by Jesse Reiss
Balfour
Los Angeles: February 24, 1942
Nick Berk was driving the Ashton family’s new Studebaker Champion, a beautiful shiny maroon four-door station wagon. Nick had been dying for the chance to drive it ever since he had seen it parked in their front yard and now he was doing so, with no permission and no license. The feel of the car made him feel confident and mature.
Peter Ashton sat in the passenger seat, watching every move Nick made with the car’s controls with dread on his face. “Man, I’m scared — I don’t know if I want to do this,” he said.
“Too late to chicken out now, pal,” Nick replied with a confident smile and twinkle in his blue eyes.
They were winding up a mountain road on Griffith Park’s north face, having driven over from Pasadena. It was twilight and they had gotten in before the gates closed. “We’ve basically already done it. We’ve already got the car and the balloon. All we have to do is carry out the last steps of our great plan and watch what happens. Probably nothing, anyway, but you’ll never find out if you don’t try.” Nick looked entirely of place to Peter, acting all macho and cocky behind the wheel of the Ashton family car.
“If we get caught, do you know how much trouble — ”
“We ain’t gettin’ caught!” Nick interrupted with some annoyance. “Quit being a baby and grow up!” He gripped the wheel tight and gritted his teeth in a threatening tone.
Peter didn’t reply. He looked off the side of the road, between the passing trees, at the city far below. A gnawing in his stomach told him to open the car door and dive out to get away and a voice in his mind told him this was no big deal and to go through with it. They had done pranks like this before — no sweat. He swore at himself for feeling ashamed and being such a coward.
Their parents thought their sons were staying the night over with the other. He and Nick were fifteen-year old High School kids and this would be the most adventurous thing they had done yet. Nick had talked Peter into taking his dad’s car and convinced him that he could drive because he was an experienced forklift driver, working with his dad at the Lockheed plant in Burbank. Peter was a “boring” science wiz following in his father’s footsteps. His father worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, from which they had stolen the weather balloon that was squashed into the car’s trunk.
The car lurched as they went from a paved to dirt road. They were going to go as far up Lee Mountain as the road would allow and would make the remaining climb on foot. They had staked out the route a couple days before and made their final plans. It seemed like some exciting fun at the time, but now, looking out over the blacked out city, Peter was having second thoughts and kicking himself for letting Nick talk him into this.
The sun had already set and the last of the light was diminishing. Normally you would see the Glendale City lights from where they were, but not on this night. A mandatory citywide blackout had been instituted after a Japanese submarine had fired seventeen shells the day before at an oil refinery and a pier a few hours north near Santa Barbara, luckily doing little damage. The devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, just two months earlier, was fresh in everyone’s mind. The media had whipped Southern California up into a state of paranoia about the potential oncoming Japanese invasion of the US mainland. The US was at war and air raids could occur on any coastal city at any time. Large cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco were likely targets for the next Japanese offensive and if they could pull off a disaster like Pearl Harbor, who knows what else they could achieve. In anticipation, antiaircraft guns, searchlights and lookout stations had been positioned on hilltops and in parks throughout the city and they had orders to be ready at a moment’s notice. The reality of war was becoming apparent to the peaceful West Coast with the images of the Nazi’s relentless London bombing taking on a whole new meaning for the Americans. It was in the heart of this hysteria that Nick and Peter planned their stunt.
On the mountain’s south side a Ford pickup truck was approaching Griffith Park. In the truck’s cabin were three men in their late twenties with Laurel Kopelin, their leader, at the wheel. Laurel was a burly man, thick in the chest and standing at least half a head taller than his peers. Known for being a bully and a racist, trouble followed wherever he went. The other two men, Mike and Fred, were his cronies who wanted to be seen with the tough guy and who without him, were whimpering cowards. In the duffel bag at their feet was a handgun, three white coned hats and white sheets with eye-holes cut out. And coiled on top of the bag was an inch thick rope.
In the truck’s rear under some tarp was an unconscious black man, Balfour Smith, gagged and bound. A small blood pool was forming on the truck bed, dripping from where he had been clubbed over the head.
