Ep. 2 - Biography of Wayne Brecklin
Wayne Brecklin was born in a New York slum area to an unwed mother and a father who was a drunk and a womanizer. All his life he had to survive on hand-me-downs from others that felt sorry for him and charity from the local churches and soup kitchen. He could not go to school as that was for boys with families that could afford the fee. As soon as he turned 5, his mother made him earn his keep by becoming a farm hand to a wealthy farmer that would at least give him some food as well as a meager sum of money.
His mother got by as a prostitute and had 6 more children to support. Wayne was not her biggest priority, but she depended on him to look after his siblings while he worked in the fields. From time to time, he would run into his father who was almost always drunk and giving him a hard time. No matter how much he promised to be good to his son, by the time he left, he beat up his son and left him with a bill to pay. He was so glad when his father was found dead with a gun shot wound in the head after he lost a bet and could not pay it.
He didn't have much more sympathy for his mother and felt burdened by his brothers and sisters that did not appreciate what he was sacrificing to take care of them. By the time he was 15 years old, he had enough. Instead of giving his mother all of his wages, he would skim some off the top and hide it at a local bank. He wanted to leave town and his burdens to start a new and better life.
It took him 7 years to make enough money. As soon as he had it, he left his mother's home in the middle of the night with a crew on their way towards Missouri. They traveled along a rough path and food was getting short and he was running out of money. Lucky for him they passed through a newly developed small town of Kensington Falls. The men realised Wayne would only be dead weight and insisted he stayed there, make some money and go back home.
On his first day in town, all he could do was catch up on some sleep. He found a creek with plenty of fish, lots of shade and privacy. He decided to pitch his tent there until he knew what he was going to do next. A kind woman, who looked roughly around his age, approached him and seeing he was hungry brought along a basket full of food. She introduced herself as Enid Kenzie, the new owner of the land he was sleeping on. She said he was welcomed to stay there overnight and returned to her home.
Wayne didn't have many options. He was glad someone would give him a break. While in New York, many folks would have taken advantage of him and turned him in a slave or cheap labour. Instead, this woman fed him and let him stay overnight with no strings attached. Not even his own parents were that kind to him.
Wayne was really tired. The overnight stay lasted three days. Each day, Enid came down to check on him and feed him. As Wayne was getting his energy back, he asked her where he could go to get a good job. She told them that most of the people of town belonged to the church and unless he was a member, chance of him getting a good job would be harder. Wayne was not exactly a church type and thought it was boring, but he was hungry and had no other options, so he took her advice and went to the service.
Week after week he would attend the meetings and sleep in the mission and eat at the soup kitchen as a charity case of the church. He was given menial tasks without pay to compensate for his food and lodging, but never enough to make it on his own. He hoped after a lot of effort perhaps they would get to know him and give him a chance. And it worked.
About three months of subjecting himself to the strict rules of the church mission, the church members took pity on him and gave him odd jobs here and there with barely living wages. It wasn't enough to make him well off, but it did get him a rental unit in the town's hotel and at least one meal a day. No doubt about it, he was still miserable. He wasn't really any better than he was when he left New York.
As he worked as a farm hand on the Gannette property, he spotted a lovely young lady named Gail. She had just come back into town from a boarding school in Paris. She would only be there for a few weeks in the summer and a few weeks in the winter before she had to go back. The rest of her family lived in France and kept an eye on her. Her parents found that quaint town and decided that would be a good area to run their American branch of the enterprise. They were the wealthiest people in town and among the wealthiest in the country.
It was love at first sight for Wayne the moment he saw her. He was easily distracted from his work as she sat outside talking with her sister and sipping on cold drinks. He was so distracted that his pay was being docked for the day. As he was already in trouble, he decided to approach the ladies and introduce himself to them. The foreman noticed too late that Wayne left the area and went where he was not supposed to go. It was forbidden by the Gannettes for the hired hands to go anywhere near his daughters. Now here was a scrawny Wayne about to make a fool of himself.
He reached the girls and said, "Hello lovely ladies. My name is Wayne. If there is anything you need me to do, I would be glad to help." The girls laughed at him as the foreman ran up to the house. Mr. Gannette came out of the house and started screaming at Wayne and humiliated him in front of the girls and told them to get in the house. The foreman begged for leniency for Wayne. Mr. Gannette agreed not to press charges for trespassing, but he was to fire the young man immediately.
The Gannette family had a lot of power. While the foreman was sorry to lose such a good and hard worker, he knew he had to comply or he would be out of business and had a family to support. He warned Wayne it would be best to go back home to his family because he was over in town. And the foreman was right. He was blacklisted. No one would hire him, at least no one who depended on the Gannette family to support their business and income. Even the church mission gave him a hard time, though they had a duty to help the poor, they were less than eager to help him and he was kept in virtual slavery.
