…Sometimes, the scariest-looking person in the room is the safest place you can run to.
I didn’t go to Walmart that morning looking for trouble. At sixty-three, I’d long since learned that trouble has a way of finding you whether you invite it or not. I was there for coffee, motor oil, and the cheap kind of cereal that reminds you of being a kid before life gets complicated.
My bones ached like they always do when the weather shifts. Old injuries — Vietnam, bad decisions, worse fights — they don’t ever really leave you. They just settle in and wait. My reflection in the freezer door showed the same man I’d been for years: gray beard, weathered skin, tattoos crawling up my arms like stories I never told out loud.
Most people see me and look away.