After passing Los Feliz Boulevard, the truck wound its way past the fancy houses and half completed construction sites for even more houses and entered Griffith Park. It passed the Greek Theatre and ten minutes later it was kicking up dust along a dirt road, now well passed the new observatory. Other than the truck’s headlights, all was dark. The city below was also dark, allowing stars in the night sky to show their splendor for the first time in decades.
The truck’s radio repeated the same news bulletin about enemy submarines being sighted off the coast and ordering citizens to diminish all lights and stay indoors.
“Stupid war,” Laurel said as he spat tobacco juice out the window. “It would never have started if we had won the Civil War — can guarantee you that.”
“How can you say that?” his buddy Fred asked, the rattling of the truck bouncing them around in the cabin.
“Cuz no way anyone would give a crap about the Germans wanting to have one united country with one race if the Americans had already proven it could be done.” Laurel Kopelin’s great-grandfather and many distant uncles and cousins had lost their lives fighting for the Confederates in the Civil War. His father, Tom Kopelin, had moved to Los Angeles to work on the oil wells during the boom in the 1890s. At the time Los Angeles provided one-fourth of all oil consumed in the world and it sparked the first real population explosion in the city. Tom had inculcated in his son the belief in their racial superiority as whites and the God-bestowed responsibility they had to support and actively work to keep the race clean of inferiority. Hell, mankind’s future rests on our shoulders, he would say.
When World War II broke out, arguably no area received more mobilization and energy than Southern California. With multimillion dollar government defense contracts, huge factories sprung up all over to build airplanes, tanks, bombs and supplies for the troops. With its large port and wide-open spaces, Los Angeles rapidly became a primary industrial center to support the war and its population soared again.
Laurel was a strong proponent of eugenics and deep inside he admired Adolf Hitler for the dream of a strongly united and superior Aryan race that would bring mankind’s intelligence and physical capabilities to levels never dreamed of before. He had already decided that the war was a win-win situation for him — he would either remain in this country or defect to the victor.
For Tom, Laurel and thousands of white folk, the tens of thousands of Negros migrating into Los Angeles was an outrage. They had celebrated when after the Pearl Harbor attack — a couple months ago — Japanese were gathered up all over town by the thousands and herded together into the Santa Anita racetracks and from there shipped to internment camps. But now they were fuming as unending trains filled with Negroes came into the Union Station by downtown Los Angeles, to create what they saw as the government’s “inferior work force”. A presidential decree forbidding racial discrimination in any federally created jobs gave hope, but was ineffective in easing the tensions. Decent jobs one day reserved for whites were now being handed to men of color. When Laurel witnessed a black man being given a position where he was a superior over a white man, he had reached his limit and was now taking action. Tonight he would make a statement to the city in the name of white supremacy.
He kept the truck
going, maneuvering the tight dirt road that hugged the mountainside. Laurel’s buddy, Mike, was nervous, dragging hard on his cigarette and keeping an eye on the rearview mirror and side roads for possible witnesses. “Any one of these trees here would be fine, man. Let’s get this over with.”
“No. We don’t need any normal tree by the side of the road. We need a tree that is bold and prominent and that will send a message to the entire country. I want the two million people in this city to wake up tomorrow morning and know that we will not stand for this any longer. I want the scar they have caused to be visible to everyone. I know the tree I want — I’ve seen it from a house in the Hills.”
“You want to light the whole thing on fire, man? Ain’t that arson and possibly going to start a wildfire in these parts?”
“You think I care what they call it? This is winter, stupid. Ain’t no wildfires in the winter. It’s been raining and the hills are green — ain’t gonna burn. Besides, there will be people crawling all over to put it out and we will be long gone.”
“How we gonna get out without being seen?”
“Like I said, got a friend who lives in the Hills and we’re gonna stay with him until the early morning and go to work like everyone else.”
“Whatever you say man.”
They hit a large bump in the dirt road and the body in the back bounced. Fred studied the tarp in the back through the rear window and confirmed Balfour hadn’t been jolted from his drug and pain induced sleep.
Balfour had recently come to Los Angeles, a young man, alone, seeking work and a place to start a family. As he had demonstrated some aptitude, he was given a relatively well paying job on the nightshift on a bomber assembly line and was surprised to find out he would be receiving the same salary as the other white folk who worked besides him. He was understandably nervous about this and could see his presence caused some ire. He would have been happy to take a reduction in pay if it meant the name-calling, stares and humiliation would end. He had been heading to work this evening during the blackout when three sniggering white men surrounded him in a dark street. The last thing he saw was the club’s edge as it came crashing down on the back of his head.
