Note: If you’re new to Franck’s Wild Ride, click here to start at the beginning! Otherwise, I hope you’re enjoying the story so far! If so, please leave a comment at the end or reply to the email. After today, I’ll continue posting chapters from this story, but will also intersperse some short stories and essays!
Franck found himself driving without any rush. He seemed to be aware of every leaf that fell from the trees lining the avenue.
A car passed him on the right. "What's your hurry?" he thought, but didn't have the energy to say it out loud. He watched the impatient driver swerve to pass a turning car, shoot through a yellow light, and bounce over a speed bump at a cross walk.
Franck was actually happy to see the yellow blinking lights in the school zone today. It gave him a great excuse to slow to 15 mph, stop for kids in the crosswalk, and wave to a girl waiting at the curb, inviting her to start across the street in front of him. Franck felt like he'd just stepped off a speedboat and was enjoying firm dry land again.
He meandered home, pulled into the long driveway and parked at the side, leaving room for Bob's car to pull in front of his, and for Stella's to pull into the garage.
The backyard was already nearly covered with yellow leaves. One silly leaf perched on the head of the little statue of the half-naked lady with outstretched arms holding a bird bath.
The air felt quiet, as if the wind were holding its breath. Franck mounted the fire escape steps to the back door of the apartment.
His key was a copy of a copy of Bob's key and always took some jiggling before it would turn. The label on the doorbell gave him pause. It was marked McIver/Wainwright, which he never usually gave a thought to, but this time he pictured a reversal of fortunes. He had just signed "Robert McIver" on a form. What if he was the signer on the apartment lease; what if he was the one who owned all the furniture and rented the extra room out to a roommate and had to collect rent and utilities payments, and stayed in the big bedroom, and used the computer in the little office space in the corner of the living room, whenever he wanted?
Franck reached into the fridge for a grapefruit juice but decided to grab one of Bob's beers. He suddenly had a headache and felt again, keenly, the jarring ride on the railroad tracks.
He saw again the street coming up and the platform replacing the railroad ties and his ride smoothing out; there was the gate that he had avoided by squeezing between it and the tracks, to drive on the embankment. Then the earthshaking blare of the train’s horn.
It was only now that it occurred to him how wild it was that a train had actually been speeding along behind him as he was driving on the tracks. He had raced a train.
He suddenly felt shaky, and his knees trembled. He had to sit down on Bob's easy chair.
After lunch he had set out from the apartment to meet with the manager at the bank. Again he pictured the bank manager. Her entire goal seemed to have been to get him to voluntarily leave her office as soon as possible with the least effort expended on promises or plausible explanations.
That Zeke was a total contrast to her. Seemed like a good guy. It’s not every day you get a guitar-picking banker. I wish my bank manager was like him, thought Franck. What was he talking about foreclosure for? How weird was that, signing Bob's name. That train was bearing right down on me. What if I didn't turn off? What if it blasted me with the horn and I lost control? Bob never talked about being married. No, absolutely couldn't be the same Bob McIver. What a coincidence, right? Well I've only known him for what, 10, 11 months. Cannot be him, that would be just crazy.
He gave a sigh. Crazy day, just the way I like 'em! When's Bob getting home?
The phone rang. Franck answered. No one there. He hung up. The phone rang again.
"Hello? Hello?" After his third hello, a voice clicked on. "This is Governor Ransome. Be sure to join me in voting against Question 1 tomorrow…" Franck hung up.
He paced the floor. When is Bob getting home? He heard a car door slam outside. Someone came up the steps, but not all of them. It was Stella getting home downstairs.
Franck put the empty beer bottle in the sixpack cardboard by the fridge. He felt sweaty. He got ready for a shower.
Bob heard the shower going when he walked in, picked up Franck's shoes in the kitchen and tossed them over by the door, picked up the bank notice lying partly on the wet floor by the kitchen sink, and placed it on the counter after drying it off with a paper towel.
When he saw Franck's hat on the floor by the easy chair, he knew something was wrong.
He fixed himself a cup of tea and was sitting at the kitchen table when Franck emerged from the steaming bathroom. The kitchen was open to the living room, and to the short hall with doors to the bathroom and bedrooms.
"Oh, that feels great!" said Franck. "How you been, Bob? What a day I've had, you would not believe it, whoa! Wait till I get dressed."
Bob sipped his tea and read the paper. He was 31, with a good job as a title examiner, received a decent regular paycheck, enjoyed his apartment, and reminded himself of all these nicely grounded things whenever Franck had wild stories to tell. It was especially entertaining to hear the stories because Bob knew he had nothing to do with them. It was better than watching TV.
Franck came racing frantically into the kitchen. "Where's my hat?" he shouted.
It was a comical performance, at least from Bob's point of view. Franck raced to the easy chair, dashed to the chair by the window, checked under the coffee table next to the easy chair again, and crawled around the floor by the love seat. When he slowed down and started looking around the apartment more methodically, Bob held out the hat and said, "Is this it?"
Franck reached over and grabbed the hat. "You schmuck! You waited for me to make a fool of myself! Where was it?"
