“"sucks for you." Tyrone looks over his shoulder and then back”

“The hut gives up what it always gives up: the rack of poles, each one dulled to a bronze the colour of old tea, and the smell of oil gone tacky in the cold. Tyrone's shoulder fills the doorway. Nothing moves but the flies. Hesper crosses to the stove and sets her palm flat on the lid. 'Cold since morning,' she says, to no one, or to the flies. 'Somebody's been here.' She lifts the lid by its hook and shows him the ash — grey, fine, and no cinder in it. Raked clean. The scratching under the oil-store floor stops when she speaks, and does not start again. Outside, the spur runs off into the blue-grey with its lamps dead all the way down, and the mist has taken the far posts so they seem to stand at the wrong height, nearer than they should be. One fly peels off Hesper's cloud and drifts down the line, and she watches it go the way you watch a dog leave the yard.”