“We're not sure she'll ever fully recover,” the nurses had told him, and he'd nodded, mute. Of course she wouldn't, and neither would he. He loved her, still he loved her, imagined her with him on the rig, an angel on his shoulder. The things he couldn't forgive he just had to bear, but Mandy was an exception—he could neither forgive her nor bear seeing her. He'd broken his own heart and left town, the condition of Mandy's heart in the capable hands of the facility staff.

Dustin stuffed his pockets with sausage biscuits and filled his thermos with coffee. Joe grabbed sack lunches for them both. “You look like shit,” Joe said. “Sure you don't need a day?”

Dustin shrugged. “The cough is a real bitch at night, but it gets better in the daytime.”

Joe nodded. It was the same with his dreams. In the bright light of day he didn't imagine DJ's fading struggle against his seat belt, the river current flowing through his hair, through his lungs. In the bright light of day, he didn't stop to wonder whether Mandy had a real accident or whether she'd meant to drive into that river.

WINDBLOWN GRIT SCOURED HIS face and tapped against the buildings, which bowed slightly in the heaviest gusts. Joe was happy for the long shift ahead of him, happy to be free from his dreams. Gravel crunched under his boots, louder for the 5 a.m. silence around him. The men seemed quieter at night, presumably due to the human habits of their lives before the camp, but there were always men coming in and men heading out, a twenty-four-hour stream of going to work and getting off work, sleeping and waking, being indoors and being outdoors. Even now there were guys watching The Godfather in the rec room, guys lifting weights in the fitness area, guys walking to the bunks, hoods pulled over their heads to shield them from the relentless prairie wind. The lens coating on his sunglasses was scraped and scratched nearly off from the grit that pelted him as he worked.

He and Dustin were set to ride together, and once Joe got the kid talking his own mind could drift away on the conversational current—he could nod, hum a few times, offer occasional low-stakes advice on Dustin's low-stakes twenty-one-year-old life, call it a day well lived. At the truck, Dustin paused. “Give me a minute, will you? I forgot I need new laces.”