3. Four Houses Down
THREE
FOUR HOUSES DOWN
? SHELBYVILLE, INDIANA, UNITED STATES?
The Wicketts lived in a quaint, calm, suburban neighborhood on the northwest edge of Shelbyville, Indiana.
They had lived there since Charlie was two, after Ed had finished his MBA in Indianapolis and Diane had insisted she would 'not raise her children in the city.
' Over the years, neighbors had come and gone in the Wickett Family's lives, but a few had stayed, watching Charlie and Katie grow up.
One of those neighbor families was the Beckmans, who lived four houses down on the same side of the street as the Wicketts.
Frank and Helen, married approximately forever and with no children of their own, had watched from afar as the two girls down the road built strange contraptions on their front yard, eventually gave up waiting on the front porch for their father to come home from work every night, and rode their bikes down the block singing songs at the top of their lungs, as if they'd found a way to be happy that had nothing to do with the house they lived in.
The Beckmans had a garage that smelled like motor oil and pipe tobacco, and they possessed that particular warmth of a house where someone was always baking something that smelled absolutely delicious.
Charlie and Katie had walked past their driveway hundreds of times before. But one day, Frank Beckman's Oldsmobile changed everything.
Charlie was twelve the first time she heard the knock in the engine when Mr. Beckman had finished pulling the car into the driveway after running the day's errands.
It was faint but rhythmic, the sound of a timing chain stretching past its tolerance.
She heard it all the way from the sidewalk in front of their house where she stopped walking, even dropping Katie's hand to look up toward the Beckman garage.
She heard the sound as the car cooled down, and her feet led her up the driveway to where the car was parked.
Noticing Mr. Beckman had gone inside, she stood there looking at the hood of his beige 1968 Oldsmobile Cutlass.
Helen saw young Charlie through her kitchen window, standing next to the car, examining it as though she was trying to listen to it speak.
She'd tell the story later by saying, "I looked out that window and there was the oldest Wickett girl, standing in our driveway staring at the car in a way I have only seen one other time in my whole life.
" Helen immediately recognized the look and interest on Charlie's face, even from twenty feet away.
She'd married the exact individual on where she'd seen that same look many times herself.
So she walked away from the window, dried her hands on the dish towel, and went to find Frank.
Frank returned to the driveway to find Charlie there with Katie standing next to her, watching her sister tilt her ear toward the Cutlass's engine.
"May I help you, young lady?" he asked. Not stern, not pushy, but engaged enough to make sure those girls knew he meant business.
"Your timing chain is about to go," Charlie said, standing up straight and looking Frank in the eye. For Charlie, there was no time for pleasantries when there was a machine to be fixed. "If it does, it'll take the engine with it."
Frank looked at her closely, and Charlie looked right back at Frank.
He was tall and solid, weathered in the way of men who'd done real things in life and didn't need to talk about them.
His hands were thick-knuckled, stained around the cuticles with something that never quite washed out.
Charlie noticed those hands. They looked like hers did after long nights in the garage.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"I'm Charlie. Charlie Wickett," she answered. "And this is my little sister, Katie," Charlie said, indicating at the smaller child standing next to her. "I call her Kit, but only I'm allowed to do that," she explained, turning her gaze back to Frank. Frank smirked.
"And how old are you?"
"Twelve." Frank started stroking his beard, his fingers running against the stubble as he considered the girl.
"Do you know what you're doing?"
"Yes, sir," she answered. "I've been fixing things for two whole years."
"Yup, she has. She fixed our tooster," Katie chimed in.
"Your 'tooster?'" Frank asked, suppressing a chuckle.
"I did," Charlie admitted, her chest puffing up in pride at her sister's acknowledgment. Frank considered them both. "I can fix it if you want, Mr. Beckman."
Frank studied her just a moment longer. He'd remembered seeing her on her front porch at times with what looked like her father's tools in her hands, tinkering. He had originally thought that perhaps it was just for show, but now...
Maybe there was more to this young girl than met the eye.
"Alright, kiddo. Let's see what you got," he said, handing her the keys to the Cutlass. Charlie beamed.
"I just gotta run home and get my tools," she said, spinning on her heel to run back down the street.
