Death followed him from a very young age.
They first glimpsed each other in the early 80s, when he was walking back home to his house on Devils Lake. Someone started shooting, and a stray bullet missed his head by about a foot.
Out of work a decade later, he joined the Army and was promptly shipped off to Iraq. That time, he took a bullet in the leg, which probably kept him from stepping on the landmine that got the guy to his side.
When he got home, things settled down for a bit. He got a job at Angelo’s Coney Island and worked with dignity even though his coworkers walked with bile and muttered racist epithets under their breath. He was a favorite among the customers. His smiles were never strained, but frank, and he seemed made for the night shift, still on-stride as the sun came up. It wasn’t a paradise, no, not by a long shot, but it was a pause. A draw your breath in deep and let it out still and smooth. Outside Angelo’s in the midnight and summer, you heard crickets.
Death finally caught up with him in the mid-2000s. No bullets. No landmines. A heart attack. It was instantaneous. Maybe he was genetically predisposed. Or maybe someone so wrapped in beatitudes is just the most provisional of guests in our world.