The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (42 page)

LOOK. THE PALLBEARERS ARE GATHERING.
They will carry Frankie’s coffin to its final resting place. Do you see them there?

I will tell you who they are.

What they meant to Frankie.

And how he died.

But then I must be gone. There are new souls to tend to. New talent to dispense. So let us play this final movement in an
allargando
tempo—slowing, yet growing more majestic. It is worthy of the story, for the years, in the end, did elevate Frankie Presto.

I see one of the choir’s selections is “Come to the Water.” How fitting for a child once thrown in a river. Water was also the gateway to Frankie’s journey home. Although Mr. Marsalis offered a plane ticket for his newly discovered friend, Frankie, coming out of monastic seclusion, was not yet ready for a rapid return to the world.

Instead, he went to the Barcelona harbor. There, seeking work for his passage, he joined a cargo ship, doing kitchen labor, and sailed with it to Italy. He joined another ship and sailed to Sri Lanka. Another took him to Singapore. And another to Australia and finally to New Zealand. He took solace in the vastness of the sea and how small his problems seemed in its wake. Each morning, he would gaze at the water, imagining the soul of El Maestro at rest; each night he sang devotionals on the deck, his prayers joining the splash of waves against the hull. Fellow sailors marveled at his voice. Some climbed up to sing along, another in Frankie’s long list of bands, this one vocals only.

All told, he sailed for five months and 19,000 miles. Over those weeks, he made a certain peace with his less than peaceful past. For the first time in a long time, Frankie slept through the night. He found himself dreaming of Baffa Rubio, and the oranges they would share from a paper bag, and old Hampton, making Frankie pork stew in his tiny kitchen, and even the nuns in the orphanage and the meals they would serve after mass. He realized how many people it takes to keep one child alive in this world.

His final water journey was the shortest, a one-hour ferry, at sunset, from Auckland back to the island of Waiheke.

Where Frankie ended his exile.

He stepped off the boat, carrying only his guitar case and a folded shirt. His skin was browned from the sun, his hair had grown back long, and his thick beard was flecked with gray. He moved slowly behind a group of passengers toting shopping bags or briefcases. In his mind, he envisioned the walk up the hill and around the road to the small beach that he last called home. He had not written that he was coming. He had not been sure, until that morning, that he felt ready for—or worthy of—a return to his old life.

But when the people cleared in front of him, he stopped, and his heart jumped.

There, sitting against the ticket booth, arms around her knees, was Aurora.

She wore a long green dress, leather sandals, and dark sunglasses, which, upon seeing him, she removed. But she did not rise.

Frankie approached slowly.

“Aurora means dawn,” he said.

“Not anymore.”

“Do you come here every night?”

“I wait for the final ferry.”

“How long do you wait?”

“Until the last person gets off.”

“And then?”

“I go home.”

“For three years?”

She looked away.

“Did you find what you were looking for, Francisco?”

“No.”

“Will you keep looking?”

“No.”

“You are done with that?”

“Yes.”

“And you will stay with us?”

“Yes.”

“We are not kids anymore.”

“No.”

“We are not in a tree.”

“I know.”

“You have a family now.”

“You’re right.”

“You wrote that you were innocent.”

“Of killing, I was.”

“Yet you punished yourself.”

“It was not punishment.”

“It was to us.”

“I know.”

“Who killed that man?”

“They wouldn’t tell me.”

“Do you care?”

“I should always care.”

She watched a gull land on the dock. It pecked at something then flew away.

“What does Aurora mean now?” Frankie asked.

“Glowing light.”

“Why?”

“A teacher told Kai about glowing lights in the southern sky. They’re called ‘the Aurora.’ ”

“And?”

“Kai said that was me. I was a glowing light. And as long as I stayed in one place, you would find us and come home for good.” She raised her eyes. “Is that what you’ve done?”

Frankie felt a choking in his throat. He had not known, when he stepped off the boat, what life would be there for him. Or any life at all. But Aurora’s love had waited for him, as he had once waited for it.
Save the last dance.
He thought about that song. He looked at the cliffs. He looked at the small boats. He looked at Aurora, as beautiful as she ever was.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

“Do you want to see your daughter?”

