But his father always told him, you never turn your back on someone in need. Friend or stranger. Walking toward the house, Hunter remembered how his father had always talked of giving hitchhikers a lift. Of helping people who had broken down on the road, helping them change a tire, giving them a lift to get gas if they had run out. Some folks called it being a good Samaritan. His dad called it being a person.

His father, Hank, always came home with stories. One Friday evening, he brought home a 1911 .45 Colt handgun. Told Hunter about a man down on his luck. Broke. The wife had packed up, taken the kids, moved back home to stay with her folks. He was out of gas, way off the beaten path down in southern Missouri. Hank carried a spare gas can in his trunk, gave the man a lift to a pump-pay-and-eat mart. Hank paid for everything. The husband told Hank he’d lost his job. Next went his identity and self-worth. He had decided he was done with life. Was going to drive to an undisclosed area, a state park, or some pull-off out in the middle of nowhere and eat a bullet. Those Reagan years were tough at first. Lines with government cheese. Unemployment rates were like the murder rates in Detroit, Michigan, or Gary, Indiana—off the charts.

Hunter’s father got the man some supper. Lifted some of the gloom. Brought some color back to his complexion. Bought him some groceries for the road, some gas for his car. And when Hank dropped him off, he gave the man all the money he had left in his wallet. Told him he wanted to buy the gun he’d planned to off himself with. Then gave him a phone number to call for a job, said tell them Hank Offutt had told him to call, that they’d have work for him. After that, he told the man he needed to get his house in order. Get his wife and kids back and don’t give up. There was always hope. Always another mission, a new life waiting—you just had to go out and find it. Hank told him how his wife had run out on him several years after Hunter was born. Some kind of free-spirit hippie bullshit. How, with his father’s help, he had raised Hunter while working on the road as a salesman. It wasn’t easy, but he was a father with a son, and he had responsibilities.