by Frank Perdue
Ted’s father walked over to a stack of albums laying on the blue carpet. There were three of them. A few feet away were the two albums Elaine had already played while waiting for her husband, minus the one disc that was on the turntable. He picked up the top album and opened it. He pulled the first record out of its sleeve. There was a long, jagged crack near the disc’s center. The label was the only thing holding it together.
“Who did this?” he bellowed.
“What?” Elaine answered.
“Broke this record.” he said, belligerently.
“I didn’t know there was anything wrong with it “ she said calmly.
“Well there certainly is, so just tell me who did it.”
Ted had never seen his father act that way before. At first he thought it was just a joke, and he was smiling. Soon it became obvious that it was not funny to the older man. The smile left the boy’s face, and fear took its place.
“Answer me!” Owen demanded, looking right at his son. Ted was so frightened by then that he was shaking, and couldn’t speak. His face showed the terror he felt.
Suddenly his father turned from him and picked up the entire stack of precious albums. Holding them slightly above his head, he let them drop. The heavy albums hit the carpeted floor with a loud thump and cracking noise. Some of the records escaped from their sleeve and scattered over the tightly woven rug. All now had fully obvious cracks. Some were held together by the labels, others were missing pie-shaped pieces. They had become worthless in one angry gesture.
“There, I broke them,” he declared matter-of-factly. “At least I’m not afraid to admit it.” He announced, as he turned toward the door he had entered just a few minutes before. It was still open. Without another word he was gone, leaving his wife in shock, and his son in tears. It would be years before some of what had happened made sense, for it was on that day his father was diagnosed with heart disease and, in that era, was handed what amounted to a death sentence.
CHAPTER THREE
When Owen left the house that night he drove his’41 Ford coupe across the north side of Point Loma and picked up Harbor Drive. It was the quickest way to travel downtown, and the scenery was breathtaking, with the lights of the city reflected off the water of San Diego Harbor. Owen however, had something else in mind. He turned left before he got to Consolidated Aircraft, crossed Pacific Highway, and drove up a winding incline into Mission Hills. He then headed east on University Avenue until he reached East Park. Traffic was light, and it was just as well. He was driving on a short fuse that could touch off his violent temper at any time.
The neon lights of Frank’s Bar were brightly lit in red, white, and blue. Frank the owner-night bartender was a good business man. It didn’t hurt to be patriotic, especially when it helped bring customers to his establishment. The bar’s clientele was mostly local businessmen who lived nearby, but not in East Park.
Owen opened the door and stepped inside. He stood there for a moment, looking around, letting his eyes become accustomed to the darker environment. He didn’t see anyone he knew at any of the six tables that lined the walls, so he walked to the bar. No familiar faces there either. Tuesday nights weren’t really busy, not like the weekends. He had his choice of bar stools. He chose one in the far corner away from the front door, but near the lavatory. That way he could have some privacy, and see every broad up close as they came by him on their way to relieve themselves. The view going the other way wasn’t bad either. Usually he didn’t even think of women in those terms. It was just on that particular night he didn’t care about anyone. He’d consumed a couple of double bourbons and water before his confrontation with his family, and with the liquor pulsing through his veins, he was right and the rest of the cockamamie world didn’t matter.
Frank noticed Owen when he came in. He could tell that the man was not in the best of moods. Owen was a regular customer, and was always pleasant until he’d had a few drinks. Then his conversation took on a confrontational tone. It was at that point Frank had to use his people skills learned from years of experience with men and women at varying stages of drunkenness. He was always amazed at the different ways people reacted to alcohol. With Owen Warner he had found that it was best to agree with everything the man said, and steer others away from him after he’d had a few.
“Hi, Owen.” he opened. “Have a rough day?”
“You could say that.” Owen was not anxious at that point to discuss his problems with Frank, even though he liked the man.
“Bourbon and water for you this time ‘round?” The bartender could sense Warner wanted to stay within himself for a while. And he really didn’t care. All he wanted was to take the man’s money, and avoid trouble.
On that night, as luck would have it, there were no women in the bar. Owen reasoned that it was late enough, nearly midnight, that he was probably out of luck. He had really hoped that Sally Jessup would be there. Her husband was still overseas the last time Owen was with her. Somewhere in Europe she said. It had been awhile since VE day though, so maybe he had come home after all. That would be too bad. She was a nice piece of tail.
Frank brought his drink. He mumbled “thanks.” as he hoisted the amber colored glass to his lips.
“You don’t live around here anymore, do you Owen?” The bartender said as he wiped the bar next to his customer.
“Naw. I moved to the beach.”
“Which one?”
“Ocean Bay.” Owen answered as he took another sip of his drink.
“I hear that’s really sweet out there.” Frank surveyed his other two customers at the bar. They seemed to be doing okay. He had just taken drinks to the one table that was occupied. He had a few minutes for small talk with his steady customer.
“Yeah. But you know what’s best about it?” Owen was starting to relax and feel more like talking.
“No. What?”
“There aren’t any Jigs or Spics out there.”
