The second I saw what that man had gone to all that trouble to hide before he disappeared, I forgot to breathe, because the false bottom was packed with manuscripts, and published books, and when I picked one up and saw the author photo on the back, it was the man himself, under a name I did not recognize.
I sat down on my carport step, stunned.
The man who owned the freezer had not run from the law, he had chased a lifelong dream, and what he hid was a secret career no one in his family ever knew about.
The books were westerns, gritty and true, and they had sold, and had readers all over the country, published under a pen name. The man who owned the freezer had been a secret novelist for decades.
The notebook explained. His name was Walt, and he had grown up in a hard family that mocked a man who read books, let alone wrote them, so he had published in secret under a pen name and told no one, hiding his manuscripts in the freezer where his rough kin would never find them.
And then, the boy said, he took off in a hurry. The notebook explained: Walts publisher had finally offered him a chance to come out from behind the pen name, to be honored at a big literary event out of state, and Walt, at long last, had decided to go claim his life as a writer in the open. He left in a rush of excitement, telling family only to keep his things, not ready yet to explain the whole secret life.
The last entry read: After all these years, I am finally going to tell the world I am a writer. If something happens and I do not come back, please, let my family know these books are mine. Tell them the quiet uncle they never understood had a whole secret life of stories. I was proud of them. Let my real name go on the covers at last.
Walt, I learned, had passed on his way to that event, a heart attack, so close to finally being known.
But I made sure his last wish came true. I contacted his publisher and his family, and together we revealed the truth of the beloved author no one had ever met. His books were reissued under his real name, with the story of the secret novelist of Iowa.
His family, who had never understood the quiet uncle, wept to learn he had been a real, published, beloved author all along. His real name is on the covers now, where it belongs.
I keep those wing nuts in a coffee can. My wife tells the story and nobody believes her, but they held down a mans secret life of stories. I bought a dented freezer for thirty-five dollars. I ended up giving a hidden author his name back at last. Cheapest, richest thing I ever found.