First Steps

A young Florida rain played outside, and Jubal was young. He stooped to pick up the broken picture frame that had fallen at his feet.

“What the hell did you that for?” he said quietly, not looking up.

“You care more about your damn photographs than about what I'm trying to tell you.”

“I thought we were talking. Let's talk then, but you don't have to break the photograph.”

“I didn't mean it alright? Geez, it was just a photograph.”

“You still didn't have to break it.”

“I'm sorry alright?”

“Alright”, said Jubal. But it was not alright. He was lonely and far from home and the picture of him and his family lay cracked across its smooth, glass pane. He could feel his eyes get misty. Gosh I'm sentimental. Why am I always so sentimental?

“Now I'm trying to tell you something important.” said Thomas. He was always trying to tell someone something important, Jubal thought. Whether it was his investment strategies, his defense of his favorite sports teams, or his thoughts on politics old Tom thought everything he had to say was important. Jubal hated him for it. He hated everyone for thinking what they had to say was important. Loud-mouths always did.

Jubal was an oldest child, blessed and cursed with an oldest child's memories. He had lived long enough to see his parents happy, to see his parents in love. He had also been alive and conscious enough to notice the change that had come over his father and the sadness that had all too soon shrouded the once happy countenance of his beautifully plain mother. He had briefly seen how happy life could be, and also seen it snatched away like a bait that kept a tiger crawling into his cage, a bait he would never find, the thing he would neither see or touch again, only remember. Forever and ever, longer than seemed possible or humane.