To  explain  plot, teachers  say, if  a  gun  is
introduced on page two, it  has  to  be  fired  by   the  end.  Because  I
didn’t  know  my  nephew  had  a  gun,  I  didn’t  think, a gun
means he’s three times more likely to die by suicide.   I  found  that
out later in the story. There was no life you could live out to its end,
says   a   poem   he   loved. Studies  show  dowsing  is  no  more
accurate   than   chance: the person reads the landscape’s
cues,  hands  moving  before  the  rods  do.  When people say,
guns don’t kill people, people kill people  they mean  if people are
introduced on page two.

Read it in Southern Humanities Review