Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me by Ian Morgan Cron

Author:Ian Morgan Cron
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-fiction, Biography, Religion
ISBN: 9780849946103
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When I got home from the beach, there was a tan Mercedes 450SL convertible with the top down parked in our driveway.

My heart sank. “My parents are going to kill me,” I said.

“Why?”

“I thought my mom said seven. She must have said six thirty.” I jumped out of Tyler’s car. “Let’s hang out tonight. Come over around eight thirty. Rustin Grant’s parents went to Nantucket. There’s a party at his house,” I said.

“He’s a jerk,” Tyler said.

“He’s a jerk with a half keg.”

Tyler smiled and nodded. “Good point,” he said. “See you at eight thirty.”

I tiptoed up to my room and changed, then ran downstairs and found my parents with … well, let’s call him Mr. Smith. They were on our patio, drinking iced tea.

“Hello. I’m Ian,” I said, walking out our back door, extending my hand, and looking Mr. Smith directly in the eyes.

Mr. Smith stood up. “Your parents have been bragging about you. It’s good to have a face to go with your name,” he said, gripping my hand, so tightly that I nearly yelped.

My parents were dead serious about social protocol. My brothers and I had at one time been required to wear jackets and ties to dinner on Sunday nights. Whenever my mother entered the dining room, we were expected to stand and remain standing until she had taken her seat. Before guests arrived, my father drilled us on the proper way to meet people: “Always look people in the eye when you meet them. Make sure your grip is strong—not viselike, but confident. You’ll never offend anyone by calling him sir. Your wingtips should be polished till you can see your reflection in them. Men can tell a lot about other men by the way they take care of their shoes.”

My father believed shoes told you everything you needed to know about a man. If a man’s shoes were scuffed and unkempt, so was his character. If they were waxed and shined, he was morally peerless. He had an electric buffer in his bedroom. It had a long, silver, vertical pole with an on-off switch at the top, and at the bottom two round brushes, one red and one black, on either side. The brushes spun so fast they would burn your hand if you touched them. You used the red brush first, after you applied the Kiwi polish to your shoes, then finished off the shine with the black one. My father didn’t know the names of my friends or teachers, nor over the course of eleven years had he attended more than one or two events at my schools, but the man knew footwear.

Mr. Smith wasn’t wearing a dark suit with a bulge in his jacket where he kept his gun. He didn’t wear dark Ray-Bans, nor did he have a pen in his pocket that looked like it might fire poison darts. He looked like he had stopped by our house on his way home from playing a round of golf at a local country club, which turned out to be the case.

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