I went to school with a tank of a young man. He played football and wrestled, and he was my pal.

Fairly quiet, he was a great audience, laughing easily, especially at jokes that had a tone of menace to them.

To those that didn't know him, like a feral animal, he emitted something that made him a spirit to encounter only at a distance.

Whatever that aura was, it had worn off by the time he graduated high school and became one of our town's entrenched homeless. I heard he had killed one of his ranks in a turf battle, another street-guy.

When that news was delivered, the first thing that came to mind was his Cheshire grin, signaling he knew more than he'd ever tell, and no force on this earth could ever make him tell.

That quality made him someone you could count on, the type of guy you wouldn't mind having in a foxhole next to you.

Years passed, about a dozen, when I got a call from a mutual friend. He informed me that our killer had done it again.

Same M/O-he stabbed and mortally wounded a homeless confederate.

There is a memorable Oscar Wilde line, which says, roughly: "If you lose a parent it is a misfortune. Lose two, and it looks like carelessness."

My old pal was looking suspiciously careless.

He avoided incarceration for the second killing, and a few years after that, I inconspicuously observed him panhandling in a seaside park.

Looking very healthy, and even youthful, he had obviously beaten the odds that peg a homeless person's life expectancy at less than five years.

Nothing about him signaled his pugilistic past.

He seemed very comfortable in his skin, at peace in this tourist filled venue on a sunny afternoon.

I have attended high school reunions where I've mingled with The Night of the Living Dead, souls that didn't have a trace of the mercury or ice water that still pumped though my buddy's veins.

Did he murder those two guys? Were there others I didn't hear about, unreported victims?

Or was it a matter of repeated acts of self-defense?

Who knows?

I'd give him the benefit of the doubt--and a very wide berth.

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