Epilogue

      The twins were forty-three when they last saw each other in the spring of 1963. An Air Force assignment in the New Mexico desert was a long way from the truck driving hub of central New Jersey, especially when those long-houred jobs barely supported growing families. 

     Francis died suddenly of a heart attack in 1968 not long after Frank was nearly killed in an accident while hauling a loaded trailer from Queens back to his home base at Apgar Trucking in Bound Brook. He survived a traumatic brain injury and femoral artery tear thanks to a companion trucker who pulled him from the burning wreckage and held pressure on the leg wound until the rescue squad arrived. The long physical and financial recovery from those injuries made travel to his twin's funeral undoable. 

     Loss of an adult sibling is always painful, but it can be even more devastating for a surviving twin.(1) My father never talked about it, but he seemed to carry an underlying sadness for the rest of his life, surviving two cardiac arrests before succumbing to lung cancer in 1986. His only deathbed regret was wishing he could have seen "Francis's little girl in West Virginia." This was a request his children could hardly fulfill when it was the first time anyone had heard of this cousin. 

     Not long ago I received an unexpected message on 23 & Me from an unknown cousin listed as the granddaughter of my father. My first thought was to message my six siblings that here at last, nearly forty years after our father's death, was that little girl in West Virginia he regretted never seeing. Before pressing send I decided to ask this new cousin who her parents were. It turned out the mother, my supposed long lost sister, was born out of wedlock to a German seamstress and a U.S. soldier who soon disappeared into the post-war confusion of 1946 Berlin. Knowing my father never made it to the German capital, it was apparent this new cousin was instead the granddaughter of his genetically indistinguishable twin.

     It could be that my uncle was as good at spreading his seed as he was at sharing a smile, but what I really believe is that my father used that niece as a proxy for expressing the unspeakable pain of losing a twin. Barring any new genetic surprises, the identity of "Francis's little girl in West Virginia" will likely remain a conundrum that I too will take to my grave along with those Beatty twins.

1. Creed, J. (2022). The uniqueness of twin loss and grief. Bereavement, 1. https://doi.org/10.54210/bj.2022.8

Chapter 9: Next Time Around

"What do you know, Mo?" Frank quips in his newly acquired central Jersey slang.

"Not much Bro, you?" retorts Francis recalling that same dialect from his pre-war Philadelphia days.

"Could be our year with Stargell in left," the younger twin hedges, looking west instead of at the tears in his brother's eyes.

"It's only April," shrugs Francis swiping at his cheeks. "First they gotta beat the Dodgers and Giants." 

"When are you heading west?" Frank grunts, taking a quick puff from the Chesterfield barely gripped between index and middle fingers.

"Any day now. Due in White Sands in May."

     It had been twenty years since the twins had last seen each other, but it seemed like two lifetimes ago. Frank had done his time in the Army's liberation of Europe and returned to a new daughter in Eastern Kentucky, but Francis had stayed on at Weisbaden until a recent transfer to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

     In the spring of 1963 the country was beefing up air defenses in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis of the previous fall. It was just the chance Francis needed to convince his German wife to bring their ten-year-old son stateside. 

"Stopping by Fairchance?" entreats Frank sending a stream of smoke into the slow dusk as a loose line of big black birds flaps north toward First Watchung.

"Not with Edna here. Say, can you drop off these metals?"

"An Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross? Good thing that tail gun of yours didn't sight us rolling into Dachau."

"Yeah, one if by land, two if by air and all that rigamarole." 

"What about your little girl in West Virginia?"

"We'll take that one to our graves, little brother."

"I don't know what to say, Francis."

"All we can say is see you next time around."

Chapter 8: What You Gotta Do

     "What do you say, Frankie?" sings out Francis in his newly acquired Philadelphia slang into the cool twilight of spring in the Laurel foothills. 

"Not much, you?" Frank replies in his minimalist way, flashing a rare broad smile as they grasp hands in the back yard.

"So what have you been up to little brother?"

      The twins were back home in Hopwood for their mother's fiftieth birthday celebration in the spring of 1943. It had only been seven years since they went their separate ways, but it felt like a lifetime after such an entwined youth. Their father had been in prison most of that time, but now he was starting over in Wheeling, sixty-three years old and blackballed by most of the family.

     The ex-convict wasn't eligible for fighting, but men under forty-five were signing up in droves after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Those married and with children were initially excluded from the draft, but single men were required to register whether or not they had dependents. 

     "Little by nine minutes," laughs Frank moving to stand like they were often made to as children, their profiles darker than the dusk to their mother peeking out the kitchen window. "Look who's taller now!"

