Mrs. Minton suggested that only one of the fathers go, but the men wouldn’t hear of it. They didn’t want someone else cleaning their mess. Together they went down to the diner to tell Joey’s mother where her son was. They’d lived through the Depression. They’d been in the war. In trouble you take care of your own.

On the plane to California, Mr. Kurtz sat very still and thought of different ways to break his son’s arm. It was the first time he had ever been in an airplane and he did not enjoy himself. He counted out the miles as they traveled and tried to calculate how much each one was costing him. All of the money he had saved for Ralph to go to college was being spent on the plane tickets—one over, two back. The only way his son could attend a university now would be if he won a scholarship on his grades. He would have to be able to write. This is why Mr. Kurtz planned on only breaking Ralph’s left arm.

Mr. Minton sat beside him and wrote on the back of a paper bag designated for motion sickness. This wasn’t poetry. It was a list of everything he was going to make Danny work on when they got home, starting with the old outhouse and continuing piece by piece through the property; all the hardest, roughest jobs that he’d kept for himself. Mr. Minton peered through the tiny window of the airplane. The clouds rolled out in every direction. He thought about Robert Frost and “The Road Not Taken” and thought, Sometimes you don’t get a choice.

Without looking at their sons, the fathers filled out the paperwork for all three boys at the police station, met with the appointed lawyers, and negotiated a sum with the owner of the Lay-Z Motel, which they split between them. Then they went to a local diner and bought everyone some food. The boys were hungry. They ordered sandwiches and Cokes. The fathers ordered chili and scraped their bowls angrily with their spoons. Everything that was wrong with their lives was on account of these dishes.

When they were finished, Mr. Minton handed Joey an envelope.

“It’s from your mother,” he said.

The boy opened it. Inside was a letter and forty dollars. Joey read the letter. Then he put it down and looked at the fathers. Mr. Minton cleared his throat. Mr. Kurtz signaled the waitress for the check. They paid for the meal. Afterward, each of the men gave Joey another twenty dollars. Then they shook his hand and wished him luck.