by Frank Perdue
Though some locations in the book actually exist, this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Frank A. Perdue
Other books by Frank A. Perdue
JOURNEY OF SHADOWS 2012
LOST IN THE SHADOWS 2013
SHADOW OF A KILLER 2014
THE ADVENTURES OF
F.R.E.D. THE BLUE SQUIRREL 2014
THE COLOR OF DECEPTION
An Ironic Black and White Novel of Love Tragedy and Triumph
By
Frank A. Perdue
As the sleek powerful silver Boeing 707 lifted off the runway, Ted Warner tensed, his shoulders pushed against a giving seat back. Even with all the flying he had done in the last few months, he was sure he would never conquer his fear of takeoffs. He knew the dynamics of flight; the good forces of lift and thrust conquering the evil gravity and drag. It wasn’t the physics that bothered him. It was the human thing. What if the pilot pushed the wrong button, or an improper lever?
He tried to distract himself by peering out the window. Oh Great, he thought, at least the wing is still there. He wondered why some enterprising scientist hadn’t invented a see-through surface for aircraft. He abandoned that line of thought quickly when he heard a loud thump as the giant wheel carriage retracted into its hiding place on the fuselage. Again Ted’s body betrayed his fear. The lights of Honolulu were visible behind the giant wing. It was too dark to see anything else. Beyond the clustered lights was only the blackness of a moonless night.
Ted hated the night. No that wasn’t true. It was the dreams. Without them, the nights were just fine. These days his dreams were different. They were fragmented the way it was supposed to be. The trouble was, the bits and pieces resembled nightmarish scenes; images of furious battles, and the dead victims of a war he hadn’t been prepared for. It wasn’t at all as he had pictured it so long ago. Now, as the lights disappeared, and the engines roar became a steady drone, he thought back to when the other dreams began, and he wondered if he would ever understand. Had he known what awaited him when he landed in San Francisco, and the cross-country odyssey to follow, he would certainly have felt more anxiety than that which a routine airplane takeoff from paradise could cause.
PART ONE: AWAKENING
CHAPTER ONE
He walked, sometimes stumbling, down a dark street. The blackness was accentuated by a steady rain. It was little more than drizzle, but his clothes were already sticking to his body. His brown dress shoes were making a sucking, squeaking sound with every step, the puddles of water splashing outward with each stride. It was quickly becoming a muddy trip, to where he wasn’t sure.
There were no lights. It was too dark to tell if there were houses. Once he turned, looking back from whence he came, but there was nothing there. It was as if he was alone in the world. He would eventually drown on this endless road as the water slowly crept up over his head. Then he heard the sound.
If what he heard was an airplane, it was going to crash right on top of him. It was sputtering, and the noise kept increasing. It was very near now. He saw two dull yellowish-looking lights coming toward him.
His first reaction was to run, for it was surely after him. He took two hurried steps away from the road, looking back toward the lights as he did so. He needed to find shelter from this threat, whatever it was. Then he heard voices.
The lights turned out to be headlights. The noise was emanating from beneath what looked to be a pickup truck. It was a popping sound, and very loud.
“Hey, man, you need a ride?” It was a man’s voice, and it came from the bed of the truck, which had stopped right next to him. The stranger was yelling to be heard over the noise of the truck’s engine.
Ted was disoriented. He had been frightened by the intruders, whoever they were. He was afraid of them. He could see two silhouettes in the cab of the vehicle, and there were two more in the back. He was sure they meant him harm.
“No, I’m okay”, he muttered.
“Suit yourself”, the spokesman of the group said. Then he knocked on the back window of the truck, and pointed down the road when the driver turned to face him. Suddenly the noise became deafening. The rear wheels spun on the wet road, kicking up rocks and mud. Finally the tires found traction, and the sputtering vehicle slowly moved away. Soon its small red taillights disappeared into the blackness, and Ted was once again alone.
He felt sad. He didn’t remember where he was going. And he really did need help in finding his way. Maybe he had made a mistake in not accepting the ride, but it was too late now. He stepped back onto the road, and continued in the same direction he had been heading before. He didn’t know why.
Somewhere along his journey the rain had become heavier. He was soaked, and he had no hat. His curly hair, nearly straight now, lay flat against his forehead. A raindrop hung from each strand, waiting its turn to roll down his face, around his jaw, and into his once starched but now limp shirt.
He didn’t know how long he had been walking down that same road. It seemed hours. The rain had continued steadily. Once he looked up to the hidden sky, expecting to see just one cloud directly overhead dumping its fury only on him. He saw nothing.
Suddenly it was imperative that he get off the road to somewhere that was dry. He found himself beside a flight of stairs. The rain somehow couldn’t reach him there. He felt safe. Then he heard a noise at the top of the steps. Again he felt fear. He crouched and leaned tightly against the wooden staircase. He heard voices. Only a minute or two later he heard creaking, like someone or something was coming down toward him. He tried to stop breathing. It was then that his head exploded in pain.
