His face would change over time…boyish good looks of his twenties were gone…cigarettes and whiskey had carved lines giving him a weathered look…an old cowboy complete with a Stetson hat that he’d pull down over his dark eyes…

And he’d drive ’round town in a beat up old truck with a gun rack in the back window…always ready for huntin’ no matter what season it was…sometimes he’d just pull off to the side of the road and survey land up there on the Michigan line…lookin’ at it for hours…placed empty beer cans on fence posts and shoot at ’em…was always dead on the mark…

He felt a sense of freedom in drivin’ ’round back county roads…there was no-one at home waitin’ on him…no wife nor girlfriend…just a house with things he’d picked up over the years…an old leather chair…records he’d collected…Hank Williams…The Texas Dough Boys…Porter Wagoner…would sit and listen to ’em in the night time with nothin’ on but a lamp in the shape of a cowboy boot…he’d open a can of Spam and eat it cold along with a Coors…it filled his skinny belly…

And so he’d drive ’round all day and into the evenin’…listened to an old Gospel station…thought it was his way of stayin’ right with God…didn’t pray…didn’t read the Bible…just listened to that Gospel music everyday…he was baptized at eleven…so his soul was saved by the grace of Jesus…least that’s what he thought…

Funny thing…he’d lived in that town for sixty years and only a few folks knew him…didn’t have any friends really…stayed mostly to himself…always had…even when he worked at the factory he’d stay mostly to himself…was always scared to make relations…he figured people just come and go in your life…no need to try to hang onto anybody…they’re just gonna die anyway…his parents died when he was young…so did his kid brother…went round and round in foster care throughout his childhood…he’d take off on ’em…ran away from homes several times…they’d always find him in the next county over…walkin’ along dirt roads in the dead of winter…always talked him into comin’ back…

So…he keeps to himself…too late to change him now…this is the life he’d chosen…he was at peace with that…