Henry Franks (4 page)

six

His shirt glued itself to his skin within moments of leaving the house, and he was sure his deodorant had failed before the school bus even arrived. After standing on the sidewalk too long, the bottoms of his sneakers seemed to adhere to the concrete and the first step onto the bus was sticky.

Justine melted into the seat in front him. She fought with the window and gave up with it open almost an entire inch. The August breeze through the opening was hot against his face. Her brown hair was up, as always, exposing a great deal of tan neck all the way down to the straps of her tank top. One thin river of sweat began with a single bead at the base of her hair and disappeared down her back.

She fanned herself with her hand and then turned around to face him. “Think of ice,” she said. “Milk shakes, chocolate ice cream, snow. Have you ever seen snow?”

“No.” Henry shook his head.

“Really? We go up north to see family for Thanksgiving and it snows sometimes. Whose bright idea was it, do you think, to put plastic seats on a bus in Georgia? I'm sticking to the seat, here. Is that why you're in jeans again?”

Henry shrugged and Justine, as usual, continued her monologue.

“I'm pretty sure I'll be in shorts through November at least. Then we'll get a few weeks of fall, a week or two of winter, and then it's summer again. So you've never seen snow?”

He shook his head.

“You weren't on the bus yesterday afternoon.”

“It was Thursday.”

“I know. Tuesday, Thursday, Henry's not on the bus home; same as last year. Why not?”

She rode half-turned in her seat, one arm curled around the backrest, the plastic piping on the vinyl biting into her skin. Her white bra strap slipped out from the white shirt. He couldn't meet her eyes and kept looking at the strap.

“Doctor,” he said to her shoulder. His wrist itched as the medicinal mint smell of the ointment lingered on his fingers and around his neck.

“For your scars?” she asked. “I thought I should ask, but then, no, I figured, if you wanted to talk about it, you would. Of course, I told myself, ‘Justine, he doesn't actually talk all that much. You should probably ask.'”

He tilted his head to the side, the way a dog looks at a human when spoken to, then covered his mouth to try not to laugh. It didn't work.

“It's a curse, my mom says.” Justine smiled. “There's even a term for it.”

“There is?” he asked.

“It's called a sense of humor.”

Henry shook his head and laughed, then went back to studying the way her white bra strap seemed to glow against her tan skin.

“So,” she said, “the scars?”

“I don't remember,” he said, the words barely spoken out loud.

“What?”

“The accident.”

“Accident?” she asked, reaching her arm out, but she let it fall short without touching him.

He shrugged and turned to look out the window. “So they tell me.”

“I have a scar too,” she said as they pulled into the parking lot, pointing at her stomach, hidden by her tank top. “Appendix, when I was five. I don't really remember it.”

“Might be better not to remember,” he said.

He looked at where her fingers lingered on her own wrist, right about where his own scars were. When he glanced back up, she was watching him.

“They're only scars, Henry,” she said. “They don't change who you are.”

With a shriek of brakes, the bus shuddered to a stop. One of her friends called her name and she jumped up and ran off the bus. Henry waited until almost everyone had left before standing up. It was sweat, he thought, not tears he was wiping from his eyes.

Just sweat.

Murder on Jekyll Island Has
Not Impacted Tourist Season

Jekyll Island, GA—August 14, 2009:
Preliminary autopsy reports on the two boaters, Crayton Mission, 52, and his nephew Paul Wislon, 24, found on Jekyll Island on August 5 have, according to Brunswick Police Department spokesperson Carmella Rawls, ruled out drowning as the cause of death.

“We have opened up an investigation into the murder of Mr. Mission and Mr. Wislon,” Rawls stated in an impromptu press conference.

Assistant District Attorney Brian Winters gave a brusque “No comment” when asked if there were any leads.

FLETC, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, located in Brunswick, has provided logistical and material support to the investigation in order to locate the boat that Mission and Wislon were supposed to be on.

Wanda Mission and her brother, Jerome Craw, were questioned for background but neither is considered a suspect in the deaths at this time, according to sources close to the investigation.

seven

Justine bounced into the seat in front of him, the plastic bench squeaking in protest at the early morning activity. Her tank top, pink today, slipped down as always, exposing a matching pink bra strap.

Henry glanced up, but only for a moment before returning his gaze to her shoulder, unable, unwilling, to meet her warm honey eyes.

“Seriously, did you think to yourself, ‘Henry, it's hotter than hell out there; today's menu choices are black with varying shades of black in some sort of gothic monochromatic thing or well, damn, black it is.'”