“How about Jews?” Frank asked, baiting him. He already knew the answer.
“Yeah. There are some Jews, but the only contact I have with them is at my store.” Sally was a Jew, but she didn’t look it. He was sure Frank was unaware of that. Besides, he couldn’t tell the difference when he was screwing her.
Owen Warner was a bigot because his father taught him to be. And his father’s father before him was the same way. The family was from Texas but they weren’t ranchers or even cowboys. A grocery store in Fort Worth had been passed down through a couple of generations. Owen was the end of the chain. He wanted to go to California. He left his blood kin behind at the young age of sixteen after working in the market for three years. He didn’t have a lot of money; barely enough for the train fare, but he had big dreams. He wanted his own store by the beach.
What he got was a bone-wearying job in a slaughterhouse in Escondido. Owen was not afraid of hard work. Even though he didn’t earn much money he was able to save a little each week. Soon he moved from the rooming house he had found in Escondido to a small cottage in the East Park section of San Diego. Rent was cheap in East Park.
He started going to a gym in downtown San Diego on his day off, which was Thursday. He had always been good with his fists. One of the local trainers saw something in him when he was punching the bag, and skipping rope, and all of the other little things that make up the training regimen of a boxer. He helped the kid with his footwork, and taught him to cover up, and jab, and get some force behind his punches by using his whole body, not just his arms. The way the trainer explained it, it was a lot like a power hitter in baseball; striding into the pitch and turning his hips to attain more bat speed. They worked on balance too, and added a few new blows like crosses, and counters. Next they worked on Combinations. Soon he was ready for sparring matches with the regulars. Of course, up to that point there was no money in it.
It was at that time in his life he met Elaine Brown. She was elegant. At first he thought she was rich. As it turned out she was a clerk in the five a
nd dime a few blocks from the gym. He met her at the lunch counter of her store. She was sitting next to him, and the ketchup was too far away even for his boarding house reach. So he asked her to pass it his way. Their eyes met just for an instant as she complied.
She seemed different. Her clothes were definitely not department store quality, and her hair really swept him away. He had seen red hair before, but not so well kept. He thanked her for the help, and then went back to his meal. A few minutes later he asked her if she worked nearby. Hell, he thought she probably owned one of those big stores downtown.
“Yes, I work here.” She said, emphasizing the last word. It would not have occurred to her to lie, or act better than she was.
“Maybe I’ll see you here again, sometime?” Owen made it a question.
“Well, I work days. I sometimes eat my dinner here before I go home,” she offered. There was something about this rough looking young man with the good manners that interested her. She hoped she would see him again. They both left it at that and went their separate ways after their meal.
The young street fighter was fast becoming a boxer, and a good one. Luck was something else. He had no manager. The club trainer took him under his wing, and he was making good progress. People were starting to notice him. He felt that he would soon start making some extra cash with real bouts in front of paying customers. He even allowed himself to dream about becoming a contender in his weight class, which was middleweight. In one of the sparring matches at the gym, he was body punching his opponent in the corner of the ring when his adversary quickly moved out of range. A devastatingly strong punch thrown by Owen Warner missed its mark, and his gloved fist landed instead squarely on the metal ring post. The damage wasn’t immediately apparent, although the pain was intense. When it was still hurting the next day he went to a doctor. The diagnosis was three cracked bones in his hand. It was placed in a cast, and he was warned not to fight again for a year. It wasn’t a week later that Art Madison, a middleweight contender, announced that he would make his headquarters in the gym to train for a title fight.
Seeing Elaine Brown, and he saw her every chance he had, eased his disappointment over the loss of his boxing career. After a few months, and about thirty silent movies, the young couple realized they were in love. Owen had moved into a retail store where he was a journeyman meat cutter. He earned quite a bit more money than when he and Elaine had first met, so they got married. Owen was barely twenty-one years old, and Elaine was twenty. It was nineteen twenty-four.
It would be a reach calling Owen Warner a handsome man. Nevertheless, in nineteen forty-five, there were some women who found him attractive. It certainly wasn’t his nose that stirred them, for it resembled an eagle’s beak, only without the sharp point to it. It curved downward gradually. His thinning hair was straight and combed back without flair. Though he prided himself on his French heritage, his skin was pallid, rather pale. Were he a younger man, his appearance might conjure up visions of the pugilist he once was. At the age of forty-two, with much of his energy eroded by a heart that pumped only weakly, his broad shoulders slumped perceptibly. His chest, though still large by most standards, appeared set back by an even larger stomach. His eyes, or the fire in them, had not yet died. That was the one physical characteristic that still made women take a second look. Perhaps it is always true of Frenchmen that their eyes reflect the strong passion within them. Of course it didn’t hurt that there were very few men available in those months before Japan surrendered, and World War Two ended.
