The rear door of the old vehicle was poorly maintained, its lock loose.

On a dark curve he forced it, and the door gave, and he went out into the night and the mud and the rain.

He did not remember the fall itself — only that afterward he was lying at the bottom of a wet embankment, hurt and unable to stand, and that up on the road there were flashlights and men’s voices calling to each other, searching.

He dragged himself away from the voices, through the mud, toward the faint glow of another road.