The Acolytes of Crane (Theodore Crane, #1)(9)

Taylors Falls was north of the Twin Cities. It was breathtakingly beautiful in autumn, when the colors of red, orange, and yellow proudly staked out their domain over the forest canopy. The numerous cliffs of Taylors Falls had eons ago been carved out and shaped by the powerful St. Croix River. To miss such a craved opportunity to escape the Red Bricks over mischief would have been a shame.


At school, I waited for further pain and loss from my family, as I fully expected my dad would cancel our trip to Taylors Falls. I knew what was coming, and I would have liked to crawl through a rabbit hole to disappear.

From Miss Pinckney’s window, I could see my mother Ann pull up in her long shiny black car, with red trim riding down the side of it. It was a gift from my maternal grandparents. They had a couple of successful small businesses that afforded them the cash to buy extravagant gifts.

When my mom stepped out of the vehicle, I could tell she was upset, because she almost tripped over the curb. She wanted to get to me. Her weapon of choice at home was the wooden spoon.

The door of the principal’s office swung open, and my mother stood stiffly before me, as if she meant business. ‘What did he do this time?’ Ann demanded, with her hands over her hips and eyes that could burn through a concrete road barrier. ‘Wait till your dad gets a hold of you!’

‘Your son kicked a boy in the private area today and from what he told us we reasoned to believe that he learned this action from his father. You don’t condone this type of action, do you Mrs. Crane?’ Miss Pinckney asked, as she strutted across the room in her hideous pink suit-dress. If Miss Pinckney waved her finger one more time, my mom would have chewed it off her hand in one bite.

Ann scoffed and said, ‘Of course not. Why his father?’

‘I am curious, what would his father do?’ Miss Pinckney asked, suddenly softening her tone. ‘What will you do to discipline him? Theodore told me that his dad hits him. Is this true?’ Stunned, I looked at my principal as she faced my mother. It appeared as if the revelation had softened my principal’s harsh expression, and now she was pleading to protect me.

Ann looked ferociously angry. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth draped open. I could probably fit the end of a pop can in it.

Without retort, she yanked my arm and dragged me to the car. Once inside, she screamed at me. She told me, not for the first time, that she had never planned on having me, and that I was an ‘accident.’

I screamed back at her, ‘You guys don’t care about me. You and dad are jerks!’

The car screeched to a stop.

‘Get out of the car, you little son of a bitch!’ she said with spit flying, causing me to wipe my eyes. Oddly, I was distracted by her faint, but perceptible moustache too.

Shaken, I opened the door wide and put one foot on the ground. Appearing flustered and apologetic, she told me to get back in. Confused, I started to shift my weight back into the car. As if Ann had a panic attack, she shifted the car forward with a burst, causing me to lose my balance. Panting heavily with my adrenalin out of control, I grabbed onto the handle of my door, with the toe of my sneaker scraping along the pavement. I feared I would fall onto the asphalt and be run over by the car.

“I’m sorry, Ted,” my mother gasped as she realized she had lost control of her senses. She gazed at me with pleading eyes.

I solemnly entered the car, closed the door, and we took off. When we both stopped crying, there was silence.

Punctuating our brooding silence, the horn blared as my mother firmly swerved her steering wheel. We knowingly looked at each other and, to our mutual relief, exchanged the thinnest of smiles. My mom’s car looked nice and had a great interior, but every time she made a hard right, the horn went off. It was something that only seemed to occur in the best of times to bring about some humor.

I sat there briefly thinking about our engagement, but I was distracted by a pressing desire to pee, and I twisted my legs like pretzels in hope of deterring the urgency.

We finally arrived home, and I ran off to the bathroom.

Since my misdeed had occurred “offside” from my father’s domain, he laughed it off as a school incident. I think he just liked hearing about how a guy got it in the nuts. From there it went into parental “damage control” overdrive. Ann called Travis’s dad and told him about the entire thing. I was worried that Travis himself would catch a beating. It wasn’t what I planned to do. I was carried away with the whole thing. But, no. Nothing immediate would happen to Travis, to my relief. You see, the four parents involved all had an “adult” discussion in bits and pieces and gleefully conspired to make things right.

So it was all settled. Despite the ordeal, we Cranes still made the trip to Taylors Falls, on one condition: Travis had to go. Since Jason was already invited, I sarcastically imagined he would be thrilled to bits at the last-minute invite extended to Travis.

“Yes, my father and Travis’s father decided that it would be good for us to be men about it, and it would help if we were forced into hanging with each other. Travis, Jason, and I—we all rode to the cliffs, squished together in the back of a Chrysler Lebaron. I wasn’t happy, but thankfully, Jason sat between us.”

I glance at my recording device, my throat hoarse. I stand up and pace for a moment, then lean against this wall, sliding my back downward until my butt touches the gritty floor.

There is only a bit of muscle or fat between my bones and the hardness of the cell. I sigh. Every rustle and scrape seems loud against the silence. Even when I refresh my mouth, I can sense tiny ‘slurps,’ as my saliva courses through the gaps between my teeth.