by P. T. Hylton
The door in front of Frank swung open and Frank suddenly remembered the other important thing about Gus Hansen: his sons.
Ty and Kurt Hansen had been the scourge of Rook Mountain during Frank’s high school days. The brothers were both in the neighborhood of six foot seven and built like brick walls. In high school, they had helped put the Rook Mountain High football team on the map. By the time Frank was a teenager, the Hansens had graduated from high school and had moved on to bar fighting and general hell-raising.
Every time Jake and Frank Hinkle got into trouble, which was frequently, folks would say, “Well, at least they aren’t the Hansen boys.”
The Newg had run with the Hansen boys back in the day, so Frank had heard plenty of stories about them during his time in prison. Enough stories that he hoped he’d never again cross paths with either of them.
One of those Hansen boys was standing in front of Frank now, filling the open doorway so thoroughly that only a sliver of light managed to eke in around his edges. The man was as big and solid as Frank remembered. He grimaced at Frank, and then looked past him and noticed his father. Frank kept his hands in the air and waited.
“Dad, what’s going on here?”
“This here’s Frank Hinkle,” Gus said. “He’s a little confused. Ain’t that right?”
Frank nodded slowly. “You Ty or Kurt?”
The man in the doorway scowled.
“This is Ty,” Gus said. “And I think it’s time for you to be moving on, Hinkle.”
Frank started to go, but then stopped. Maybe he could still get something out of the long walk out here. Maybe he could get the one thing that mattered. “I don’t care about you living here. I’m going to be staying in town. And I don’t care about my stuff. You can have it for all I care. I only want my guitar case.”
There was a long pause. Gus asked, “Your guitar case? The locked one?”
Frank nodded.
Another long pause. “Boy, you don’t know how long I’ve spent trying to get that case open. My fingers have been itching to play that thing for years. I found those keys in the kitchen, but they didn’t work. I take it there’s a trick to it?”
“There is,” Frank said.
Gus sighed. “Been driving me crazy trying to figure it out. I could have smashed the hinges off and opened it that way. I came close to doing just that a few times. But I kept thinking some night it would come to me. I thought I would beat the thing somehow.”
Another long pause. Gus said, “Whoever heard of a guitar case with a puzzle for a lock? I take it you can open it? You remember how?”
Frank said, “Let me have the case and I’ll show you how to open it.”
Gus was quiet for a long moment, and then he said, “You used to make those, right? Trick locks?”
Frank couldn’t help but correct him. “Puzzle locks.”
“And people paid you for that?”
Frank nodded. It was a small market, but the customers paid well. He had spent years creating thirty original designs. And they were all in the guitar case. His life’s work was in that guitar case.
“So wait a minute,” Ty said. “You know so much about locks, how come you never broke out of that prison?”
Frank smiled. “They put pretty solid locks on prison doors. Besides, the guards kind of frown on lock picking. They knew I was a locksmith, so they watched me pretty close.”
Gus sighed. “Well, as much as I’d like the trick to opening that case, it ain’t gonna happen. Like I said, we got an arrangement with the owner. Ty?”
Ty smiled like he had been given the green light.
He moved fast for a big man. His fist hit Frank in the gut like a sledgehammer, driving the air from Frank’s lungs. Frank hit the ground with a thud.
He lay on the ground, gasping, his mind reeling. He had spent the past nine years successfully avoiding fights, and he had let his guard down the moment he got out. Stupid.
Ty grabbed a handful of Frank’s hair and pulled him up to his knees. He leaned close and whispered into Frank’s ear. “Don’t come back here. This place is off limits. You come back here, and I’ll have to get rough.”
6.
It took Frank an hour to walk to the section of town where Christine lived. The sun was down now and he felt a slight sting of worry. Sean had said not to sleep in the park, but what about walking down the street at night? Was he asking for more trouble? And what if Christine wasn’t home? Or if for some reason she refused to let him stay with her? What would he do then?