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Ted Warner couldn’t remember exactly when the dreams began. The first one he could recall occurred about the time he was nine. It was so real.
He was on a sidewalk facing a large building that was under construction. It looked to be only two stories high from where he was standing. It extended from the corner to an alley in the middle of a large block. The structure looked square, so the distance was about the same in the other direction. There were no doors on the structure that he could see. The opening in what appeared to be the front entrance was twice as large as any door he had ever seen.
He went inside. When he looked up he could see all the way to the roof. The second floor decking hadn’t been built yet, and there was only scaffolding in the form of two by ten lumber criss-crossing across the building’s broad expanse. Each horizontal board was approximately twelve feet long, and was supported by vertical wooden beams at each end that extended from the ground to the roof.
Suddenly he was on one of the planks about ten feet above the ground. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there. Looking down, he could see the ground floor wasn’t finished either. Most of it was still dirt. There were several piles of gravel in the huge space below him. Each was about four feet high, and more than twice that in diameter. There was an occasional wooden stake in the ground.
When he walked out toward the center of the building the narrow platform under him began moving; down and then up like a diving board at a swimming pool. It was becoming harder to maintain his balance the farther out into the open expanse he went. Still, he continued on. He started to fall, an
d tried to dive to the next board across from where he was, but it was too far. Suddenly he was free falling toward the ground. It was only ten feet, but with his body stretched out horizontally, it was extremely dangerous.. He landed in one of the stacks of gravel, and then rolled down the mound to the dirt surrounding it. A marking stake had been driven into the ground at the edge of the gravel pile, and his left eyelid brushed the wood as he tumbled by.
There was blood everywhere, but he was conscious, and not in shock. He ran across the street to his house where he once again felt safe even though he was alone. The next ten minutes were spent pulling tiny pieces of rock from his eye and its socket. He found a washcloth, saturated it with warm water, and gently rubbed around his eye, cleaning away the blood and dirt. After rinsing the cloth thoroughly, he folded it twice neatly and placed it over his eye to ease the pain he still felt. After a few minutes he removed the covering. He looked in the bathroom mirror to survey the damage. He could see a thin puffy red line on the outer part of his eyelid, an eighth inch above the lash. The cut itself was only about a quarter inch long.
When Ted awoke from the dream he realized he had thrashed around quite a bit in his sleep. Part of his covers were on the floor, and the top sheet was wrapped around his body, as if he were a mummy. Instinctively he touched his left eyelid, feeling for a cut. There was none. The dream scared him a little. He wondered if such a building really existed.
Ted Warner at nine was a little taller than the average for his age, around four and a half feet when shoeless. He had dark brown curly hair, of medium length, parted on the right side. He was a decent-looking, but gangly boy, with a slightly pointed nose. His complexion was ruddy. He tanned well in Summer. His father explained that it was because of his French heritage.
The family home was in a small community in San Diego, California called Belltown. Ted was already in the fifth grade. He had started kindergarten at the age of four. His mother later told him she put him in school so early because their family doctor had advised it due to the boy’s nervousness. He was hyperactive before physicians began using the word to describe conditions like his, and before they attributed much of the affliction to diet and nutrition. The kindly old man, Doctor Printher was his name, thought the activities of school might keep Ted from being so anxious.
Elaine Warner and her husband Owen lied about their son’s age to school officials in order to have him admitted to class. For the next thirteen years he had two birthdays; May third, his real birthday, and March third, his birthday of expedience. To Ted it was not necessarily a bad thing at the time. He couldn’t talk his parents into celebrating both with cake, ice cream, and presents, but he often tried.
Ted’s mother had a classic beauty that compared favorably with the red-headed Hollywood stars of the era; Lucille Ball and Maureen O’Hara. Her strawberry colored hair was done in waves reminiscent of the Prohibition years. Her face was flawless, except for a few freckles that stood out against her pale white skin. Her slim body on a five foot four inch frame was well proportioned. Her bosom was larger than average, but her taste in clothing, which was extravagant, hid her endowments well. Her shoes always matched her ensemble. She was immaculate, availing herself of a hairdresser once a month. Her nails were kept short, even, and well rounded, even though she did them herself. She used the palest shade of red polish, trying to match the color of both her hair and lipstick.
Elaine was thirty years old when Ted was born. He would be her only child. She was very protective of him. She didn’t work outside the home, because Owen’s income was adequate. Her husband was proud and wanted her home, even before Ted came into their lives. She acceded to her husband’s wishes, partly because it was the accepted behavior of the day, and because she wanted to give her son all the attention she could.
When they put Ted in school and started the lie about his birth date, their intentions were good. They really thought it would help him cope with life later on. They couldn’t have been more wrong. It would turn out to be an error in judgment that would affect him well beyond his adolescent years.
