“All I meant, dude,” Dustin said, “is that I don't necessarily want to be like you when I'm your age. Fifteen years, for me? I'm gonna have a family, my own business, a fucking BMW. I'm going to work clean. No more dirt and shit all over my clothes.” Joe felt gut-punched, humiliated. Still, he hoped he would see Dustin do better than he'd done for himself, even if it shamed his own life some. Maybe it wasn't his place to feel that for Dustin. Then again, maybe Dustin was a fine place for all his feelings to land. Okay, Dad.

THEY PULLED INTO THE man camp, exhausted. Dustin had picked up Joe's habit of ladling soup into a mug, drinking it on the walk from the cafeteria to the bunk, collapsing into as much sleep as possible before they were back to switching tanks in the wind-howl and the swirling dust devils. Today, Joe sat for a few minutes, ate his mac and cheese with a real fork. He pulled up CNN to check the headlines but got distracted by sponsored links and ended up on YouTube, watching something called a Whizbang chicken plucker a farmer had built out of an old washing machine. The farmer fired up the motor, shot a garden hose into the basket, and dropped in a beheaded, bled-out bird. Feathers and water splashed into the air for a minute, and the bird emerged totally bare, like a rubber chicken from an old slapstick gag. The farmer, all enthusiasm, raved about the speed and quality of the pluck. Joe almost laughed out loud.

It was then he noticed Stone, a few tables over, working on a crossword, brow furrowed. When Joe sat down across from him, Stone seemed exasperated. “Any guesses about a suffix suggesting noodles?”

The metal eraser casing of each of the pencils poking out of the top of Stone's shirt pocket was empty and bent. An old Stetson sat on the table next to him. Joe wondered why Stone, who seemed to have been cultivating this cowboy professor look for years, neglected to use a pocket protector. The bottom seam of his shirt pocket was marked and stained with lead. “Try -aroni?”

Stone paused, then attacked the page with a gum eraser. “Right,” he said, “but that means these two down answers can't be right. Anyway, you got an answer for me?”

Joe felt his hands start to shake, hid them in his jacket pocket. “I could use some details about the offer.”

Stone put the paper down. His eyebrows, gray, bushy caterpillars, crawled toward his hairline. “Significant salary increase, with bonuses. Stock options. Nice private office in our Greeley headquarters. I hear it's got a mountain view and everything. Company truck. Relocation paid, though looking at the, well, simplicity of your situation here, we may be able to swap out the moving expenses for a down payment toward a house. You keep your benefits.”

“When would I start?”