It was four years ago Hank Jones left to grab some Marlboros and a sixer of Schlitz, and it was four months later we held his funeral.

Hank hadn’t died on his trip to 7-11, not so far as we knew, but no one, ’specially not me, was ready to say out loud – and thereby ratify – the sudden amendment to our family: Hank had left Mom, this time for good.

Rather than make it any harder on Mom than it need be, we all came up with a reason Hank might have, on his faithful voyage, kicked the bucket. Lucky for us, conjuring Hollywood endings for a man that was bigger than life wasn’t so hard.

Maybe on his way to the convenience store, he’d stopped to fetch a kitten from a tree and fallen plumb on his head; or maybe off I-70 he’d spotted a burning orphanage, and, over and over, gone in saving dozens of children, selflessly ignoring the firemen’s pleas to consider his life and his own family, until he fatally returned to the blazes; or maybe he’d been telling one of his tales, one he’d cribbed from the back of a grocery store pulp novel, to the gas station attendant when, fantastically enough, the same novel’s author came out of a neighboring car, pen in hand like a rapier, and lanced him through the heart. (“So the pen is mightier!” Hank would shout.)

At least that’s what I said to juice up an otherwise dry sermon.

In hindsight, Hank’s big getaway was probably motivated by the town hussy – Big Mug Diner’s resident coffee-serving, bubble-gum snapping Aphrodite, Diana. She gave him eyes, he tipped her well, and if my brother Thomas and I remember right, it was around the time Hank embarked on his indefinitely protracted trip to the bodega that Diana had begun to miss her nightly shifts.

But nobody mentioned Diana, just like no one mentioned the possibility Hank was alive (”doing well, wish you were here in Rome or Paris or one of those other cities people vacation with mistresses and not the Mrs.”).  So we held a funeral for Hank, Mom’s husband, who had disappeared one evening never to return. It was death by trauma or fire or manic writer.

Assuming Hank wouldn’t return one day was poor thinking and, come to think of it, quite presumptive of us. What if his pockets got holes in them? Plenty of men aren’t prepared for the sticker shock of infidelity, and as Mom says, A begging man is a loyal man.

Or what if he was saved? Jesus has a way of finding people like Hank, men with no goals, but a mind to prove they can reach ‘em.

Turns out, it was a little bit of both. Hank found a savior, but he couldn’t well afford it. He first laid eyes on the Magnificent Thing while waiting on Diana outside the Overland Park Mall Victoria’s Secret. In the Gamestop’s window across the way, practically glowing under the light of a demo station, it sat — The Beatles: Rock Band.

Now Hank had never played a video game. Hell, he’d never played a game. (He’d worked since the age of 4. Coal mining.) But this one had that special je ne sais quois he didn’t know he’d even been looking for, not just in a game, but in life — the chance to (”finally!”) grow out his hair and sing about love, free of obligation to his gender (”or something like that”).

See, Hank was, if anything, a romantic. And Beatles Rock Band was, if nothing else, expensive.

And that’s what put Hank on our doorstep. Mom, with the door open, her eyes wide, practically screaming, “Why can’t that writer hop out of the gardenias and finish what he started.”

But those dilated pupils didn’t say a thing. They couldn’t. And neither could she. She just gingerly pulled back the door and let him slip inside.

Hank was mum too. (That was new.) He cleaned the kitchen. Took out the trash. Caulked the shower, like he’d been promising to get to do since Thomas was born. And before we knew it, night was here and Hank and Mom went to sleep in the same bedroom.

The next day the family — amendment repealed — went to Best Buy and bought an Xbox 360 and The Beatles Rock Band with the final bit of Hank’s life insurance. Mon and Hank spent the day, the night and the following weekend playing the tracks. Always on no fail mode, so they could freely stop watching the screen and start watching the other.

Things have been normal enough. Hank’s back at the coal mine. Mom’s back at the PTA meetings. Diana’s even back at Big Mug’s – or so I hear, we’re no longer Sunday morning standards.

Folks say Hank’ll be gone sooner than later. He’s an island, a nomad. And to those, I say you might be right. You’re probably right. But if I had to put my finger on one thing that’s changed inside Hank, it’s the tune in his heart. Each morning in front of the bathroom mirror, us two men shaving and deodorizing, I catch a special glimpse of the real Hank in the reflection of his eyes. He’s younger and thinner; his hair’s a little longer. As far out as he can see, thousands of nubile, tight sweaters cheering his name. And there right beside him, stands Mom, his wife, on guitar. Providing rhythm, backup, perspective. The Paul to his John.