Mr. Crocodile's Tears

I bet that everybody had that one weird friend at school who they’ll never be able to forget. I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way. Mine was ‘Kat’, also known as “Catherine Wheel”. Nobody else ever liked her very much. I guess we were best friends, for a time. She was fiery and passionate, with a keen love of justice, and could be crafty and cruelly hilarious. I guess other people were wary of her; maybe a little afraid of ending up in her bad books.

I bet that everybody had that one weird teacher at school who they’ll never be able to forget. I very much do mean that in a bad way. Mine was Mr. Kroc. Inevitably, everyone called him Mr. Crocodile. He was a snappy dresser, sharp and droll, and all the other girls in our class seemed to think very highly of him. I guess I did too, to begin with. He had a winning smile which no-one could resist; those perfect teeth showing on the front row of every class photo.

But there was something about him which just never rang true to me. Something which made me wary. The way he behaved seemed wrong in some way that I couldn’t place my finger on. Just as well; perhaps those perfect teeth would have bitten my hand right off.

However, now that I can look back on these terrible events from the distance of a decade or so, I find myself tormented by the thought that maybe I was wrong. Very wrong. About Kat; about Mr. Crocodile.

Tormented because I may have stood back and let my friend do something truly dreadful.

Tormented because Mr. Crocodile is dead.

Kat must have tasted my hesitation towards our teacher’s playful ways and we started talking to each other. I had never heard her breathe a word to anyone before; she was pegged as the school weirdo. She said she blamed Mr. Crocodile for her being paralyzed from the waist down, and having to use a wheelchair. The story she told me is at least partially true. He had taken us on a field trip, three years earlier; an art class at the local beauty spot: a small country park with a great viewing point, high above an ancient weir, which everyone in town called “The Waterfall.” It was at least eighty feet down to the ever-churning water beneath. If the sheer drop onto jagged rocks didn’t kill you, the river’s rapid current would finish you off; it was pretty savage, and the place was well-known in local lore as people used to throw those accused of witchcraft from the overlook, and let God judge them. Kat had gotten lucky. She only broke her spine.

Everyone assumed she’d fallen, and the matter was swept under the carpet, as her oddball parents never pressed charges. But she told me she had jumped, to escape the advances of a certain sleazy teacher with slimy claws. I didn’t believe her at first, but as our friendship strengthened, she soon started to convince me with pieces of evidence which slotted together into a perfect portrait of perversion.

He was definitely one of those teachers who always had favorites among the students, that much was pretty obvious. But Kat began to pry open my jaded eyes to the scale of his slithering schemes. I never knew he groomed them. She made me notice him asking the same students to stay late after class to help him to tidy up, or put up posters for the next day. She pointed out the predatory ways he would lean over and guide their hand in his, pat their trembling backs, and quickly flash his greedy tongue inside a beguiling smile.

But the clincher came one cold October day, when Mr. Crocodile told us he was taking some younger pupils on an outing later that week: a repeat of the eventful field trip which Kat & myself had embarked on three years earlier to the local park to create some paintings. He wanted volunteers from our class to accompany him, and help keep an eye on the kids. In his tiresome way he was joking around with the girls who always sat at the front, about how he’d be there “but don’t let that put you off”, when Kat shot up her hand, and that definitely made him lose his cool. She stared him down for a few stone-hard moments until he stammered his thanks and turned to nervously rearrange some papers on his desk. Kat nudged me hard in the rib-cage and I volunteered too. I had never seen him look uncomfortable before, and this was, to my mind, surely the ultimate proof that Kat had told me the truth.

The fateful day came around and she easily engineered an encounter at the viewing point above the weir; whatever happened out there was probably in the planning for years. I played my small role to perfection, eagerly leading the posse of twelve-year-olds ahead to scout out great landscape-painting locations, whilst our poor teacher was stuck sweating and straining in the rear, duty-bound to push Kat’s stubborn old wheelchair, the brakes of which kept suspiciously seizing up. I timed things to perfection by guiding the group of kids out of sight just as Kat and Mr. Crocodile arrived at that inauspicious and picturesque site; this would leave only one witness.

We rushed back when we heard Kat’s anguished cry, but Mr. Crocodile had already gone over the edge. Suicide, she told everyone. The guilt had caught up with him. He had actually begun to cry, practically a cascade of tears, she said. He Apologized, but despite her gracious forgiveness, had hurled himself to his death. I peered down at the white water below. No body. No sign of him at all. When they finally snared his corpse a mile downriver three days later, nobody came forward to claim him. Not so popular, after all, it seemed. They had to formally identify him by his teeth. By that winning smile.

I don’t remember there being much of an investigation; I guess my town is good at looking the other way. Nobody would have ever suspected foul play as I assured the police that though Kat was in the vicinity at the time of the incident, since she was sat in her creaky old chair at the viewing point, a good few yards distant from the edge of the weir, she couldn’t possibly have been physically involved. A helpless young girl cursed by two mishaps in that one cruel location. The police did reveal that Mr. Crocodile had been receiving anonymous hate-mail for years, threats and hexes and pledges of revenge, always in the same handwriting. He’d not told a soul. Make of that what you will.

Things very quickly returned to normal, after the inevitable flurry of gossip melted away. Kat was given a brand new mobility scooter, paid for by the school, perhaps as a sort of subtle compensation. Or maybe this gift was in return for her silence on the story, as the press could have had a field day; instead Mr. Crocodile’s strange death was barely reported at all, just a brief mention on the local TV news of a teacher dying accidentally at a hazardous beauty spot. The cover-up complete, he became almost erased from existence. I rarely heard his name again.

I began to speak to Kat less and less; by Christmas she was ignoring me completely, and I started to wonder if I had allowed myself to be manipulated in some way. I avoided reviewing the strange events too thoroughly, though, as a sense of unease always washed over me. Doubts began to set in. Evidence appeared ever more inconclusive.

I still live close to the old school, though I haven’t spoken to Kat in years. It’s a small town and we often pass each other in the street; there is no acknowledgement between us. Perhaps she believes that we share a bond of silence. She teaches now. I hear the other children are a little afraid of her. And to tell you the truth, I am afraid of her too. I have a daughter of my own now, and would never send her to that school. Because I know a secret about Kat. Something I never told the police. Something I’ve never told anyone, until now.

Kat could walk a little, after her accident. Everyone thought she had no sensation in her legs at all. Perhaps there wasn’t, immediately after her fall. Perhaps the feeling had returned slowly. I had caught her practicing alone, one day, far from predatory eyes, in the overgrown woodland near the weir. She would slowly rise, stifling agonized cries, and laboriously swing each leg in turn, every step a great weight. She could not walk far. Perhaps she could only manage the distance from the viewing point overlooking The Waterfall to the edge, and back again.

Credit: Hack Shuck