Meanwhile, near the mountaintop on the north face, Nick pulled the car off the roadside and drove behind some bushes so it was concealed from view. He killed the engine and save for the stars above, they were plunged into darkness. They sat there for a moment in silence, contemplating what they were about to do, Nick with anticipation and Peter with dread. “This is it!” Nick said to break the stillness.
They turned on their flashlights, climbed out of the car and opened the side and rear doors. They pulled out the helium tank from the backseat and the carefully folded silk balloon from the trunk and using their flashlights to guide the way, set out on the trek over the mountain ridge.
“Do you have any idea how much these cost?” Peter asked, trying effortlessly to discourage his friend again.
“Haven’t a clue. Can’t be that much as they lose them all the time for experiments, right? Don’t worry; they’ll get it back. See it has ‘Jet Propulsion Laboratory’ written on the base and we aren’t going to send it that high and the red lights and battery attached to it are going to weigh it down. It’ll probably end up in someone’s backyard and they’ll return it to JPL before anyone even knows it went missing.” After an hour climbing with their burden, they reached the mountaintop and took a rest. They continued on down the side to the open space they had scoped out earlier.
As Peter had flown these balloons several times with his dad for different aeronautics experiments his father conducted, he nervously instructed Nick as they went through the procedures for getting it assembled. It was hard doing it in the dark and Nick ended up mostly holding the flashlights while Peter worked. They had disconnected the radiosonde that transmits back to the scientists such things as the atmospheric pressure readings and wind speeds and left it in the lab, which made Peter feel a little better about the theft as that was the most expensive part. Where the radiosonde had been, they attached a contraption Peter had designed and built consisting of several red and white bulbs connected to a battery pack.
A cool breeze was blowing out to the coast, meaning if they set it right, the balloon would carry across the basin.
As they waited for the helium to fill the balloon, they looked out at the city below them. A blackout was in effect and most lights were out, but not all. Light clusters continued to sparkle in various spots across the valley, making them obvious targets, were the Japs to conduct a nighttime air raid.
“What if the Japs came bombing right now while we were up here?” Nick asked. He liked to pose hypothetical scenarios and make Peter analyze them.
“This would be one of the safest places to be. Well, maybe not. If they didn’t see the mountain, they might fly their bomber planes right into it.”
“That would be cool. I hope one takes out the rest of that stupid ‘ollywoodland sign,” Nick said, referring to the rundown landmark near the mountain they were on. A few years earlier its caretaker had drove drunk off the mountainside and crashed into the letter ‘H’, destroying it, along with his car. Probably due to the war effort, no one had yet bothered to fix it.
“Yeah. I heard about ten years ago an actress committed suicide jumping from the letter ‘H’ that used to be there,” Peter remarked.
“Hollywood is where all the crazies are, that’s for sure.”
The balloon had filled and was off the ground now, swaying in the breeze coming over the ridge and tugging on its lines, trying to tear itself from the mountain. Peter reached up and switched on the lights as they were lifted beyond his reach by the balloon’s pull. An erie red and white glow surrounded them, which he feared would make them visible to anyone looking up the mountain.
“Hurry, get it off!” Nick shouted, realizing they had placed a spotlight upon themselves.
Peter would have wanted the balloon to fill up with more gas to give it more lift, but there was no way he could now reach the battery to turn off the lights to buy him more time. He frantically removed the helium tank, untied the guide wire and released the balloon.
He fell on his rear and watched. Here goes disaster, he thought.
The balloon lifted a little, caught on a breeze and began to drift outward from the mountain, level with the earth. The lights reflected off the treetops as it sailed over them and out into the sky.
“We did it! We did it!” Nick shouted and jumped up and down.
Peter felt no reason to celebrate. He felt regret and dread. He smiled weakly, unable to join in his friend’s enthusiasm.
Nick stopped his celebration as the balloon changed course and began to drift back towards the mountain. They watched it for several minutes as it wavered in midair. “Uh-oh! It’s heading for that tree!” Peter said as he jumped up. They watched, as the balloon seemed to move again with the air currents, drifting back towards the mountainside and headed for a large oak tree a few hundred meters from where they were. Grabbing their flashlights they began to scramble across the mountainside towards the tree.