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On this night Owen would come up empty. He sat there at the end of the dimly lit bar until a little past one. He must have consumed six shots of bourbon by then; drinks made progressively weaker by Frank the bartender, as he poured from a bottle diluted with distilled water that he kept under the bar. It bothered him that he cheated his heavy-drinking bourbon customers, but he rationalized it with the perception that he probably saved their lives; the driving ones anyway. Why was it that the potential problem drinkers always drank bourbon? Frank had a theory about that. In the movies of the late thirties and early forties the tough guys all drank bourbon straight with water chasers. Either the writers or the directors of those movies must have decided it was the manly way to drink. He doubted that they themselves drank the stuff that way. To him it tasted bad. Those artistic types had to be smarter than that.
When Owen finally gave up his quest for amorous company, and stepped out onto the sidewalk of University Avenue, he was struck by the brightness of the night. He glanced down at the Bulova watch on his right wrist. It was one-thirty. Suddenly he noticed the full moon. It was about thirty degrees above the south horizon. The skies over East Park were cloudless. The Santa Ana winds of the daytime had died, but not before pushing all the coastal clouds offshore. The moon looked especially huge that night because, dwarfed almost in its center were large twin oil drums that loomed high above the East Park theater.
CHAPTER FOUR
There is a spot, almost midway between Point Loma and Ocean Bay, at the highest point above the Pacific Ocean before the land to the east drops off into a canyon, that is magnificent for the view it offers. The Pacific is right there to behold about eight city blocks to the west and perhaps six hundred feet below the ridge, affording different shades, from turquoise blue when skies are clear, to gray under an overcast. To the northwest, perhaps five miles away and also visible from the ridge, are the hundreds of acres of land and water that make up Mission Bay. West of the Bay on a tiny peninsula lies Mission Beach, a resort and recreation community with a strip of perhaps the whitest beach sand in the world, and an amusement park that features a wooden frame roller coaster. Just beyond Mission Beach stretches Pacific Beach and then the hills surrounding La Jolla, playground of the rich. On a day with good visibility all of these sites can be seen from the one vantage point.
In nineteen forty-five Owen and Elaine Warner couldn’t believe their luck when they were able to purchase a house on that spot for fifteen thousand dollars. Actually that was a fair price, since it was a good five or six thousand above the general market for homes without a view on the east side of the canyon. The canyon itself was undeveloped, but wouldn’t be for long. By nineteen forty-six the real estate and land market would get a tremendous boost from the returning servicemen, and the GI Bill.
At first Elaine was uneasy being in the house by herself when her husband had to work late. Of course Ted was there with her but he was still a child. Soon though, she came to realize that living in Ocean Bay was not the same as surviving in East Park, where they had lived until Ted was four. Or, for that matter, in Belltown where they had resided until they saved their money and found their dream house. There was no crime at the beach; not yet.
When her husband hadn’t returned by midnight that night, Elaine Warner knew that he might not be back at all. She didn’t know the woman’s name, and she didn’t care to. She would call the store in the morning to be sure he was all right, and he would apologize for his behavior the night before. He would assure her that he wouldn’t act that way again. He would even come home from work earlier than usual, maybe with a gift to make it up to her. She knew it would happen again. She just didn’t know why.
They had been married for over twenty years. They were good years. The two of them struggled to make ends meet. They fretted over their childless early years, but they were together. When Ted finally came along it drew them even closer. The last ten years were the nearest thing to heaven she knew. She even came to tolerate all the negative and degrading things he felt about the non-white races, and the Jews. Of course he considered Jews non-white. She, on the other hand, wouldn’t intentionally hurt anyone’s feelings.
She had not looked at another man throughout their married years. She had not wanted to. Owen was enough man for her. When Ted was born, she had everything she wanted.
Elaine didn’t believe that it was a female who had come between them, even though she knew of the w
omen in her husband’s life. He had quite an appetite. The strange thing was, that their sex life, hers and Owen’s, had not changed. He was still as voracious and loving in bed as always. What had happened that one night was out of character for her husband. Something had to be wrong. What could it be?
She sent Ted to bed at about nine-thirty, since the next day was a school day. He had asked her what was wrong. She told him that his father probably had a really bad day at work.
It was a little past two in the morning when she heard a key in the lock. It took a minute but presently Owen stood at their open bedroom door.
“Come to bed, dear.” Elaine said it rather matter-of-factly.
Owen was drunk and extremely tired by that time. He didn’t say a word. He removed his clothes, letting them fall to the floor. The normally meticulous man fell on the bed. He was already asleep when Elaine tugged at the covers under him until they came free. She covered him, putting the blanket snugly over his shoulders. She looked at the little alarm clock on the nightstand by his side of the bed. Her eyes had long since become accustomed to the dark. She wondered if he would be able to rise in three and a half hours to begin a new day.
She lay awake for another hour before finally dropping off to a restless sleep. Her mind was searching for answers that wouldn’t come to light for another year.
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Ted did not awaken when his father came home. He was dreaming. He had a girl with him. She was about his size with the same color hair, but much longer. It flowed in brown ringlets to her shoulders. It looked tangled, like it hadn’t been combed in a while. Her skin was tanned, but she wasn’t as dark as Ted. She wore a boy’s shirt in long-sleeve style, and brown pants that looked like dirty wrinkled slacks. Her tennis shoes had once been white. She wore no socks.
