The Ultimate Discipline

By Dan Fenton

Nancy found herself on a flight 32,000 feet over Tennessee. She was running from a bad marriage in Chattanooga and heading straight into the arms of her high school sweet heart, though she hadn’t seen him for over thirteen years.
Not knowing what kind of life she was taking her three daughters toward concerned her because, after all, she hadn’t seen Dan in over a decade. The only thing she was certain of was that she was miserable with the statuesque. She had never stopped caring for the man she was running toward. Dan had been her high school sweetheart, and professed to still be in love with her.
She couldn't possibly have known that he had been taught to be a killer and that murder would soon become a part of her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Fenton
• Release date: Sep 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465936455

Dan Fenton

About the Author: Born in 1947, just after world war II, in a suburb just outside of Saint Louis Missouri Called Saint Ann, Dan became the third child of the Fenton clan. His siblings looked nothing like him and probably for good reason. It was an era just the emerged from the great depression, when jobs were becoming more plentiful. None the less his family was struggling to get by. A sixth grade education didn't lend itself to making a good living and driving a cable car for the city just didn't pay his father that much. It wasn't long before running from the law took the family to the west, were Dan was to grow up. Graduating from Rio Grande High School in 1967, Dan attended classes at Technical Vocational Institute, University of New Mexico, Santa Anna College and The University of Phoenix. He would never obtain his degree, yet After extensive training in the computer industry by Wang laboratories, Redactron Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation and Compaq Computer Corporation, Dan ended up retiring from a Field Engineering position at Hewlett Packard while servicing computer systems in England and Germany. He began writing his book in 1985 only to put it aside after a brief beginning. In August 1989, his best friend encouraged Dan to finish writing his book, and the very next day his best friend was murdered. It wasn't until 2005 that Dan decided to revive his manuscript in an attempt to honor his friends request and to find closure to his death. A twisted tale of love, romance and murder emerges that will not only shock, but cause the reader to sob and laugh at times.

Book preview

The Ultimate Discipline

(Revised Edition)

By Dan Fenton

Copyright 2005 Dan Fenton

License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedicated to Robert:

Son, husband, father and friend.

You are profoundly missed.

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars

Wrenching, heartbreaking and Funny

October 2, 2011

An intriguing story that made me laugh, and cry.

Excellent Read

August 2, 2012

This book shook me deeply Readers in search of a new and dramatic experience will find it in Dan Fenton's memoir The Ultimate Discipline.

Fascinating Read,

August 28, 2012

I would re-read this book and recommend it highly to anyone who wishes a "fascinating read

The Ultimate Discipline

(Revised Edition)

Dan Fenton

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Lessons of Our Youth

Chapter 2 Educated to Kill

Chapter 3 Saving the Damsel

Chapter 4 Surviving in St. Louis

Chapter 5 Traveling Home

Chapter 6 Welcome Home

Chapter 7 A Mamas’ Love

Chapter 8 Hiding the Damsel

Chapter 9 Happier Times

Chapter 10 Loss and Discovery

Chapter 11 Capturing the Son

Chapter 12 Rekindled Love

Chapter 13 The Awakening

Chapter 14 Reckless Endangerment

Chapter 15 Destiny and Blindness

Chapter 16 Shunning A Parent

Chapter 17 The Ultimate Discipline

Chapter 18 Paying the Piper

Epilog

About the Author

Prologue

It mattered not that a young black man had been beaten to death by an unknown assailant. The victim’s face was unrecognizable, more like hamburger than human. In the city of St. Louis there were lots of murders every year and most went unsolved either because the victims were prostitutes, homeless, or blacks. Let’s face it, with the Christmas season upon us, the cops couldn’t be bothered with putting any effort into yet another murder. The snow covered the body in less than 20 minutes.

Chapter One

Lessons of Our Youth

(TOC)

Snowflakes as huge as cotton balls fell softly from a pitch black sky and like magic appeared in the beams of the old 1936 Packard’s headlights. Every time Don, my father, stepped on the accelerator pedal, the vacuum operated windshield wipers would stop working.

Wipe my windshield again, Nelda, I can’t see a thing, my dad said.

