Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [108]
Back home I moved in temporarily with Harry Read and his mother and resumed my life. After the war nobody really expected much from my running career. They figured I’d had a rough time and it was all over—until I opened my big mouth and told them different. So now I got up every morning at five-thirty and worked out in the arroyo nearby. My body tested out okay as I ran up and down the little canyon, again and again, and managed to clock a 4:18 mile in heavy tennis shoes, which meant I could probably run a 4:13 in competition. I’d have to press harder to get into world-class shape, so I doubled up my workouts.
At night, instead of carousing as usual with Harry, I sent him off alone. Sometimes he’d try to set me up, but I wasn’t interested.
One morning, out of the blue, Harry’s mother said, “Louie, how come every day I see the same car parked in front of my house, with the same guy in the car?”
Good question. Later I found out that Cynthia’s father wanted to catch me misbehaving and discourage the relationship, so he’d hired a private eye to see if I went out with other girls. (When I told Cynthia about the stakeout, she laughed too hard to be mad. “Well, I wouldn’t put it past my father to have me watched,” she said.)
When Cynthia and I couldn’t stand being apart any longer, she told her parents that she planned to visit me in Los Angeles. Naturally they forbade it and refused to give her the money. Only when Cynthia threatened to get a job and earn her fare did the Applewhites finally understand their daughter’s determination.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” her mother asked. “You know we only want you to be happy. I’ll buy your plane ticket and you stay out there for a week and find out about his family. You know, there could be insanity or something.”
Mr. Applewhite wasn’t that easy to convince. In fact, he reacted furiously to the plan, but it was too late. I’d met Cynthia in March 1946. In May she came west to visit and I met her at the airport. News of our engagement had already hit the papers. We’d set the date for August, but the Los Angeles Times ran a picture of her getting off the plane and another of us on a running track, with the caption, “Will they jump the gun?”
Why would they even care? They just did. Everywhere Cynthia and I drove in my convertible, people would stop and stare. While we waited at the stop sign at the intersection of Wilshire and Western Boulevards, the busiest in town at the time, people at all four corners waved and shouted, “Have a great marriage!”
Cynthia’s trip wasn’t all flashbulbs and fun, though. When she saw my family’s little house—a shack to her—and met my dad with his Italian accent, I could tell she had misgivings. Doubts. Questions. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t stop stewing. I got mad and said, “Maybe we better call the whole thing off.” Neither of us wanted that, so we talked it through and realized that our life together was pretty well clinched.
We decided not to put off the wedding any longer. I had accumulated about $10,000 in back pay and been allowed to keep almost $1,600 in life insurance payments, so we had no immediate financial worries. We got blood tests and a marriage license, sidestepped a few other technicalities, and on May 25, 1946, we were married in the Episcopal church Cynthia had attended as a child.
After the reception, at a friend’s house, we went to the Chatham Hotel. Everyone thought we were across the street at the world-famous Ambassador. I brought a magnum of champagne I’d borrowed from the party.
“I want to call my mother first,” Cynthia said as I popped the cork. Her parents had a fit at the news, and she stayed on the phone for over an hour, crying. I sat there, disgusted, saying, “Call her back in the morning,” to no avail. Instead, I drank all the champagne myself. I didn’t pass out, but I went to bed drunk. Heck of a marriage night.
BEFORE THE WEDDING Victor McLaglen, the actor, and Jim Jeffries, the prizefighter, gave me