Buena Vista, Calif. • The bracelet is still on Jonathan Smith’s wrist, right where he put it a year ago as he entered the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. It was there when country star Jason Aldean took the stage, when what sounded like fireworks morphed into a shower of bullets, when the blood started to run down his shirt, when he tried to drag concertgoers away from danger, when he almost lost his life.
It's a tactile talisman now, along with the bullet still lodged in Smith's chest, between his shoulder and his heart.