The second I saw what that man had gone to all that trouble to hide before he disappeared, I forgot to breathe, because in the false bottom sat a small cassette player and a stack of labeled tapes, and the top label, in a mans careful hand, read: Marie, so I never forget her voice.
I sat down on my carport step, put in the tape, and pressed play, and a womans voice, warm and laughing, filled my carport.
The man who owned the freezer had not fled from the law, he had fled from a house too full of silence, and what he hid was the recorded voice of his late wife, the only company that eased his loneliness.
The notebook told the story. His name was Gerald, and his wife Marie had grown ill, and in her final years he had recorded her, her voice, her stories, her laugh, so he would have her after she was gone. After she passed, he could not bear the empty house, and he played her tapes every night just to hear her.
And then, the boy said, he took off in a hurry. The notebook explained: the grief had gotten too heavy, and Geralds own health was failing, and he had gone to live near his sister out of state so he would not be alone at the end, hiding Maries tapes in the freezer for safekeeping, meaning to send for them.
The last entry read: If somebody finds Maries tapes, please do not erase them or throw them out. Her voice is all I have left of thirty years. Find our son. Let him hear his mother again. Tell him his daddy could not stay in that quiet house, but he never stopped loving them both.
I could not let Maries voice fade in a freezer.
I found Geralds son through the notebook. Gerald, I learned, had passed at his sisters home a few months back, at peace, with Maries voice playing beside him.
The son wept when I brought him the tapes. He had thought his mothers voice was lost forever, and he had been hurt and confused when his grieving father disappeared. Now he had his mother back, her voice, her stories, her laugh, and he understood his father had left out of grief, not abandonment.
He had the tapes digitized so they would never wear out, and he shared them with his own children, so Marie could go on telling her stories to grandchildren she never met.
I keep those wing nuts in a coffee can. My wife tells the story and nobody believes her, but they held down a womans voice, and I got to carry it home to her son. I bought a dented freezer for thirty-five dollars. I ended up giving a family back their mothers laugh. Worth more than money, that.