![]() Mom had started on dinner by the time I got home. Nobody’ll mess with you on my watch.įrom my stoop I watched him saunter on down the block until he turned the corner, out of sight. He promised to come running whenever someone gave me trouble. ![]() He told me a joke about a man from somewhere called Nantucket that made me laugh until I forgot about my ant stings. He walked me home, him swinging his bat at imaginary curveballs and telling me about how great practice went earlier. We’re all told as children not to talk to strangers, but this kid didn’t feel like a stranger at all. That was the first I could remember another kid being nice to me. “Your big brother is always looking out for you. “Don’t worry, little bro,” he said, squatting to clap me on the shoulder. Then I saw that way up at the peak of him the kid had a pushed-in nose like a pug dog and a big, warm, crooked grin beneath it. I shrunk back at first-Jason looked like he was hurt really bad, wasn’t moving or anything. The kid offered me a paw as leathered as a worn-out baseball mitt. He had to be at least twelve, I remember thinking that was ancient, back then. He was big everywhere, tall enough to splinter the sun into a hundred blinding rays, and thick-not a fat kid like I was then, but hard in the belly and the arms. There was hair curling up over the tops of his grass-stained socks, and he had knuckles on him the size of jawbreakers. ![]() Another boy stood over him holding a Worth Bat Company aluminum baseball bat with a dent in the middle. Jason Bigmore was flat on the ground, the back of his head an explosion of blood. I rolled over and saw Jason’s two goons bolting in opposite directions. The difference between kids and adults is that adults want years in advance, where kids only want what the moment demands, and they want it with everything they have. I didn’t know they couldn’t do that then, so mostly I just cried, being seven and all, and they laughed and laughed. They wanted me to lick the anthill-they called it eating hot sauce-and if I didn’t, they’d let those hungry red ants crawl into my ears and sting my brain. They called me the usual names and told me to stick your tongue out, pussy willow. This was a game we played most every day-sometimes I won, but this time around, two of them held me down by the arms while Jason smushed my face into the black dirt beneath the dead old oak tree out by the baseball diamond. It was five minutes after school let out, and Jason Bigmore and his fourth-grade friends had caught me before I could make it out of school grounds. I was seven when I first met my big brother. This story is my take on how that might play out in reality.” Someone more devoted to them than their own parents. I think a lot of kids secret hope for a guardian angel. Ever since I was little I wondered what it would be like to have an older brother who could be a constant companion like I never had, and maybe beat up bullies and things. “ Although I have a younger sister, I’ve always felt more like a single child, since we were never very close.
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