by Frank Perdue
“Couldn’t you hire someone?” Ted softened his tone, somewhat.
“The profit margin wouldn’t allow it. I had no choice but to sell. I decided to look for something down here, and we could all work together again.”
Ted sighed. It would be so easy to just go along with the old man. He would again be working full-time. There would be more money. He wouldn’t have to worry about the future. The only problem was, it would be his father’s life, not his.
“I can’t do it Dad. I have to go my own way.” He wanted to say “I love you”, but he couldn’t get it out.
He stuck to his guns. His father finally realized that he would lose the argument. They visited for awhile, but the strain was felt by all. When they left Ted’s apartment that night, they each understood that an era was over. And they were saddened by the realization. Even Ted felt strangely dejected.
In the weeks that followed, Ted continued to work only weekends. It soon
became apparent to him that it would take much longer than he thought to become a fully employed journeyman. There was little left of his money after paying rent.
Most of his friends were gone now. When Ted went to the beach, often as not it was by himself. All the people there were strangers.
He made another decision. He would join the Navy after all; if he could get his dad to sign the enlistment papers. He was still seventeen. He would be unable to enter the Service without parental permission. Somehow that made him feel juvenile.
Ted’s mom and dad were staying with friends in Belltown. His dad was selling cars. It was a profession he had fallen back on before, when the meat business was slow. They were looking for an apartment or small house to rent. All this made Ted feel very small. He knew it was his fault that things had gone badly for them. If he had just stayed put in Big Bear, things wouldn’t have been so tough on them. But it was something he felt he had to do. Now there was no turning back.
When he left his place one morning and headed south in the direction of Belltown, he decided to take a shortcut through the neighborhood instead of using the arterials. As he drove slowly down one street he suddenly felt very strange, as if he had been there before. He pulled over to the curb and stopped, shutting off his engine.
On his right was a large Seventh Day Adventist Church. He noticed it because it seemed so out of place. The area was old, with small wood-frame houses. Many of them needed paint. All had large porches leading to their front door, as if the same builder had constructed each. The church was different. It was obviously much newer, and it was very large. Its size stood out starkly against the diminutive family structures that surrounded it.
Ted was not usually interested in churches. His religious upbringing was sadly lacking. He had been Christened in the Baptist faith, but had given up its practice by the time he was ten. If there was any blame to be given for that fact, it would have to fall on his parents for not insisting he accompany them on Sunday mornings. There were other things Ted would rather be doing.
This particular house of worship was oddly familiar. He had no idea why that would be. Ted, to his knowledge, had never been on that street before.
He reached down and fumbled for the key in the ignition. When he turned it the old car labored and shook, but the engine finally started. He slowly pulled away from the curb, and continued on his journey to his sure confrontation with his father.
As it turned out, his parents were already resigned to his new individualism. They agreed to sign whatever paperwork would be needed. It consoled them to know that the thirteen weeks of their son’s basic training would be conducted right there in San Diego.
Of course the Navy was not the free ride that Ted expected. Boot Camp nearly killed him, physically. Most of the first six weeks was spent running and marching, with a few classes thrown in. It started with reveille at five AM. They marched to morning chow, and lunch chow. Ted wondered where the name chow came from. It sounded as if they were eating a dog. Free time was at a premium. There was no liberty at all for the first month and a half. Laundry was done completely by hand. For a spoiled only child it was almost too much. Often at night, just before an exhausted sleep claimed him, Ted Warner considered quitting.
Somehow he stuck it out. After six weeks it got better. There was still early bugle. The physical training kept on. But by then he was in much better condition. Rising before the Sun had gradually become natural.
The recruits were allowed eight hours of liberty on either Saturday or Sunday during the last seven weeks of training. Ted looked older than he was, but not old enough to get into the downtown bars. He went back to the grocery store by the beach where other boys had found it so easy to pass for twenty-one when he was in high school. It helped that he had a car. He was very popular with the other underage recruits. Ted and one or two others usually drove into the hills, and drank beer or whatever else they could buy.
