Anonymous Bullet Holes Around Big Bend

Anonymous Bullet Holes (from the series: Inanimate Subjects)

We went off the beaten track somewhere in the vicinity of Big Bend in West Texas. We drove into the hills, following a road that soon ceased to be much of a road. As far as we knew we were passing through someone’s land. That’s what a sign at the side of the road suggested, warning us not to stray from the track for fear of being mistaken for marauders.

That was a while before we came across this sad van. It was a hundred yards off the road and decorated with bullet holes. It looked like it had been there for years. Your imagination can work overtime on food like this, envisaging some unreported shoot-out in the wilds. Most likely though, the van broke down and wasn’t worth saving. So its occupants hitched a lift on the next vehicle that came through. And in the years that followed, everyone who passed by with a gun used this accidental monument for target practice.