Dustin gasped. The kid's eyes were welling, and Joe was struck by the gesture, Dustin's emotions laid bare between them, as though there was nothing to fear in turning them loose. Emotion did not reconcile easily with life in the man camp. Dustin was just like he'd been at that age, so full of cocky absolute certainty that the way he lived or ate or thought was the one right way to do any of those things. Dustin hadn't lived long enough to fuck it all up, to fail at important things. He couldn't realize how much of life was the luck, good or bad, that flowed out of the crap choices you made before the stakes were clear, before you knew how to properly care for the things you held dear.

In Joe's dreams, memory held hands with the imaginary, intertwined like fingers, and a withered, ghost-like Mandy pointed at him, scowling, so accusatory, so suddenly lucid, and then it was Joe, not Mandy, who had driven the Caravan off the bridge, and he was frozen, unable to flee, guilt shining from his skin in visible rays. Sometimes it was DJ, all curls and bounce and innocence, scrambling around the riverbank rocks, asking incessantly if Joe wanted to try a different fly, and Joe felt ashamed of the annoyance he had felt toward his son in that past moment, regret flooding his present-day self. Sometimes a twisted gas rig leaked poison into a burning river, and it was Joe's own limp, lifeless body, not DJ's, trapped under the currents.

“How old was he, your son?” Dustin had wiped his eyes, the moment hardening between them.

Joe shook his head. It was already too much. He hadn't talked about it to anyone at the man camp, and nobody had asked. Part of what made it work, all that lonely, was an unspoken prohibition against curiosity. The men didn't pick at each other's scabs. “Time to roll, kid.”

“It's like that, eh?” Dustin shrugged. “All right, Joe. I'm always just waiting on you.”

THE SHIFT WENT BY. The drilling rig had left the site the week before, and the injector, after a minor repair, was put back to work. There was a bit of tension with the flare until it was clear that all was working the way it should. Dustin was a sloppy worker—leaving tools at various job sites, half-assing the cleanup, half-assing most things. He cut corners. Today, it was a connection to the water tank that leaked gallons before Joe caught it, prairie dirt becoming prairie mud all over the men's boots.

Joe caught Dustin by the jacket sleeve. “You got to take some pride in what you do.”

“Pride,” Dustin laughed, shaking his head like it was some kind of joke, but Joe noticed that he doubled back, tightened things up, that the work he did the rest of the day was focused, beyond reproach.