With the commotion caused by Jen’s lively exit Jake stirred, eyes still shut to the inevitability of the day. He asked in a voice drunk with sleep and more than a little touched by irritation, “What d’you want?” He was asking the still morning air, of course. Jen was gone to meet whatever fate had to offer before he’d arched an eyebrow. Getting no response his face slackened, eyelids again at ease, no force pushing back the light.
Joe envied the apparent ease with which his son fought off the sunrise for a few more minutes of sleep. He sometimes felt depleted of the strength to accomplish even so much as that. He rose nonetheless, trusting his spirits to follow. Recalling the whirlwind masquerading as his oldest child, they did.
Nudging Jake with the worn end of a walking stick he’d picked up somewhere between what was then and now Joe said, “Come on kiddo. Gettin’ there in your dreams don’t count.”
Jake responded by scratching his head, though clearly not yet awake. His light brown hair had rich undertones the color of faded rust. It was sun-bleached, resembling something like Galveston Island’s sand or long cut hay on top. He insisted that it be kept short, out of his eyes and ears always, despite his sister’s pleas that he let it grow. Cropped short or not, however, it managed to look disheveled. “When you wash that mop you look like you just got highlights,” Jen would tease truthfully and tauntingly at once, and maybe even a little enviously. “Please let it grow,” she’d say. “You’re the only boy I’ve got to look at except daddy, and he’s older than dirt. You’re hair is firecracker hot, Jake. The rest of you’s just my stinky kid brother.
Stinky was, in so far as it went, an apt description of Jake. Very few would assent to limiting a description of him to just that, however. Methodical and capable of complex and naturally organized constructs of thought, his mind was equally agile and quick when the situation called for it.
While the exceptional nature of his mind was what most separated him from others, it was his physical stature, even as a child, that drew him immediate attention and made him stand out in a crowd. He was lean like his sister, his muscles long and elastic, like those of a runner rather than those of a lumberjack. Unlike Jen, though, he was as tall as he was lean. He was already within a hair of surpassing her. Whether he had or not already was one of the few points of real contention between them.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to call Jake’s prominent square jaw statuesque. His nose was narrow and straight, classically nordic in its origins. His eyes were so deeply set as to give their piercingly crystalline blue the illusion of genuine radiance; of emitting light from within, rather than simple reflectors of the light available to them.
He was a good looking kid, and knew it. He knew it not from a place of conceit, however, but from the fact that he’d been told so by practically every mother and teenage older sister of his friends and classmates before the world of friends and classmates ended. Women would stop his parents in groceries stores, malls or any other public spaces just to coo over him and shower him with complements. He’d never had a female teacher for whom he wasn’t among her favorites.
Those that knew him well would to a person point to his kind heart if asked what one quality best described Jake, however. His dad and sister were the only ones that knew him well now, of course, but his friends, family, teachers and others, all gone now, would have said so too if they could.
Even as a kindergartner he would break up arguments and tussles among classmates. “But not only that,” Joe remembered Jake’s experienced grandmotherly teacher saying, “All three; Jake and the two fighting, always ended up friends laughing together. If Jake’s getting involved I’ve learned to give him a crack at it and he’s yet to fail me. I’ve never had another student in my thirty years in the classroom I can say that about. Maybe I’m getting too old for this,”she laughed, “But you’ve got yourself something special in that boy. Very special indeed.”
Growing more serious, the old teacher continued, “Just remember there’s a high price to pay for special gifts. You’ll do right to raise him knowing that and preparing him to pay when his debt is called in.” Joe had know idea how to respond to that. He just thanked her and left, a feeling of unease twisting his insides and holding Jake’s hand a little more tightly as they walked away.
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