Scrambling over bushes and shrubs, they covered half the distance, keeping an eye on the balloon, as it seemed to hover like it would change course again. But it didn’t. It kept drifting over towards the tree. The balloon was drifting approximately twenty feet above the tree’s canopy and would clear it, but the battery and lights were hanging directly in their line and would certainly crash.
As he trailed behind the faster and more nimble Nick, Peter had mixed feelings about the whole thing; his stomach was doing backflips in anxiety. He was glad they hadn’t succeeded and equally disappointed he wasn’t able to pull off the experiment.
As the lights crashed into the canopy and the balloon was jerked to a halt, sending it swaying, a white light burst from within the tree itself, illuminating the boughs and branches in a brilliant display.
Under the oak’s great canopy and near its tru
nk, Laurel removed his white ominous Klu-Klux-Klan outfit, revealing the big smile on his face. Fred did the same and they strolled over to where Mike was standing with the box camera.
“Did you frame it to include the rope and branch as well?” Laurel asked.
“Yeah. Got you all in the picture. Great shot.” The photo would be turned into postcards that they could print and distribute for use in boasting, intimidating and discouraging, a common practice for the KKK.
“Good. Now we get the fire going!” Laurel said as he stepped over to a gasoline can.
Running footsteps could be heard along the mountainside outside the tree’s canopy and a flashlight came into view through the leaves, dancing over the ground. A young boy’s voice yelled out, “What was that?”
“Damn!” Laurel said and dropped the gasoline can. He reached for the handgun in his bag as Mike and Fred scrambled to hide behind the tree trunk.
Nick reached the canopy first, well ahead of Peter and ducked down under the branches, pointing his flashlight up to try to see the balloon’s lights through the foliage. His flashlight instead shone straight into a dead man’s face, strung up on a tree bough. Nick felt his whole body go numb and his mind freeze. The image was ghastly. He had never seen a corpse in his life and the one before him altered every past glorious daydream he had had about the thrill of killing. He wanted to scream and run, but couldn’t muster any motion from his body.
A bright flashlight was being pointed at him, blinding him. A voice commanded, “Drop your flashlight!”
He did as told and remained frozen, staring into the beam.
“You got any weapons on you boy?” The voice was spoken slow and sinister.
Nick shook his head, feeling sick to his stomach. A man stepped in front of him. He could see from the flashlight glow that the man was near twice his size, towering over him. He had small dark eyes, a wicked smile on his face and was holding a gun, pointed at him. Nick felt his knees go weak and his stomach rising in his throat. He began to shake and his bladder spontaneously began to relieve itself. The warm sensation of urine ran down his legs.
“What you doing up here on the mountain, boy?” came the stranger’s voice again. The word “boy” was emphasized so Nick got the idea that stringing him up next to the dead man would be only a minor nuisance. No answer registered in Nick’s mind. He was out of breath from the running and unable to get his lungs working properly.
“You alone?” came the next question.
Nick opened his mouth to answer and instead his gut’s contents came gushing out like a fire hose, splashing down his own shirt and covering the man’s legs and shoes.
“You brat!” the man said and stepped forward and swung out at him with the back of his hand, striking him hard across the face.
Nick went sprawling to the ground, his nose exploding in pain. The impact seemed to have knocked him back to his senses and he spun around in fear to face the man. He was breathing now, gasping for air.
“Ain’t you ever seen a dead animal before?” the man asked in a rage. “Your papa never takes you hunting or something? What the hell you doing up here anyway?”
“My friend and I…were setting a balloon…and it…caught…tree…” He pointed upwards. The taste of vomit and bile mixed with blood that came from his nose and the tears that ran down his face and he felt like puking again.
Laurel briefly shone his flashlight up into the tree’s canopy and didn’t see anything. Nick spotted the balloon. It had broken free and was now visible, drifting away from the mountain, its distant lights flickering through the branches.
“It’s…there,” Nick said, pointing off to the side.
Laurel looked over and saw the balloon. “Mike, Fred, get over here. It’s just a lame kid doing some science experiment.”