She smiled; little white teeth, the very tip of a small pink tongue were surrounded by lips colored just a shade different from her shirt. His gaze returned to her shoulder, maybe her neck, anywhere but to those welcoming eyes and too-long lashes and that smile.

“Gothic?” he asked.

“That's not the look you're going for?”

“I've got a look?”

She smiled again. Most amazing of all, he smiled back. In his lap, his off-colored finger scratched along the scar on his left wrist; mint and shame wiped the smile off his face.

The bus pulled to a stop on Gloucester to pick up more students, and Justine turned to the window.

“Henry?” she asked, pointing toward one of the small tables in front of the sidewalk cafes. “Isn't that your dad?”

The bus started pulling away and Henry pressed up to the glass for a better view, but all he saw was the woman the man was sitting with. He blinked and the bus turned the corner.
Dr. Saville?

“Kind of looked like him, but … ” Justine shrugged.

Henry stared out the window, trying to count to ten, the numbers running together until he lost count. He took a deep breath. Another. His fingers ran over his scars and Justine reached her hand out almost far enough to touch his arm.

“Do they hurt?”

He froze, then raised his hand to rest upon the scar around his neck. He pulled his collar up to cover the line. Still, she smiled at him. He tried, but failed, to smile back.

“They itch,” he said. “Sometimes.”

“I'm sorry.”

“‘He jests at scars that never felt a wound.'”

“Wait, I know that,” she said, her hand in his face to keep him from speaking. “No … ” She lowered her fingers. “Can't remember.”

“Story of my life. It's
Romeo and Juliet
.”

“The story of your life is a suicidal tragedy we were forced to study in English last year?”

“Not remembering is,” he said.

“You remember Shakespeare.”

“No, only one line; there's a difference.” He smiled. “It's everything else I forget.”

“You remember me, right?” she asked.

“You're from
after
.”
He turned away, looking out the window as they entered the parking lot of Brunswick High. “I don't remember
before
.”

Justine was one of the first students to stand up when they finally reached the high school, but she stopped a few feet down the aisle. She turned around to look back at him where he sat, still staring out the window.

“Are you joining us for school today, Henry?” she asked when he didn't stand up.

He shrugged. “I was thinking about it.”

“Don't take too long.” She waved and walked away.

He waved back, but she was long gone. His answering smile melted away when he reached the school, and even the air-conditioning didn't seem to help.

eight

The house was too quiet when Henry opened the door after school, missing the steady thrum of the central air fighting the good fight against August. No lights illuminated the dark foyer, only weak sunlight struggling through the lead-glass windows high in the walls. The air, thick, heavy, and wet, was difficult to breathe in the heat.

“Dad?” Henry said, still standing in the doorway, though it was hours too early for his father to be home.

Silence.

Henry closed the door, and the light was cut in half while the temperature spiked. The curtains, tattered and torn green fabric that might once have been serviceable, let in slanted rays of weak sunlight, bringing heat more than illumination.

He flipped the switch at the kitchen door. Nothing. He flipped it back and forth once more. Still nothing.

“Again?” he said, his voice quiet in the stillness of the house. He sighed. “Crappy fuse.”

In the kitchen he pulled open the drawers, rifling through the random contents—dead batteries and a collection of broken pencils, empty pill bottles. One drawer held hundreds of plastic forks and a single packet of ketchup; another held nothing but pink ribbon tied into miniature bows. Next to an old bag of syringes on top of the fridge, Henry found the flashlight he was looking for, though the batteries were weak when he tested it.

Bigger windows in the laundry room let in more light. A thin door stood behind a rolling cart filled with cleaning supplies, and the wheels squeaked as Henry pulled it out far enough to reach the doorknob. A narrow set of stairs led down into the dark. The air, released on opening, was cool, smelling of age and dust.

The boards creaked on the first wooden step but they held his weight. The flashlight shook with his movements, making the shadows jump around him. Cobwebs came in and out of the light as he turned around, looking for the path to the circuit box to reset the breaker. Shallow footprints were visible in the dust from the last time he'd had to do this, and he followed them through the maze of boxes stored in the basement.

Sweat coated his skin, and kicked-up dust stuck to his arms and face. The metal door of the circuit box squealed in protest as he slid the latch to open it, and the heavy switch fought against him as he flipped it back into place. The air-conditioner kicked in immediately, a loud roar in the silence.

