Tommy Hancock

Ian finally tracks down Tommy Hancock, the man Gabe frequently writes about, who explains the significance of the code in which Gabriel's letters are written.

I left the school and went to the address Frank had given me. A man with curly brown hair who looked about my father's age opened the door. "Hey, my name is Ian Smith and I'm looking for Tommy Hancock. Do you know where he lives?"

The man looked at me like he kind of thought it was a joke, but when I didn't laugh, he said, "I don't really feel comfortable giving away his information to a stranger, but if you want I can call him for you."

"That would be great."

"Alright, come inside and I'll give him a call." I stood in the hallway and the man held the phone to his ear. "Dad?" he said, scratching his head. "There's a man here asking for you. He says his name is Ian Smith...alright." He held the phone away for a moment and looked at me. "He says he doesn't know you."

"Is there any way I could talk to him?"

He frowned and put the phone back to his ear. "He wants to talk to you...okay." He handed me the phone and watched me cautiously as I talked.

"Hi, I'm Ian Smith. I know you don't know me, but I was hoping you'd be willing to talk to me regarding Gabriel Watson."

"Gabriel Watson?" He laughed. "Well I'll be damned! Haven't heard that name in a while! You're not going to tell me he's dead, are you?"

"No, he's not dead. At least, I don't think he is. I just moved into his house. He left a lot of stuff behind. Mostly letters and papers, but I can't decipher them."

"Well why don't you bring it over and I'll take a look?"

"Sounds great, where do you want me to go?"

He gave me an address and I wrote it down in my phone, then thanked the confused man and walked out.

When I got to the house, an old woman opened the door and led me into the cozy living room. An old man was sitting in a rocking chair with a wheelchair beside him. He told me I could sit in the wheelchair, so I sat down.

"Are you Tommy Hancock?" I asked, shaking his hand.

"I used to be," he chuckled. "Nobody's called me Tommy since I was a little boy. So how'd you find me?"

"I came a long way. I came here to Boston from Texas to meet Gabriel's stepdaughter, who led me to his great nephew, whose mother led me to Frank Butler, who led me to your son, who led me to you."

He looked at me like he was amazed I could remember all of that. "Frank Butler, eh? How's he doing?"

"Fine, I think. Swears a lot though."

At this, Tommy laughed. "That's Frank alright. He always was getting in trouble for that potty mouth. So what's he up to these days?"

"He's teaching PE at Silverview Middle School. Oh yeah, and he wanted me to tell you he says 'hi'."

"Haha, alright," he smiled. "So what have you got there?" He looked at the envelope in my hand.

"There are probably a hundred more of these at home," I explained as I handed him the letter. "This one doesn't mention you, but out of everyone he talks about in these, your name and the name of his wife come up the most."

"Really?" he said, sounding amused. "I haven't seen him since we were kids! I'm surprised he still remembers about me at all!" He laughed. "Now let's see what we have here. I've been thinking about the maniacal song... This is code."

"For what?"

"Let me keep reading. I know fourteen o'clock is military time, meaning two PM. Other than that, I don't... Well hold on. The caterpillar is Eleanor. I don't know what the hell a chrysalis is. He used to use this code to write to Eleanor back when we were in school. They would use it to pass notes and so he could leave secret messages for her without her parents or Frank knowing."

"That's interesting...I wonder why he mentions you so much then?"

"Well the code wasn't originally for that reason. We used to have this club a while ago- me, Frank, Gabe, Jack Anderson (Jack Be Nimble we called him), and Eleanor."

"Do you know where I'd find Jack?" I asked.

"Sure, just a minute. Ruthie, would you fetch me the phone book please?" he called.

"Of course, master. Your wish is my command!" she called back.

Tommy chuckled and shook his head. "I'd gladly trade my so-called laziness for your legs!"

She came back in with a phone book in one hand as the other hand lifted up the corner up her dress, revealing a wrinkled thigh. "What, these hideous things?"

"Oh God, not this again." He rolled his eyes.

"Again?" she said, touching a finger to her chin.