It was during one of those short breaks that he became a man. No he didn’t get laid. He got a tattoo. He was, of course, drunk at the time. He did have enough presence of mind to have a tasteful piece of artistry needle-stitched into his left arm; a heart with an arrow going through it, and the lettering Mom and Dad on a ribbon wrapped around it.
Over the next year things improved, but not much. Ted met a student nurse in Jacksonville, Florida, where the Navy had sent him; to Aviation school, of all things. Apparently his meat cutting career was over.
The girl introduced herself to him during an outing at the USO in town. It was where he spent much of his liberty time. They saw a few movies together, and petted in her car. She was not looking for love, only distraction from her tedious studies. He didn’t know for what he was searching. They parted friends when he was transferred to Radioman School in Eastern Pennsylvania. Their sexual experience together consisted of three kisses.
After graduation, instead of being transferred to the fleet, he was sent to Point Venture, a Naval Air Facility on the Southern California coast. The base was seventy-five miles north of Los Angeles, and only two hundred miles from his home town.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ted Warner received an honorable discharge from the Navy two weeks before his twenty-first birthday. His ship had sailed, literally.
He’d been assigned to the U.S.S. Roosevelt a year earlier. It was a new vessel. By the time it was deemed seaworthy and ready for an extended cruise, Ted was within a month of his discharge date, so he was left stateside when the ship steamed away to Hawaii and Japan. It was cheaper for the government to be deprived of the services of one sailor than to ship him and his belongings back from the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The Korean war was over. The Communist North Koreans were back behind the thirty-eighth parallel. A treaty was shakily in place to keep them there.
Ted was not enamored with the Navy; not enough to sign up for four more years. He’d had a few good times, met some nice people, and some who were not pleasant at all. It was time to move on.
The Roosevelt’s home port was, of course, San Diego. For some strange reason Ted kept gravitating back there. He’d been to the East Coast, when he was in Navy schools, and to the Pacific Northwest, where his ship had lain in drydock. Now here he was, about to be discharged where it had all started. But something was different this time around.
It happened just a little more than a year after he reported to his duty station at Point Venture. He was standing his regular watch in the radio room. It was about two in the afternoon. He would be off at four.
When his Chief walked into the small cubicle that was used for radio liaison with airborne traffic, Ted heard, rather than saw, the big man. The only door was behind him.
The Chief, in his khaki working uniform, cleared his throat. The younger man turned on his swivel chair to face his senior.
“Son” he started, very ill at ease. “We’ve had some news from San Diego.”
“Yes, sir.” Ted still had trouble in not referring to Chiefs as sir. “Yes Chief”, would
have been the proper reply.
The Chief let it go. “Your father has died!”
Ted was numb, and at a loss for words. He had seen Owen Warner just two weeks earlier. They had argued as usual, but he seemed to be in good health. Just then, Ted couldn’t even remember what the dispute had been about.
He was granted emergency leave almost immediately. The Chief took care of all the paperwork.
He couldn’t drive south. On Ted’s last trip his old Plymouth, which had replaced the ancient Chevy when it up and died, had thrown a rod. It wasn’t worth fixing. He had gotten thirty dollars for it at the junk yard.
There were no flights scheduled out, and an enlisted man certainly didn’t rate a special aircraft, no matter what the emergency.
After he had changed into his dress uniform at the barracks, Ted hitched a ride to the south gate. Once there, he walked the hundred yards or so to Highway One, and stuck out his thumb. Hopefully he would get a ride all the way to San Diego.
He stood out on the Coast Highway for maybe twenty minutes. It was a slow traffic day. He counted only five cars going his way. Some days were like that. It was bad luck, when he was in such a hurry.
He heard someone yelling his name. It was the base guard. He walked rapidly back toward the gate house.
