An Act of Valor

Jeff Wilcott had lost track of the funerals he'd been to over the years. Dozens. Hundreds, maybe. More than any fifty-three-year-old man should ever see. But funerals, like bad chicken dinners, were something that politicians endured. They should have made it easier. By volume alone, they should have prepared him.

They didn't.

He leaned with his elbows on the big dark desk, staring at the photograph. Jeffrey, the week after graduation, smiling back. Shotgun tucked into the crook of his arm, that damn Astros cap tipped back on his head with Daddy's thick hair bushing out beneath it. Senatorial hair, silver, just like Jeff's own had been since he'd been his boy's age. Jeffrey, smiling at the camera as if he'd live forever.

But, of course, he hadn't.