"Oh lay off it, will you? You know I've told you a million times. Are you really going to make me waste my breath saying it again?"

"Saying what again? Why, I'm just so old and senile I can't remember what you said."

He kissed her exposed thigh. "Your legs are not hideous! Let me tell you something. They have that ridiculous Kardashian show now with all those girls, you know the one?"

"Of course, you watch it all the time and you say Khloe is sexy."

"That you remember. Well look at me honey." She let go of her dress and looked back up at Tommy. "You're still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

"Really?"

"Really."

"More beautiful than Khloe?"

"A million times more."

"But she's still young and sexy."

"Oh please! Honey, that skank doesn't have half the experience as you do, she doesn't know what she's doing. Compared to you she's an amateur."

I didn't know whether to be moved or uncomfortable. It was sweet, but I felt like I was hearing something I shouldn't be hearing. I guess Tommy noticed my awkward expression, because he said, "Oh Ian! I completely forgot you were here!" He chuckled, seeming mildly embarrassed, then looked back up at his wife. "See Ruthie? You make me senile too! Thank you for the book, darling."

"Anything for my master." Tommy grinned as he watched her walk away.

"Did you see dat a*s?" Tommy said when she was out of sight.

"Uh..."

He winked and nudged me with his elbow so I laughed. "I'm sorry I got so distracted," he said. "I just can't help it around her! I can't stay focused on anything else!" He reminded me of a lovestruck teenager.

I said, "I always thought that effect wore off after a while."

"Not if you're really in love. I wonder if it ever wore off for Gabe and Eleanor. I haven't seen either them since the wedding."

"I thought you said the last time you saw them you were kids."

"Well when you're eighty-two years old like I am, nineteen and twenty-two-year-olds are kids. Gabe was nineteen when he got married, and I was his best man. He was my best man too, a couple years prior to that." He looked at the book in his hands. "Sorry, I was supposed to be finding old Jack Be Nimble's home address for you wasn't I?"

"It's okay," I said. He found the page with Jack's number and address and I put them into my phone and thanked Tommy.

"Now what were you saying before? About the club?"

"Oh yes, the club. Well it was me, Gabe and Eleanor, Frank, and Jack Be Nimble. We would meet in the treehouse behind Gabe's house and talk about silly things that we thought were important. Well I guess they were important then. At the time they were all we had. That small fraction of our lives seemed so big because it was all we had known, there was nothing else.

"So anyway, we'd meet in this treehouse and talk about drama and how the teachers were all conspiring against us, and on Wednesdays we'd make Eleanor stay out so we could all complain about our girlfriends or lack thereof.

"Sometimes we'd bring our girlfriends up but we never talked about anything that we considered important then, you know? Nothing that really mattered when they were around. Eleanor was the only girl who was really part of the club though. That's only because she lived on our block and nobody was dating her at that time. When we started it we were all between nine and twelve, and she wasn't a girl to us then, she was just a kid, liked the rest of us. But by the time she was about fourteen, that's when we noticed she was a girl. And when I say notice, I mean couldn't notice anything else when she was around.

"Man, Eleanor had the biggest crush on Gabe for a long time, but it took him a while to notice her, and by that time we were all noticing her. She was the only girl who thought us boys were cool instead of gross. Except Gabe of course. He always was a lady's man. He chased all the girls, and they chased him right back. He loved it, but we were all so jealous.

"When we all started dating, Frank and Eleanor got together. That's when we made it No Girls Wednesday. Frank wanted to complain about Eleanor and we wanted to complain about our girls without worrying that she was going to tell on us. After all, we weren't her only friends anymore, she had girl friends now."

"What did Eleanor think about No Girls Wednesday?" I asked, genuinely intrigued.

"She hated it. She'd get mad all the time and say we were sexist. I think it hurt her feelings that we didn't trust her as much anymore, and since she was the only girl, I'm sure No Girls Wednesday must have felt really unfair to her. Really it was No Eleanor Wednesday, and that was very insensitive of us, but we were just dumb, obnoxious boys and we didn't think about how it affected her.

