Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [110]
“What’s the matter?” I asked nervously. “What happened?”
“You learned a little lesson,” my friend told me. “Someone walked by with a lady friend and you patted her in the wrong place. The guy she was with didn’t like the idea and patted you once—in the right place.” My fighting also got worse. At a Newport Beach bar with buddies I got shoved accidentally by a guy who weighed about fifty pounds more than I did. I didn’t care. My blood boiled for revenge. I got him out on the sand and danced around him until he was winded. Then I attacked, punching him until he went down, then pushing his face in the sand for good measure. Suddenly I was like the kid who had beat the bakery-truck driver to a pulp and left him by the roadside, not knowing whether he was dead or alive.
Realizing that I needed help, Cynthia put aside her fears and anger and tried to calm me and to help me restore some measure of self-respect. But all that helped, though only temporarily, was another dose of recognition, like when Torrance held a ceremony dedicating Zamperini Field. Sitting there with my wife and family, listening to the mayor and some military bigwigs give me the most generous compliments imaginable, I wondered what they’d do if they knew the truth about my high life and my low life and all the demons in between.
DURING A SMALL dinner party on Harry’s yacht I seriously lost control. Cynthia agreed to cook the steaks on a tiny, slow butane stove, and we joshed her mercilessly as she struggled. When dinner was served I made one more joking, disparaging comment. That did it. Cynthia told us off, left the boat, and went to the car. I followed. “Get back on board,” I ordered. “You’re spoiling the party.”
“I will not,” she said. “Either take me to your parents’ place or give me money for a bus ticket home.” She got in the car. I did, too, furious, and repeated my demand. She ignored me. Without realizing it, I grabbed her and…let’s just say she was coughing and choking when I let go of her. In shock, I ran back to the boat and the bottle. Cynthia went to my parents’ house.
That night, as I lay alone in bed, the nightmares returned with unusual ferocity. Just as my fingers clutched the Bird’s windpipe and crushed it, I woke with a start and sat up in bed shouting. Had Cynthia been there she’d have calmed me, but she wasn’t. Sweat poured off my body, and I remembered what had happened earlier in the car. I froze. I couldn’t get even with the Bird or avenge my life in Japan, so I got even with everybody else. What if by mistake I reached out for Cynthia’s neck in the middle of a bad dream? I couldn’t go back to sleep. I sat up, staring out the window at the streetlights and then the dawn, then went running, pushing myself during my workout as if I were trying to get away from everything that had happened to me.
CYNTHIA AND I made up, and I decided that a rededication to racing would help me get better. I bought some new running shoes and worked out at Los Angeles City College. Cynthia came and timed me.
I did it for the self-esteem. I wanted to win again, to fill the gaping hole in my life. And yet, though I approached my workouts with the best positive attitude I could muster, I resented them. Why must I run? Why did people insist I try again? Weren’t my previous achievements enough? Maybe if I hadn’t bragged to the clubs and organizations that had paid good money to hear the Great Zamperini speak that I’d be back for the next three Olympics, I’d have acted differently. In truth, no one had forced me to run but me; I still believed that my only true identity lay with the sport.
One morning I warmed up with some short sprints, then jogged over to Cynthia. She told me I had a “pretty stride” in my new shoes. I snapped, “Cut the remarks and just time me.”
Her face wrinkled up and she began to cry, but my heart remained cold. I’d given her money, a place to live, good times, and soon I’d be a famous runner again. What more could she want? After all, the past few months hadn’t been