Fiction Friday – Slippages

Slippages

I trailed after my older brother down the street to the creek, and continued to follow him through the bush as the track ran parallel to the water. The cicadas were out in force, the aural accompaniment to the heat haze we walked through. I was following him because he’d had this shit-fight with Dad and had to duck to avoid the backhander swung at his jaw. When he stormed out, I followed him as a shadow. Under the broken shade of the eucalypts he kept walking, and still I followed. Said nothing. Watched his feet pick their path. I didn’t watch where I was going and tripped over a small branch. I looked down to pick myself out of it, check the branch hadn’t scratched my leg and saw my shoelace was untied. Once I’d done my shoelace I looked up and my brother had gone beyond the bend in the track. Picking myself up I jogged to catch up with him. Coming around the bend, I saw him a little ways ahead, but he had stopped and was facing the way I was coming. I pulled up, drawing deeper breaths. He nodded, turned and kept walking. I understood the irony that while Dad had broken him, he was not fragile.