The Acolytes of Crane (Theodore Crane, #1)(15)

Of particular delight to me was the walkout three-season deck in the backyard, perfect for me to practice my skateboarding tricks. Concrete stone slabs, firmly laid long ago although now they had become somewhat uneven over time, surrounded the deck. I would set my back wheels into the space between the planks. It was a good way to keep the board still while I practiced ollying. I figured that since the old, badly maintained deck jutted out to a huge backyard surrounded by forest, they wouldn’t mind if my skateboard ground down their steps. To my surprise, Laverne had shrugged and said, ‘As long as you don’t kill yourself, it’ll be nice for the deck to finally be of some use.’

Three days before our trip to Taylors Falls, my grandpa and I decided to work in the flower garden together. My favorite flowers were the bleeding hearts. They had dark pink heart-shaped outer petals with drooping white inner petals protruding from the heart. They always had a slew of aphids crawling on them. In the garden, there was also a gigantic over-grown rose bush. He grew types of roses known as floribundas and grandiflora. The flowers were pretty, thanks to his incessant shapely pruning.

While he pruned, I took up shelter in my tree fort, which grandpa helped me build last year. Equipped with two tiny haphazard home-constructed chairs made only of sawed-off planks, the fort afforded me a space in which I could hide and write in my journal. The trauma I experienced at the cliffs two years earlier had placed me in a social rut, and I regressed to preferring to “chill out” alone.

I was enjoying the quiet, when I heard a pop. I dropped my journal. My amulet displayed its typical response by glowing.

The sharp sound was like that of a cap gun or one of those little white bags of poppers we used every July 4 holiday. I heard my grandpa let out a man-scream, which was more or less an indirect yell.

I hopped down from the tree and searched the neighboring patches of woods for the origin of the sound. Two kids were hiding at the wood-line by the fence. The neighbor boy had a friend over, and they were both sharing a pellet gun. Dimly, they had thought they could have their fun by taking one crack at an old man, and get away with it, too. They sat in disbelief for a moment and then booked beyond the pines. They hadn’t reckoned on one of their own kind resting away nearby in a fort.

I yelled, ‘Ey, you get back here you punks! No one does that to my grandpa!’ I tried to make out their faces, but the forest cover was too thick.

‘What are you going on about, boy? I was stung by a damn bee,’ my grandpa said to me, not aware there were other boys about.

‘I saw two boys at the fence firing a gun at you,’ I said, sure of myself, but worried that my grandpa would not believe me.

Marv turned to look and he saw the boys sprinting up the cherry stained deck of the neighboring house. Boy, I had never seen my grandpa run so fast, confuting his advanced age. He darted into his kitchen. He called the police, and no sooner than my grandma could fry a quail egg, two cops were knocking at our door.

They introduced themselves. Officer Johnson, who looked like a kid right out of cadet school, had the lead role. I guessed the police force were anxious to train the newbies while a more experienced colleague looked on. The other man, Officer Carruthers, had sergeant rank. I could tell he was a sergeant, because of my gramps’ military ID that he saved from his term in the army. They both had high-n-tight hairstyles—the most severe buzz cut possible, popular with military guys.

We walked over to the troublesome kid’s house. I marched next to the cops like a sidekick with an itchy trigger finger.

Officer Johnson knocked on the window beside the storm door with his knuckles—fingers curled, while his more seasoned partner looked on. The tapping was light, as if he was trying to see if a bathroom was occupied.

He had to knock a few times before someone answered. The person who opened the door was a wretch. He stood there, proud yet shabby, with belly hanging outward underneath his white cotton tank-top, the sleeveless kind of undershirt with the scoop neck and large armholes, exposing his hairy shoulders and armpits. His clothes were stained; some of his teeth were covered with black tartar stain. His face was poorly shaved with patches of stubble remaining. I didn’t like what I saw, so I took cover behind my grandpa.

‘What the hell do you want, pig?’ the disgruntled man asked. He went by Dick, a name befitting him.

‘Do you have kids here?’ Officer Johnson asked.

‘Yeah, but you should know I don’t like cops, especially cops that think they are better than me, with that tone. You are lucky I don’t take you out with my rifle for knocking so damn much. Now state your business,” Dick said with a slur and the glossiest of eyes.


‘We’re here because we believe that your kids were involved in an incident that occurred about twenty minutes ago,’ Officer Johnson said, ‘Now you can bring the kids out so that we can see for ourselves, or we can do this the hard way, and I can bring you all down to the station.’

‘Looks like you are going to have to do it the hard way,’ Dick chuckled and slammed the door into the cop’s face.

It wasn’t at all a surprise he was so belligerent. He was continually inebriated, among other things. Dick and his family had lived there for such a short time that we really had not figured them out or even known them by face. Regardless, it all seemed that trouble was looming—very soon.

The two cops had a quick huddle twenty feet away to discuss strategy, and then returned. I watched as the cops walked up as if it was a raid on a druglord’s house. Batons out, the duo looked like they were dying to use some excessive force.