The winter of Frankie Machine

91

The crowd is immense.

Frank the Bait Guy was loved in the community.

There are fishermen here, and surfers, and the Little League kids with their families, and students from the drama club, and soccer kids and soccer moms, and the teenagers who played hoops underneath the baskets that Frank paid for, and the local Vietnamese are out in force.

And men are telling their sons how they caught their first fish on the pier at Frank’s annual fishing contest, and old surfers are telling their wives what Frank used to be like back in the days of the long, endless summers. And one Vietnamese guy is telling his kids how Frank stood up for him just a few days ago.

Who isn’t here, Dave thinks as he takes a seat in the front row beside Patty and Jill, is the Mickey Mouse Club. The ones that he hasn’t already arrested are in the wind, but he’s going to pick them up soon, because they aren’t that good or that smart.

And Donna isn’t here. She’s already in protective custody, but Donna is too classy to have come anyway-she wouldn’t have wanted to cause any more pain to the grieving daughter and widow.

The flag is draped over Frank’s coffin. It was in his will that he wanted a closed casket, so his friends would remember him the way he was in life, not like some wax dummy the morticians made up.

Dave stands as the Marines fire their rifles into the air and the bugler plays taps.

It’s long and slow, beautiful and sad under the warm sun of the false early spring day.

That’s okay, though, Dave thinks.

Spring was always Frank’s season.

The Marines fold up the flag and hand it to Patty, who shakes her head.

They hand it to Jill.

She takes it and smiles a tight smile.

Brave, Dave thinks. Like her old man.

There’s one last thing to be done.

It also came straight out of Frank’s will.

A second later, the recorded music comes out of the sound system:

“…ma quando vien lo sgelo il primo sole e mio, il primo bacio dell’aprile e mio! il primo sole e mio!…”