UNCLE FRANK

     Uncle Frank was a bear of a man. He was always big. As a kid, he lived in a home that believed in "cleaning your plate." To leave even one crumb visible was akin to punching your parents square in their faces. Frank’s dad, my grandfather, would beat his children for the most ridiculous of reasons. My dad used to tell me horror stories about how hard his dad was on Frank. The most severe story involved Frank spilling milk on a second-hand, Oriental rug. I think Frank was seven at the time. My grandfather beat him so badly, Frank developed a limp, which he kept hidden whenever his father came around, thinking that it might anger him. Frank had that limp for the rest of his life.

     What most people considered abuse, my grandfather considered discipline.

     The only job Frank was ever really qualified to do was drive. He was built for truck-driving. And he did that for a number of years before the loneliness got to him. After that stint, he wanted to be surrounded by people, naturally. He was never much of a people-person, per-se, but then, there was something about driving a bus that had always appealed to him. There was the steady paycheck, of course. There was a great deal of that humdrum consistency that also pulled him towards it. At that point in his life it was something he felt he needed to do.

     "That point" ended yesterday.

     Frank started yesterday the same he always had. Fresh, hot shower, bowl of King Vitaman, two cups of coffee, grapefruit. Walk two blocks to work, slide into the flattened seat of bus 442 and start the route. His route had been the same since he started 14 years ago. Other drivers had always called it the "skunk route," as Frank’s predecessor was notorious for hitting an inordinate amount of them during his tenure. No matter how many times it had been washed, bus 442 never really got that smell out of it. Frank’s uniform would always have a hint of that musk.

     The "skunk route" started on Sequoia, made a right on Deerdoorfe, then snaked through Midtown before ending in the Bastinado District. Frank followed this route back and forth six times a day.

     Somewhere around Da Silva Street, at approximately 4:19 yesterday, Frank began quietly unbuttoning his lime green MetroFast shirt. By Lurie Avenue, he’d already removed it completely and none of the 11 passengers even noticed. His final stop in the Bastinado neighborhood was Megson and once all the same faces he’d seen for 14 years at that stop had trudged onboard, he knew it was time for the pants.

     As Frank passed one bus stop, then another, then another without ever stopping, the screams from the passengers got more and more violent. Hands jerked at the above-head wire. The ringing was non-stop. One man was bold enough to try and take the wheel from Frank, but to no avail. Frank brandished a gun and gave the man a slug in the jaw, sending him to the floor, bleeding. One woman used her cell phone to call 9-11. A little girl in red pigtails began to cry.

     It was such an unorthodox hijacking, when you think about it, but it’s really the perfect way to do it. For all the weird stuff I attribute to Uncle Frank, this was certainly his moment of clarity.

     He made it as far as Branca with all those people. Branca, for Christ’s sake. That’s a good 70 miles from his original route. Three squad cars followed him all the way and three more met him at the Renaldo Gardens entrance. After crashing through two roadblocks, bus 442 entered the cemetary.

     In his dirty, blue-striped boxers, Frank limped out of his bus, his gun at his own temple. Once he’d cleared it by about 10 feet, all of the passengers flooded out, screaming and running to nearest squad cars.

     I’m sure Frank heard the shouts from the officers telling him to stop, but he just wouldn’t. He continued to limp away from them, his eyes the huge hillside full of endless graves. He knelt at his father’s headstone up on lot 28 and blew his brains out.




-SLL