Don was a pale, lanky man with jet black hair that he combed straight back with no part. He stood nearly six feet tall and weighed one hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet and had a scar over his right eye. He always wore green work pants and matching shirts along with a pair of black Wellington boots. It was the uniform required while driving buses and street cars in St. Louis. He wasn’t a God-fearing man and my mom was Catholic, so these two made an unlikely couple. He loved and collected guns and his spare time was used reloading his own ammunition. He had even hand-cast his own homemade bullets. As an NRA member, he won most of the local shooting contests. He would shoot cigarettes out of my mother’s mouth just for practice.

He had his hands on the steering wheel at ten o’clock and two o’clock and was pulling himself up close to the windshield, trying to peer through the fogged-over glass. As I leaned over the middle of the front seat, I stood on the drive shaft hump in the floor with my chin resting on my crossed arms. It was so cold that I could see my father’s breath in the cold, puffing out toward the windshield. The heater had stopped working long before he bought this old car.

My mother was sitting on the edge of the front seat so she could wipe the fog off the windshield for him with an old rag. She laughed and told him, Well, stop breathing on it, you’re making it worse.

Her maiden name was Mary Nelda Lee Dwyer. She, like her mother, didn’t care for her first name and, as such, went by Nelda. She never got to know her own father, ‘Grandpa Dwyer’, because Ora Lee, my grandma, divorced him early on due to his drunkenness and abuse of his family. He never came around to get to know his girls and, in fact, his daughters wouldn’t see him until many years later when he was on his death bed. By then, he wasn’t able to recognize them at all.

My mother had been raised a good Catholic girl and loved God and Jesus. She believed in all the Saints, but especially loved St. Jude. The Apostle Saint Jude Thaddeus is The Miraculous Saint, the Catholic Patron Saint of lost causes she said.

My mother was quite striking in her youth, with long, silky black hair and stood about five foot four. As pretty as she was, she had one feature that stood out, a slightly larger than normal nose that was slightly bulbous on the end. Her hazel green eyes lit up the room wherever she went and her smile warmed the hearts of everyone she met.

If I stop breathing, I’ll pass out, he chuckled. He let off the gas pedal for a moment to let the wipers flop back and forth a couple of times.

My older brother and sister were in the back seat with me. They were both blowing their hot breath onto the windows and drawing faces in the fog that appeared on the glass. They were older so they were allowed to sit next to the windows and, as the youngest, I sat in the middle. I liked that because I got to hang over the seat and look out the front window. After all, that’s where all the action was.

We were on our way to grandma’s house to spend the two days prior to Christmas and then, of course, Christmas morning. I was only three years old and I didn’t recall ever having seen snow before. Each time we drove past a street light, I would see more snow falling under the beams of the lights and I asked my mother, Why is it only snowing under the lights?

It’s snowing everywhere Danny boy, but you can’t see the snow out in the dark, she explained. As soon as the snowflakes get under the lights, then you can see them. I thought it was magical and remained fascinated with the phenomenon.

We were all bundled up in our winter coats, with wool scarves wrapped around our necks and tucked down under the fronts of our coats. Norman, my older brother, and I wore wool billed caps with ear flaps as well. My sister, Nikki, wore a scarf over her head and tied under her chin like my mother. We all had wool mittens on our hands, less the ones pulled off to allow finger drawing on the windows. The mittens were stitched to the sleeves of our coats so we couldn’t lose them.

Soon the old car pulled into grandma’s driveway and we all piled out of the car and scampered up to the porch of the dark brick house. It was a typical St. Louis suburb home, built of dark reddish-brown brick with a small wooden covered porch about 8 ft. by 16 ft. with a little picket railing around it. Everyone started stamping the snow off their feet as we all followed my father’s lead. We made such a racket that my Grandpa Joe turned on the porch light and opened the door hollering, Come on in, come on in. Lula, the kids are here. Come on in and get over there by the fire and get warmed up.

Grandpa Joe, full name Joseph Barso, was Italian. He had a medium build and was balding at the crown of his head. He might have had thirty or forty hairs remaining at the center and combed them straight back. His large nose showed every pore and when he spoke, he sounded as though his nose was stopped up. My Grandpa Joe was my Grandma Lou’s third husband. Looking back now, I realize he was the kindest soul I knew. He seemed to love having us over and did everything he could to make us feel right at home. But we kids dreaded our initial encounter with him because, as he greeted each one of us with a jovial how’re my grandkids, he would pinch our cheeks with his thumb and forefinger and shake them till it felt as if they were going to come off. Of course, all the while he was smiling and laughing with a loving gleam in his eye. It hurt but somehow we knew he meant it lovingly.