"And that's not the only thing that made her feel left out. She'd get upset because we would sometimes bring our girlfriends just to show off how cool we were- especially Gabe, since he had a lot of them- but she never got to bring any of her friends, and she said if Frank wasn't her boyfriend and some other boy was, we wouldn't let her bring him and show off either.

"We just said 'whatever' and kept doing what we wanted, because we knew she would stay no matter what. She had other friends, like I said, but even she admitted that they weren't as honest and loyal as us boys. So she stayed and we kept treating her like a girl. In fact, if Eleanor had just stayed the same as us and not changed physically, the club probably wouldn't have ended. At least not the way it did."

"Why did it end?" I asked.

"Well one night, Eleanor showed up on No Girls Wednesday and refused to leave, demanding to know why we didn't want her and why it couldn't just stay the way it was when we were kids. So Gabe got up and told her it was because she was pretty now. He told her she would never truly be one of the guys again because she was so attractive. She pretended to be all offended and called us shallow, but I could tell that deep down it made her happy, especially coming from Gabe."

"What about the code?" I asked, remembering why I had found him in the first place.

"Oh, the code. Right. Basically it was a way for Gabe and I to tell secret messages about the other boys and Eleanor. Gabe used to fight a lot with the boys, mostly because they were jealous of his popularity. He mostly fought with Frank about girls. I didn't fight with him because I was older and not jealous as easily.

"Jack would get mad sometimes too because Gabe always accused him of being gay. Whether or not it was true, I don't know, but we all thought that at the time since he never brought any girls up. That's why we called him Jack Be Nimble. For some reason we all thought that 'nimble' meant 'flamboyant'. We were so dumb.

"Anyway, so that's where the code came from, but one day he left me a note that was written in code explaining that he and Eleanor had been kissing. Now this was at the same time when Eleanor was dating Frank. Now being the great friend I was and slightly partial towards Gabe, I gave him the brilliant idea to teach the code to Eleanor so they could continue meeting behind Frank's back.

"Eleanor felt guilty and broke up with Frank, and when he was looking for answers he found the notes. He asked me what it meant and told me he saw some with my name on it, so I couldn't pretend I didn't know. So I told him what it said, but that I had no idea Eleanor had been with Gabe. And, long story short, it led to a huge fight between Frank and Gabe and they each wanted the other out of the club. So we just stopped meeting."

If that was true, wouldn't Frank recognize the code? Unless one of them is lying. And something tells me that Tommy didn't just make all of that up.

He continued, looking down at the letter again. "Why he'd mention me in these messages now beats me; like I've said, I haven't seen him in at least sixty-some years. I used to know the code better than the Spanish class I was required to take, but I probably couldn't speak that either anymore. Maybe I'd remember some more of the code if I saw more. Do you have anything else with you?"

I pulled out my phone and showed him the pictures of the writing behind the wallpaper. Tommy took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then held the phone closer, squinting to read the cryptic writing. I took my phone and adjusted the brightness, then handed it back to him. He read it, looked up at me, then read it again, frowning before giving me back the phone.

He cleared his throat nervously. "That's odd," he said, still frowning. He looked concerned. "I've got no idea. Did you show that to Frank?"

"Not the wallpaper, no. Why?"

"Just curious. Do you still have Frank's number?"

"I think so," I said, wondering what he was really thinking.

"Do you think there's any way you could give it to me? Just to catch up with an old friend, now that I remember how much fun we used to have." He smiled faintly with his mouth, but his eyes remained locked on my phone and the picture that was still on the screen. I clicked the screen off and he immediately looked back to my face, waiting patiently for me to answer.

I found the number in my phone and wrote it down for him. Tommy thanked me for the number and I thanked him for letting me visit. As I left, I thought about Tommy's expression as he read the writing on the wall. That one single word scrawled in red ink behind peeling wallpaper. He wanted Frank to know whatever it was. And he looked scared. What could that one little word possibly mean that he wouldn't be able to tell me? All it said was "infested".