"Over by the easy chair," Bob said quietly. "What's going on? You must have had quite a day today. Looks like it started with a nice little letter from the bank. The paper's there on the counter. Any chance of paying the electric bill today?"
"No problem," said Franck. "But you got to hear this."
"I'm ready. Let me guess, you went to the bank, played banjo, put on an act, and signed my name for a loan?" cajoled Bob.
"Hm. You're not too far off. I played banjo with a banker, yes. I signed your name on a bank document, bingo. I put on an act for a banker. You win a cigar."
"I hate cigars. OK, what happened?"
Franck stood up to deliver. He paced to his left, and then abruptly back again.
"You've never seen a traffic jam like this in Port Haven. I've never seen it, anyway. Backed up for blocks. Blocks! It was insanity on wheels. There was some kind of accident in Hollows Corners.
"So I'm sitting there cooling my heels. We're inching up. This guy in front of me is taking his sweet time, leaving big spaces in front of him, big enough for somebody else to slip into. We get to the tracks and the guy leaves space enough for a semi. I'm right on his tail and when he finally moves to the other side of the tracks, I'm still right on his tail. That's the thing about an SUV, you feel like you could drive right over somebody if you feel like it.”
“Wait a minute. This calls for a stronger brew.” Bob took his teacup to the kitchen, and reached into the fridge for a beer.
"So get this. The cars coming the other way are stopped at a light and this lady shouts out her window, 'Hey Big Boy’ – just like freakin Regina – ‘Big Boy, get off the tracks!' and I'm like, 'Who the fuck are you?' and she’s smirking at me, and guess what? She's sitting on the tracks herself! She shouts out, 'What are you, a train?' and she's laughing at me. Well, where am I going to go? I'm on the other guy's tail, the traffic’s inching up, there's a block to go, and the guy in front of me is leaving a big space in front of him so I can't get off the tracks anyway, probably to teach me a lesson about tailgating, meanwhile this prissy lady is laughing her head off at me stuck on the tracks. So I just blew right out of there."
"What you mean you blew out of there? You drove over the guy in front of you?" Bob took a sip of his beer.
"Hah!" Franck grinned. He paused for effect. He practically whispered, "I took off down the tracks."
"What? What?"
Franck shouted. "I took off down the tracks! It was amazing! Blew out of there. You shoulda seen the look on that lady’s face. Whew! Her jaw hanging down to her lap!
"And then what do I see in my rear view mirror? The train! When that lady saw it, she was terrified and took off down the street like a shot. Hah! That was priceless!"
It was Bob's turn to hang open his jaw. "You're making this up."
"No sir! I was racing down the tracks and this train was chasing me. Gaining on me. Blaring his horn but not slowing down. I raced all the way to the next intersection and just jumped the tracks onto a field and dodged between trees just as the train roared past blasting his horn. That engineer musta been totally freaked!"
Franck pulled out a chair, and sat down, distracted. Bob drew on his beer, and then asked quietly, "So how's your car?"
"Oh the car's tough, just fine. So I find myself driving at a horse! And the horse takes off and I head right into a sinkhole."
"What? This is really crazy. What do you mean, sinkhole?"
"Yeah, I hit this little hill and it collapses and sinks down, and I think if I didn't dodge around it my car would have been just sucked down in, and I would have been calling my buddy Bob for a ride and probably some bail!"
Bob pursed his lips, took a sip, sat back. "That's quite a story, Franck," he said quietly. "Quite a story."
"Oh, that's not the end. No way. So I drive by this little barn. Really nice place, like two stories, I'll bet it would be a perfect little house if it got fixed up. So I'm driving on down the driveway, coming up past the house and I'm blocked by this humongous black Lincoln. Shiny, polished, brand new. I get out and see this tough dude coming at me, like a skinhead in a suit, looked like secret service, like the president was in the house or something, and what do you think? He thinks I own the house!"
Bob groaned. "Oh, no. You didn't."
"I did!" crowed Franck. "I was the owner! I gave him a whole tour of the house, and he bought it, hook, line and sinker. Told him a ghost story about my great grandfather who was a slave! How I grew up there, and about the slaves who hid in the basement cooking grits by the big hearth. Great story! I’ll have to tell that one again some time. Oh, and there was a banjo."
"Oh, no, a banjo."
"And you wouldn't believe it. This suit was a banker named Zeke. He's from Nashville and played guitar in the Grand Old Opry. We played a few tunes before I had to go. He thought we could do some gigs together."
"Well you had yourself quite a day, Franck. Where is this house you saw?"
"Oh it's down, I think it might be Church Street. Across from a graveyard. Pretty big piece of land behind it. Old house, set back from the street. Do you know it?"
Bob got up and took his beer bottle to the kitchen. "Yeah, I think I know where you mean. Hey, you had a beer, wow."
"Yeah, I forgot to tell you."
"No problem, just that you never have them. And your hat was lying over by the easy chair. Rough day for you, huh Franck?"
"Bob, you didn't live there did you?"
"What? Where?"
