- Things begin to heat up. It looks like we're in the desert now. Joe knows that he's having another dream memory. This time, he's remembering the time he worked on the railroad with his friend Howie.
- They're in the Uintah desert in Utah working on a section gang. Joe recalls how excruciating the physical labor was.
- This is Joe and Howie's first day on the job, and they don't bring anything for lunch. The other workers are Mexican, and after they finish their lunches they run to a canal to swim.
- Joe and Howie follow them and go through a patch of thorny tumbleweed to get to the water. They go back to work. Every muscle in Joe's body aches, and he has trouble breathing.
- Joe thinks about someone named Diane. Yeah, it's a Code Red Drama Alert. Joe and Diane were together until she cheated on him with Glen Hogan. So now we find out that Joe is working out in the desert because he wanted to run away from the whole ordeal.
- At quitting time, all the workers get on a handcar to go back to the bunkhouse. Joe collapses onto his bunk and falls asleep thinking about Diane.
- Joe wakes up to someone shaking him. The other workers are cooking dinner in the bunkhouse.
- Howie is the one shaking Joe. He's just got a telegram from his girlfriend Onie telling him to come back to Shale City. She says she hates Glen Hogan (who was also seeing her).
- Howie is excited, but Joe knows why Onie hates Glen Hogan, though he doesn't tell him.
- Howie convinces himself to go back to Shale City on a gravel train passing through, and Joe jumps up at the opportunity, though he pretends to go reluctantly.
- On the train, Joe thinks about his friend Bill Harper. Joe hit Bill and called him a liar when he told him the news about Diane and Glen Hogan. Then he saw Diane and Glen together himself and knew that it was true. He feels guilty about how he treated Bill.
- Then Joe met Howie, who had been having similar girlfriend problems. Joe thinks about how Howie has always had trouble keeping a girlfriend, and he resents being in the same situation as Howie. He agreed, though, when Howie suggested going away to work in the desert.
- Bill Harper is Joe's closest friend and he remembers some of their experiences together. He decides that he wants to make up with Bill when he gets back.
- Joe then rationalizes to himself that it's his duty to tell Diane what kind of guy Glen Hogan is (though it seems like he just really doesn't like the idea of Diane and Glen Hogan being together).
- Joe and Howie jump off the train a little outside of town so that no one will see them in their dirty work clothes. Howie says he's going to Onie's house, and Joe silently resents him for this.
- Joe finds that he has walked in the direction of Diane's street. He gets excited every time he gets near her house.
- Then Joe remembers how dirty he is and quietly crosses the street in case Diane might see him.
- And the drama comes full circle: Joe sees Diane kissing someone on her front porch. When they finish, Diane runs up the front porch, and Joe knows from experience that she is smiling.
- The man Diane was with turns around. He's whistling. And guess what? It's not Glen Hogan. It's (cue dramatic music) Bill Harper, Joe's best friend.
- Well, you might say that Joe is pretty down after this. His insides hurt but not from the labor. Joe feels that he has lost not only Diane but Bill as well. He knows that he will never be able to forgive either of them.
- That night in bed, Joe thinks about how lonely he is and cries.
- But now we're back in the present. That memory was from when Joe was in high school. He thinks about where Glen Hogan and Howie are now. Bill Harper was killed at Belleau Wood, a battle near Paris in June 1918, and Joe thinks about how lucky Bill was to have gotten Diane and then to have been killed.
- Joe's initial hot sensation cools off as the memory ends.