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"Nobody's ever asked me that."

"Well, I'm asking now."

"Two years I've driven forty minutes down that road and forty back. I eat supper at Dad's table twice a week with Dean looking at me like I've got Clay's brand on my forehead, and not one of them has asked me one thing about where I go." He turned the bottle in his hand. "What do you want to know?"

"What's changed?"

"Since when?"

"Since winter."

"They put in new wells," Jett said, after a minute. "West line. Four of them, maybe five, I don't work that end. They went in after Thanksgiving. They're pumping more brine than they were, a lot more, the trucks run all night now, and the ponds are bigger. They pushed the north pond out a hundred yards in February. I run three pumps. I know how many gallons a minute go across my gauges, and I know it's near double what it was in October, and that's all I know."

"Where's the water coming from?"

"Down."

"Down where?"

"Owen, I run a pump." He said it without any heat. "Nobody asks me that either. They ask me if the pump's running, I say yes, they go on. You want to know where the water comes from, you ask a man who reads rock for a living. You've got one of those in the family, and he's up at the house right now eating my daddy's pie."

"I want to know."

"Then I don't know," Jett said, "and I'm the only man on that whole place who'll tell you so." The grin came back, slower, with something easier under it. "You want that beer now?"

"No."

"You're a strange man to have in a kitchen." Jett stood up. "Come back sometime. Bring a question. I'll have thought about it by then."

"I might."

"You won't. But I'll have thought about it anyway."

Brody was leaning on Owen's truck when he came out, in his coat with his hands in the pockets and his breath going up, looking at the cabin light like he'd been there a while. He hadn't been at the window. Owen would've heard it.

"Jett's?" Brody said.

"Jett's."

"Nobody goes to Jett's."

"I went."

"I see that." Brody didn't move off the fender. "Saw your truck from the porch. Thought you'd come to see Dad. Dad thought so too. He's still got the light on."

"How is he?"

"Counting. He counts everything now. Trucks, plates, who's at the table." Brody said it easy. "He counted you tonight and came up one short."

"I'll come see him."

"Sure you will." Brody tipped his head at the cabin. "He tell you anything?"

"He told me the porch is crooked."

"It is crooked. Whole family's told him." He looked at the light a second longer. "You didn't drive over here at nine at night to talk about a porch."

"Wanted to see him."