Talk to nice sleep.

Monday.

The men were first spotted by the gas station, the one just off Miller Street, heading south toward the highway.

Andy Cartwright said he spotted a few of them walking along the road when he first clocked in that morning.

Through the unshakable darkness of a February dawn, he had caught them through the glow of the gas station sign,

their long coats, blowing like banners in the freezing wind, and their faces cold and dirty with slush.

Loretta Wilson said she had seen one or two men coming down the road past her house at around 6.30.

She had looked out her window to see if the mail

had come and, in the gloom, they were trudging single file through the unplowed snow-like

lost soldiers. At around 7.15, Leo McCarthy had claimed to have seen five of them on his way

to work. Five dark shadows and filthy rags by the drainage ditch out near where

the warehouses used to stand. At around eight o'clock, the men, a dozen of them soaking

and grimy, had arrived at the Willow Tree Inn. As per custom, a room was left open for them

on the fifth floor and was prepared accordingly by the time

the first man appeared in the lobby.

By 9.30, the whole town knew that the men had arrived and, although there was the usual

fretting and worrying, everyone understood by now that it was best to continue as per usual.

The men had arrived just as they had last year, and the year before that,

so there was nothing else anyone could do. Life in Jackson Crossing would go on, just as it usually

did. This is why Jeannie Davis was able to go into the ABC drugstore that very same morning,

pick up her prescription

and a quart of milk, and say hello to Robert Taylor behind the counter. Bobby was a nice young

...