Mike came over, still wearing his KKK outfit and Nick felt the terror coursing through his body rise higher once more.
“The brat puked on me. Shall we string him up next to Balfour?” Laurel asked with a mischievous grin.
Mike was antsy and had enough killing for one day. “No man, let’s finish the job we came to do and get out of here. We tell the kid if he says anything to anyone we come after him and his family.”
“He’s scared shitless. He ain’t gonna talk,” Fred added.
“I don’t know about that,” Laurel commented.
“I won’t tell…I promise…don’t kill me…please,” Nick begged as he lay on the ground, blinded by the flashlight that remained focused on his face that continued to drool blood and vomit.
Far in the distance came the eerie sound of an air raid siren — another and another. In seconds the entire basin was echoing with the siren’s wailing rise and fall. A dozen searchlights shot up into the sky and danced around and more shot up in the distance.
“Get up!” Laurel yelled to Nick and motioned for him to move out from under the tree’s canopy.
They walked out and looked out over the basin. Searchlights darted this way and that as the sirens continued to wail. It must have been around 3:00 in the morning Laurel thought and by now not a soul was sleeping in Los Angeles. Perfect opportunity to light the tree on fire!
Now several hundred yards out, Nick spotted the balloon, hovering over Hollywood, the red and white lights appearing to flash in the distance. It was traveling faster now and had gained more height. A few searchlights spotted it too and several focused their beams on the balloon like a distant performer lit up on a dark stage.
“That’s your balloon, eh kid?” Laurel asked with a smile.
“Yeah. That’s my balloon,” Nick said regretfully, wishing the nightmare he was experiencing would end.
“Looks like we both got something to hide, eh?”
Nick was about to offer a plea bargain for his life when sparks shot up from a location near the Cahuenga Pass. Something ripped through the tree’s upper branches with a crash and exploded in the mountainside behind it.
Nick spun around to see Laurel’s body spin backwards like a bowling pin and slam into the dirt, his abdomen ripped open. Blood shot out from him like a meteor crater, along with the flashlight and the gun he had been holding.
No sooner as the shells hit than the staccato of antiaircraft guns reached them, pealing like bells across the city. One gun seemed to have triggered them all and the sky was lit up with explosions as taut and nerve-wracked militia fired their cannons across the city at objects they imagined they couldn’t see, but must be there.
Nick took once last look at Laurel, who let out a scream as he flailed his arms, his motionless legs appearing to be half connected to a torso that looked like his sister’s doll after he had ripped it in two. Another ammunition round exploded near him and he dropped to his knees and covered his head.
As soon as it started, the exploding shells stopped and Laurel’s arms went limp, but the guns continued firing wildly in the distance.
There was stillness on the mountainside as no one moved.
Laurel was dead. Fred and Mike gathered themselves and scrambled up to where he had landed to find his gun and flashlight.
“Stay where you are!” came Peter’s voice as he turned his flashlight on and shined it in Mike’s face. Mike looked up and saw another teenager was holding Laurel’s gun, pointing it at him. Peter had been watching and listening in the distance, too scared to move and not knowing what to do, when the gun had miraculously landed a few feet from him.
He spun the flashlight onto Fred and stepped sideways, switching the gun and flashlight back and forth between the two men. “Take that hat off — I want to see your face,” he commanded to Mike.
Mike slowly removed the white sheet and hat and stared into the flashlight beam. Peter saw the face of a coward and it bolstered him. He had his own fears, but they weren’t greater than the fear he saw in these two men. Peter had a flashlight and the gun and they had lost the man who had dragged them into this mess.
Keeping the gun and flash
light dancing between the two men, Peter crabbed over to where Nick was still bent over and nudged him with his foot. Nick didn’t move. He kicked him in the side and Nick looked up, his face pale and eyes lost. “Get up!” Peter said. Nick slowly got to his feet. He was a mess with blood and vomit down his shirt and his pants wet with urine. “Let’s go,” Peter said, nudging Nick forward.
Distant cannon fire continued to sporadically erupt and searchlights continued to ply the sky while the ever-present air-raid sirens reverberated around the mountainside.
