Nick Remembers His Cousin Frank “The Bear” (Link Here)

Frank "The Bear" Basto is my cousin. I have never met him. What little I know of him comes from a few internet references. The events depicted below are fiction. No offense intended, Frank. The depiction of my father’s intense protectiveness toward even distant family members is quite accurate.

Cousin Frankie is a few years my senior, which makes him an unqualified senior citizen now. As I remember my aunt, his mother, she was a diminutive, gentle woman. How she gave birth to a living block of granite was an occasional item of conjecture within the family. We all agreed that Frankie was an only child likely because his mother, known to be pain-averse, would not willingly risk another such birthing experience.

Within the neighborhood, Frankie’s solid mass generated respect quite naturally among those of us who were reasonably sensible. His compact bulk was usually sufficient to maintain what Frankie felt should be the natural order of things. Fortunately, Frankie loved everyone, and was himself not prone to violence as an initial response until and unless someone foolishly threatened that order. Frankie may have loved order excessively.

The Glare
Only occasionally did Frankie find it necessary to add The Glare. His size and The Glare together were sufficient to quell rebellion among even the most reckless of us. Had only sensible, prudent beings populated our neighborhood, Frankie might not have become a legend at such an early age. Unfortunately, the sensible, prudent population of the neighborhood did not reach 100%, so there were a few incidents, and Frankie achieved legendary stature for violence early.

I recall a disturbing day when I overheard what I judged to be unkind remarks about my cousin and reacted with uncharacteristic fervor and energy resulting in inappropriate language directed at the offending adult. This was about my cousin, after all. Knowing that word of such disrespect of my elder would get back to my father within an evening, I decided that preemptive action would be the best course.

“Dad, why do people say such mean things about Cousin Frankie?”

Except for some tensing of his jaw muscles, Dad went nearly rigid—a very good, controlled start, I thought. Dad loved Frankie, the son of my mother’s brother. We all loved Frankie.

“WHO said WHAT about Frankie?” In his chair, the established seat of authority, protection, wisdom, and mirth in our home, Dad was making a normal and customary effort to keep his emotional fervor in check. He was raising three children. He had a good notion of the need for self-restraint at times. I knew the signs. Oh yes, this was a very good start. I can do this.

I Take A Shot
“I overheard Mr. Minnelli tell Mr. Rossi that Frankie lives only to inflict excruciating pain on those who cross him, and that he must be the devil’s own spawn. What’s the devil’s spawn, Dad?"

Mr. Minnelli’s statement had come nowhere near this concentration of venom. In retrospect, Mr. Minnelli was probably expressing a note of admiration that I was too reactive at the time to catch. I had embellished substantially here, at great risk, anxious to deflect the consequences of my earlier breach of conduct. As we used to describe it, I was “taking a shot.” I was confident that I had a good chance here to distract my father just enough, given the supposed sleight to his wife’s family. Who would pass up a shot like that? You do have to take those shots when they present themselves, right? I was in the zone now. I was ready to play my dad like a fish before word of my abuse of Mr. Minnelli reached him.

Fish indeed . . .

"BASTARDO! ANIMALE!”

Launching himself out of his chair, Dad jostled the lamp positioned on the table next to him, the lamp my mother’s parents gave her as one of her wedding gifts. The lamp passed down from great-grandmother to grandmother, to daughter. The one intended for my sister. That lamp.

In the nanosecond it took for the magnitude of the impending disaster to hit our brains, we sprang as one on the lamp, catching it while still on the table. Lamp in hands, eyes affixed to it, we froze. Eyes still affixed to the lamp, saying nothing, barely breathing, we steadied the lamp back into position and backed away in unison, hands and arms positioned as though we still held the lamp. Two feet away now, unwilling to risk straightening up, we looked at each other. Knowledge and understanding passed between us without a gesture, without a spoken word. It was clear that my mother would go to her grave with no knowledge whatever of what had just occurred. And indeed, she never knew.

With the lamp secure in its place, Dad settled himself back in his chair, cleared his throat, and took the deep breath he relied on under stress to return his blood to levels in the more temperate range.

I considered what would have happened had Dad not jostled the lamp and had Mr. Minnelli been near that chair instead of at home oblivious to my own slander. My gratitude toward my grandparents for that wedding gift remains boundless. Within the family, we assumed that Dad might have had a defective flight response, but no one doubted that his fight response was fully functional.

A Seismic Shift
With the cataclysm averted, Dad must have determined to address the issue at hand for his wide-eyed, innocent son with as much calm and restraint as he could muster, thereby showing me by example how composure works best under all circumstances. I was greatly relieved to see that he had settled on this course.

“Frankie . . . Frankie is a very special boy. He has . . . some difficulty with control at times and, well with his size and strength, well . . . but we love Frankie and . . . and he’s our blood and . . .and . . .. Giorgio Minnelli has always said good things about Frankie. He's been a good friend to us for a long time. He likes the boy."

Yes, fish indeed . . .

"TRADITORE! ANIMALE! What have you done to us?”

The shift was seismic.

You notice the oddest things in stressful situations, things that stay with you for years after the event that triggered the stress. Dad loved to work in his garden, the product of which my mother converted to the most incredible food for our table. That daily activity created a perpetual tan on the olive skin of my father. When the realization of my deception became obvious, however, his knuckles went white, alabaster white. At that moment, those parts of his hands displayed the whitest epidermal layer I had ever seen, have ever seen since, and probably ever will see again.

Was it a mistake to take the shot? I looked it up: Reggie Jackson hit 563 home runs. Enroute to that accomplishment, he struck out 2,597 times. Do you think he would have passed on a shot like that, a shot equivalent to a fastball down the middle of the plate in October?

Frank And I Diverge
However, I digress. Frankie and I took different paths after his third or fourth incarceration, and that occurred long ago when I was twenty-something. We have exchanged no communication for many years, and I assume we are lost to each other completely. That’s not because I ever had a disapproving thought about my cousin; it’s just that we had other priorities and faced different circumstances in distant parts of the country. The connection just slowly unraveled due to lack of effort. My dad would have been greatly saddened with that knowledge.

I searched recently on the Internet and found a partial record of Frankie’s prison time. It is surprisingly incomplete. It appears that his most recent release from some federal prison in Florida at age 70 was around April 2007. Evidently, retirement does not fit into Frankie’s personal life vision.

Knowing him as I did, I doubt that he would have had a lifetime that he did not want. I just don’t see him settling for a job he didn’t fully enjoy, hoping to make it to full social security benefits. Maybe Frankie has had a life that met all or most of his expectations. Maybe Frankie would change nothing or very little in his life, apart from less prison time, perhaps. I don’t know, and I guess we’ll never have that conversation.

Had my dad been able to conceive of the kind of neglect within the family that unraveled the relationship between Frankie and me, I think he would have judged it unacceptable and unconscionable. I don’t know; we can’t have that conversation now. I wish we could. I bet his knuckles would turn white.

The Lamp
The lamp now resides in the home of my sister’s only child, my niece. It awaits its transition to the home of her eldest daughter. To the extent that a human can have a relationship with an inanimate object, that lamp and I are bonded in emotional intimacy, as would be two Marines in the same squad who survived a Japanese charge at Iwo Jima.