“Desperately,” he said.

She bit her lip. Then she grabbed and kissed him, as he grabbed and kissed her. Had you returned an hour later, you would have found them still there, locked in that embrace, refusing to let go.

The mystery of Alberto the conga player I can only partly explain. Frankie had not killed him. That is true. He had lifted the gun, and as Alberto charged him, Frankie contemplated the worst thing he might ever do. But in the end, he’d fired into the air, three times, wanting only for Alberto to halt. When the old man went down, Frankie thought he’d fallen.

As it turned out, Alberto
had
been shot—but someone else had pulled a trigger, the bullet’s noise melding with the sound of Frankie’s shooting.

After forty years of inner torture, Alberto got his mortal peace.

By someone else’s hand.

The police held Frankie for two days. Then they let him go. They said the real killer had come forth, that the bullets matched, and that Frankie’s story about warning shots proved true. He demanded to know who the assassin was, but they would not tell him. Only that the person had surrendered voluntarily and was locked away. And it might be wise if Frankie left Villareal for a while.

He departed on foot that afternoon, lost in a swirl of disbelief: a man died in front of him, a gun was in his grip, the last witness to his childhood was gone, El Maestro had been dead all this time. Who killed Alberto? Had Frankie really been ready to take a man’s life? He stumbled along the main road out of town and past the Mijares River, where a sardine maker and a hairless dog had once saved him. After days of walking and exhausting himself in thought, he came upon the monastery. He climbed the steps and asked if he could stay. The monks saw his guitar and inquired as to his church.

“Santuario de San Pascual Baylón,” he answered.

They nodded with approval. Pascual Baylón had practiced the guitar himself, they noted, as a shepherd, more than four hundred years ago. They didn’t know he had died in the same room where Frankie was born.

56

THERE IS ONE MORE MOMENT I MUST DETAIL FROM THE ISLAND YEARS.

Shortly after Frankie returned, he was able to attend his daughter’s twelfth birthday celebration. A table with a cake was set up on the beach, and a group of children joined Kai for the party. Reunited with her father, she was all but skipping on air.

As the sun went down, Frankie called Kai to the table and told her he had a gift for her. He fetched his battered guitar case.

“Papa, I don’t want your guitar,” she said.

“I know,” he answered. “But maybe you want your own.”

He opened the case to reveal a most unusual-looking instrument, a red guitar with white tuning pegs, its body colorfully painted with the image of a Spanish horseman and a beautiful young woman.

“Oh, Papa, is it for me?”

“All yours.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Another country.”

“Look at the horse!”

“And the señorita.”

“So pretty.”

“Like you.”

“Will you teach me to play it?”

“If you want.”

“Yes!”

She grabbed it and ran off with her friends. Aurora watched until they were out of earshot, then leaned over and touched Frankie’s shoulder. “Where is
your
guitar?”

“I don’t have it anymore.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I left it behind.”

“But the strings. Their power—”

“That’s
why
I left it behind.”

“It did good, Francisco.”

“And bad. A string turned blue when Alberto died.”

“You didn’t kill him.”

“He’d be alive if I hadn’t gone there.”

“That just means you affect people.”

“I don’t want to affect people.”

“You can’t help it.”

“I can try.”

“It was a gift—”

“I know—”

“From your teacher—”

“So is my playing—”

“And what your playing does to others.”

“I am done with it, all right?”

They sat in silence. The tide splashed against the rocks.

“Francisco?”

“Yes?”

“What if something . . . happens?”

“Happens?”

“What if you need to affect someone else? What if you need to save a life?”

“Yours?”

“Hers.”

She nodded toward their daughter, up the beach, shaking the guitar for her laughing friends.

“I’ll have to do it myself,” Frankie said.

And that was the last they spoke of it. In life, as in music, there are measures to play and measures to rest. For the first time since he was nine years old, Frankie Presto was without his precious guitar, which remained halfway around the world, under a bed inside a Spanish monastery.

With one blue string to go.