He turned onto Riley Drive and slowed his pace. He hadn’t thought much about what he would say to Christine; he had only considered getting there. How much would he tell her? Would he admit he had been released to find her missing husband?
He paused for a minute in front of the tan, ranch-style home. It looked bigger than he remembered. More intimidating. The bushes were carefully manicured and the lawn was nicely hedged. No weeds growing in this driveway. Frank reached for the knob, then stopped and pressed the doorbell instead.
After a long moment, the door opened. The man on the inside squinted out into the darkness, trying to see Frank. Frank should have said something, but he was too surprised. Why was Will Osmond answering the door at Christine and Trevor’s house?
Will fumbled for the porch light and finally flipped it on. It was his turn to be shocked.
“Frank?” Will asked. “Frank, is that you?”
“Yeah. Hi, Will. I got out today and I was...well, is Christine here?”
Will’s mouth hung open in an expression that was half surprise and half confusion. Christine appeared, pushing past Will. “Frank?” She laughed and the sound was a balm to Frank’s soul. She looked older, but the years sat well on her. To Frank’s eyes, she looked prettier than she had a decade ago. “What are you doing here?”
She stumbled forward without waiting for an answer and threw her arms around him. He returned the hug, maybe a little too tightly. He wasn't accustomed to physical human contact these days—it was going to take some getting used to.
“I was wondering if I could stay here for a while.” The words felt awkward and dumb coming out of his mouth. What had he been thinking, showing up here after all these years? That he could sleep on the couch like some teenager crashing at a friend’s house? Maybe he should have stayed at Sean’s place.
“Of course you are staying here,” Christine said. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, right Will?”
“Yes, of course,” Will said. “We wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Frank looked at Will and then back at Christine. “Does he...live here too?”
Christine smiled. “I’m sorry. I forgot you didn’t know. So many things have happened. Yes, he lives here. Will and I are married.”
“Oh. Well, congratulations. Is this...recent?”
“Almost seven years,” Will said.
Frank blinked hard, trying to remember when Becky Raymond had said Jake had disappeared. Eight years ago? He wasn’t sure.
As if reading his mind Christine said, “We have so much to talk about. Please, come inside.”
Christine stepped back to allow him to enter. She was beaming. The look on Will’s face was less easy to read. He was smiling, but there was something else, something troubling behind that smile. Frank took one last look over his shoulder onto the emptiness of Riley Drive, and stepped across the threshold and into the house.
IN THE BEFORE (PART 2)
“Should we have brought wine? I feel like we should have brought wine.” Frank sighed. Why was he so nervous? He’d shared a bedroom with Jake for sixteen years. And he had lived next door to Jake and Christine for the last five. He walked into their house without knocking. He’d walked into their old house without knocking, anyway. This new place on Riley Drive, he wasn’t so sure.
Wendy reached across the car and squeezed his hand. “You’ll be fine. Stop stressing. You brought something.” She held up a package slightly smaller than
a shoebox.
“I don’t know,” Frank said. “Maybe the gift wasn’t such a good idea.”
“Oh come on. I’ll bet all Christine’s doctor friends brought wine. I guarantee no one else brought one of these.”
“You’re right. Let’s go.”
Frank had to admit, Wendy looked great tonight. He might feel self-conscious around Jake and Christine’s friends, but one look at Wendy set things right.
They walked together toward the door, hand in hand. Frank had never been a big hand holder, but something about Wendy made it feel different. Even after almost a year together, he still wanted to touch her as much as possible.
Frank paused at the door and then tapped his knuckles against it. He heard laughter from inside the house. Sounded like the party was well underway. A woman he didn’t know opened the door and showed them inside.
The place was crowded. There must have been a dozen people crammed in living room with at least half a dozen more in the kitchen, and Frank recognized only a precious few of them. Frank was relieved to see that Will was there. Will was standing across the room engaged in conversation with an intense-looking pudgy little man. Frank nodded to Will, and Will motioned him over with the insistence of a man stuck with a conversational partner he is desperate to pass off to another unsuspecting victim.
