Samuel Crane

Samuel Crane               Looking out the window like I have since I was a kid, I see the sun is rising. A new day is here! I used to get so excited that I would wake up before it was up and lie in bed and watch it. I had so much to do and so much to explore in the fields and forests that surrounded our small farm house.    But today I watch it through these bars on the outside of the window, just another day in a bad life. Here I sit in a concrete room filled with people sitting on old dirty furniture, some walking around lost in whatever state of mind they have or has been created with the drugs they push on us.   I am Samuel Thomas Crane and this is my story I write to the world. But only if the world would listen and open their minds to what really happens behind these walls when the doors are locked for the evening.   I have seen so many families come here to visit their loved ones, and as time goes on they grow angry with them. They just don’t understand the truth that is happening, they don’t see the real medicine they are given, they don’t see through anything other than what the doctors fill their heads with. They are all sheep; the true heroes are the ones left behind in here to face the torture until they’re insane or dead! Once, I was the same as these families. I would drive by this place as a teenager with my friends and we would all laugh and say, “That’s the crazy house; they should just blow that place up. The people are worthless in there—just another waste of tax dollars.”   Little did I know or take into consideration what they go through.   I am sure you are wondering just how I became a patient in the Athens Lunatic Asylum.   It all started when I was about 10 years old. My real father passed away in an accident on the job. He worked for the railroad back in the mid-1950s. After that it was my mother, Doris Crane, my brother, Roger Crane left to tend to the farm and the crops. After about six months my mother could not do this anymore; she had run out of money so she decided to find a new man to marry and help with the farm. Well, my brother and I didn’t know what my mother had planned; she locked her feelings away from us after my father died.   We woke up one morning to find a strange man standing in the kitchen. He was facing the screen door in the kitchen that led to the back porch; sipping a cup of coffee, no shirt, just blue jeans and cowboy boots on. He had long, wavy, dark hair, and his tan skin made him look like he hadn’t shaved for a month. He turned and looked at my brother and me with eyes that could see into your soul and rip your heart out. We both turned and ran upstairs to our mother’s room. She was standing in front of her dresser mirror, fixing her hair and running her hands down the front of her flowered dress. She saw the frightened looks on our faces and laughed. Turning around, she asked,   “What is wrong with you two? Don’t you remember what a man looks like in this house anymore?” The laugh sent chills down my spine. And from that day on I knew our lives would change, and change they did.   She had married this man and he was now our stepfather. During the next few years she grew to hate this man as we did. She never knew what he really was. I remember the first time I found out how bad a man he was. I came home from school and found my mother lying on the floor in the kitchen with blood trickling out of her mouth, and bruises on her face and arms. I grabbed a rag, put cold water on it and placed it on her face, slowing wiping the blood off her mouth. Her eyes slowly opened; she started to cry and her words let me know that this was just the beginning of the horror we went through.   His name was Walter Jackson, and he was hooked on alcohol. Pure, homemade moonshine. Fire water is what we would call it because as kids we could set it on fire. Later I found that the Native Americans called it the same except their meaning was because it made people see fire and hate instead of good. He was abusive and not just to my mother. He started beating my younger brother when he was eight. I would call Walter a coward for the things he did. Then one night as I was asleep in bed someone put a rag in my mouth and tied it with another so I couldn’t scream. It was dark in the room so all I saw was a silhouette, but by the grip of the hands, callused and large, I knew it was a man. I knew it was Walter; he couldn’t hit me while I was awake because he knew I would fight back. I was like my father; the American Indian in me was fierce and powerful and that was something Walter hated about me and my brother, that we were half American Indian.   That night Walter took me out to the barn and tied me to a stall gate inside and beat me with a whip until the flesh on my back was ripped open and bleeding. See, in his mind, he was breaking me down to obey him like my mother, but I wasn’t that easy to break. I was a free spirit, and that night something happened to me. Something from my American Indian side came out, something I never knew was inside me.   I took his beating without a scream or cry, which only made Walter angrier. But what he didn’t see was what I felt; something inside me was trying to come out. Something the majority of people thought was a myth or legend. I believe I would never have become this creature if it wasn’t for Walter Jackson.   I remember feeling my muscles burn like I was set on fire; I felt a strength coming from inside me that I couldn’t control. I was angry, and that fueled the feeling that was overwhelming my body. It wasn’t pain from the whip, and it wasn’t the words that Walter was yelling. No, this was something else.   The next thing I knew I had pulled my arms tight, one at a time, and snapped the ropes he had tied me in. I reached up and pulled the rag away from my mouth. About that time Walter fell silent and the whip didn’t strike my skin again. That was the last thing I remembered before waking up in the barn the next morning with a handful of dark hair in my right hand. I spit the straw out of my mouth and walked towards the house.   Opening the kitchen door, there was Walter like usual, standing there sipping on coffee. I looked at him but he wouldn’t look me in the eye. He turned his head away and there I saw a bald spot on the side of his head and a large gauze bandage taped to the side of his neck. This time he had a shirt on.   