I am not sure if he is still even alive
my oldest brother
John.
We have lost touch
mostly
because our mother died
almost three years ago.
She kept us all together.
John is six years older than me
with the most gentle heart
scarred by life.
I remember him being so protective
I knew that he would take care of me.
When he was 16,
a couple of boys months younger than him,
convinced him to steal a few TVs
from an old motel on the highway.
They were junk
even then
those TVs
but
he longed for acceptance.
As he was the oldest,
he went to prison for a year.
Imagine -
sending a 16 year old to prison
and
for an old TV or two!
I imagine his fear
being in a cell with grown men.
My mother wailed in bed
for nights -
“My baby, my baby!”
I sat on the side of her bed,
unable to comfort her.
When he got out,
he wasn’t the same.
Occasionally,
he would laugh as before,
and give me a loving look,
but there was also
fear
pain
anger.
When I was attacked by a large boy,
years older than myself,
I told John.
He got in his van,
with me by his side,
and drove the town until he found the boy -
I remember that obese bully
repeatedly calling my brother “sir”
and
my brother
looking down at me
with a protective look.
I had missed him
the year he was in prison.
Imagine -
a 16 year old,
gentle,
loving,
in prison,
with adult men.
Lee Sturgis