Frank smiled, shook his head, and walked in the other direction. Will’s eyes shot daggers at him.
Frank looked around and saw Wendy was gone. How had he lost her already? It wasn’t surprising really. She was a great social mingler. He heard her distinctive laugh across the room, a lower pitched version of a schoolgirl’s squeal—all the delight but none of the ear-splitting.
He walked toward the group, the largest in the room. They all seemed to be listening to a story. As he approached he was surprised to find he knew the storyteller. It was Sean Lee, his childhood neighbor.
The group burst out in another fit of laughter. Jake spotted Frank from the bowels of the group. “Hey, man!”
“Hey! Nice party,” Frank said.
Wendy grabbed his arm. “Frank, you’ve got to hear this. You know that naked guy who was wandering around downtown yesterday? Sean was the one who arrested him.”
Sean nodded. “Yeah, it was pretty wild.” Sean turned back to address the group. “So Wes and I are still on the way downtown when we get the third message from dispatch. Seems he’s near the Post Office now.”
A woman Frank had never met before asked, “And did the dispatcher mention how, um, large the naked man was again?”
Sean laughed. “Indeed she did. In fact she seemed so obsessed with this central point that Wes offered to snap a couple of cell phone pictures for her. She shut up pretty quick after that.”
The group roared with laughter again.
“So we finally turn onto Main Street, and we see him standing there in front of the Post Office. He’s looking all around, up in the sky, down the street, not a care in the world. We get a little closer, and we see the guy a little more clearly. More clearly than either of us wanted to, I’ll tell you that.”
“So was he as big as everyone was saying?” Wendy asked.
Sean grinned. “He was, and not just the way you all are thinking but are too polite to say. He had to be six foot four or six foot five and he was completely bald. Pretty ripped, too. So Wes and I park the car and approach the guy. We start calling to him, saying, ‘Sir, we need you to come with us,’ stuff like that. But he doesn’t respond. He keeps looking around like he’s never seen a city street before. And he’s got something in his left hand.”
Frank glanced at Jake and Christine sitting together on the couch. Little Trevor slept in Christine’s arms with the kind of slumber that only babies know, the kind that occurs independent of location, body position, or the noise level around them. They looked happy, this little Hinkle family. Peaceful.
Frank didn’t know if he’d ever have anything like that. He wouldn’t mind settling down with Wendy, but sometimes he got the feeling she didn’t feel the same way. Sometimes he felt like she was passing the time with him, waiting for something better to come along.
“So we keep walking toward him,” continued Sean, “yelling to him the whole time. And he continues to ignore us. Finally, we’re right up next to him, and he is still in his own little world. Wes and I look at each other, trying to figure out how to proceed. So I decide, what the hell, and I reach out and put my hand on his shoulder. And as soon as I touch him, he gives me this look, and I’ll tell you what. In that moment I saw pure crazy. He looked like he wanted to eat me for dinner.”
A wise guy sitting in a recliner in the corner grinned. “I ate his liver with some fava beans, Clarice.”
“Something like that. He definitely gave off a Hannibal Lector vibe for a moment there. But then he smiled and said, 'I like your town. I think this will do just fine. I think I’ll live here for a while.’”
“Oh my God,” Wendy said. “'This will do just fine'?”
Sean shrugged. “We cuffed him and put a blanket around him. I didn’t want his naked ass sitting in my backseat, so we put another blanket down under him. We took him down to the station, and that was about the end of it.”
“Wow,” the smart ass in the recliner said. “So what was in his hand?”
“It was an old-fashioned pocket watch. The only time he got lippy with us was when we tried to take it away.”
“He still down at the jail?” someone else asked.
“No, they took him to the psych ward at Elizabethton Memorial. Makes you wonder what he was doing though. We tried to question him, but we never got farther than his first name. Zed.”
