Henry Franks A Novel

twenty five





The house was empty and almost chilly, the air-conditioner working through the humidity outside. Henry took the stairs two at a time, letting his backpack fall to the floor as he turned his computer on. He sat down for just a moment before pushing the chair away and pacing the confines of his room, keeping his eye on the monitor slowly coming to life. On his third circuit, he pulled the chair behind him, spinning it around.

From his backpack, he grabbed notebook paper and a pen, centered them next to his keyboard with the page of names from beneath the pillbox and sat down.

A knock, and then, “Anyone home?” Justine called from downstairs.

“Up here,” he yelled back.

She came in, dropped a large duffel bag on the floor, and sat down.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

“My mom left a note saying she had to go into Brunswick to pick my brother up from school and then run down to St. Mary’s to get my grandparents. They don’t drive. She asked your dad if he could take me along if there’s an evacuation.” She shrugged. “Apparently he said yes.”

“Well,” Henry said, “except for the fact that my dad’s not home at the moment, that sounds good to me.”

“Where is he?”

“Unlike your mom, my dad isn’t the note-leaving type,” he said. “The last note he left me apologized for the note before.”

“I’m sure there’s a really good story behind that,” she said.

“Not really.”

“Well, in that case, what are we looking up first?” she asked.

“Google just gave me almost eighteen million hits on Victor, Alexandra, and Elizabeth. I need a last name, or maybe a city at least.

“So, Oxford it is,” Justine said.

On the screen, the Oxford alumni page loaded and he turned the monitor toward the bed so she could see.

“Do they have class listings?”

“Even better,” he said, clicking his way through the site. “It looks as though they have class pictures.”

“Individually?”

“No, split up by residential areas.”

“Do I want to know how many dorms?” she asked.

“Only four are listed.” He shrugged. “But that’s today. There might have been fewer back in the eighties. I don’t know.”

He continued clicking through the alumni section until the small black-and-white thumbnails were displayed.

“They’re not labeled all that well, are they?” Justine moved next to him, leaning on the desk to get closer to the screen.

“No.”

“The last numbers have to be the year, don’t you think? Maybe we can narrow it down a little.”

One by one, they opened pictures and read through the names at the bottom.

“Would be easier if these weren’t scanned in. The resolution isn’t that great,” she said, her fingernail running along the monitor.

After dozens of pictures, Henry stretched against the seat, his bones cracking with the motion. Outside, the rain continued, the clouds so dark it might have already been night.

“Hungry?”

“And thirsty,” she said. “But just open the next one; we can eat later.” She pushed the mouse herself as he turned back to the monitor.

“We’re up to 1983,” he said. “Are we even close to running out of pictures?”

What seemed like hundreds of grainy photographs later, Justine rested her finger on the names at the bottom of a picture, the quality so poor that faces were blurred together.

“Henry,” she said, pointing toward the faint type where Williams, Frank was listed.

Beside her, he was silent as his discolored finger rested on the monitor next to hers.

“Is that a typo?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Her voice was softer than before, her breath hot against his skin. “Your dad’s William Franks, right?”

“So he says,” Henry whispered. “I can’t see the face. It’s too blurry.”

“Google it.”

Henry opened a new window and carefully typed the name into the search field. “Williams comma Frank,” he said, the words barely spoken.

Google returned almost thirty million hits.

“Try ‘doctor’?” Justine said.

Eighteen million.

“Try it without the comma?”

Dr. Frank Williams, he typed.

Over eight million hits.

“Put it in quotations.”

He re-typed and hit enter.

NOAA Alert: Hurricane Warning: Florida and Georgia

Miami, FL—August 28, 2009, 6:57 PM: FOR EMERGENCY RELEASE:

The National Hurricane Center has issued a Hurricane Warning for the following counties along the Florida and Georgia coastlines:



Nassau County, Florida

Camden and Glynn counties, Georgia



Landfall is estimated late tonight on the east coast of the United States.