Did I do that to him? One thing I did know was I could smell the fear coming from the pores of his stinking body. It almost made me laugh in his face, but instead I went straight upstairs to check on my brother and my mother.   My brother was asleep; thank God Walter hadn’t touched him. I went down the hall to my mother’s room and that’s when I saw it. She was standing in front of the mirror on her dresser, her hand on her belly, but her belly was much larger. I noticed she was getting heavier but only thought she was finally gaining weight as she was so thin after my father passed she lost a lot of weight.  Then it hit me seeing her standing in front of the mirror she was pregnant with that son of a b***h’s child.    My first reaction was anger and disgust that she would let that son of b***h touch her that way. I turned and walked back down the hall to the bathroom to shower. Looking in the small bathroom mirror at my sides and back, I saw I had no wounds.. I remembered the feeling of the leather whip striking my skin but I had no wounds; however, dried blood streaked my back. I stepped into the shower and absorbed the hot water.   The days after that Walter didn’t talk to me, or even look at me at the dinner table. He acted as though I didn’t exist.   My mother’s belly grew larger as the days went on. I tended the farm because Walter became more concerned with the bottle than doing chores on the farm.   It was just about dinner time and I was coming back from the store, as my mother would send me to get groceries every Thursday. Just as I crossed the wooden fence that entered our driveway, I heard my mother yelling and my brother screaming.   I dropped the bags of groceries and ran towards the house. It was almost dark at dinnertime this time of year. So as I raced to help my mother and brother I could see two people fighting behind the kitchen curtain, and when I placed my foot on the step of the porch I heard a loud thud hit the floor and everything went silent.   I reached for the door just as it was ripped open and Walter came rushing out, slamming me into the wall of the house. He was heading for his old truck, and as much as I wanted to chase him and kick his ass I knew something bad had happened inside the kitchen.   I didn’t expect to see what greeted me. I was at a loss for words. My mother lay on the floor, crying and bleeding, a knife stuck in her belly. My brother sat on his knees with a blank stare. He was in another state right now and I needed to take care of my mother first.   I ran and grabbed towels from the upstairs cabinet and held them on her belly. She tried to sit up but I wouldn’t let her. I told her not to move, that I would go get help and to hold the towels tightly on her belly. About that time my brother finally came out of it. I instructed him to help put pressure on mother’s wound to stop the bleeding as I went for help.   I hit the kitchen door so hard it broke two hinges. Walter was gone, so I ran like the wind down the dirt road we lived off, to town. I ran in to the sheriff’s office, trying to catch my breath and explain to them my mother needed help. The sheriff sat me down and tried to calm me down before he’d listen to what I was saying. When he finally listened to me he loaded me into the car and raced to my house. We rushed into the kitchen and found my brother lying over my mom, hugging her and saying,   “Please, Mommy, don’t leave me.”   Those words would never leave my memory. That day I swore to my dead mother that I would kill that son of a b***h Walter even if I died doing it.   Walter didn’t want a child; he knew he couldn’t care for the three of us. We were nothing but a burden to him. As I grew older I found out that he took everything we had made from the farm and spent it on buying drinks for his friends in town. So, in his sick mind he thought if he stabbed my mother in the stomach he’d kill the child and not hurt my mother. But he found out he killed her when he heard he was wanted for the murder of Doris Crane Jackson.   I searched for Walter for years until I was about 19 or 20 years old. One day I was walking out of the general store and guess who I came face to face with? Yep, Walter Jackson. He’d shaved his head and face and cleaned himself up. He looked like a gentleman for once in his miserable life, but one thing he could never change was those black, soulless eyes and that smell of fear when he stood there staring right into my eyes. He knew exactly who I was and I laughed under my breath as I bumped my shoulder into him walking out the door. Now he knew I knew he was in town and I would get even with him. And I did.   During the years I was looking for Walter I, too, fell into the bottle. I soon discovered what I became that night he whipped me. A creature I have become many times since I learned how that bottle relieved that pain in my heart and in my mind. A creature the American Indians called ‘Skin Walkers’.               For weeks my mission was to get even with Walter. I would hide out throughout the town in stores, or in my truck and wait for Walter to come. I would study him; I would watch the stores he went to, and then I followed him home one evening in my old Chevy pickup my grandfather gave me after I turned 18. I called it “ol’ red” because it was an old 1965 red step-side pickup. Wasn’t much to look at, but for me it was freedom.               Walter didn’t know this truck so he didn’t realize who was trailing some ways behind him as he traveled down Hwy 56 to 27. I let a few cars in between us until he turned left on 27. I waited a few minutes before I turned just to let him get about a quarter mile ahead of me. By now it was dark out; since it was mid-summer it had to be around 8:00 or 9:00pm.               He turned right into a driveway that led to a nice little country house; little white wood fence, flowers—the perfect American dream home. I slowed to a crawl as I passed by, watching him walk to the front door of his house. Now I knew where he lived and I watched him here every day until the day I was ready to get revenge for my mother.