Excerpt from Pew by Catherine Lacey, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When dawn came that morning in the gas station, the cashier gave me a carton of milk, said to come back if I ever needed. She never asked me what I was.

In the dark of the night with no one else around, she spoke to me—

I'm the only one who will work on Sunday. They all want to buy gas on Sunday, sure, but don't ask them to sell it. Strange thing is, people not working on Sunday is all that makes this place any good but it's also everything that's wrong with it.

She was quiet a long time, shaking her head, riffling through the newspaper.

Anyway the only good preacher I know isn't sitting up in any church just to get looked at. She's just the one that keeps the children all day, and sits in the hospice at night. She don't say nothing about God, the Bible. Don't have to. You see the way those children look at her—ask them what they know about. They know plenty.

SUNDAY

I WOKE UP ON A PEW, sleeping on my side, knees bent. I did not move. I felt the warmth of another body near my head. I looked toward the floor, saw navy blue pant legs and two pale brown shoes. Above: the underside of a stubbly jaw. A large voice in the room like faraway thunder. My joints ached. I felt I'd been sleeping for weeks, heavy, immovable, mind empty, this body stiff against thin cushions.

Nearby was another person, in a blue dress that hung loose and long. Pale brown hair pulled into a knot at the neck. On the other side of this person were three children, boys, in little suits like the person sitting beside my head. The smallest was asleep. The largest was alert, staring forward, thick navy book in his hands. The middle-size boy was staring at me, and when our eyes met, he tugged on the dress. The person in the dress reached down and held that tiny hand still a moment, squeezed hard. The child grimaced. Hand released hand. A thought slowly came to me that this is the sort of person called a mother. A mother wears dresses, holds hands. Sometimes a word like this would appear, spoken by some silent voice.

Excerpted from Pew by Catherine Lacey. Copyright © 2020 by Catherine Lacey. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.