“Two weeks to get yourself settled down there, and then you're on the job.”

Memories appeared at the worst times. Here was DJ stumbling on the rocks on a foothills hike, red dirt scuffed into shoes that flashed neon lights when he stepped on them. DJ on the top of a rock he'd labored to climb, his arms spread wide, spinning slowly, the joy of accomplishment streaming from somewhere near his tiny boy heart, ribboning into the big sky, combining, in the end, with the placid cumulus clouds above. Here were the ways Mandy's joy had morphed into brooding darkness, her maddening silences broken only by the blare of the TV. Here was the flare and release of his own anger as he grabbed her shoulders and yelled, “Pull it together, Mandy. Jesus. Do something. Do anything. If you can't be happy with this, make a fucking change.”

Joe could almost picture Mandy's eyes rolling, then boring straight into him, each one its own kind of drill rig. He could almost hear her laugh out loud, as though she were with him in the man camp cafeteria, saying, That's right, jackass. Not so easy to take your own advice, is it?

Joe tried to swallow the lump out of his throat. He appreciated Stone's patience. The man just sat there as Joe struggled to pull himself together. “Can I sleep on it?”

Stone nodded, went back to his crossword puzzle.

BACK AT HIS BUNK, Joe used the Jack-and-Jill bathroom he and Dustin shared. Drifting into sleep, he wondered how many of the other guys knew that term, a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, from their lives at home with their wives or girlfriends. He wondered if knowing it made them as lonely as it made him. He woke to a film of dust and tears crusting his eyes nearly shut, and when he cleaned his ears after his shower, the swab came out blackened and greasy. The bunks were small, a single bed, a closet with drawers inside, a small counter/desk with a mirror above it, something Mandy would have called a vanity. In the middle, there was just enough space for one man to stand up. Visitors were naturally discouraged by the tightness of the space. Women, drugs, and alcohol weren't allowed in the rooms at all.

Joe went outside into the afterglow of a spent sunset. The evening was calm, the wind settled. Dustin sat in a plastic deck chair nursing a bottle of chocolate milk, texting. He didn't look up when Joe sat down, his fingers nearly blurring across the touch screen of his phone. Joe hated the kid's distractibility, the assumption that the human in front of you, face-to-face, should wait in favor of the human on the other end of the digital world.

“I think someone was in my room when we were gone,” Dustin said. “It just looked . . . I don't know, like someone was in there.”