All Points Bulletin

Has anybody seen my boy Frank?

I last saw him about to step out to the corner store. “I’ll be back,” he said. But he wasn’t. He was sixteen and so good it made you ache to look at him. I’m not asking for a lot, just tell me if you’ve caught a glimpse of him.

Has anybody seen my boy Frank? He was a good boy and a help and he didn’t do drugs. His passion was model cars. I still have the last one he ever got, it came in the mail the day after he left. I haven’t even slit the strings on the package. Dodge Charger, it says. And who am I to tell different? It could be rocks in the box, for all I know, but I won’t open it.

Has anybody seen my boy Frank? I know you can hear me. Don’t shut the door and turn out the lights and pretend to watch TV. There hasn’t been anything good on since 1973. There’s nothing on that box that will make you happy, anyway, not as much as Frank made me.

Has anybody seen my boy Frank? He was eight pounds five ounces, the definition of a bouncing baby boy. His middle name was Oz, because we’d always liked that book. He skinned his knee growing up more times than I could count, never needed braces, broke his arm jumping a hay bale in fifth grade. If you see him, look real close for a scar around his elbow. That’s how you’ll know.

Has anybody seen my boy Frank? He would tell us if he was getting ready to leave. He’s not the type to lay everything down and just scarper off. His grandaddy went AWOL once, but that was a different case, and besides, he ended up marrying that girl. Frank would’ve let us know if he had someone, good or bad. He would’ve told us if he was in some sort of trouble, that’s the kind of family we’ve always been. We share the good times and the bad, otherwise what are we?

Has anybody seen my boy Frank? I know it’s going on thirty years now, but hope doesn’t have an expiration date and we’re not getting any less desperate. Any tip you have will be appreciated, even if it turns out to be bunk. We put all our eggs in one basket, I’ll admit, but it was a good basket, it wouldn’tve let them all tumble away. There has to be something. Even a skeleton would do now, because we’ve been living on air since he left. We refuse to believe he’s not coming back, not since he’s been sixteen in our hearts for thirty years. Thirty years. We’ve got trees younger than that. No matter if he’s dead, drunk, drugged, or on the run from the law, we want some word of him even if it pierces our hearts. Our only son, our only boy, our only joy can be dead too, and that’s okay, because this ain’t no kind of life for a human being to live.

Send us word.

Any word.

Even if it’s just “no”