He'd forgotten to pull the cord to turn on the single bulb hanging from the ceiling; as the batteries of his flashlight died, he was plunged into darkness. Henry shook the flashlight. A weak glow cast shadows but the beam didn't travel very far. He reached his other hand out, back and forth, sensing for boxes, hoping to find the string attached to the light.

Near the circuit breakers? Behind the boxes? Closer to the stairs?

He took a step, his arm swaying back and forth, patting the air as the flashlight died a second death. He shook it, harder and longer, banging it against his hip when it still refused to work.

“Damn it.”

The words echoed in the basement as he dropped the flashlight. He took another step, both arms moving to lead the way; the blind leading the blind. His fingers ran into a cobweb, the spider silk sticking to his hand, and he wiped it off on his jeans. Another step and he kicked a stack of boxes. He steadied them with an unsteady hand, continuing to shuffle forward in the darkness.

A hint of light appeared—the sunlight through the windows in the laundry room leaking down the stairs. Another step, a little lighter, until he could actually see the string hanging down a few feet away.

With a sigh, he pulled it, flooding the basement with light. Henry blinked. Again. The brightness and the dust brought on a sneeze.

He walked back to the circuit breaker to pick up the flashlight. It wasn't there; a trail through the dust showed where it had rolled next to the box he'd kicked. Another inch or so and he would have stepped on it, probably would have tripped and fallen over everything.

As he picked the flashlight up, a feeble beam came out of it and he smiled.

SCRAPBOOK SUPPLIES
was written on the bottom box in his father's nearly impossible-to-read scrawl. Henry thought about the photo album upstairs in his room, now battered and torn with use. The mad flipping of pages in his bed late at night when sleep was slow in coming and the pain of forgetting was lessened, somewhat, by the handful of pictures his father had collected for him.

The box on top was heavy, with nothing written on it. He moved it to the side to get to the supplies. Inside, pages of scrapbook paper and little tape dispensers and archival pens were thrown together. He took a few of each. Beneath, he found scissors and stickers, unopened, which had probably come with the paper and pens. He took those as well.

He tried to pick up the other box with his hands partially full. It seemed even heavier than before. In the poor lighting and worse ventilation, dust kicked up and he almost lost his hold on the box.

He sneezed.

The box slipped, reached its tipping point, and fell to the floor. Henry's papers, pens, scissors, and tape went flying.

On its side, the heavy box had opened just enough to make it difficult to pick up again. A single photograph fell out of the small opening, landing on its face. On the back, a woman's hand had written
Frank
above a yellowed date,
March 14
, followed by a year that could have been
1968
or
1963
.

The little boy in the picture was less than five. If Henry squinted in the dim light, it sort of looked like him.

Like Pandora, he opened the box.

There were hundreds of photos, all black-and-white, dated throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, with the same handwriting. By the time the boy in the photographs was a teen, the resemblance between the stranger and himself was unmistakable.

Frank?

Henry sat in the basement, sneezing, holding the box of snapshots in his lap. One spider had visited to take a look but hadn't stayed for long. A smaller one, barely visible, had scurried back into the box of pictures and not been seen since.

The photos were taken in front of unknown houses; no addresses could be seen or found. No other names appeared even in the pictures where Frank wasn't alone. And in the mid-seventies, the pictures stopped altogether.

Henry dumped the box onto the floor and sifted through them all again, but there was nothing more.

He scooped all the pictures back into the box, gathered up his supplies, and walked to the stairs. On the bottom step he turned around to pull the cord. He froze with his hand on the string and, for the first time, really looked at the boxes lining the maze. Each identical, some with labels, most without.

He walked to the first box and peeked inside.

Blank paper.

Next.

Electrical cords.

Again.

Socks.

And again.

Again.

Another.

Behind him, boxes littered the floor.

Nothing.

Halfway through, with dozens of boxes still to search, he heard the garage door open. He stopped and surveyed the damage he'd done.

Henry jumped over the boxes strewn about and took the narrow stairs two at a time, tugging the string as he ran past. Each step threatened to collapse underneath him and he slipped halfway up. He stopped his fall with his palms and walked the rest of the way, then closed the door and pushed the cart back into place. His pants were dust-covered, cobwebs in his hair and on his shirt.

The clothes went into the washer and he ran his fingers through his hair to dislodge the webs. He hurried up the stairs before his father entered the kitchen. In his room, he went to put on clean clothes and noticed a trail of blood running down his left arm. A splinter from the basement steps stuck out of his palm and small red drops had splattered on the floor.