"At that place. You didn't have a wife who died of cancer and you skipped out of the place and came here and let the mortgage go and got the place foreclosed on? Did you?"
"What are you talking about? Is that place being foreclosed?"
"Well Zeke, the banker, he had me sign something just to show his boss he'd been over there, and then he said something about foreclosure."
"Huh. I'll look it up at work. See what's going on."
"I did sign your name."
"What?"
"The name, under the line, it was Robert McIver. I signed it, just to get out of there. I hope it doesn't get you in trouble."
"Oh, well, it's not going to get me in trouble. Yeah, I've seen in the phonebook there was another Robert McIver in town. Not too common a name. I never tracked down where he was, though. No, I don't care you signed the name. It might come back to haunt him, but probably not, since the signature was forged."
"Forged? I didn't forge anything, I just signed his name. Just so Zeke could show his boss he wasn't goofing off all day. Did I forge something?"
"Light dawns over Marblehead. Well yeah. You signed someone's name on a document, that's forgery. But maybe like you said, it's just a little worksheet to show his boss, so probably not a problem."
"Not a problem, no problem, yeah. I didn't really forge something, it was all just a lark anyway. It was really weird to hear him call me Bob, though. I thought he was psychic."
"What do you mean?"
"Well Bob is actually my real name. That's what they used to call me when I grew up and in school. Robert F C Wainwright III. Robert Frank Christian Wainwright. Too much! No offense, but I couldn't stand the name Bob, at least for me. Too boring."
"Oh I like Bob. That's me. I don't need some special name, just my own. McIver's different enough. There's a few wacky McIvers out there, for sure. A couple of them in my own family, I’ve heard. I don't need that. So your middle name is really Frank, not Franck?"
"I didn't like that either. Couldn't stand it. Sounds like a salesman. 'Frankly, ma'am, you can't get a better deal.' No, but I didn't want Christian either. I'm not even a Christian."
"What are you?"
"I don't know yet. I only know what I’m not. I will say, though, that I had too good an imagination as a kid. One time I had an intense daydream about the crucifixion, topped off with some eating of flesh and drinking of blood, and I actually threw up. That and the Santa Claus thing kind of did me in."
“What do you have against Santa?”
“Nothing, except, you know, when you find out there isn’t one. I was so ticked off at my parents when I found out. I was about 12. I vowed never to listen to stories again. From then on, I was only going to be the one telling them. I was not going to be on the receiving end.” Franck laughed. “Didn’t turn out that way, of course. I love to hear stories. But I also like to tell them.”
“Tell me about it,” Bob groaned with a theatrical roll of the eyes.
“So what did you do, when you were a kid? About the Santa Claus Dilemma?” asked Franck.
“Oh, I eventually had my suspicions,” said Bob, “but I loved it and went along. When they let me in on the routine, to keep it going for my little brother, I felt pretty grown up. Of course you were an only child, so maybe it was different. So where did you get the name Franck?”
"It's better than Frank, don't you think?"
Bob shrugged.
"Well, I like Franck a lot better. Back in college, I had a really hard time picking a major. It seemed so arbitrary. I said to myself, what subject do I like best? That was easy. History. American history. The creation of a whole new kind of government, the Civil War. Slavery. I could never get my mind around slavery. How could we possibly have had it, or ended it? Did you know President Monroe and Congress tried to get the world to treat slave traders as pirates? Way back in the 1820s?”
Bob raised his eyebrows. “No, I guess I…”
“But never mind that. You won’t guess what I decided.”
“I’m not a great guesser,” muttered Bob.
“Huh?”
“Oh nothing. So what did you do?”
“Well, I was hanging out with my girlfriend Donna and talking about history, which everyone knew by then I was going to major in, and she said, ‘You’re history, man!’ And we cracked up. I’m history. It became a running joke. After a while, I didn’t want to be history. Superstition maybe. Too predictable, probably.”
“Yeah, but how many people end up working in the field they majored in? Not too many.”
“Exactly. So I went with what really struck me. I majored in Creativity. I put the program together myself. First person in my school to do it. But then, it put me into a big funk. How could I major in Creativity and be called Bob? Or Frank? Or Christian? And they weren’t even my own names – I was the third in line with all the same names. Donna came to the rescue without even knowing it.”
Franck rubbed the edge of his hat between thumb and forefinger thoughtfully. “Donna played violin,” he went on, “and one time the most beautiful violin piece was playing in her room. She said it was by Franck. I loved that name right away. She told me all about Cesar Franck, the composer, and told me I even looked like him, with the frizzy hair. One time I tried growing frizzy burnsides like his. I decided he must have been just like me.”
Bob raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in a friendly frown as if to say, okay, if you say so.
“So there you have it,” said Franck. “I really liked that name, and I've been Franck ever since. Sometimes I think of my middle initial C as standing for Cesar."
"Well as long as your checks clear, I don't care what you call yourself. Don't forget about the electric bill, okay? Foreclosure. I think maybe you signed some kind of foreclosure document. Forged it, I mean. I'll look it up tomorrow at work. They probably won't find you, though, or let's hope not. What do you want to do for dinner?"
"Find me?"