She turned on the five-o’clock local news. Clarice Tinsley was narrating hour fifty-five of the rescue operation. The parallel hole had been drilled, and now they had to dig a two-foot tunnel between the well and the hole. Carefully. The baby was quiet, but they were pumping oxygen down the well. The baby was singing to herself. Anne whispered another Hail Mary as she salted butterball potatoes in a Corning casserole. Those went in over the glowing Nichrome coils of the electric oven, and the pork chops came out of the Deepfreeze and into the microwave to slowly turn and thaw. Applesauce, farting out of the jar. And a bag of Birds Eye mixed vegetables brought to a boil.

Smacking her hip with a wooden spoon, Anne stood in front of the thirteen-inch Trinitron as the broadcast cut to Dan Rather. The drilling couldn’t break into the well right on top of the baby. They had to go deeper and come up to her. I should call Dan out to watch this, Anne thought. He has no idea what’s going on out there. The man in the hole was lying on his stomach, trying to poke through with a jackhammer. With all the noise, the baby was crying again. Faintly. They were getting close, and now the news hour ended but the coverage kept going. The sun had set in Dallas, and in Midland it was growing dark.

Wordless, reeking of booze, Pat Malone came through the door at six thirty and offered a tired smile before heading to the bedroom to change. He was limping badly. Anne made him a vodka and Seven, and herself one too. She placed them on coasters in the den in the hopes they could talk before the pork chops went into the pan.

She popped the foil seal from a can of Planters and poured two fingers’ worth of peanuts into a small snack bowl that had been pilfered from an American Airlines first-class cabin.

Pat came out in blue sweatpants and the same work shirt. He was holding his glasses to read the paper but watched the small TV in the kitchen for a moment as the local news reporters carried on about the rescue. He muttered something about digging a hole to China and staggered into the den. The Irish trifecta, Anne dismayed, drinking too much, miserable at work, and sick to top it off.

“Do you want me to put that on in here?” He meant the bigger TV in the den.

“What?”

“The news. The baby rescue.”

“No, it’s okay.”

Pat perched at the edge of the burnt-orange chair in the den and picked up his drink, the coaster at first stuck to the sweat on the glass, then falling off with a rattle onto the end table. A shower sprayed the backyard as the clouds rolled up like cotton bales in the western sky.