“Hey!” he said, banging on the window again. “Hey in there! I’ve got an emergency!”

Richards opened the panel. “What is it now?”

“Listen,” Grey said, and pushed his head through the narrow space. He lowered his voice so the others wouldn’t hear. “I can’t. Seriously. I can’t use the bottle. You’ve got to pull over.”

“Just hold it, for fucksake.”

“I’m serious. I’m begging you. I can’t … I can’t go like this. I have a medical condition.”

Richards sighed with irritation. Their eyes met quickly in the rearview, and Grey wondered if he knew. “Stay where I can see you and no looking around. I fucking mean it.”

He pulled the vehicle to the side of the road. Grey was muttering under his breath, “C’mon, c’mon … ” Then the door opened and he was out, sprinting away from the rumbling light of the van. He stumbled down the embankment, each second ticking off like a bomb between his thighs. Grey was in some kind of pasture. A sliver of moon was up, wicking the tips of the grass with an icy glow. He had to get at least fifty feet away, he figured, maybe more, to do the thing right. He came to a fence line and despite his knees and the pressure of his bladder he was up and over it like a shot. He heard Richards’s voice behind him yelling for him to stop, fucking stop right now, goddamnit, and then he heard Richards yelling at the other men to do the same. Dewy grass swished against Grey’s pant legs, drenched the toes of his boots. A dot of red light was skipping across the field in front of him, but who knew what that was. He could smell cows, feel their presence around him, somewhere in the field. A fresh surge of panic pressed upon him: what if they were watching?

But it was too late, he simply had to go, there was no way he could wait another second. He stopped where he was and unzipped his fly and peed so hard into the darkness he moaned with relief. No tepid arc of gold: the water shot out of him like the contents of a busted hydrant. He peed and peed and peed some more. God almighty, it was the most wonderful feeling in the world, peeing like this, like a great plug had been pulled out of him. He was almost glad he’d waited so long.

Then it was over. His tank was dry. He stood a moment, feeling the cool night air on his exposed flesh. An immense calm filled him, an almost heavenly well-being. The field stretched around him like a vast carpet, creaking with the sound of crickets. He lit a Parliament from the pack in his shirt pocket, and as the smoke hit his lungs he tipped his face to the horizon. He’d barely noticed the moon before, a rind of light, like a fingernail trimming, suspended over the mountains. The sky was full of stars.