Chapter 3 - The Dawn Shift
The alarm went off at 3:15 AM.
Rowan didn't need the buzzer. He had been awake since two, listening to the industrial dryers downstairs enter their final spin. He got out of his cot—he had given the small bedroom in the apartment to Tessa, choosing to sleep on an old canvas army surplus cot in the kitchen—and pulled on two pairs of wool socks.
The apartment was freezing. The radiator gave a dry, metallic clink every few minutes but produced no heat until the laundromat owner turned on the main boilers at five.
He walked into Tessa’s room. She was buried beneath three blankets, her nose pink from the chill, the blue sneakers lined up neatly next to her school backpack by the door. He touched her forehead. It was cool. The fever from last month hadn't returned, but the fear of it remained in his throat like a dry pill.
Ten minutes later, he was walking down the dark street toward Bellweather. The snow was fresh, an inch of silent white powder that muffled his footsteps. The only lights in the entire valley were the high, orange sodium lamps of the steel mill across the river, casting long, industrial shadows through the fog.
When he opened the bakery door, Arthur was already there, his coat on, standing by the brick hearth. A pile of split oak logs lay on the floorboards.
"You're late," Arthur grunted. "The bricks take two hours to draw the heat."
Rowan didn't argue. He took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and grabbed the long iron poker. For the next ninety minutes, the kitchen was transformed into a furnace. The wood-fired hearth, dormant for nearly thirty years, began to breathe again. At first, the chimney coughed up a cloud of acrid black soot that filled the kitchen, setting Arthur into a fit of coughing, but Rowan had inspected the flue the night before. He knew the draft would clear once the core temperature reached four hundred degrees.
By five, the bricks were glowing with a pale, fierce heat.
Rowan worked the Hobart mixer. He had recalculated Arthur’s rye recipe, cutting the commercial yeast entirely and increasing the sourdough culture by thirty percent. He added two cups of dark molasses and a handful of caraway seeds he had found in a sealed jar at the back of the pantry.
The dough was thick, dark, and stubborn. It didn't look like the pale, clean foam that rolled out of the continuous mixers at Halden. It looked like the mud of the Monongahela River after a spring thaw.
"It’s too heavy," Arthur said, watching the Hobart’s motor groan as it turned the hook. "It won't rise in time for the shift."
"It will rise in the oven," Rowan said, his forehead wet with sweat despite the draft from the back door. "It’s called oven spring. The high moisture content turns to steam instantly when it hits the hot hearth brick. The loaf expands from the inside out before the crust can set."
They shaped eighty loaves by hand, their fingers moving in the cold kitchen with a silent, urgent rhythm. Rowan’s hands were clumsy at first—he was used to managing people who managed machines—but he had watched the production lines for eleven years. He knew the shape of a perfect boule. He knew how to pinch the bottom seam so the carbon dioxide didn't escape during the final rest.
At 5:45 AM, they loaded the loaves into the hearth using long wooden paddles called peels. The moment the dark dough touched the fire-clay bricks, the kitchen filled with a scent that made Rowan’s stomach contract with a fierce, primal hunger. It wasn't the sweet, artificial smell of the grocery store bakery section. It was the deep, scorched smell of toasted grain, wood smoke, and old earth.
Tessa came through the back door at six, her winter coat zipped to her chin, her school bag slung over one shoulder. She had let herself out of the apartment using the spare key Rowan had hung around her neck on a piece of twine.
She stopped in the kitchen doorway, her eyes wide as she looked at the rows of dark, blistering loaves lining the wooden cooling racks.
May you like
"Papa," she whispered, her breath forming a small cloud in the air. "It looks like magic."
"It's not magic, Tess," Rowan said, lifting a loaf that was still crackling as the crust cooled and contracted in the air. "It’s twelve ounces of flour, six ounces of water, and a lot of heat. Go get the brown paper bags from the counter. The mill workers are going to be at the gate in ten minutes."
