Of all the lives that had changed over the year, however, Uncle Frank’s had changed the most. It wasn’t his expectation of old age or disease that killed him, but an unfortunate alignment of Planet Rock with a Fisherman’s Friend.
It happened in early November when Uncle Frank had come down with a cold. The cold ran for three days and three nights and filled thirty of his sixty-three handkerchiefs. On the fourth day it started to dry and Uncle Frank decided to stay in bed until lunchtime. His neighbours were out and he used the opportunity to unplug his hearing aid and listen to Planet Rock with the volume turned up.
When the Anorak Quiz came on that morning – when a listener had sixty seconds to answer rock trivia questions that might win him or her (usually a him) a Planet Rock anorak – Uncle Frank popped a Fisherman’s Friend into his mouth and waited for the questions. (In the years he’d been listening to the station, his own top score had been three – and one of those answers had been a complete guess.)
The morning DJ always asked the contestant where he was and what he was doing, and usually the answer was the name of an industrial city and some kind of trade beginning with a P: either plastering, painting or plumbing. On this particular morning, however, the aspirant had answered: ‘I’m in the back garden burying a dog, Rob,’ and had then burst into tears. It was the funniest thing Uncle Frank had ever heard on the radio and he started to laugh uncontrollably. It was then that the lozenge slipped from his tongue and lodged in his throat. Three minutes later he was dead, forever unaware that the person playing the quiz had scored eight points.
He died a virgin.
Although it had taken Uncle Frank only three minutes to choke to death, it took a further three days for his body to be discovered, and then only because his neighbours had got sick to death of listening to rock music all night. For the first two nights, they’d thought Uncle Frank was just being his usual bloody-minded self, trying to torment them and purposely ignoring their knocks on his door when they went round to complain. After the third night of sleep deprivation, however, they started to wonder if something might have happened to their ornery neighbour and telephoned the police. The door was broken down, the radio turned off and Uncle Frank’s body removed to the mortuary.
Against all expectations, there were as many people at his funeral as there had been at Lyle’s. The Reverend Tinkler performed the eulogy (one index card) to a congregation of eleven: Greg and Billy; Jean and Katy; Betty (there to confirm Frank’s death rather than to mourn his passing); Syd Butterfield, Lyle’s best friend and Uncle Frank’s intended wheelsman; Uncle Frank’s neighbours (there out of guilt rather than sadness); and three members of the police force Uncle Frank had befriended in the days of turning himself in.
It was Greg’s idea to have his uncle cremated and the remains shipped to Texas. He’d promised Uncle Frank he’d go to Montana and go to Montana he would. Once the ashes arrived, he transferred Uncle Frank’s cinerary remains to the pouches of an old cowboy saddlebag he’d found at an antique shop, and then placed the bag in a wardrobe. There the ashes remained until Billy and Katy arrived that summer, and now, in the back seat of a large black sedan, they approached their final resting place: the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the place where the Sioux and Cheyenne had wiped out the 7th Regiment of the US Army.
Greg, Billy and Katy, wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots in honour of Uncle Frank, and taking it in turns to carry the saddlebag, toured the battlefield and memorials for over an hour and then drove to a quiet bluff overlooking the Little Bighorn River. It was here they scattered the remains of their dear departed uncle.
‘You’re sure Uncle Frank’s going to be happier here than in Llandudno?’ Billy asked, somewhat late in the day for such a question to have any meaning.
‘Uncle Frank’s not likely to be happy anywhere,’ Greg smiled, ‘but the Wild West was always his spiritual home and this place is the nearest thing to it. Besides, he always talked about Custer’s Last Stand and, when you think about it, his demise was as untimely as the General’s. I think we’re doing the right thing.’
When the last handful of ashes had been emptied from the saddlebag and released into the wilds, Greg went back to the car and slotted It’s a Long Way to the Top by AC/DC into the CD player.
‘Do you think Uncle Frank would prefer to hear Lady Gaga?’ Katy asked. ‘I’m sure he said he liked her music.’
‘Nice try, Katy, but Uncle Frank hated pop music. He was a rock ‘n’ roller – and this was his favourite song.’
He then pressed the play button and turned up the volume. ‘Okay, let’s do it! Let’s give Uncle Frank his send-off.’
The opening guitar chords split the silence like an axe. The riff was jagged and hypnotic, the cadence taunting. Drums pounded, symbols crashed and a voice honed on Jack Daniels and unfiltered cigarettes started to howl the valedictory words.
Greg flailed his arms, hopped from foot to foot and spun in circles; Katy followed suit, abandoning practised routine for abandoned self-expression; and Billy, the most self-conscious of the three, jumped up and down on the spot and clapped his hands together.
And then the bagpipes chimed in, raucous and sneering; pipes that would have led soldiers into battle and not be seen dead in a Top of the Pops studio. The three celebrants whooped and hollered, linked arms and swung each other in circles, wished their uncle was there to see them, wished he was there to dance with them.
The music faded and there was silence. The leather saddlebag was empty, the celebration of Uncle Frank’s life over.
The younger brother started to cry and the older brother held him.
‘What’s Uncle Greg crying for, Daddy?’ Katy asked. ‘Uncle Frank was old, you know.’
From a distance, far far away, Lyle Bowman smiled.
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This ebook edition first published in 2016
First published in 2016
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The Last of the Bowmans Page 28