Scene six: I’m at a house after so many fields. I know the men aren’t behind me anymore, but I don’t know where they’ve gone. Maybe they went back for the truck. Maybe they are hiding. Maybe the knife is in a hand and not a belt now.

On the front stoop is a small mat that says welcome to our home and a large red planter full of bright daisies. I lean on the wood cutout of an old woman in a blue polka-dot dress who’s holding an apple pie. A sign hanging around her neck on a brass chain reads, the lord provides. for everything else, there’s grandparents. I catch enough breath to knock on the door and tell the woman who answers that I am scared and I am being chased and I need help. She tells me to sit on a small bench beside the cutout and goes back in to get her husband, says he can help me.

I sit on the narrow bench and put both hands flat on my chest, convincing my lungs to slow down. A minute passes. I rub my legs to ease the ticks. Another minute. Then the door opens again, and this time it’s the husband, only I don’t see him, I just see his handgun. He tells me he knows what I’m up to and I better get the hell out of there before he puts a hole in me.

I stand and fall back down on my butt. I try to say I’m not up to anything. I stand up again and start backing away. I tell him I’m scared.

He tells me he knows all about “you people,” that I’m only there to rob him. That I’d better get my buddies and hit the road.

I’m alone. And I’m scared, I say, and hear myself getting quieter. Scared is barely a whisper.

He takes a shot. The bullet lands beside my foot. The wife yells from inside, “Don’t go getting dirty blood all over the front walk, Harold.”

“Sorry, dear,” he says to her over his shoulder, his voice full of the kindness I was searching for. He turns cold eyes back to me. Tells me to move…now! To grab the others and take our party somewhere else. He knows how we are, what we do to poor farmers like them.

I tried to get help. I tried to get them to help me. And they reminded me of who I was…what I was. And I ran.

I’m not sure if it was an accident, or if he was too full of adrenaline, or if he just hated me that much, but I was at the end of the front walk when the bullet tore into my calf. Maybe he was going to shoot me all along and was just trying to respect his wife’s pressure-washed cobblestones.

Scene seven: Trees. Blood. Ache. At least the bullet went straight through. More trees. So much time passes that eventually I forget to run. Then I find an old trailer, all rusted out and quiet, a fifth wheel without a truck to pull it. It’s leaning a bit to one side, but all the windows and the door are intact. I think it’s a fine place to rest up, to give my leg a chance to really heal. I’m too loud in the bush with a limp. I sit in the low brush and watch the trailer all night, waiting to see if anyone comes out or goes in. Once I think someone must be inside because it starts to shake, but it’s just a massive raccoon lumbering over the roof. His nails scratch into the vinyl top when he rears up on his hind legs, sniffing me out. But he’s not afraid that I’m there. I’m bleeding. And just a boy.