Somewhere south of Humansville and north of Springfield, on a day of intermittent rain and sultry heat, I saw him walking on the shoulder of Missouri Route 13. I pulled over and stopped about fifty feet behind him. My guess is that the sound of tires on gravel alerted him and he turned, then walked back toward me.

Lean and long-haired, wearing a denim vest over a long-sleeved shirt, he looked like something out of a Coen Brothers film with a possible edge of Quentin Tarantino: weathered face, snug-fitting jeans, and a plethora of sewn-on biker patches, and a baseball cap. He stepped over toward the car and I lowered the window.

“You headed to Springfield?” I offered.

“Naw, not that far. Just up the road here a bit.”

That seemed pretty non-definitive but I reckoned it didn’t matter. His eyes seemed kind and his manner very non-threatening and so I invited him in. We headed back onto the highway and I asked him his name. That’s usually about the most mundane part of my banter with hitchhikers, though technically, he was hitching, just hiking. His response was probably the least mundane I’ve ever heard.

“Well, folks call me, ‘Bullet,’ on account of I got shot in the head when I was in the fifth grade.” I have to admit, of all the names and nicknames I’ve heard over the years, “Bullet” pretty much tops the list.

According to Bullet, a friend accidentally shot him in the head when he was twelve years old. “They had to remove part of my skull and they replaced it with an experimental plastic.” That certainly sounds more interesting than most of the experiments we did in my high school chemistry class.

I was looking forward to hearing more about the incident and any other related stories but Bullet wasn’t kidding about not having far to go. I don’t think we’d gone more than two or three miles when he said, “This is where I’m headed, right up there,” and pointed to an Amish trading post. That’s gotta be another story right there but it’ll have to wait.

Bullet got out, thanked me again for the ride, and I headed on south. He didn’t seem much like one of those angels we might entertain unawares, but he certainly made my day more interesting. Hopefully, I made his a tad easier. Pretty sure I got more than I gave and that’s how kindness usually works, I reckon.