My Grandma Lou was a small lady and stood with a stoop. She had an obvious hump on her back, the result of a beating from her second husband that left her hospitalized with a broken back. She stood five feet tall, had blue eyes and a cute little button nose. Her eyes were a little closer together than most people and she usually wore dresses that were mid-calf high. The dress I most often saw her wearing was dark blue rayon with white dots about the size of nickels all over it. The collar wasn’t neck high but down four inches or so, just enough to allow a nice string of white pearls to lie on her skin. She always wore shoes that laced up, and I nick-named them ‘grandma shoes’. They were black lace-ups and looked a little heavy and had large square two-inch heels. Each step she took was so short that it almost looked like she shuffled. This was no doubt due to the spinal damage she had suffered. Her skin had a kind of silky look to it due to the thinning of age and the backs of her hands had a few dark ‘age spots’. Her hair was always cut short, never even shoulder length. I had seen a photo of her when she was younger. The photo was mounted in an oval frame and the glass that covered it was domed instead of being flat. The photo was a copper tone instead of black and white. Of course ‘color’ photography hadn’t been invented back when this was taken. She was a knock-out by anyone’s estimation and, though her hair was up in a bun, it was obviously quite long. She looked beautiful, content and confident as she posed with shoulders back and a slight smile on her lips.

Grandma Lou was extremely intelligent, well educated and well read. Unfortunately, she had one of those ‘look down her nose’ attitudes toward just about everyone. She belittled everyone from my Grandpa Joe to the clerks at a store. It was as though she not only realized that her IQ was higher than everyone else’s, but that she was disgusted with the ignorance of the rest of the world. You just can’t get decent service nowadays, she would say. These people are just so ignorant.

The only person she didn’t do that to was my father.

My Grandma Lou had married my Grandpa Leslie Fenton some years prior, long enough to have my father. Then, for reasons never imparted to us, they divorced. She married again to a man that took pleasure in beating her and she ended up hospitalized with a broken back before she finally divorced him.

Several years later she met my Grandpa Joe who fell head over heels in love with her. He was an alcoholic with strong connections to the Mafia. In order to win her over, he had to promise that he would never take another drink as long as he lived, that he would sever all ties with his family, who were also Mafia, and that he would always love and protect her. He kept his word to his dying day and treated her like she was a queen. Although she was a well-educated woman and Grandpa Joe had barely got through the 3rd grade. He had to go to work early in life to support his mother and siblings because his father had died. I loved that old man and came to respect him more as the years passed. My Grandma Lou, on the other hand, always talked down to Grandpa Joe, belittling him at every family gathering and in front of everyone. He would hang his head and say, yes Lula, and do whatever she was badgering him to do. Over the years I felt sorry for him and yet had to admire him for the wonderful way he treated us kids, as well as for keeping his vow of sobriety and protection of her. She once told me that she really only ever loved one man and that was Leslie Fenton, a fact that she never kept from Grandpa Joe.

The hardwood floors of their home were covered with beautiful tapestry area rugs. There were two comfortable wing backed chairs setting on either end of a brocade sofa separated only by small end tables. A glass covered coffee table sat directly in front of the sofa which was centered in front of the fireplace where a warm glowing fire was crackling softly. . Each end table had hand crocheted doilies on them and sported matching lamps. Each was hand painted with a floral design and topped with a pleated lampshade to cover the bulbs

Pretty glass and crystal knick- knacks were everywhere and we kids were instructed not to touch any of them. The living room was in the front part of the house and a small pony-wall separated the living room from the dining room at the rear of the house. To the left of the dining room was the kitchen, where Grandma was cooking up a feast that smelled so good my mouth started to water. The ceiling was covered in tin panels that had been stamped in a floral pattern and painted white. The home had a heater built into the floor in the hallway and we kids were instructed to be very careful not to burn ourselves on it.

As soon as my mother got her coat off, she unbuttoned my coat and took off my cap. I was particularly glad to get the wool scarf off as it had been scratching my neck like crazy. Then suddenly, something bumped into the right side of my small head; then again, much harder this time. It hurt and just as I looked up to search my mother’s face, whatever it was, struck me again. I opened my eyes to find that I had been sleeping and dreaming