I.

The factory closed on a Wednesday. Joe O'Brien found out because he was the last one to leave—the night shift, the one nobody wanted, the one that paid forty cents an hour less than the day shift. He walked out of the gate at six in the morning, his hands stained with grease, his back aching, his mind already thinking about the coffee he was going to make when he got home.

The sign on the gate had been taken down. The lights were off. The parking lot was empty except for a few cars that people had forgotten to move. Joe walked to his car, a rusted Ford from 1998 that he had bought for eight hundred dollars, and sat in the driver's seat for a long time, staring at the building through the windshield.

Ten years. He had worked at that factory for ten years. Ten years of waking up at four, driving in the dark, punching the clock, standing on his feet for eight hours, driving home in the dark, sleeping for four hours, and doing it all again.

And now it was gone. Just like that. A sign taken down. The lights turned off. Ten years of his life, reduced to a pile of rusted machinery that nobody was going to buy.

He drove home in the daylight for the first time in ten years. He noticed things he had never noticed before—the crack in the road outside the factory, the billboard that had been there for twenty years, the church on the corner with the steeple that leaned slightly to the left.

He noticed that the town was dying.

II.

Joe told his wife about it that evening. They were sitting at the kitchen table, the one with the chipped laminate top and the leg that wobbled unless you put a folded napkin under it. Mary listened while he talked, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea, her eyes on his face.

When he finished, she said, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," he said. And it was the truest thing he had said all day.

They had three children—Tom, who was twenty-two and working at a gas station in Cleveland; Lisa, who was nineteen and studying nursing at the community college; and Danny, who was seventeen and senior in high school. Danny was the youngest. Danny was the one they had saved for—college fund, 529 plan, the works. Danny was the one they had planned for.

Danny was going to be the one who got out.

Joe looked at his hands. They were rough, scarred, stained with grease that no amount of scrubbing could remove. These were the hands of a man who had spent twenty years standing on a factory floor, lifting heavy things, turning bolts, doing the same thing over and over again.

What were these hands good for now?

He applied for jobs. He applied for twenty-three jobs in the first week. He heard back from four of them. None of them wanted him. He was fifty years old. He had no college degree. He had no skills that were transferable. He was, in the words of one hiring manager, "overqualified for the position."

He was not overqualified. He was too old.

III.

The first time Joe started over, he was twenty-five and the factory closed. He spent three months applying for jobs, sleeping on his couch, eating peanut butter sandwiches for dinner because he could not afford meat anymore. Mary tried to keep things normal—she took in sewing, she cancelled the cable, she stopped buying name brands—but Joe could see the fear in her eyes when she thought he was not looking.

The second time, he was thirty and Mary left. She took the kids for a weekend and did not come back. Joe sat in the kitchen and ate a peanut butter sandwich and waited for her to call. She did not call. She filed for divorce three weeks later. He got the kids every other weekend, and then he did not, because the distance was too far and the schedule was too hard and the visits became shorter and shorter until they stopped altogether.

The third time, he was thirty-five and the house was foreclosed. He had kept working—construction, warehouse, driving a forklift—but the money never lasted. The mortgage payments were always late, the credit card bills always piled up, the medical bills from Danny's car accident always hanging over his head like a sword. One day he woke up and the house was not his anymore. A bank owned it. He packed his things into a cardboard box and moved into a studio apartment above a laundromat.

The fourth time, Danny died. He was seventeen, driving his friend's car, on the highway at midnight, talking on the phone. A truck ran the red light. Joe was at work when the phone rang. He dropped the phone. He stood in the factory aisle for a long time, listening to the machines humming around him, feeling something inside him break.

The fifth time, he went to rehab. He was forty-two and the drinking had gotten bad. He could not sleep without it. He could not think without it. He could not feel anything without it. His daughter Lisa came to see him one day and said, "Dad, you're killing yourself." She was right. He went to rehab for six months. He got sober. He thought he was done.

The sixth time, he went to jail. He was forty-five and he had a DUI. He was driving home from a bar, one beer, maybe two, and he hit a tree. No one else was hurt. He spent six months in county jail. When he got out, no one would hire him. He had a criminal record. He was fifty years old with no skills and a criminal record.

The seventh time, he was working at a convenience store on the night shift. He was fifty years old. He stood behind the counter from ten at night to six in the morning, selling cigarettes and lottery tickets and microwave dinners to people who did not look at him when they paid.

IV.

Joe went to the bar on Friday nights. It was a small place on the edge of town, the kind of place where the regulars knew each other's names and the bartender never asked questions. He sat at the counter and drank a beer and talked to Old Man Harris, who was maybe seventy and had been drinking since before Joe was born.

"How you holding up, Joe?" Harris asked.

"Same as always," Joe said. And it was true. It was the same as always. He went to work. He came home. He drank a beer. He watched television. He went to bed. He did it again the next day.

Harris nodded. He took a sip of his beer. He looked at the floor.

"You know," he said, "I lost my job at the steel mill in '85. Same as you. I was forty-eight. No one would hire me. I spent two years drinking myself into the ground. Then I got sober. Got a job at a gas station. Made minimum wage. Died broke."

He looked at Joe. "But you're still here, Joe. You're still standing. That's something."

Joe looked at his beer. He looked at his hands. He looked at the man across from him, a stranger who had somehow become a friend.

"Yeah," he said. "That's something."

He finished his beer. He paid the tab. He walked home through the streets of the town that was dying, watching the streetlights flicker on one by one, feeling the cold air on his face, thinking about Danny and the way he had laughed when he was seven and had caught his first fish, thinking about the way his daughter Lisa had looked at him in rehab, thinking about the way his wife Mary had looked at him the day she left.

He went home. He made a cup of coffee. He sat at the kitchen table and listened to the silence.

And he thought about the seven times he had started over. Seven times he had fallen. Seven times he had gotten back up.

He did not know if that made him a hero or a fool. He suspected it was neither. He suspected it was just what you did when there was nothing else to do.

He drank his coffee. He went to bed. He slept for four hours. And then he got up and went to work.