Joe had been in the man camp for about a year, and he had to admit it lived up to the promises of the recruiter he had spoken to back in Colorado, who had sold a comfortable life (Amenities like you wouldn't believe! Better than home! Hassle-free!) and the chance to make his fortune driving water trucks for the rigs. It was Joe's nature to doubt all salesmen, but in spite of his low expectations about this part of his compensation package, it was an improvement over his first gig back in Colorado. Room and board had been free there, too, a giant double-wide provided by the company stuffed with eleven other guys, bunk beds lined up like army barracks, slopped Stagg chili and Dorito powder in the shared kitchen, the smell of burnt coffee and weed and the never-ending trash can overflow, their sense of decency dropping off the same cliff as their privacy.

Joe hadn't been back to Greeley since he'd left, had decided to avoid location-based triggers that might evoke memory—his lovely wife, pregnant, laughing as a thick milkshake mustache dripped down her chin at JB's Drive In. “Say it five times fast!” Mandy had insisted, and they'd both tried it, giggling like fools, over and over. Marshmallow milkshake mustache marshmallow milkshake mustache marshmallow milkshake mustache. Or years later, at the junkyard off Highway 34, the one with the observation tower he'd paid a buck to climb with DJ so the boy could marvel at the view of the Rockies on the western horizon. Mandy's minivan, the car he had spent so many days off working on, had been hauled there after the wreck, was there still, he imagined, crumpled, rusting in the cruel sun. She'd driven off a bridge into the South Platte River. Witnesses reported a sudden jerky swerve, a loss of control, enough momentum to half break, half jump the crumbling concrete barrier, but there had been no sightings of what, if anything, had been blocking the road. They'd managed to pull an unconscious Mandy out in time, but DJ was already gone.

Joe asked for extra shifts instead of weeks off, and his supervisor was more than happy to shave his breaks. He killed the rare empty day playing Gran Turismo on an ancient PlayStation 2, taking breaks on the smokers' plaza. The gas rigs were a new world—unceasing, unstoppable—and working eighty, ninety hours each week had made him the small fortune he needed to pay for Mandy's care in a long-term care facility back in Greeley, where she lived now.