Owen Warner was a meat cutter. He did not like to be called a butcher, feeling he was much better than the word implied. In his mind a butcher only slaughtered the various animals that found their way into a meat market. Owen , on the other hand, used his considerable skills to cut, display, and merchandise the meat. He did no killing. He was more of a technician; an artist of sorts. Of course the buying public never understood. That contributed to the anger he always seemed to feel.
His pride and expertise probably hastened the day when he would have his own shop, and also allowed him to convince a stingy banker that he would be a good investment. It didn’t hurt that he was not available for the draft, being a family man. He also had high blood pressure. In nineteen forty-two when most young men were going off to war, he bought his first butcher shop inside a large food market.
The store was in Point Loma, an affluent suburb of San Diego, on a peninsula between the harbor and the Pacific Ocean. After three years , to be closer to the business, Owen moved his family to Ocean Bay, a community of so-called middle-class people.
In his younger days Owen Warner had wanted to be a prize-fighter. Somehow he never quite measured up. He did have the barrel-chest of a pugilist, but he was not tall; only five-eleven. Nor did he have the reach of a big man. He never had a pro fight. He hung around the local San Diego gyms. Later he bragged about having sparred with a future middle-weight champion; Art Madison. His son was duly impressed, even though he had no idea what a middle-weight was.
Ted loved almost all sports, but his favorite was football. He had become shy as a result of an inferiority complex developed over his early school years. He was always the youngest in his class. He could let out his frustrations in the contact sport, but they resurfaced in his relationships with girls.
There was one girl he liked. Her name was Rachel Carson. He was allowed to go to Saturday matinees with his friends, of which he didn’t have many. Rachel lived only a block away, and he knew her from school. Ted was good in math and spelling. His teachers entered him in spelling bees and math contests held by the elementary school each year. Rachel was the only local student who could compete with him. In fact she won most of the math contests, with Ted finishing second. The order was reversed in spelling bees. There was no national competition in those days. When Ted and his family moved to the beach, he and Rachel lost contact. It was in that year a big Army Air Force bomber dropped the first atomic bomb on a city in Japan he had never heard of. Not long afterward the war ended.
CHAPTER TWO
There were things going on in Ted’s home life that he didn’t understand.. His father had begun acting differently toward he and his mother. Always before Owen Warner had seemed like the perfect father to Ted, and an ideal husband to his mother. He was a hard worker. He was attentive to them both. He drank some, but not to excess. They did things together as a family most weekends. But everything changed in one night, and for Ted and Elaine Warner the idyllic family life they had taken for granted was gone, perhaps forever.
In the 1940’s popular music was evolving from the big band era which had enjoyed a long run. Many of the orchestras featured singers employed by the bandleader. The large group would perform the melody in its entirety, then begin again, with the singer performing the lyrics, after which, the band would again play the entire piece. Early in the decade radio stations began airing fifteen or thirty minute musical segments that featured vocal groups. They usually consisted of three or four singers. Some of the performers sang and played instruments, while others were just backup instrumentalists. The most famous of these were the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, and to a lesser extent, the King Cole Trio headed by a young singer pianist by the name of Nat Cole. All of these were Negroes.
The business of selling music on a disc of hard plastic became a thriving industry in the l940’s. The discs, or records, were about nine inches in diameter and very thi
n, approximately one sixteenth of an inch. They made seventy-eight revolutions a minute on a rotating peg that extended upward from a record playing machine that, by that time, was powered by electricity.
When a song became popular, the record producers used it to sell a collection of music by the same artist or group. These “albums” usually consisted of from four to six records. There was only one selection on each side. Each record fit into a hard paper or cardboard sleeve or pocket on the album for storage and to give the valuable collection some protection. The album cover was the same as a photo album; rigid and sturdy.
On one particular evening, Elaine and her son were sitting in their living room listening to records while waiting for Owen to come home from work so they could have dinner. Ted’s mother had prepared lamb chops, mashed potatoes and gravy, and fresh string beans. It was one of her husband’s favorite meals.
He was late. Usually you could set your clock by Owen’s promptness. He had definite ideas about everything, and he became agitated if people were not on time in their dealings with him. Once he spent ten minutes complaining to a receptionist about the wait in a doctor’s office. On this night it was he who was tardy.
When the front door finally opened and he stood there framed in the doorway, the dinner that Elaine had prepared was turning cold on the stove. There was no greeting, no apology, and there was no smile on his face. A record was playing, the speaker casting out the soft soprano voice of the lead singer of the Ink Spots, filling the small living room with pleasant sounds.
The Ink Spots were one of Owen’s favorite singing groups. On family outings, while driving the car, he often tried to imitate their sound and style. They, along with the Mills Brothers, constituted eighty percent of the family’s record collection. The seventy-eight RPM albums took up considerable space in the living room. He had purchased a record cabinet recently, and it was nearly full.
