DEATH WAITS FOR NO ONE

Sam Mathers stood on his front porch, as quiet as his wife’s headstone, and stared at the rosebush. It was in full bloom now and wealthy with gorgeous red petals. The beauty snagged him like a fishhook as soon as he closed the front door. He hadn’t noticed it, not really, when he was loading up his truck, but as he locked his door, and turned… Those flowers. They were stunning.

The bush would only be in bloom for two or three weeks, he knew. If he were a sentimental type, he would’ve thought of the Christmases, the Thanksgivings, the cookouts, the laughter, everything that took place before her heart attack two months prior (at 51, for Christ’s sake). He would’ve thought back to the month prior when his son left for college, of the day in April when the factory shut down, of his bank account. But he wasn’t sentimental. What was the point in it?

The wind forced a petal to the ground.

“Morning.”

He turned to his right. His neighbor waved the morning paper at him.

“Morning,” Sam replied.

“Hot one, eh?”

Sam nodded.

“Heard it’s supposed to get up to 95 today!”

Sam nodded.

“We could use some rain. Break this heat.”

They stared at each other for a second too long.

“Okay,” his neighbor, whatever his name was, said. “I’ll let ya get back at it.” Whoever he was went inside his home.

Sam never cared for the guy. Well, in truth, he never really knew the guy. Didn’t care to. He couldn’t say why, he just didn’t. He never did like talking to neighbors all that much, especially since the guy that lived in the house before what’s-his-name broke into his garage about three years ago and stole his lawnmower. Cops said he sold it for drug money.

Besides, Nancy was the social one. Always was.

Sam left the porch and went to his truck.

He glanced at the gun cases in the bed, the AR-15, the .308, the .223. He opened his door and saw the boxes of ammo in the passenger seat.

For no more than a second, he thought of the hunting trips he took with John his son, all those treks out to Jackson, up to Ludington and Grayling. For that second, he felt the cold morning air on his face. For that second, he could see the sun rising through the trees.

There’d be no more hunting trips after that morning.

None.

And as he started to climb into his truck, all went black.

Later that afternoon, the Detroit News reported a man from Romulus, Michigan had been struck dead in his driveway. No details were released at the time.

Two days later, the cause of death was revealed. A chunk of “blue ice” (the official term for a frozen chunk of human waste) had broke off from the underside of a DC-10 on its way to Detroit Metro Airport and struck Samuel Charles Mathers in the head, killing him instantly.

Aviation experts were quoted in the article stating that although there have been incidents of blue ice falling from aircraft and damaging vehicles and buildings across the globe, there had never been a reported death until that morning. “People might believe this because it’s referenced every so often in sitcoms and shows like Six Feet Under,” pop culture expert Ed Keck stated.

The report also mentioned the number of rifles and “excessive” amount of ammunition he had in his truck at the time, although the police refused to speculate as to what he’d planned to do with the rifles.

Some would say that it was a “miracle” that something so random took out a potentially dangerous person, because who could tell what his intentions were. Others said it was sad because he was probably just some guy heading out to the shooting range, or perhaps, as one commenter on social media who claimed to have worked with Sam stated, maybe he was going to pawn the guns because “he lost his job” and he’d “heard money wuz tight.”

Some gave credit to God. Others brought it down to a horrible accident. Most never read the article.

Sam’s son had no comment. Sam’s neighbor, Jeremy Okun, was interviewed and said Sam was “a good neighbor and a very quiet man.”

However, a few jokes were cracked. After reading the article the morning the Detroit News article was published, Dr. Joseph Deeds, a fulltime dentist and functioning alcoholic from Onsted, Michigan said to his wife (whom he’d beaten the night before after an argument regarding his drinking), “Shitty way to die, eh?” She laughed. She was scared not to.

Millie Kremly, a 16 year old high school student from Dearborn, told her best friend Lavon Walsh, about the incident while they were in homeroom. Lavon replied, “Shitty way to go out.” They laughed.

Dave and Chuck the Freak, the morning duo at WRIF radio in Detroit talked about it. They got a good ten minutes of material out of it before they went on to talk about the scores in the previous night’s Red Wings and Pistons games.

A few weeks later, not many people remembered. A few months later, it had passed from the public consciousness for the most part, but every so often, throughout the years, a person, a wife, a factory worker, a resident at an old folks’ home, a police officer, someone would ask a friend, relative, spouse, or neighbor, “Wasn’t there a guy that got killed by a flying piece of shit?” and someone would say, “Oh yeah,” and laughs would be had, details would be looked up on Wikipedia, and then it would be forgotten again.

The new owners of the home tore up the rosebush the other day. They told their new neighbor, Jeremy Okun, they’d planned to put new shingles on the roof and power-wash the siding sometime next spring.