Sure, buddy, he says, leaning back. He lifts the ice chest lid for me this time. The can snaps open and hisses. He hands it to me. The can is slippery with ice and nearly slides out from my hand and I steady it and thank him.

It’s just people like that made me want to move up here, he says.

I know what you mean.

You do?

Yeah.

He thinks about this and nods. We pass through a thinning in the trees and dappled light illuminates his face followed by a sharp light which then slowly fades. I notice where shadows fall beneath his eyes from worry. We round a curve and his face catches the sun again and I notice that his glowing stubble has red ends and they cover wrinkles at the edges of his mouth.

So you like it up here? I say.

Sure.

It sounds nice that you don’t have any crime. Where we live it’s a big problem for my mom.

Is that right?

Yeah.

He shakes his head, true concern on his face.

She has to sleep in the back of our house because of drive-by shootings, I say.

You can’t be serious.

Oh yeah, I nod. We get all kinds. The Mexicans come up and it’s like they’re still roaming all the barrios killing each other down in Mexico. They have their neighborhoods they mark up with graffiti. Like pissing dogs. The new ones have macho mustaches and slick their hair back like they’re some kind of Spanish Casanovas, but they’re like these short Indian-looking guys. The Cambodians are the worst. It’s like their war isn’t over yet.

You know, he says, getting excited, his eyes widening, I really know what you mean.

Suddenly he looks upon me with fatherly concern. An overwhelming warmth spreads within me like an intake of hot sour breath. Blushing, I turn away.

He leans forward and fingers open his top shirt button, barely able to restrain himself. A gold chain connects to a pendant which rests against a nest of chest hair. He pulls it out.

Here, take a look at this, he says, handing it to me.

The warm sweaty metal feels heavy in my fingers. It takes a moment of fumbling for the latch to snap open. There’s a picture of a pretty blond girl inside.

He seems to be nervously studying me as if to see what I think of her.

Who’s this? I finally say.

She was my daughter.

The photo is a cutout from a color snapshot and you can see where the edges were trimmed with scissors to make it oval. She looks about twenty and is smiling and you can see her baby fat beneath her pale skin and she wears some sort of a fitted suit and looks nothing like this man. I want to ask him what he means by “was,” but I do not.