“You have a phone call,” The marine called loudly. Ted was still twenty yards out toward the highway.
It was his Chief. It seems that a high ranking officer had to get to North Island in San Diego. They were preparing an SNB to leave right away. Given the circumstances, Ted was cleared to ride along. The flight on the small reconnaissance plane was bumpy, but much quicker than the highway.
The bus trip to Belltown from the main gate at North Island took about forty minutes, because, to get to what the sailors referred to as the mainland, it was either a half-hour drive through Imperial Beach almost to San Ysidro, and then back about the same distance into San Diego, or a fifteen minute ferry ride right to the wharf in the big city. The bus that Ted caught used the ferry.
His mother was not alone, thank God. She had many friends, and they were all crowded into the tiny apartment that, until that day, she had shared with her husband of twenty nine years.
There had been no time to talk that night. By the time the guests had gone to their own homes, both Ted and Elaine Warner were exhausted.
Ted had been notified of his father’s death on a Tuesday. The funeral was held on the following Friday. He viewed his father’s body the night before the services. Owen Warner had not been a faithful churchgoer, so the memorial was held in a funeral home.
Ted had not cried up until the time he saw his father lying in his coffin. The corpse looked waxen and not real, not at all like the vital man Ted knew. He remembered the temper, and the autocratic way in which Owen had treated his wife, but he also thought of the companion who had taken him to the wrestling matches, and the movies.
He said “So long, Pop.” Then he sobbed uncontrollably. There was no one else in the room, so it was all right.
That Saturday he and his mother finally had a chance to talk. She knew he would have to return to the Navy on Monday.
“You’re the man of the house now,” she said, reaching for his hand as he sat there on the soft cushions of the chair that had always been reserved for his father. The rocker had been in the household since before Big Bear Lake. It was like a friend the old man couldn’t bear to say goodbye to. Ted wouldn’t have dreamed of sitting there, even now, but his mother insisted.
“You know your father was only forty-nine years old,” his mother continued. It was not a question. She was not looking at Ted. She stared out the living room window, but she didn’t see anything. She was deep in her thoughts of the past. “We would have been married thirty years this November.” At thirty-five years she would make the same statement, and at forty. The earlier rift and his indiscretions were already forgotten. He was once again the love of her life. It didn’t matter that he was gone. She would always love Owen Warner.
“He asked me never to tell you this, but now that he’s gone, I don’t see the harm.” Now she was looking deeply into his eyes. She wanted to see Ted’s reaction to what she was about to reveal.
“Do you remember the night we were listening to records, and your father came home and smashed them?”
“Yes.” It was indelibly burned into his brain. It was without a doubt the low point in his relationship with the man who had been his father.
“Before he came home that night, he had been to see a doctor; a heart specialist. He was told that he had heart disease. It was then he found out that he could not live without nitro-glycerin tablets from that day forward.”
Ted just stared at his mother. Why hadn’t he been told? But as soon as he thought it, he knew the answer. He’d been only nine years old. That’s not something you tell a little kid.
He stared down at the asphalt tile flooring. It’s crazy what you think of sometimes. The thought entered his mind that his father had lived all his life. There was no more. And he couldn’t even afford a rug for his living room.
Owen Warner had been so vain, so private a man, that when he had his fatal attack he couldn’t get to his nitro. No one knew that he was taking it. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.
Ted left on Monday as scheduled. He took a Greyhound Bus back to his base.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ted’s eyes opened wide. His left hand instinctively rose to where there had been pain just seconds before. There was nothing; no pain, and no cut. He lay safely in his bunk. Only his nerves were damaged. The barracks was quiet, except for the sound of his still labored breathing.
He looked at his watch. It was too dark to read the face of it. He rose and walked the hundred feet to the head. He closed the door, lit a match, and saw that it was two AM.
