Crispy Cotter's Suspended Sentence, Part 2

"This doesn't make any sense to me," Mr. Cotter said, distractedly scratching his head with a butter knife. He then used the same knife to smear a gob of jelly on his buttermilk biscuit. "What is this floating? What does that mean?"

Work had delayed Mr. Cotter at the bank the night before, arriving home hours after Crispy had burrowed underneath his down comforter and drifted away to dreams of candied rockslides and spinning pinwheels, and the bookish banker was just now, in between bites of eggs and peppered reindeer sausages, reading the reprimand his son had pinned to his shirt the day before.

"I couldn't make heads or tails of it either," Missus Cotter, seated to the right of her husband, said. "It's all torsos."

"What does that mean, 'It's all torsos'?" Crispy asked.

"I'll ask the questions," Mr. Cotter reproached. A splash of egg yolk clinging to his hair from where he'd scratched with the cutlery. "I want you to explain this floating. Ducks float on water. The poor float checks. But people? Actual, physical people. People do not float. Unless they're wearing life preservers, but even so. What's this...what's this all about. Explain it to me, please. Somebody shed some light on this cryptic note. What's it all about?"


"Dear, you're not giving Crispy a chance to speak," Missus Cotter said to her husband, filling Crispy's glass with orange juice. "Tell us what happened, Crispy."

Crispy swallowed. He looked at his mother with wide eyes, trying hard not to clam up under the stern gaze of his mathematical father.

"Don't be afraid, my little cinnamon bun. We just want to know what happened. No one's in trouble."

"That has yet to be determined," Mr. Cotter interjected.

"Let him speak, please."


"I was on the jungle gym, swinging, you know?" Crispy said uncertainly.

"Right. Swinging on the jungle gym like a gorilla, were you?" Mr. Cotter asked. "Like a silverback high in the canopy, eh?"

"Don't be foolish, dear," Missus Cotter said. "Everybody knows gorillas are far to heavy to swing from the canopy in the fashion you're thinking."

"Then a chimpanzee! Swinging like a chimpanzee! Is that a better image for you?" Mr. Cotter erupted.

"I suppose," the missus capitulated. "Although..."

"Although what?"

"Although, chimpanzees are more knuckle-walkers than anything else, dear."

"So what?"

Crispy took a mouthful of orange juice as his parents parried over primates. His face folded in on itself like mismanaged origami, but neither of his parents took note. Missus Cotter had failed to add enough water to the concentrate and the juice was shockingly sweet.

"So, why not give fair representation to the other sapien races? Nobody ever remembers gibbons or siamangs. They're the ones that are anatomically built to swing from the trees. They're adapted for it."

"Fine!" Mr. Cotter shouted. Then, to Crispy, "You were swinging like a gibbonang! Then what?"

Crispy was so taken aback by his father's doubly loud outburst he spit the second mouthful of orange juice all over the dining room table.

Missus Cotter took the napkin from her lap and spot-cleaned Crispy's face. Only then did her sone continue his story.

"I was swinging from the bars and then I just let go."

"And then what?" his father asked.

"I just let go. But I didn't fall."

"Why not, dear?"

"I don't know."