I protected my younger brother his entire childhood. I thought that would change when we got to be adults but it didn't. In fact the most important protection I ever gave my brother was after he'd married.
I'm Will Grimes, thirty years old at the most critical point of this tale. My brother Jimmy is two years younger.
I was always big and strong for my age, and had a daring mindset. I guess I don't have most of the genes that prevent people from doing risky things. Since I was big and fearless after I beat the shit out of the kids in my first four fights in school – three of my opponents were significantly older than I was – I was never really challenged again. The only guy tougher than me in the entire area, Brett Hogan, was one of my best friends, and we never did anything more than playfully wrestle.
Jimmy is the opposite of me in many ways. He is of average size and has the most pleasant, kind, disposition of anyone I have ever met in my life. While we have facial features and coloring in common (both favoring our mother) my personality is "killer," his is "compassionate." I'm a fighter but he avoids confrontation at all costs.
Jimmy has lived "kind and gentle" his entire life. When he was six years old he cried on and off for a week after he saw a crow steal a baby robin from its nest. When he was in sixth grade he set up a program to get school supplies for poor kids in the district, a program still in existence today. When a freshman in High School he started a school-wide campaign to put together care packages for troops serving oversees. In summers during High School and college he worked with charities restoring and building homes for people displaced by floods. Whenever a member of the family was down Jimmy would comfort them, tell some jokes, give them a hand-made present, or otherwise cheer them up. The world is a much better place because of Jimmy.
Despite his winning personality, because he is so meek the only reason that Jimmy got through school without being bullied was because everyone knew that if they messed with him I'd kick their ass. I only needed to actually do that once, when he was a freshman in High School and two thug sophomores picked on him. That wasn't one of the four "fights" I referred to earlier since this wasn't really a fight but a massacre, ending up with me suspended from school for a week and the two thugs in the hospital for two nights.
While I loved Jimmy more than anyone else in the world the rest of my family was just so-so. My father was basically an uncaring boor; at least he was a good provider of material things. My mother was a buxom, feisty, hot-blooded vamp. While she did most of the things that a mother should it was always clear that she came first, the kids second, Dad third. She was also beautiful; what she ever saw in my relatively plain looking father I never knew.
Although my parents had their share of arguments it normally wasn't tense around our house because my mother's temper usually fairly quickly backed my father down. That wasn't the case, however, on one of the most unforgettable days of my life.
I was a junior in High School serving the last day of my week-long suspension for massacring the two thugs I mentioned earlier. I was in the basement weightlifting when my parents both came home for lunch, as far as I knew a highly unusual event. They likely forgot that I was home on suspension since they both had been at work the entire time the first four days of my "sentence."
As soon as both were there a heated argument started. My father had found out – exactly how I was never sure since that part of the argument was both technical and garbled – that Jimmy was not his biological son. While I was shocked that did explain a lot about the differences between him and me.
My father called my mother every name in the book; she cried hysterically, and for the first time in my memory she was not giving as well as she was getting. I just listened at the door from the basement to the kitchen, having decided not to reveal my presence, until my father started screaming about how he was going to tell Jimmy that he was a bastard, in addition to all of their friends and relatives.
When I opened up the door and walked into the kitchen my parents turned ashen. "Hey, Dad," I said as calmly as possible. "I really don't think that you should do that. You know how sensitive Jimmy is. You both need to swear to me that you will never, ever, tell him, or anyone else where it could get back to him."
"You have no fucking say in this," my father screamed at me. "Butt out."
"Dad, I insist; don't tell him, or let him find out. I mean it!" I replied having great difficulty maintaining my cool.
"Or what, asshole," my father smirked.
In a flash, before I could even think, I was on him. I put one arm under his chin and with the other pinned his shoulder against the wall. Even though he was my size I had twice his strength and "attitude." I had never been physical with any member of my family before, but they all knew how tough I was from visits to the superintendent's office after my fights.
"Let me make this clear, Dad. If you tell Jimmy or let him find out I'll kick your ass, plain and simple," I told him, as forcefully as possible. "Understood?"
He nodded, I released him, and as he stormed out of the house yelled to my mother "I'm not done with you, slut."
I turned to my mother and said "Mom, make sure that Jimmy never finds out." Through her tears she said "I promise."
