then she got up, walked over to the wall, and switched the lights back off.
The candles were better.
