THE BIG DAY

Tomorrow was the big day. Frank paced up and down the little room trying to learn his speech. He was known as a man of few words, a doer - not a talker, so he was determined to surprise everyone by addressing them directly, rather than reading from his notes, to look people in the eye as he mentioned them by name, to ambush them with his eloquence. He even planned to drop in a few phrases of his terribly rusty Spanish to please his ageing father.

            Frank went over and over his mental checklist. The priest would be there, of course. Frank’s father would be on his way already; he’d probably be checking into some cheap motel on the way to break the journey. Lori’s parents would be there too and her brother, Jeff. The meal was booked: crab claws – her favourite, followed by rump steak, potatoes and mushrooms, his favourite. To finish off, there was blueberry pie and cream, their favourite.

           

Manuel Hernandez crossed the Rio Grande in 1961 searching for work, hoping for a future. He ended up in a tiny apartment above a grocery store in Inglewood, California, a few miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles. A few years later he wed Maria, the sister of a former schoolmate. Manuel was a practical man, an electrician by trade, and found a lucrative business reconnecting the supply of those unfortunate Angelenos who’d fallen foul of the Electric Company’s terms of payment and been cut off from the grid.  Meanwhile Maria sewed, cleaned, waited tables and tried to conceive.

Having almost given up on the idea of children as her fortieth approached, Maria fell pregnant in the summer of ‘69, and gave birth to twin boys eight months later on March 22^nd , 1970, Palm Sunday or Domingo de Ramos. The older twin was named Francisco, the younger twin Jorge.

The two boys were inseparable until one day just after they’d turned ten, Francisco came home in the back of a police car. His Latino skin was white, his eyes raw. Jorge had fallen from the top of a parking lot where the boys had been playing Batman and Robin and died on impact. After that, Francisco changed. He started skipping school, smoking, calling himself Frank. He refused to speak Spanish. Manuel tried everything, and eventually, out of frustration, resorted to beating the boy, but Francisco just stared into the distance unmoved as the blows fell upon him. By the age of seventeen, Frank was bigger and stronger than his father, so the beatings had to stop for Manuel’s safety. Eventually, Manuel decided that the only way to get Frank back on track was to have him enlist in the army. Surprisingly, a gift of five hundred dollars towards an old beat-up Harley-Davidson was enough incentive for Frank to agree, so a few days after his 18^th birthday, Frank joined up.

Frank put down his notes and thought back to when he’d first met her. Tomorrow was the big day, but he needed to see Father Mike tonight. There was one last thing he wanted to go over. He hoped Father Mike hadn’t been called away by some other pressing matter.

Barely out of school, Lori looked a good five years older with her heavy make-up and a blouse that always had one button too many undone. Her eyes were grey, almost silver, and black curls that defied taming fell over her face and shoulders. Her limbs and her neck were elegant and long and when she moved, she did so with the efficient gait and confidence of an apex predator. Frank was home on extended leave after picking up a piece of shrapnel during Desert Storm, and rode a Harley-Davidson. Lori’s previous boyfriend was quickly forgotten, and she became a permanent fixture on the back of Frank’s bike, her tanned arms entwined around his waist. Then tragedy struck again; Frank’s mother died from head injuries after tripping over a loose floorboard and falling down the stairs. Frank and Lori attended the funeral together; in black, Lori looked every inch a young Jackie Kennedy. There was a bit of life insurance, so Frank upgraded his bike and bought Lori a diamond.

Then came the letter – the Second Infantry Division (Mechanized) wanted Frank back the following month. Frank was not pleased; he spent the rest of the day shooting pool and drinking beer, roaming from bar to bar with a few guys from school. It was a hot, sticky evening and The Oasis was packed. A scuffle broke out between Frank and another guy at the pool table. Frank sustained a split lip and chipped a tooth; his opponent   staggered from the bar with blood gushing from a face wound. The following day the police caught up with Frank. The other guy, a Marlon Johnson of no fixed address, had lost an eye – he’d been glassed. Frank was pulled in for questioning, bailed and a court date was set.  When the date came, Johnson failed to appear. There were a couple of witnesses who claimed Frank had launched an unprovoked attack on Johnson, but others who swore that Johnson had pulled a knife on Frank first. In Johnson’s absence, the judge threw the case out and admonished the District Attorney for dragging a war hero, a patriot, in front of him for defending himself against a drifter with previous drug convictions. He didn’t mention that Johnson was black.

A few days after the hearing, Frank reported back to Fort Riley in Kansas, and two weeks later was posted to Germany. He wrote to Lori every couple of days, but she seemed to have gone cool on him after the fight, and after answering his first few letters, the replies ceased.

‘Mike,’ said Frank. ‘Tomorrow’s the big day. I’d like you to hear my confession before, you know …’

The young priest’s bible dropped to the floor. Frank had never expressed any wish for confession in all their previous meetings.

‘I just want everything to be just right when I see her tomorrow,’ Frank continued. ‘You only get one chance.’

When the army finished with Frank, he headed home to patch things up with Lori, but she’d left town. Finding her took some detective work, but Frank was not lacking in determination, and he tracked her down in Sacramento working for a firm of accountants, and managed to follow her back to her apartment unseen. The next day, after she’d gone to work, he managed to gain access to her place via a fire escape and laid in wait to surprise her with the hugest bunch of flowers he could find.

‘Thanks, Padre,’ said Frank, ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling you out like this. I’m going to have an early night. Tomorrow is the big day.’

Frank flopped down on his bed, and remembered that day in Sacramento when he had been reunited with Lori. She had looked at the Frank, looked at the flowers, and seen the body of her boyfriend, Tom, curled up motionless in the corner. Before she could cry out, one large hand had covered her mouth, another had gripped her slender neck. Frank had whispered that everything was going to be alright, and she had understood.

Father Mike stumbled down the corridor. It was worse, far worse, than he’d expected. Lori Porter, strangled – Frank had been convicted of that. Tom Edwards, beaten to death with a blunt instrument – that too. Marlon Johnson’s body had been reported missing, but his body had never been found. Frank had bought his silence with a bullet and buried him in a quarry. It was the other killings that shocked the priest most: Maria Hernandez, thrown downstairs for a few grand’s worth of insurance, a nameless Iraqi boy, shot for target practice, and young Jorge Hernandez thrown from the fifth floor because he was sick of always being Robin.

The guard pressed a button, and Father Mike fell out of San Quentin into the Californian night. Tomorrow was the big day. There was a chair, but no top table, waiting for Francisco Hernandez.