"Don't worry. I should have everything you need here in my garage. Just tell me what I can get you, and I'll bring it out."
"But I always give her the tools," Katie piped up, a stern look on her face as she watched Frank walk toward the garage while Charlie went to open the Cutlass. Frank turned to regard her.
"Are you her apprentice?" Frank asked.
"She's more than my apprentice," Charlie voiced. "She's my partner." Frank considered the statement from Charlie, watching as the youngest one grinned widely at her older sister's inclusion of her in the work. Just then, he felt a tug on his shirt tail and looked down.
"Where are the tools, mister?" Katie prodded, knowing her job was to get Charlie what she needed. He grinned at her, looking up again at Charlie, who was waiting by the open engine of the Cutlass, ready to begin her work. His gaze returned to Katie.
"Right this way, boss," Frank said, about to become a happy compatriot to a genius and her precious partner.
Charlie fixed the timing chain that afternoon while Frank sat in a lawn chair by the garage door and watched her work.
Katie buzzed around Charlie, fetching tools (usually the wrong ones) and bringing the glass of lemonade Helen had left out to and from Charlie when she asked.
He noticed the way Charlie would ask for a tool, take whatever Katie provided to her, thank her or ruffle her hair or say 'close enough,' then ask for that lemonade glass, and switch out the wrong tool for the right one while Katie was busy.
He also noticed, and suspected he wasn't supposed to, that Charlie muttered at the Cutlass the whole time she worked.
Easy now. Yeah, I see you. You've been carrying this one a while, haven't you.
Like the car was an old horse who'd thrown a shoe instead of a car with a dying timing chain.
Frank didn't hover over them and didn't offer advice.
He just sat there with his own lemonade while Charlie and her little sister took apart the Cutlass's engine with the quiet authority of someone who'd been doing this all her life, no matter how short it had been so far.
As time passed in the afternoon, he noticed that, despite his initial precautions, he could tell the Wickett girl was doing a bang-up job.
Something in his face changed.
Neither Charlie nor Katie saw it. Charlie was underneath the car doing her work and Katie was standing over the engine on her tiptoes, trying to see in to witness what Charlie was fixing.
But Helen, walking out the kitchen doorway with a plate of cookies to add to the lemonade, saw it clearly.
Frank had found a purpose. Or, perhaps, that purpose had found him.
After the Cutlass, Charlie and Katie started coming by the Beckmans' home often. Close to it. They'd walk past the house on their way home from school and Frank would be in the garage, tinkering around on something small. He'd wave them both over, asking "Hey, got a minute, you two?"
"What's going on, Mr. Beckman?" Charlie would always ask.
"I think I need the dynamic duo's help on this one." He always asked it like he was the one who needed the favor. The girls never said no.
Charlie was often there before Frank expected her. He noticed, and it became one of his favorite things about her. "Early is on time and on time is late," he told her one afternoon when she showed up ten minutes before he'd even opened the garage. "Remember that, kiddo. It'll serve you well."
Charlie would drop her backpack on the step next to the lawn chair, Katie following suit, and Frank would hand them a coffee can full of bolts that needed sorting, or a hinge that had come loose on the screen door, or the carburetor from his lawn tractor that was running rough.
Small jobs. Things he could have done himself in ten minutes.
But Frank wasn't interested in the jobs.
He was interested in watching Charlie's hands, and in talking to the girls while Charlie worked.
Frank Beckman had spent forty years telling stories about engines to a wife who loved those stories and loved him. But he hadn’t met someone since his days on a Navy ship who could understand the engineering language underneath the way Charlie did.
Frank's stories started after the first day with the Cutlass.
"The Big E," he called it, the first time he mentioned his career on a naval carrier ship. "The USS Enterprise CV-6 Naval Air Carrier. Yorktown class. The most decorated warship in the history of the United States Navy."
Charlie's hands went still on the lawn tractor and she looked up at Frank. "You served on a warship?"
"I served on the warship." Frank took a sip of his lemonade. "Aviation Machinist's Mate. I kept the planes flying."
"Airplanes!" Katie shrieked.
"That's right, boss."
"What kind of planes?" Charlie asked.