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July 17, 2003
Frank
I woke up grumpy today—annoyed at my job. I battered off to work anyway and after some harassment from a workmate realized I was complaining much more than usual. Were the complaints warranted? Not really, just griping.
After lunch I’d managed to get my shit together and was enjoying the fact that there was some actual work to do. The hundred-plus heat doesn’t feel so bad when you’re distracted. At the end of the day my cell phone started vibrating.
“Hello.”
“Hey James, this is Jarrad.”
I had been sick the night before and Adrian had called to check on me but that wasn’t Jarrad’s M.O. I thought maybe he had my leftovers because I’d left the restaurant early. “What’s up, man?”
“You need to call your uncle Rick, something happened to Frank.”
“What do you mean, ‘something’?”
“I don’t know. Just call him. Call me if you need to talk.”
That last part is Jarrad-speak for “you’re about to get really bad news.” “Ok.”
I got a hold of Rick. His first words were “Are you sitting down?” Oh, shit.
By this time I’d already figured out that Frank, an adopted uncle of mine who’d been a friend of the family since before I was around, was seriously hurt or, more likely, dead. I thought he’d been in a motorcycle crash, or maybe had an accident at the airport where he works. Not so.
The cops had found his body decomposing at his barn in Straussbourg. He’d been dead for about five days, they said, baking in the heat. I pity whoever found him. His wife had filed for divorce and he couldn’t handle the idea so he shot himself—“blew his brains out” in the words of his widow. He had two kids. There is no excuse for that kind of selfishness. What a prick.
I’m going to visit his wife and daughter in a few minutes. What a prick.
Posted by james at July 17, 2003 04:46 PM