Desmond and Orville’s relationship wasn’t like father and son. They weren’t exactly friends. They were more like drifters in the old westerns Orville watched, bound together by some shared need, on a quest, in search of something or someone, though whom or what they were searching for was never clear. They went from town to town, each town like an episode in the show, a new bad guy to best or a mystery to solve. The mystery was always how long it would take to drill the oil well, whether they’d hit oil, and whether they’d survive the days after the tour, what Orville called “blowing off steam.”

For Orville, that usually entailed holing up in the nearest town for a week, drinking himself to sleep at the local bar, gambling, and running women. He fought a lot too. After a certain point, he would fight the first guy who said a cross word to him. Military veterans were the only ones he wouldn’t take a swing at, and their wives were the only ones he wouldn’t take home. He didn’t like other men doing it either; that was always cause for a fight—fights that inevitably drew Desmond in, no matter how hard he tried to stay out of them. Eventually, he fell in beside his uncle the moment they started. The fights ended faster that way.

Desmond got pretty good at sizing a man up, knew who would be trouble, who would run, and when they should run. He developed a sort of sixth sense about whether he needed the beer bottle or the pool cue he was holding, or if his fists would do. He didn’t like fighting with a knife, but he learned to take them from others. They had a few run-ins with the law, but Orville always had a good story and a few hundred dollars for the bar owner to cover the damage. Desmond nearly always had a bruised rib, a smashed finger, a broken knuckle, a black eye, or a healing cut; pain became commonplace to him, and so did their weird life, living by Orville’s twisted code.

In the hotels, they drank and listened to songs by Robert Earl Keen, The Highwaymen, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Johnny Cash until dawn. They sobered up a few days before their next job, and didn’t take a drink while they were working. It was too dangerous. That was part of the code too.

Desmond finally understood why his uncle had hated him so much when he’d first arrived. This was the life that Desmond had kept the man from, and Orville was finally getting back to it. That made him happy, and Desmond got some relief at home. They even went hunting together every now and then.