Jack washed his coffee cup carefully, dried it and put it away. An ache of uneasy regret settled into his chest: he had the whole day ahead of him to think about the pettiness of snapping about the dishes. Only two of his wells were viable now, pulling up just enough oil to stick him at home—not so little he’d given up on them, and not so much he could look for new leases. He wandered through the living room, pulling dead leaves off houseplants. He tried contemplating the storm windows he had put up the week before, what good protection they would be against the winter. But the ache remained, and he looked beyond the glass to the streaked planks of the back deck. The old stain had begun to wear away years ago, wind down from Canada and long months of snow working their way into the cracks of the wood. Marie had threatened to weatherproof it herself, but he always talked her down, intending to do it, and she’d finally given up. Now was the time.

Energized, he drove to the paint store in Havre to rent a water-pressure sander. He was surprised how big it was, but he was happy to have a real piece of machinery, not just a vague promise he’d made to Marie. The air was bright and chill, the first hard frost still weeks away. He felt invigorated, as he drove back home, by the prospect of a job he could see through to the end: an end that would be a good thing, not a dried-up well. Marie talked that way about the dishes. She worked as a shrink for the state; she said if you couldn’t solve people’s problems, you could still stand over a clean sink, a job completed.

The first chips of paint came off easy under the gun-shaped nozzle. He had to keep the nozzle moving, or the water dug into the wood and shot splinters at his ankles. So he swept the spray across the deck, watching the dark stain peel away.

When he finished, he took the sander back to the paint store and put the deposit toward all-weather stain. The girl at the counter was young and pretty, the age of his only son, and he found himself wishing Michael had stayed home. He imagined Michael marrying this girl, giving up the guitar and coming back from Portland, with his earring taken out for the wedding. (How d’you expect to get a job with a hole in your head? Jack had asked when his son came home with the silver hoop.) But Jack couldn’t set Michael up in the prospecting business; there wasn’t any business left to set up. And the girl was visibly pregnant beneath her orange paint-store jumper; he couldn’t wish that on his son.