The farm did have a bright pole light by the barn, and so they were able to barely see the line of a fence that separated the farm yard from a cornfield, and they crossed the fence without a problem. White had told them that if they walked toward the lights of the KFMC radio tower in Fairmont, they would come to Highway 81, but a couple of hundred yards farther down the road than they wanted.

They decided that was okay: they were walking less than half a mile total, before sneaking back toward the bridge. They should make it well before 10 o’clock.

The field was open enough, but walking was tough: it had been plowed that spring, and they were walking across the rows of furrows. One minute out, the mosquitoes showed up. They paused to pull the nets over their heads and gloves on their hands. The nets made it even harder to see, but they stumbled on. Ten minutes into the trek, Jenkins, who was a couple of yards behind Virgil, caught up, touched Virgil’s arm, and, when Virgil stopped, he whispered, “Look at the stars.”

Virgil said, “Shhhh,” but looked: the stars were good, though he’d seen better in the desert Southwest, he thought. Still, they craned their necks upward for a minute, the Milky Way looking like a rainbow, only it was in black and white, before they moved again. They were about a hundred yards from the highway when a car went past, which helped. They no longer had to navigate by the radio tower lights, but turned straight toward the highway. There’d be another fence to cross when they got close to the road. They were nearly there when Jenkins caught up again, touched Virgil’s arm, and whispered, “Look.”

Virgil looked. He wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing, but he thought it might be the flashlight beam from a cell phone, maybe a hundred yards away toward the bridge. Jenkins breathed, “I think the idiot’s tangled up in the fence. You want to light him up?”

“Not until we’re a lot closer,” Virgil whispered back. “If he gets outside the flash coverage, we might not see him again. He could hide, and warn off the car picking him up . . .”

They continued on to the fence. There were three strands of barbed wire, which they managed to cross without incident, but then Virgil went knee-deep in muck in the roadside ditch. Jenkins whispered, “What happened?” and stepped into the same muddy hole.

Virgil got out, but Jenkins said, “I think I’m losing my fuckin’ shoe . . . Wait, wait . . .”

He had to reach, elbow-deep, into the sulfurous muck to get hold of the shoe and then managed to stagger out onto the dry ground of the roadside bank. “I lost my fuckin’ sock,” he said. He sat down on the highway and tried to clean out his shoe, to get it back on.