Wayne was really down on his luck. The church was really demeaning to him and all of the church members would snub him and treat him as though he were a leper. He went back to that quiet spot where the lady was kind enough to let him stay. He camped out there again wondering if he should either go back home to New York, find the nearest party going West, or just kill himself right there.
Enid saw the pitiful young man there and gave him some food and comfort. He explained his bad situation and she offered him work. Unlike everyone else in town, she was not afraid of the Gannette family. She did not need them for support. She was also very disdainful of the hypocritical church members, the weak-willed women who played their men for fools to get their way, the men who thought of the women as objects instead of people and all of them who commit great sins then feel bad about it while condemning others for the same thing. She struck a chord with Wayne and he felt safe with her.
Enid had him do work for her and paid him an honest wage. Because he worked for the town outcast, no one would give him a place to stay. She came to his rescue yet again and offered him a plot of land to build his home, near the area where he first made his camp.
Wayne would work for Enid during the day and build his house during the night. In time, Wayne was feeling more like a man. He had his pride. He had a home. He was making a living that was much better than he ever had in New York. From time to time, his brothers or sisters or even his mother would stop by and pay him a visit before they became obnoxious and he chased them back home.
From time to time, Wayne would go into town and see the beautiful Gail who acted as if she could not even see him. He was hurt and thought he would never find love in his life. He wanted to leave town, but doubted he would have a better life anywhere else.
As Wayne was brooding about his fate, he decided to go to the only person in town he could trust, Enid. She was at home alone and never had any company. He thought surely she would appreciate a little company every now and then, especially as she was so kind to him when he was at his lowest. He felt he should do something nice for her.
Wayne visited the town and bought a porcelain vase and filled it with flowers he grew. He cooked a hearty meal for two and brought along candles. When he showed up at Enid's place bearing gifts, although she was so happy, she felt he might be up to something, but let him in anyway. They were so far out in the sticks that no one would notice a single woman with a man in her home without supervision. If they knew it would be a big scandal for both of them.
Wayne was rather fond of Enid and was aware she was developing feelings for him. He never wanted to hurt her, but only thought of her as a friend and wanted to keep it that way. He was still hoping one day the lovely Gail would notice him and fall in love. As he was a lonely man and Enid was a lonely woman, he did entertain the idea from time to time of getting past his feelings and settling down with her, but it was almost like what his mother observed was true when she said of him, "Some people will throw away an easy, sure and good thing because the challenge isn't there and will do anything to get something they only think is better that will end up bad for them in the end."
Wayne was never fond of what his mother had become and acknowledged maybe there was a grain of truth in what she said, but he reasoned that Enid was such a fine woman that she deserved to have a man in her life who truly loved her. He never felt he was honestly good enough for her. He has been told by most of the townsfolk he surely wasn't good enough for Miss Gannette, but that was a challenge he wanted to take, even if happiness with Enid was staring him in the face.
In a bold leap of courage, Wayne went to town where he knew Gail would be shopping in the boutique owned by her father. He wanted her to notice him, so he approached her with flowers and bowed down low and offered to show her a good time that evening. She screamed for her maidservant to come protect her from that beast. Humiliated, Wayne ran back home to lick his wounded pride and went to Enid's house to propose to her.
He figured he would never be with Gail and Enid is the only woman willing to have anything to do with him, so it made sense he would settle for what he could get. He only hoped he would not face rejection. To his surprise, Enid did not hesitate and accepted. She already had a plan laid out for their wedding day before he left that evening. She was really happy and thought he was truly in love with her.
Wayne promised Enid that he would marry her the day he made a successful business in town and could properly support a family. Enid did not want to tell him about her powers thinking it may complicate the relationship and let him follow his dream, to do less would take away his male pride. She did want him to succeed because she wanted to get married, so she used her powers to make him a big success.
Wayne was so happy and surprised things were suddenly going so well for him in a town that recently had him blacklisted by the Gannette family. He felt he surely must be a business genius because he had so many people coming in and out of his store everyday that he had to hire a staff. It looked like his wedding bells would soon be ringing. He was depressed on the notion he was marrying a woman he did not love, but compensated his feelings on the fact with Enid in his life, things have never been better.
Wayne believed it was truly his genius and hard work that got him ahead in town. Then an event happened which would change his life. He would often come home in the early afternoon to tend to his garden which helped him think. While in the fields he heard Enid talking to someone and didn't want to disturb them, but was curious as she never had a friend over. He cautiously approached as he saw her guest. He could not believe his eyes, a creature he has never seen before was talking to her. It was a female voice that was part human and part eagle with a tail and horns. He was shocked to discover this was her mother. He was afraid of what he was going to marry. He heard something about her having powers and how him finding out would hurt her. He didn't understand.
