He arches his eyebrows. It sounds nice. He can't help the slight pang of jealousy; when you grow up sick and poor in a single-parent home, your cards are pretty stacked against you from the get-go. He and his mom did all right, but it would have been nice to put a real supper on the table more often than Easter Sunday, and Christmas on a good year.

"Yeah? What does he do for work?" he asks. He figured Minnesota mostly for farmers and blue collar work.