Devil at My Heels: The Story of Louis Zamperini (2 page)

When I was still in elementary school I climbed an oil rig just for fun. The wood rungs nailed to the side often cracked in the sun. One came loose, and I fell twelve feet, landing on the corrugated pump-house roof, then bounced into a sump hole ten feet deep and filled with oil. You can’t swim in oil. I sank like a rock until my feet touched a drilling pipe that had long ago disappeared into the black waste. I straddled it, then grabbed it. Fortunately, it was well rusted; my hands held, and I inched my way up until I broke the surface, heaving for air.

After I got out I walked home, covered in gunk. My eyes burned so much I could hardly see. People on my street didn’t recognize me; maybe they thought I was the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Even my mother wasn’t sure it was me. “Toots,” she called. “Is that you?” My dad had just come home from work and had to clean me with a gallon of turpentine and a paintbrush. He started at the top of my head. Boy, that stuff stung. Then he put me in a tub of hot water. I thought my skin would parboil off.

My parents tried hard to change me, but in those days there was no widespread psychology for kids, particularly poor kids, so I was just off and running. All they could do was put up with me. By the time I turned twelve, I was out of control, full of ill will and clever ideas.

I still remember a few.

My friends and I would take long pieces of wire and shove toilet paper into pay-phone coin-return slots. Later we’d come back with a hooked wire and remove the paper—and have enough money backed up behind it to last a week.
Once, because a Red Car conductor wouldn’t stop for us and we had to wait for the next train, we put thick axle grease on the tracks just where he had to brake for the station, then waited. Every morning three women took that train to work in Gardena. They stood on the platform as usual, and as the train neared the station the conductor applied the brakes—and kept on going. The women screamed bloody murder; they thought he’d ignored
them
on purpose, making them late for work. The conductor had no idea what happened. He finally stopped the train, got out, stepped on the track, slipped and fell. Now he knew. He had to collect dirt and sprinkle it on the grease. Then he backed up and let the women onboard and had to listen as they gave him a piece of their minds.

I knew who around town made their own beer and wine. These were small-time bootleggers—and neighbors—who did whatever they could to make a dollar during the Depression. They probably sold half of what they made and drank the other half. On Saturday nights, when everyone went to the movies, we’d break into their houses and steal the booze. Then we’d stash it in a cave we’d dug in the wilderness part of Tree Row. Our victims were helpless because even though we’d later walk around brazenly tipsy, they couldn’t report us without risking their own hides.

After I got nabbed drinking beer at Hermosa Beach, I had a great idea to get around getting caught. I worked at the dairy, probably to pay for some trouble I’d caused. I took a milk bottle, poured in white paint, and rolled it around, coating the inside. I turned it upside down and set it on a newspaper overnight, then put it in the sun and let it dry for three days. When I filled it with wine or beer and went to the beach, the lifeguards thought I was a good, clean-cut kid drinking milk.

Another classic prank was ringing the church bell to wake up the town. I figured out how to get up in the tower, tied piano wire around the bell, and dropped the other end down the side of the building. I walked the wire across the street and climbed into a pepper tree. When the town rolled up the sidewalks—usually at nine-thirty, ten o’clock—and the streets were mostly dark, my buddy and I pulled the wire.
Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
I could see lights blink on all over, and
people rush out of their houses. One woman stood under the pepper tree and said, “Oh,
Mama mia,
it’s a miracle!” The only miracle is that she didn’t see me above her.

By the time the fire truck and police arrived, I had disappeared.

My favorite caper was stealing pies from Meinzner’s Pie Shop after a guy who worked there humiliated me by slamming the screen door in my face when my friends and I asked if there were any broken pies he would give away, like the restaurants regularly did with leftover cobblers on Saturday nights. A few weeks later another gang copied our crime, got caught, and bragged they’d been responsible for
all
the thefts. I wanted the police to know the real culprits were still at large, so my gang took more pies. The next day the headline in the Torrance paper read:
MEINZNER’S ROBBED AGAIN
.