Wendy put a hand on Sean’s arm. “It could have been worse. At least you didn’t have to frisk him.”
The group burst out in laughter at that.
“Hey, thanks for your help back there.” The voice came from Frank’s right, close to his ear. He looked over and saw Will grinning at him.
“No problem. Least I could do.”
Will sighed. “The guy invented some new type of stucco or something. He talked about it for twenty minutes and I still don’t understand.”
“Poor communication skills,” Frank said. “I blame the educational system.”
“I blame the fact that the guy was a self-centered prick.”
Jake sidled up next to them. “Glad to see you two are branching out. You’re really mingling. Meeting new people.”
“Hey, we haven’t talked in like twelve hours,” Will said. “Lots of catching up to do.”
“That reminds me.” Frank handed the gift to Jake. “Happy house warming.”
“Aw, thanks, man. Christine, Frank brought us a gift.”
“Thanks, Frank,” Christine said. “Jake, can you open it? I’m kinda of tied up.” She gestured to the sleeping baby in her arms.
Jake nodded and tore into the purple wrapping paper. Frank felt a slight twinge of unease. The whole group was watching Jake open the present. Frank wished he had waited and given it to them privately.
Jake pulled off the last of the wrapping paper and lifted the lid off the box. “Huh,” he said. There was a perplexed grin on his face.
“What is it?” Christine asked.
“It’s a doorknob.” Jake lifted the brass assembly out of the box and held it up. It looked like an ordinary doorknob except for an ornate letter H engraved on the top of both knobs.
The group stared at the door knob. A few people nodded politely.
“That’s more practical than the traditional bottle of wine,” the man in the recliner said.
“I’m guessing that’s not an ordinary door knob, Frank?” Christine asked.
Frank smiled. “Yeah, I, uh, made some modifications.” He held out his hand, and Jake gave him the door knob. “You know how Jake is always losing things? His wallet, his keys, stuff like that?”
“Games of darts with his wife,” Christine said. The group laughed.
“This door kno
b will help with that. It’ll keep him from getting locked out. See, it works like a regular lock.” Frank turned the lock, and then reached into the box and pulled out a set of keys. He inserted one of the keys into the keyhole and twisted. The lock popped open.
Frank continued. “Let’s say you forgot your keys and you need to get inside to get Trevor’s diapers. With this you won’t have to call your wife at work and interrupt her in the middle of some foot-saving surgery or something. If you know the secret, you can open it without the key.” Frank turned the lock again and set the keys down. He grabbed the doorknob, twisted it a quarter turn to the left, putting pressure on a specific spot, and then he turned it hard to the right. The lock opened.
The group murmured and Frank felt his ears redden.
“Is that safe?” the man in the recliner asked. “With a baby in the house and all? Couldn’t someone just mess with the door knob a little and come right in?”
“Trust me,” Frank said. “You’d have better luck picking the lock than opening the door knob without knowing the secret.” He looked at Jake and Christine. “I’ll show you two how to open it later.”
“Thanks, Frank,” Christine said. “That’s sweet.”
Jake slapped him on the back. “That’s really thoughtful, man.”
Frank smiled. “I wanted to make sure you three are safe. Will and I sit around and worry day and night about you crazy kids.”
“I’ll bet you find time to fit a few beers in there somewhere,” Christine said.
Will laughed. “Occasionally. It gets lonely. All we have is each other.”
Jake and Christine exchanged a look. Jake turned to the other two men.
“Yeah, about that.” Jake spoke softly so the rest of the group couldn’t hear. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you two. We, uh, we rented out the other cabin.”
Frank tried not to let his disappointment show on his face. He was surprised at how hard the news hit him. He had always assumed that Jake and Christine would keep the cabin empty and use it themselves from time to time. Maybe move back out there full time when they got sick of life in town. It was a ridiculous notion.
