Good Old Frank

I grew up with a kid named Frank Basile who lived on Howe Street, near the border that separates the town of Natick, Massachusetts, from Framingham. He was technically Natick and one of us, but he always smelled a little like Framingham to me, along with the Dows and the Sollimas who lived near him. He had a sort of dual citizenship that felt not quite kosher to me. But he was, as I say, Natick, so he went to Cole Elementary School with all of us, and then on to Kennedy Junior High and finally Natick High School.

Frank was always small for his age, doe-eyed and diffident, although sometimes he surprised you with contrariness. He would come up with original notions that added little to the matter at hand, then shut up when his opinion was passed over. If one cared to watch him, perhaps one could see in Frank an odd intentness about apparently nothing. His expression often denoted concentration, with a little frown and a fixed stare at the ground or the space in front of him. But for the most part he was quiet, unobtrusive, someone you could use to fill up the roster of a pick-up baseball team.

His father helped coach my farm league baseball team, the Tigers. Odd as this sounds, I don’t believe Frank was on the team. Hmmm. Maybe his father was friends with the coach. Anyway, because I was the tallest kid, I played first base, and Mr. Basile taught me to stand in a crouch with my hands on my knees, ready to spring at the crack of the bat. I was an indifferent athlete at best, but one day when someone hit a scorching line drive heading for right field I reflexively leaped up and snared the ball in my glove. All the parents went “ooooh!” and Mr. Basile told me, “You see! You had your hands on your knees! That’s why you caught it!”

Frank one time came to my house to show off a frog he caught. He carried it on a Frisbee and it was the ugliest frog I ever saw. Its colors were nearly luminescent, very harsh, very green. Something about its coloration made me think it was unfriendly and poisonous. The frog submitted to its captivity well, staying on the Frisbee and later allowed itself to be handled by Frank with domesticated passivity, no struggling to get away. The frog naturally became an object of great interest with us kids for about a half hour until when suddenly Frank became possessed with a wild desire to kill it. He set it on the ground, grabbed a a fallen tree branch the size of a staff and tried to crush it with one end, striking at it as if violently digging a hole for a post. “No, Frank, don’t!” I yelled, because the frog was an innocent thing and, despite its unpleasing exterior, wasn’t really such a bad frog after all. But Frank kept saying, “I’m gonna kill it!” and he had a maniacal expression that made us wonder if Frank’s mind was clicking on all cylinders. He came close to striking it a number of times but the frog eluded his lethal tree branch, sometimes just barely. I actually thought the frog might get away, but finally Frank made a direct hit and the frog had time to let out a small whimper before it went splat. We all protested, asking him why, but his response was that it was his frog and he could do with it what he liked.

As we got older, Frank was the first among us to smoke pot. He had older brothers who were into it and they took care of little Frank. Frank smoked and smoked all through seventh and eighth grade until he declared one day that he had smoked so much pot he was now permanently high. You could believe it because he seemed bemused most of the time, communicating to us from another dimension.

Finally Frank required psychiatric help, and over the years he got lots of it. We’d ask his younger brother every now and again how Frank was doing and he’d say, “Franky flipped out again, he’s getting treatment now,” as casually as if talking about an old car that keeps breaking down. When we’d see Frank and speak to him, he’d answer back as if he were miles away. One of my friends remarked, “One day Frank seems all right and the next you see him petting a fire hydrant.”

During late spring in 1982 Frank voluntarily checked himself into the psychiatric unit of Leonard Morse Hospital in Natick. He stayed there for a couple of weeks and abruptly left against the advice of the therapists. They couldn’t keep him there, everyone found out later, because it was "voluntary." Hmmm. Anyway, old Frank went home, took a baseball bat and bludgeoned his parents to death. The news the next day played the 911 call his mother desperately tried to make. One cop later said “their heads were all bashed to hell” and it was the worst thing he had ever seen.

There was a big manhunt for Frank. He took off in his parents’ car, a old Granada. Frank was a famous walker, often taking four or five hour strolls at a time, and the news played that up, as if ditching the car and setting off on foot would make him invisible. But finally he was caught in a diner in New Hampshire, his parents’ car in the parking lot. He offered no resistance; he had spent all day nursing a cup of coffee in this diner, quiet but seeming strange, and the manager at last called the police. No one there had any idea he was a murderer.

I last saw him a few days later on the news being led into court, handcuffed and wearing an orange jumpsuit. As always, Frank looked small for his age and doe-eyed.