Henry tried to grab the wood, but his mismatched finger didn't bend far enough. He brought his palm to his mouth and bit down on the splinter. His skin ripped as it tore free. Blood ran over his scar, creating a bracelet of blood on his skin.

A small piece of wood bit into his lip when he spit the splinter out, and he groaned with the sudden pain. He grabbed some tissues to stem the bleeding from his palm. No matter how hard he pressed, his hand didn't hurt at all.

“Why's it so hot?” his father asked when Henry walked downstairs.

“Circuit blew, had to reset the breaker a few minutes ago.”

His father looked at the ceiling, where the fan blew warm air around the room. His shoulders slumped and he sighed. He looked at Henry, closed his eyes, and placed the mail on the table unread. Without a word, he walked out of the kitchen.

Henry started to follow, standing at the transition between kitchen tile and hardwood floor, but stopped before he'd taken more than a step or two. A couple of doors stood open, one to a small bathroom and one to an unused office. At the very end of the hall, his father stood before the heavy oak door to the master bedroom.

“Been a long summer, Henry,” his father said, not turning around as he rested his hand on the doorknob. He looked back over his shoulder, sighed, and then opened the door.

The air-conditioner had yet to have much of an impact on the heat that had built up in the house. Henry wiped his fingers through his hair, coming away with a few remaining cobwebs, as his father's door locked behind him with a deep thud.

In his room, Henry slid the scrapbook out and opened it up. A page ripped at the bottom when he turned it. Some of the pictures were no longer completely attached to the paper. He gathered his new supplies, switched the light on over his desk, and set to work.

The back of each picture was blank and he had to rely on his father's shaky handwriting in the old scrapbook to keep them in order. One by one, he taped them down on the new paper and copied their captions as neatly as possible. When he was done, he started at the beginning, looking at each photograph of himself and trying to remember who he was.

William locked the door with a deep thud as the deadbolt slid home. He stood there for a long time, hand still gripping the knob, his breathing ragged and uneven, trying to find the strength to move. There was nothing there, no energy left. No motivation to do anything beyond collapse to the ground, curl up into a ball, and stay there until his heart finally gave out.

He shook his head, thin gray hair fluttering in front of his eyes. Reaching up, he grabbed a few of the remaining strands and pulled them out. The sharp pain brought relief from the lethargy and he ripped out another small handful until he was able to move from the door to the window. As he walked he let the hair fall from his fingers, landing on the dusty floor to join the rest.

Pushing aside the thick curtains just enough to peek out, he looked at the backyard, studying the way the shadows crawled across the barren dirt as the sun began to set. He stood there, a single trail of blood running down the side of his face where he'd pulled too hard, until the moon cast a pale light over the island.

He smiled, letting the curtain fall closed. “Time to hunt,” he said, his voice soft as he wiped the blood away.

Possible Second Head Trauma
Victim Discovered in Brunswick

Brunswick, GA—August 18, 2009:
Barely two months after Sylvia Foote's death was ruled a homicide, the Glynn County Sheriff's office has announced the possibility of a connected victim. Derrick Fischer, 31, was found off Route 17, half buried along the side of the road. “Along with the state forensics lab, FLETC, and the Brunswick Police Department, we have assigned a task force to look into these unfortunate events to determine if they're related,” said Assistant District Attorney Brian Winters when asked if Fischer and Foote had any similarities.

Preliminary autopsy results on Fischer, according to unofficial sources, show that death was, as in the Foote case, allegedly caused by blunt force trauma, though what is believed to be post-mortem injuries make an exact cause of death difficult to determine at this time.

FLETC houses multi-departmental government training facilities for all branches of law enforcement throughout the United States. To assist with this investigation, Winters has announced that a liaison officer has been assigned by FLETC to coordinate with local police as a symbol of the concern they have for the community. “As of this time,” Winters said, “we will gratefully accept any assistance and do not believe there are any additional concerns in regards to the current matter that would necessitate FLETC involvement.”

Major Daniel Johnson of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command (USACIDC) in Fort Belvoir, VA, who is in Brunswick as a trainer at FLETC, has been assigned to act as liaison but was unavailable for comment.

“Comedy of Errors” Leads to
Temporary “Escape” for GRPH Patients

Brunswick, GA—August 18, 2009:
During a recent field trip by residents of the minimum-security wing of the Georgia Regional Psychiatric Hospital in Brunswick to the Jacksonville Zoo, several patients were temporarily reported missing. Despite repeated calls for greater security due to previous errors in the intake process at the state-run facility, this is the first incident reported where convicted patients have allegedly not been under direct supervision.