An old favorite song of mine came up on the radio. As I sang along, I felt grateful for the distraction. I didn't think as I sang. Old and new buildings passed by in a mishmash of centuries-old houses and modern shops. I still had a few miles to go before I reached the old high school. The song ended and went to commercial, and after trying to find another station and getting only oldies and static, I gave up and drove in silence for a while.
It had been days since I got the invitation, and with it came the occasional memory of my cruelty mixed in with memories of my friends, prom, and graduation. It just bugged me that ever since I got the invitation, memories of Crane came with it. There had been other kids we mocked - Caleb Wallace, the vulture kid, was another good target - but Crane was always our favorite. And now, for the first time, I was really starting to look back on what I had done to him.
Actually...if I said that, I'd be lying. I first really thought about it when Abby came home from school two years ago in fourth grade. Three other girls cornered her two blocks from the school. They shoved her down, pulled her hair, stole her books and homework, and threw them in the mud. As I held her in my arms and went to reassure her, I learned this was not the first time they had picked on her; only that this was the worst incident so far.
Abby was a good kid: she got good grades, had a lot of friends, and her teachers adored her; it was just those girls who singled her out as their victim. When I asked her why, she told me she didn't know.
And then she asked me if she deserved it.
I told her no. No one deserved to be picked on for no reason.
And that was when I first realized Crane didn't deserve it, either.
Kids are cruel little shits sometimes. I should know, having been one of them. The irony was not lost on me, and I felt my stomach turn as it dawned on what I'd done. Maybe this was the Good Lord's lesson: what I sowed, I now reaped, and the humility that I was once what my daughter now feared filled me with shame.
As I made the phone calls to the parents of these girls and the school, I began to think more about it. Why did I do it? What lead me to think that tormenting someone the way we did was okay?
It scared me to know that I didn't have a real answer. Crane was weak and smaller than the rest of us, easy to kick around, and we got kicks from making him afraid of us. He was also a bastard, which carried a much heavier stigma in the sixties and seventies, and even more so in the Bible Belt. They weren't good reasons, but they were there.
I remember pushing those thoughts away as I made the phone calls and got the situation taken care of. Their parents were appalled to learn what they did to my daughter, and promised they would handle it. The school couldn't do much except keep them away from each other in the day, and make sure those other girls left Abby alone. One of them later got a week's detention for attempting to shove Abby in her locker, a prank her good old father was fond of back in his day.
I had another revelation as finished talking to Abby's principal. Aside from some teachers, no one ever really intervened when we hunted down Crane - and sometimes, even our teachers they didn't really intervene at all. I remembered Coach Gray took some of our stunts for attempts to help Crane grow a bit more backbone and muscle. He was never good at sports, and a bit of rough-housing was considered good for him. But even as I set down the phone, I realized there was one more thing that gave us power over Crane, one thing that could have lessened, if not ended some of his torment.
Unlike Abby, he had no one to stand up for him.
The Keenys - Crane's maternal family - were an old line, having been there since before the Great Depression. They were a wealthy, but strange bunch, with some of the strongest belief in the Good Lord in the whole town. They even had an old church on their property - one that fell to ruin before I was born and was no longer in use. At least, not publicly.
Karen Keeny's little folly with Gerald Crane was the favorite topic of local gossip back in the day. As we and our folks lived in the Bible Belt in a small town, it spread like wildfire, and was a favorite topic of sewing circles and groups of other teenagers, even if most of it stayed in whispers or private small talk. Marion Keeny kicked her daughter out on the streets. Sometime after that, she left town, leaving her own mother, Mary Keeny, alone in that old, crumbling mansion with what little was left of their now-squandered fortune. Karen supposedly took to sleeping her way off the streets and eventually ran off with another man, or so the rumors told. No one knew about Crane's existence until he started kindergarten.
Even though the scandal happened well before our time, we knew. We had all grown up with the rumors. We knew as children that Jonathan had no parents and lived with his great-grandmother, an oddity in our little town. We quickly figured out he was smaller, weaker, and submitted to brutal force. And when we grew older, we all put the pieces together, that he was the son of a whore who got thrown to the streets and never once tried to go back for him. I think even subconsciously, we used this to justify ourselves. We were the good kids born in God's grace. He was just some tramp's son, and even she didn't want him.
I had seen Mary Keeny a few times in town. She was a thin, spindly old woman who wore long, old-fashioned dresses - always black, even in the hot Georgia summers. She had a stern face, and all of her hair was pulled back into a graying bun, never a lock out of place. I couldn't tell you what she was like, just that in the rare instances I ran into her, I knew to keep away. As frail as she appeared, she radiated a kind of power that sent even the most hardy of men into shudders when she walked by.
In my few run-ins with her, she gave off a stern coldness. Her dark eyes always held this...this kind of malice, like there was something lurking inside of her. This was not a woman who loved. She tolerated, if that.
Crane was no exception.
Even more rarely than Mary's lone trips to town, I saw them both in town together. Crane almost never smiled at school, and when he was with his great-grandmother, his expression was somehow even more grim. Even as a teenager, he stayed near her side, always staying slightly behind her. Whenever Mary ran into one of her few - acquaintances would be the best word; the woman didn't have friends - he was a perfect Southern gentleman in their presence. The moment they stepped away, however, the moment he thought no one was watching...you could almost feel the resentment coming off of him, yet he never dare put a toe out of line when he was with her. That is the kind of control she had, not only over Crane, but anyone foolish enough to cross her path.
Not once did this woman ever make a phone call, write a letter, or even come up to our front door to talk to our parents, as some folks did back in the day. Some might argue tough love. Who hasn't dealt with being mocked and humiliated at some point in their childhood? Others might say she was simply oblivious to it all. Crane was quiet at school; he could've very easily kept it to himself.
I think she knew. I think she allowed it to happen. And I think Crane knew well enough not to bother, for he would get no sympathy from her.
In a way, she gave us permission to do as we pleased.
I tried to push those thoughts away as I glanced to the invitation sitting on the dashboard. Inwardly, I scowled at it. I didn't want to feel this shame, and I didn't want to think about Crane or his messed up family anymore. I grabbed the open piece of paper and flipped it over so the words on the page no longer taunted me.
The reunion, I thought to myself. Focus on the reunion. You'll see your friends, you'll forget all about this - hell, you'll probably go out and get drunk afterwards and bury it away again.
I looked up as I turned the Mercedes onto a dirt road, suddenly feeling a bit more cheerful. I would be there soon to mingle with my friends and catch up on old times. Nothing was going to ruin this for me.
Or so I thought.