He sneaked off carefully and then ran to the town's library. He thought maybe the sunlight got to him and it was in his imagination. He figured if such a thing existed, surely there would be a book about it. Indeed there was an old relic of a book that had a picture of that creature drawn on a page. It was an immortal from the Darkness. He learned that immortals would sometimes come to earth to live among the humans and could mate with humans to produce children who were near-immortals and both had natural powers to make things happen. He figured out that his success was due to Enid and not of his own doing. He was hurt. Then he figured at least his life was better than it would have been if it were not for Enid.
Everyone in town was talking about Wayne. Even the single ladies would stop by the store and throw themselves at him trying to get his attention. He would always turn them down because he owed it to Enid to stay faithful. None of them would ever look his way when he was poor and struggling, but now he was the second wealthiest man in town, all of them wanted to marry him or be his mistress on the side. Each day he turned down several women, until that one fateful day when Gail stopped by his store with a problem that only he could help her with.
Gail was an equestrian from the time she was a little girl. She had many barn servants to do her bidding To make an excuse that Wayne was the only one available to help her shoe her horse so she could go home was an obvious play for him. He knew better, but didn't care. Finally the object of his desire noticed him. For that time, he had no thought about Enid. It was as if she never existed and Gail was the only woman in the world.
As Wayne serviced her horse, she flirted with him and made him feel as if he were the most important man in the world. She apologized for the misunderstandings they have had in the past, but that was only because her father would have had him killed if she took him seriously. She wanted to show him how sorry she was by inviting him to her house for dinner so his family could get to know him better. It would be a good opportunity to further his standing in the community. On those grounds, he decided to go off with her. He let his staff close the store and had one of them send a message to Enid that he had some business to take care of with the Gannette family.
Wayne was nervous as he entered the mansion as a guest instead of a servant. He feared he would be beaten by her father who threatened him when he was there last. To his surprise, Mr. Gannette gave him a firm handshake and a warm welcome as he offered him a brandy and cigar so they could discuss things in the lounge while the womenfolk were preparing supper. There was a big deal coming up with some rich businessmen from England and he could use a local partner with good business sense on his team and offered him a position within his firm, but it came on one condition…he would have to make a commitment to his daughter.
At the dinner table, Wayne sat next to Gail who flirted with him bodily under the table. When all the courses were done, everyone excused themselves from the table and Gail took Wayne to a private room by the fireplace to talk. She told him she talked to her father about how wonderful he was and how she wanted to marry him. As Wayne was a big success, he was finally good enough for Gail and receive his approval. He always made sure his daughter got anything she desired.
In the back of his mind, he finally remembered he was committed to Enid. He told Gail he was flattered, but he had a woman waiting for his hand. Gail had a fit and showed her disdain for that woman and was offended that he would bring up someone like that in front of her. She called for the butler to throw Wayne out of the house and complained to her father that Wayne rejected her for another woman.
That act of defiance pushed Mr. Gannette into a campaign to destroy a man who insulted his daughter. Any other man would have just let his daughter sulk and assure her there were more fish in the sea. Instead, she knew what she wanted and nothing else would do, so he fell helpless to her tears and set out to destroy him until he would comply to her demands.
As his business was suffering, he was too ashamed to tell Enid the reason why. He knew it was her powers that launched his business to be a success. He didn't want to mention he knew of her powers nor that he flirted with the ultra rich Gail. He told her the business was doing well, but there were so many things he needed to accomplish before he settled down. He only kept making excuse after excuse as to why they needed to postpone the wedding day. Eventually, he grew tired of the excuses. He wanted a successful business and he longed to be with a woman that ignited him with passion. Enid was just not that woman.
Before going to the store, Wayne left a note on Enid's door to notify her that he was breaking their engagement.
My Dear Enid,
It is with great regret that I have to inform you I am breaking our engagement. I think you are a warm and wonderful person, but you deserve someone who is much better and worthy of you. I am not that man.
My dear, please do not feel hurt. I will always value the friendship we shared. Please forgive my cowardice for not telling you in person. I could not stand the look of hurt and pain on your face. I do not deserve you. Please move on without me.
With much friendship,
Wayne
Enid was shocked and hurt and wanted an answer from him. She went to the store to find him so they could talk and resolve whatever the problem was keeping them apart. He was not at the store and no one would tell her where he went. She searched the big stores in town. She went to the Gannette mansion to ask if Wayne was there, but they said they did not know of his whereabouts. Enid was very worried thinking the worst has happened to him. She walked around towards the park near a field of trees. She notices some voices and moans of pleasure and did not want to disturb the couple. She wanted to sneak by unnoticed, until she got a good look - it was Wayne making love to Gail, out in broad daylight. Enid got her answer, but wanted to hear it from him.