Frank's Interrogation (Chapater Four to: "The Last Plantation")

Chapter Four

Frank’s Interrogation
(Part of: “The Last Plantation” Chapters)


Frank didn’t care how Wally died, he just cared about who helped it along, he knew he and his brother were old, old enough to die any day, anytime of the day, night or day. This was what he told Minnie May, and Minnie May told Burgundy.
Frank never did talk to Burgundy about her baby those first few months, two months after Wally died, it was too hard for him to look at her, too hard for him to talk without crying, but he did find the courage to interrogate her. Other than that, He just saw her, sitting in that chair by the window, the one she fell to sleep in when Wally got himself killed. He called her the ‘Queen Bee,’ now, because she had a white baby in her stomach, and it was going to come out near white, whiter than black anyhow, thus, the descendents of the new child would be, who knows what. She even took up smoking a pipe, like old Wally used to do; at first that aggravated Frank, and then he got thinking, maybe she really did like him. At best, he was confused, at worse, he was obsessed with putting the puzzle together, if even he had to hammer the pieces into the puzzle to make them fit.
Frank had asked her time and again, what took place that evening Wally went out to the car, the Queen Bee said very little, actually she somehow got herself to believe, she couldn’t remember, some kind of psychosomatic symptoms, or at least that is what Doctor Wright (Psychologist) told Frank on his visit one afternoon to Fayetteville, it could be.
“I fell to sleep,” she said,” that’s all I remember.”
Frank said to Dr. Wright and Minnie Mae, “Either she’s the best actor in town, or she’s sincere, but I think it’s the actor part more than that sincerity part.”
He asked her several times more, to go over what took place that evening, and when she told her story each time a little different than it was the time before, he’d say, “Wrong!” You might say, he was quizzing her more than interrogating her, trying to make her divulge what she really knew, if indeed she did know more than what she was saying, it was all too obscure of circumstances, you might say.
“All right!” she said on the last day of the second month of the anniversary of Wally’s death, “ok, I remember somethin’ not much but somethin’…” she said and Frank listened up, sat erect as if he was going to get he truth and nothing but the truth, the official confession, finality; “…have it your way, I was sleeping, woke up, saw him going to the car, fell to sleep again, didnt really understand what I was seeing, or hearing, I thought I was dreaming—there is no more Frank, unless you want to make it up as you go along.”
Frank didn’t know what to make of it, she had been around some, he came to that conclusion anyhow.


Written 6-18-2008