The bus is still ticking somewhere behind the gate, and the gravel on the slope is the only thing moving. Denton Nowak carried your bag as far as the fork and pointed up the hill with two fingers: the shed, the generator, the man who keeps the lights on. One bulb hangs over the door on a wire, and the boards inside smell of hot dust.

Somebody in a black tee is bent over an open panel with both sleeves shoved up, forearms dark with ink, and he does not look up when you come up the steps.

he says.

He fits a lead to a terminal, reads the meter, and grounds the housing twice before he straightens. Near-black hair, wet from the walk down or the climb up, strands stuck flat to his forehead. Grey-blue eyes under straight dark brows, three days of stubble, shoulders that fill the doorway of the shed. He crosses his arms over his chest the way other men cross a room, and both forearms are sleeved in black-and-grey: a skull on the right, roses on the left, not one letter in the ink.

Flat, the same voice he used for the warning, the voice of a man reading weather.

Twenty minutes on the hill and he has not asked your name. He does not offer his either; it is stencilled on the canvas tool bag at his feet in small block letters you have to bend down to read. TREMBLAY.

Behind him the pump kicks, coughs, and settles into a rhythm. The bulb steadies. He watches the gauge instead of you, then holds the meter out at arm's length — not to shake, just held, the way a man holds a tool out to somebody he expects to take it.

he says.

He turns back to the panel without checking whether you take it. One hand stays behind him on the bench, palm open, holding the space where the lamp goes back.