When a nor'easter turns up the coast, Tuckerton hears it before it sees it — wind coming hard across Great Bay, then the heavy wet snow that packs down like mortar on a driveway. Bartlett Landing works the small hours, the ones between the last plow pass on Route 9 and the first car backing out for a morning shift. Blades down, salt spread, aprons and walkways opened while the streetlights are still the only light in town. There is real satisfaction in a clean line of pavement against a white yard, and in the fact that nobody had to shovel to find it. By breakfast, the storm belongs to somebody else.