Some incidents I’m still ashamed of:

I worked on a dairy farm when I was eight. A bull became enraged and charged me, and I had to dive through the fence to safety, scraping and bruising myself in the process. Later I used my Daisy BB gun to pepper the bull’s long, hanging scrotum. Let’s just say he was furious.

When a dog on my paper route bit me I used my BB gun once more, and the dog never bothered me again.

I was famous for shooting spit wads at girls but invariably ended up in a classroom corner facing the wall for my trouble. However, when a teacher put me there for a wad I hadn’t spit, I let the air out of her car tires after school.

Roger, a classmate with whom I had a disagreement, punched me in the back. I lay in wait for him after school and pummeled him bloody. Later, he and his father came to our house and accused me of breaking poor Roger’s nose. The dad was so pushy and insistent that my uncle Bert threw him off the porch and broke
his
nose.

MY TRANSFORMATION INTO
a rebel with a chip on his shoulder was soon complete. But even though we were poor and I’d had it tough in some ways, I couldn’t claim “I never had a chance.” No one had beaten me into sullen defiance or ignored me entirely. My father
didn’t use his paycheck for liquor instead of food. My mother wasn’t a shrew or a slattern or an ineffectual drudge. I had no dissolute background; I just acted like I wanted to even though I loved my family, even though when my dad beat me I knew I deserved it and respected him for disciplining me. I was just a social misfit, the proverbial square peg who couldn’t fit into the round hole like the rest, or appreciate what he had. Over the years I’ve seen it happen to other kids; they’re raised immaculately, and then at a certain age, boom, here comes trouble.

I USED TO
go to the Catholic church, often barefooted. The church was about eight blocks from home, and one time I came in late because I’d been goofing off on the way. The place was jammed. I found an end seat and sat down. To my surprise, the priest stopped, walked off the altar and right to me, grabbed me by the ear, and twisted it. He said, “You go home and get a note from your mother about why you’re late.” I got so mad, I wanted to strike him. Instead, I stalked out in a huff.

At home I told my mother, “I’m never going back. I’d rather die.” Afterward, I always avoided the priest. It was a small town. When I’d see him coming down the street, I’d go down another street. I didn’t want him to bawl me out again, to domineer me. Instead I went to the Baptist church with a buddy. My mother and dad thought that as long as it was a church, it was good, so they’d give me a dime. I was supposed to put it in the offering plate, but I’d keep it and ride the roller coaster at the Redondo Beach pier.

My parents didn’t go to church. They weren’t really devoted. Plus, we were too strapped to give anything when the priest came to the door, so they’d just act like no one was home until he gave up and left.

EVENTUALLY I GOT
mixed up with older troublemakers, and that pushed me over the edge. They knew my reputation and wanted to get me involved in all sorts of mischief. I let them lead me by the nose until I was well groomed in the art of disorder and started my own gang. John, Billy, myself, and even a girl were social castoffs with one desire:
to get even with anyone who looked at us cross-eyed. And if it involved protecting my family, my thirst for revenge was all the more keen.

We were an unruly bunch, but everyone agreed on one point: they took their orders from me. My nickname was “the Brain.” I came up with the ideas. Stealing was our sport; nothing else was as exciting. I loved outwitting others, destroying property, and the thrill of being chased—as long as we escaped. We swiped everything from chocolate bars to auto parts, and when we ran out of trouble to cause we roamed town egging other gangs into BB-gun wars or brawls. If we got caught, indignation consumed us until we could gather our wits and avenge ourselves.

Because I trained constantly with my weights and punching bag, I no longer hesitated to defend myself in a fight, much less to attack. I never hit a man when he was down, but I had no problem bludgeoning someone who stood up to me.

I didn’t care how long it took, I’d wait until I could get my revenge for wrongs real or imagined. For weeks I lay in wait for a boy from the neighboring town of Lomita. I’d stolen some pies from his bakery truck, and he’d squealed to the police, who made me pay for the goods. Every day I boiled over with resentment and visions of retribution. One night I spotted him walking out of the Torrance theater with a friend. I followed them to a dark street and challenged him.

Both were older and heavier, but when they laughed at me I went wild. I knocked down the friend, who ran off, and then I went for the stoolie. I punched and pummeled him and didn’t stop until he rolled limp into a ditch. I left him there.

