He unbuttons his shirt further, then peels back the damp fabric to reveal more of his chest. Matted chest hair clings to the shirt wool, then pops back. It seems weird that he would do this, and I look down.

Look here, he says.

There is a quarter-sized red scar on his chest, and suddenly he takes my hand in his sweaty palm and leads my finger to it. I have to force myself not to jerk away, this is so surprising. His black chest hair feels thick against my fingertip, the skin warm. A pulse beats, though I do not know whether it is his or mine.

It’s a bullet hole, he finally says.

I do not know what you are supposed to say to something like this. Some people seem to have words for everything, but not me. In my throat a lump swells and ebbs. I cannot even get myself to ask how it happened.

I’m telling you, buddy, he says, buttoning back up. You should think about moving your mom to this place. She sounds like a real nice lady.

II

We come out of a hilly forest onto a high plateau meadow of grass which glows light green in the sunlight, and my words will no longer come. We ride quietly. Having no words makes me nervous and I glance at him and then quickly back to forward and I do this again several times and then finally I ask him how come things are so safe around here.

It seems to me with so few people around you could not get away with any mischief without people noticing and anyway people wouldn’t be so cramped and uptight and crazy, but this question feels like something which would please him. He tells me the locals keep it clean. That there is not a mall or a McDonald’s for a hundred miles. Only decent people live around here.

But how do you keep undesirables out? I say, adding that my mother’s safety makes this of particular interest to me.

He shifts excitedly. You know how journalists keep coming up here to study reports of alien abductions?

Yeah.

Well there’s plenty of abductions, but it isn’t aliens that do it.

I keep still. Menace fills the cab like steam in a shower and we pass an old meadow of brittle brown grass and an abandoned shack sits at the edge of it, the windows slotted, by a tight cluster of ragged trees. Their branches look like the teeth of an old rusted saw. Our tires crackle over a patch of windblown gravel, then continue their smooth rubber hum.

These locals are crazy, he says. They take troubles into their own hands. When undesirables come up, they tell them to get lost, and if they don’t, that’s their own peril.