He bought the stock tank in January and ran the hose line out to the garage himself. Forty-one, two kids, manages a Toyota dealership in Fresno. Every morning at 6:15 he lowered himself in for three minutes and made a sound he later described to his wife as controlled. He kept the timer on a shelf where he could watch the numbers move.

He mentioned it at the dealership, at his son's game, to the man who installed the water heater, to a woman at a wedding who had only asked what he did for fun. He had gotten very good at describing the first ten seconds. He never described the rest: three minutes in a barrel in the dark, during which nobody on earth needed anything from him.