Back home, I went to my room, peeled off my clothes, and slid into bed, trembling. I must have had a nightmare because I woke up with a start, paralyzed with fright. My blanket was on the floor and the room was bright with light. For some reason, my mother stood there, sobbing.

“You’re hurt. You’re hurt.”

I held up my hands. They were smeared with blood. My sheet and my clothes, too. For a second my heart almost stopped, then I realized it wasn’t my blood. “It’s okay, Mom,” I said. “I just got into a fight.” My mother went back to bed, and I washed up. Yet all night I shook,
wondering how badly I’d beaten the bakery-truck boy. When I fought I never thought about anyone actually dying.

The next morning I forced myself to return to the scene. My victim was gone. For two days I worried. Then I saw him driving the truck, his face swollen and wrapped in bandages. I wanted to whoop and holler—not because he was alive, of course, but because I had really fixed him.

WITH EACH DAY
I grew more erratic—touchy, irritable, defiant one moment, happy-go-lucky the next. One night at dinner, my parents, long mystified by my behavior, finally said, “Why can’t you be a good boy like your brother?”

I felt like I’d been stabbed in the heart. But my response was sullen instead of emotional: “You love Pete more than you love me.” My parents were shocked speechless for a moment, then choking back tears, my mother said, “Louie, let me tell you this: if the Lord asked me to give up one of my children, He’d have to take whichever one He wanted. I couldn’t say take this one or that one. I wouldn’t.”

“Well,” I grumbled, “how come you always pick on
me?
”

“How can I help it?” she shot back. “
You’re
the one who, if I say, ‘Empty the garbage,’ says ‘Just a minute’ and then disappears!” I knew she could have rattled off plenty of other examples, but instead she jumped up from the table and ran to the bedroom crying. It killed me to see my mother hurt, but all I did was scowl, shove back my chair, and leave in disgust.

I wasn’t jealous of Pete. It wasn’t his fault that I thought my mother liked him better. I respected him. He was my hero. When he’d go somewhere with a buddy and he wouldn’t let me come along, I’d follow anyway. Sometimes he’d have to insist I go back, and I’d resent it, but I wasn’t mad. When you’re a kid, a brother two years younger seems like ten years younger. Otherwise, we were close and eventually inseparable. We shared the same room. We played games together. We slept outside on the grass a lot, especially on hot nights.

I even stuck my fists into situations when other kids gave him a hard time. When I was thirteen, a local bully who was about a foot taller
than Pete had him cornered about half a block from our house. He threatened and shoved him, trying to get Pete to fight. Pete refused. On my way home from school I heard the commotion, and when I saw Pete get shoved I just walked right up and punched the bully right in the teeth, then ran like hell. He chased me all the way home, but I made it into the house.

But none of that mattered now. I hated being compared with Pete. As a result I withdrew even more. I kept to myself at home and moved my bedding into the backyard. If anyone came to the front door, I retreated to the garage until the visitor left. I even refused to eat with the family. To my mind, I lived alone, and although I was often miserable, I liked it that way.

WHAT I
DIDN’T
like was getting caught and risking being sent to Juvenile Hall, way up in Los Angeles. One day, after I was nabbed for some prank, Chief Collier of the Torrance Police took me to the local jail to meet the inmates. He idled purposefully in front of two guys sharing a cell, then asked me, “Where do you go on Saturdays?”

“I go to the beach,” I said.

“When you’re in
there,
” he countered, shrugging toward the cell, “you
can’t
go to the beach.” Then he said, “Louie, if we didn’t respect your folks so much, you’d be in reform school right now. But we’re warning you: this is where you’ll end up if you don’t wise up.”

I knew he wanted to scare me, and it sank in. I cherished my freedom. I suddenly realized I’d just have to be that much smarter and not get caught again. To further demonstrate my scorn for authority, a few days later I stepped out from behind a tree and tossed a handful of rotten tomatoes in a policeman’s face, only to disappear by the time his vision cleared. That became my style: hit and run, leaving victims to spot me only by my rapidly receding shadow.