Peter walked backwards, facing the two men. With their hands in the air, the two men began nervously walking backwards, away from the tree and the plateau. When the flashlight beam was no longer strong enough to see them Peter turned it off and they stumbled along in darkness. “I don’t want them to see where we are going in case they pick up another gun and try to follow us,” he said. Nick was silent, whimpering to himself, feeling awful. Occasionally Peter would turn the flashlight on with his hand covering the beam so they could see the pathway before them to pick a direction to go.
After ten minutes Nick motioned for them to stop and they sat in the dark to catch their breath. Peter could hear Nick’s teeth chattering, he was shaking from the adrenaline rush aftereffects.
He looked off in the distance and thought he saw their balloon’s outline, now drifting downwards, only a couple lights working. He pointed it out to Nick and they followed its course as it disappeared from view, landing near the 101 Freeway.
“They killed…a man…” Nick chattered through his teeth. “They were KKK,” he said, his teeth added ten more “Ks” to the statement.
“I know. I saw it,” Peter said glumly.
“It was so horrible,” Nick said and wretched again as the image returned to his mind. He spat out the last bit of vomit from his mouth. “I’ve got a splitting headache now.”
As they sat there on the mountainside, Peter was silent, thinking. “We should cut the man down,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t live with myself if we left him hanging there. It’s like we’d be accomplices.”
“What’s an accomplice?” Nick chattered, wiping vomit from his chin.
“Someone who helps another commit a crime.”
“We didn’t commit any crime.”
“You don’t call getting the US Army to declare a full-out war on a weather balloon a crime?” Peter said, waving his arm out at the confused city below.
“Well, at least our crime accidentally killed the man who committed that crime.”
“Yeah. That’s probably the only good thing from all this. I say we go back and cut that man down from the tree.” Nick hated the idea, but couldn’t protest; now that Peter’s actions had trumped his earlier show of bravery.
Moving slowly in the dark, the two boys scrambled back towards the oak tree. They crouched down for a minute in silence and confirmed the site had been deserted. They passed Laurel’s dead body without looking at it and ducked underneath the oak’s canopy. Nick covered his eyes as Peter shone the flashlight up at where the man had been hanging.
“He’s gone.”
Nick slowly unshielded his eyes and looked up. The rope was hanging there, the noose tight like it had been under tension, but there was no body. Peter played the flashlight around in the tree and it revealed only shadows and dark boughs and branches.
“They must have come back and gotten him,” Nick theorized.
“And left their costumes and bag and a gasoline can?” Peter asked, shining his flashlight on the items that lay on the ground. “I don’t like this. It’s freaky. Let’s go before someone else shows up,” he added and they scrambled from the canopy and back up the trail they had come.
By the time they had the helium tank and reached their car, the air-raid warnings and the antiaircraft guns had stopped, only to be replaced by distant emergency vehicle sirens. Peter tossed the gun into the bushes and they got into the car.
Driving slowly as his body was still shaking and his nerves were tense, Nick retraced the route back down the mountain. They turned on the car radio and the few stations were frantically and energetically recounting the “Battle of Los Angeles”. Approximately fourteen hundred ammunition rounds were fired at the “enemy”. Conflicting reports from a dozen Japanese Zeros seen to none to several aircraft shot down to none to hundreds of civilians dead to only a few. Utter confusion. Most of the action seemed to have been along the coastal cities. One newscast reported an enemy plane shot down onto the Hollywood freeway. No official report had come from any city or military officials and warnings continued to be broadcast about a possible second wave of attacks from airplanes launched by subs surfacing along the coast. Peter turned off the radio and they continued for several minutes in silence.
“You saved my life back there,” Nick said thankfully.
“You would have done the same for me. You happened to be the first one to the tree. It could have been me.”
“Yeah, but seriously, I want to thank you.”
“Sure. Roll down your window,” Peter said as he rolled his down.
“Why?”
“You smell of piss and vomit.”
◊
Balfour awoke, startled by the distant gunfire and spot lights playing through tree branches. He had no idea where he was or how he got there. He tried to move his arms and legs, but found they were tried together and the more he struggled, the more his body swayed. Why was he swaying? Where was the ground? He realized he was hanging in the air by his neck. Then he heard voices above him.
“I’ll pull the rope, you grab his body.”
He felt the rope lifting and his body slowly rising in the air. There were groans and grunts as Thomas, Tyoo-Rut and André lifted their new companion up into the tree.