A Page from the Crime Blotter

We never really know what the people who came before us, parents and grandparents, people with shared names, have gone through, the challenges they faced, the tragedies that marked them for life. Later, putting the pieces together, hearing the truth, and including what changed a person, a story emerges, and a moment pinpointed where reality meets tragedy, and childhood is pushed aside. Chapters, family stories about life in the good old days and not really understanding the pages that weren’t so good. A page like this one.

A Page from the Crime Blotter

It should have been an ordinary day. Uneventful. Saying goodbye in the early morning to his son, F.P. stopped at the bar before heading to work. Too many mornings started that way. Trying to work on the railroad for long hours and raise a son in the 1930s was so hard. Many lost their way and never went home. F.P. should have stayed at home that day. It would have made all the difference for two families. Especially for his son.

The police report called it a fight that got out of hand because the men were drunk. How it happened was difficult to tell. The stories of bystanders differed but there were the usual accomplices. Anger. Rage. Alcohol. Too many long days on the railroad line where work was hard and it eventually took its toll.

In the end, one man lay dead. The other beaten and bruised was taken into custody and eventually convicted and sent to jail for murder. Truth is it could have been either of them that ended up dead. Either of them convicted of murder. But it was F.P. who went to prison and never really recovered from the fight, the time in prison, the loss of his son.

The boy heard the pieces of the story over time but when it happened he only knew that his Dad didn’t come home that night. And it was just the two of them. Now he was all alone. His Dad had left him.

F.P. didn’t confess to wanting to kill the other man. It wasn’t his intent it just was what happened in the heat of the day and the anger and rage within him. Life was too terrible.

His wife had left him because he was too old for her. Yes, she was more than 20 years younger and just a young teenager when they married. But they had three daughters and one son together. They must have loved each other enough for that at least. But then she wanted him to go, but they could be friends she said. She would take the girls and he would take the boy. They would live, literally, next door to each other.

Living in the smokehouse that was turned into a dirty bedroom, F.P. and his son lived right next to where his wife and daughters lived in a proper house. It didn’t seem fair but it was what was. That friendship she had said they would have allowed her to have a house and her girls and be able to see her son when she wanted, which she did. A strange family in times before it became normal to have strange family situations. 

F.P. slowly drank more and more and stayed away longer having to work on the railroad line as it was built further and further out. He got home when he could and even those nights it wasn’t for many hours.

Then one day when he was home he found out that his ex-wife was seeing another man. She had the right of course. She had said he was too old for her now that she had grown up.

But then why was she dating a man who was as old as he was? She didn’t choose a young man but instead, she chose to date an older man about the age of her first husband, F.P.

F.P. was infuriated from inside. He would never hurt his wife or his children but anger grew and grew within him. It took more and more alcohol to get him to sleep and then more and more alcohol in the morning to get him going as he headed to work.

That day of the fight was like any other day. He said goodbye to his son and went off to work, stopping at the bar for some drinks. Then he saw the man he worked with every day who laughed in his face about his wife choosing another man. The younger man called him old and said maybe it was his father who was sleeping with his ex-wife. 

The younger man had too many drinks also. F.P. kept pushing him away but the younger guy just wouldn’t let it go. He laughed in his face and called him so many names and questioned his manhood. Then they fought and F.P. lay on the ground exhausted by the pounding he had received from the younger man. 

But still, the younger man wouldn’t just walk away. He kicked F.P. and then finally was ready to end it and claim victory.

F.P. took out a revolver tucked behind his shirt and shot him dead in the heart. Dead. In the heart.

The boy was left with only a middle name to match that of his father’s.