The Acolytes of Crane "Updated Edition" by J. D. Tew

beautiful. Her hair was black as night. When she
smiled, there were these little dimples on the sides of her cheeks. Almost
every day before school, she would make some pancakes that were so good. They
were amazing, and they didn’t taste funny like at school. She would always
arrange my bacon and butter scoops into the shape of a face on top of the
pancake. I miss her so much.’
    Spellbound,
I gazed at him. I felt like crying as I recalled the memories of my troubled
parents.
    Lincoln
saw my expression and recognized the hurt within me. He turned away and
continued softly, still staring ahead in open space. ‘I would say the thing I
miss the most about her, was her hugs. She squeezed me so hard that I would
start to feel like I couldn’t breathe. I heard about your friend Jason. That
must have been horrible. You must miss him too.’
    ‘Yeah,
a lot. I really miss him. He always knew what to do. He could really help us
out right now, because he always had great ideas, and he was good with the
ladies.’
    I
now felt horrible about what I had said to Lincoln about his mother.
    Lost
in our thoughts, we said nothing during the rest of our bus ride.
    There
were some weird characters on the bus that night. We had a man who was sitting
next to us drinking from a brown bag. He was probably washing away the pains of
the day with a bottle of whiskey. He kept blurting out at people in the bus;
‘This is my world, my world.’ He repeated it at least twenty times during the
ride. I tried my best not to make eye contact. When the bus stopped in our
neighborhood, we exited quickly to avoid interaction with any of the bus
regulars.
    We
stepped down at our stop and said goodbye. When I arrived at home, I lay on my
bed, shuffling through all my baseball cards. No, not any I had stolen
recently, as I had not. It was the personal collection I had amassed over the
years.
    Upon
further reflection, I wished that I didn’t drag Lincoln into The
Intervention business, and I wished that I knew why everything was
happening to me.
    There
was no way of telling what could happen. For my birthday that year, I received
a ‘greatest hits’ CD. I plunked it into my player and began to rock to some
clever vocals that were accompanied by a piano. Just as I was drifting away, my
grandma entered the room and sat next to me in my bed.
    ‘Honey,
we are not going to Taylors Falls tomorrow. I know that you have wanted to go
up there, and we have delayed it a lot, but we cannot this year. We cannot
afford the trip,’ my grandma said.
    ‘Well,
that is too bad. I get sad after I go anyway. Things are good right now,’ I
told her, but I suspected something was going on. She sighed, as if troubled. I
decided not to ask.
    ‘Goodnight,
granny,’ I said.
    She
flipped the light switch and said, ‘Goodnight, Theodore.’
    That
night, the sky reminded us of its power with a thunderstorm that ripped through
our neighborhood. Gusty winds pounded the walls and rattled the windows. My
grandparents, who had survived times of war and economic depression, slept
through the fierce storm. In contrast, I watched through my window briefly as
the storm rocked the trees at mid-trunk.
    The
bolts of lightning streaked across on the tumultuous sky canvas, instantly
dabbing the edges of the otherwise lead-granite colored clouds with brilliant
flashes of cream, illuminating the ground below.
    My
astonishment turned to fear, after a bolt of lightning split the picturesque
window scene in front of me. The jagged sword of lightning splintered the elder
tree in our front yard, leaving it a smoldering wreck.
    The
proximity of the blast forced me back; the boom had taken my breath away. I
retreated to my covers, because I was shaking from the bolt's impact on that
tree.
    That
tree spent nearly sixty years reaching for the sun, only to be destroyed in a
millisecond.
    I
tried to sleep for the remainder of the morning, but I was left tossing and
turning. It seemed the days were becoming