We come into large fields of low alfalfa traversed by long shining pipes standing on tripods, spraying water each thirty yards. Rainbow colors glow faintly in the mist. Probably there are a million places you could buy a plot of land and build a small house and live for really cheap. So many people live in dumpy little houses in LA and complain about smog and crime and even about all the complaining people. Why they stay there I do not know. This could be a farm like where Mom grew up. Only no peasants live on the land. No people for hundreds of yards, no groups of them for many miles to bother you.

So they keep it safe here, I tell him.

Sure.

That’s good.

The man notices me nod approvingly as I stare out the window.

I’ve lived here eight years since it happened, he says, pausing. It is clear he means something about the bullet and his dead daughter. We are quiet and I want to say something to make him feel better. We pass a sixteen-wheeler whose wind shakes and rattles our cab. I tell him some rotten stories about LA so he can think about how much better things are for him now, though I am careful not to ask him about his daughter. Watching Tomas has given me plenty to talk about, though I do not tell him he is my brother but make it seem like the gangsters I describe are just people I have seen in school.

He shakes his head, bewildered. That’s a hell of a childhood to live through, he says.

I let him sympathize for me, lowering my head towards my lap. In this way I do not have to put another word in for twenty miles.

III

He tries to tell me about hunting trips he used to take with his brother, which is how he found out about this region originally, though he finally falls silent. He seems preoccupied and, sensing him glance my way a couple of times, I wonder if he is worried about the ordeals I have to go through being a school kid in Venice. To tell the truth, I only lasted in Venice High less than a week. I feel bad I told him those stories. At one point, out of the blue, he tells me the girl in the locket picture was his only kid. I do not know what to say to this—it seems weird he would keep telling me this sort of thing. His worrying fills the car, which reminds me of driving with Mom. She will worry about me like crazy.

Look, buddy, he says. We’re coming to the place I told you about. Let me buy you lunch.

You don’t have to do that.

Oh it’s no problem.