It had been quite awhile since he had experienced one of those dreams. He hadn’t missed them. They were, in fact, very disturbing, and this last had been the worst yet. He’d been in uniform, but not his Navy blues. This time he was a Marine. It seemed as if he was in a far-away land, one he couldn’t recognize. Who hit him, and why? Would the answers ever come, or would the dream itself be forgotten after awhile? He never discussed them with anyone for fear his confidante might think him deranged. For a while he actually thought he had outgrown them.
These dreams were unlike others he had. They were not disjointed, or foggy. They were completely real. They told a story from start to finish, or until he was shaken awake by the events. It had been over two years since the last one. That time he was still a kid.
In the autumn of nineteen fifty-three things were looking up for Ted. Warner. Until then he’d been unable to shake his feelings of inadequacy in his relationships with girls. Of course he was only nineteen, but he felt time was running out somehow. He’d been out on dates, and he’d even come close to actually doing it. Then his clumsiness and insecurity surfaced, and his partner backed away. Of course he was always attracted to good girls who just weren’t ready. He didn’t think about that. He heard all the stories of conquest floating around the barracks, and at his tender age he believed them. That just fueled his inferiority complex.
Things were about to change, however. Tonight, he had a date that would be different. One of the older Petty Officers had told him about this girl. She was a nymphomaniac. She loved to do it. She couldn’t get enough. If only half of what he was told was true, he had it made. He had asked the guy why, if she was so hot, he wanted to dump her on Ted. He answered without hesitation that he had met someone else. Dorothy the nympho was trying to smother him with her constant needs.
That was good enough for Ted. He called her, said he had seen her around, and she looked like she would be fun to be with. He had been coached by her ex-lover on what to say. It worked.
He didn’t have a car, but she did. It didn’t bother her at all to pick him up. They went to a drive-in movie. He put his arm over her shoulders. She said she was a little c
old. He pulled her closer, and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips immediately parted and her tongue found its way into his mouth. He rose to the occasion.
Dorothy was tall for a woman, but she had small breasts. Ted found that out as he cupped one of them. She was wearing a brassiere. It didn’t occur to him to loosen it. He clumsily fondled her for a while, not knowing for sure what to do next. She suggested that the movie wasn’t that good, and why didn’t they leave. He agreed.
She drove to a wooded area outside Point Venture. Soon they came to a clearing where the road widened. Dorothy cut the engine of her small Plymouth. They were alone.
He reached for her. She slid willingly across the bench seat toward him. His hand once again found her breast. She said “Wait”, and moved slightly away. Then she reached both hands behind her back and pulled her blouse over her head. Her bra straps fell from her creamy-white shoulders, and suddenly she was bare from the waist up.
This had never happened to Ted before. All the decision making was taken from him. They were really going to do it. He reached for the hem of her skirt. She let him slide the garment down over her long slim legs until it fell to the dirty floorboard of her old car. Her silk-like panties took the same route. Suddenly the urgency of the moment engulfed him, and he fumbled rapidly with his belt, then his pants, as she reached for him. He didn’t quite get his pants over his shoes, and they languished at his ankles as he pulled her down on the narrow seat and moved on top of her. He guided himself into her, and was surprised at how easily they coupled. He covered both her breasts with his hands, and gently moved his body back and forth, pressing alternately into and away from her.
He was becoming extremely warm. Nothing was happening. He had been sure he would explode as soon as he entered her, but that didn’t happen. It was probably the awkwardness of the situation, and the newness of the experience. Given his lack of confidence, he was sure it was impotence.
It was then that Dorothy took charge of the situation. She must have sensed that it was his first time. Amazingly it didn’t matter to her. She just wanted to complete the act. She gently pushed him away from her. “Sit up” she said, softly. Then when he complied, she straddled him and slid downward to rest firmly on his lap, pressing herself against him from his groin to his shoulders. As if that weren’t erotic enough, she began moving slowly up and down while retaining complete contact with his upper torso. The sweat he had produced earlier acted as a lubricant, and they meshed perfectly.