"Don't evade the question, Bro," Francis asserts as he dodges the back-to-back pose.    

"A docker down in New Orleans, a mechanic for Speed, now a trucker for Beatrice and our little boy."

"Your Beat sure sounds like she beats my work at the Naval Shipyard, but I'm fixing to sign up for the Air Force," a rare frown crossing his countenance.

"That little girl down at Fairchance needs you here," laments Frank swiping at the moisture beading up in his eyes.

"Her mother doesn't, so, as Pop used to say, you gotta do what you gotta do."

Chapter 7: Identical

     "Well young man," begins the Kentucky prosecutor at the Federal Courthouse in Lexington, "keep in mind that perjury is a felony offense with a sentence of one to five years and a fine of up to five thousand dollars."

Frank gives a slight nod from the defendant's table, his rising anger betrayed by squinting eyes, pursed lips, and clenched fists.

"Your fingerprints were found on the steering wheel of a 1927 Duesenberg confiscated by the Internal Revenue Service on the first day of May in this year of nineteen hundred and thirty-seven. Were you, indeed, the driver of this automobile on that day?"

"We object, your honor, on the grounds that there's no way to determine if the fingerprints in question belong to Mr. Beatty here or his twin brother."

A whispered hush spreads over the courtroom until Judge Hiram Ford cracks the gavel, stands up, and declares "This court will hereby recess for one-hour."

     Frank had been implicated as the driver in a bootlegging bust in Magoffin County, still dry four years after the repeal of Prohibition. The Duesenberg was spotted crossing into West Virginia by federal agents scouting the bridge over the Big Sandy. Their cruiser was no match for the souped up engine going up the steep switchbacks of the river gorge, but the car was later found behind Speed's Garage in Salyersville. The prints on the steering wheel didn't match Speed himself, but agents tested other employees and found a match with the owner's eighteen-year-old little brother.

     In the early days of fingerprinting it was assumed that twins would have identical imprints. As the technique improved with increasing usage and a larger database, it was later discovered that even identical twins have distinguishing fingerprint features. In 1937 there were neither case precedents nor FBI guidelines for the judge and his legal aide to discover.

     "The objection is sustained," proclaims Judge Ford to a enthralled courtroom. "Are there any further questions by the plaintiff?"

"Yes your honor," mutters the prosecutor fumbling with papers spread out on the table before him. "Mr. Beatty, do you know the whereabouts of Francis Samuel Beatty?"

Frank's shoulders and the corners of his mouth sag as he shakes his head no.

"When and where did you last see your twin brother?"

"Back home in thirty-six," mumbles Frank glancing up to the slanting beam of spring sunlight coming in a small side window of the courthouse. 

"Do you know where he currently is?"

"No," he bawls, fighting back tears as his eyes and posture betray the overwhelming sadness at the loss of a lifelong companion.

"No further questions, your honor."

"Case dismissed for lack of credible evidence!"

     

"

Chapter 6: Diaspora

      "Sorry boys," whispers the twin's oldest brother in the growing dusk behind their father's former bus garage. "We've got to take what we can and get out of western Pennsylvania."

"Some things might have to stay," Frank replies with eyebrows raised in a glance towards his uncharacteristically quiet twin.

"Be that as it may," assures George with that kind smile of his. "Now that you can drive, one of you gets the Duesenberg and the other gets the Indian."

     The Beatty boys were divvying up their father's possessions because he was on the lam from the Pennsylvania State Police. Ostensibly it was for insurance fraud for the burning of a bus company car now owned by the bank, but they also had him for tax evasion, bootlegging, and incestuous child abuse. 

     The large family had survived the transition from horse-drawn to gas vehicles, a world war, an influenza pandemic, the roaring twenties, the stock market crash, and the beginning of the great depression. By 1936 the older girls had left home for their own families and their mother was staying put with the two youngest. The twins were at loose ends, about to turn seventeen and tired of grueling work at the filthy oil wells.

     "That bike is mine!" Francis asserts, finding his usual self-assurance with the claiming of the motorcycle. "Frank's better at keeping an old car running."

"Where'll we go?" wonders Frank, already resigned to leaving the only home the twins have known.

"I'm bringing the cash to Jersey and Speed's taking the tools to Kentucky," George patiently explains. "You boys should split up and explore the country."

"What about my little girl in Fairchance?" shouts Francis into the suddenly chilly night as he and Frank simultaneously shake their heads back and forth.

"Some things have got to be left behind to help the old man."