xiii
The Son

Superficially, Timm Creed’s application to the United States Naval Academy and Jenny Lynn’s decision to pursue Women’s Studies at Bryn Mawr are the greatest ironies of Charles Creed’s life . . . or, rather, the greatest contradictions in a life filled with contradictions. What most of Jack’s friends have always understood, and what the national news media never grasped, is that Jack fully supported his son and, to a lesser extent, his daughter. In public he joked about sibling rebellion: “What territory did their father leave them, the old advocate of darkness and raising hell, except the straight and narrow?” In private, he was more expansive.

“There was a time when I would have exploded in some dark rage,” he admitted in 1986. “Now I’m a more seasoned piece of timber. I understand that the seedling grows best with plenty of light and water. You’ve got to give it space. There are only two ways to find open space. Move the little tree out of the shade of the old tree, or chop the old tree down. Especially if the old tree is a really old tree. I’m a pretty big tree. Timm and Jennifer will have to move to a space of their own—or cut me down. I’d prefer for this old tree to hang on just a few more years.

“Anyway, I’ve become a long-distant father, like most American dads. Like most American dads, I have very little control.”

In the late eighties, Charles Creed frequently discussed the subject of distant fathers with his friend west of the St. Croix River, Robert Bly. Jack, of course, spent three years neck-deep in Bly while writing Songs of the North Country, and at least two poems in Creed’s “Visiting the Father” sequence carry epigraphs from Bly’s work. Several others make oblique or pointed reference to the Minnesota poet. The Creed-Bly conversations were only a small part of Bly’s on-going study of the American father which culminated in the book Iron John, but on the title page of Jack’s personally autographed copy, Robert thanked him “for contributing so much to this book, especially to my first chapter.”

Jack understood Bly’s reading of father-son relationships, and accepted the need for the father to break with his son, even while supporting his son.

Jack would have backed Timm if he’d dropped out of high school to hustle pool in Las Vegas.

As for the Naval Academy, Jack was always one for backing beliefs with action. Busiris undergraduates who believed American interests were best served by obliterating communism wherever they found it were advised to “show the courage of their convictions,” join the military, and serve with pride. Undergraduates who believed America’s interests were best served by getting the hell out of Vietnam were advised to stop the war by all means necessary. Only the fence-sitters and wimps elicited Jack’s real contempt.

Even in 1970, Jack Creed had been no pacifist. In the game of international politics, he fully accepted the need for a well-trained military. “Most people on this planet would like to see the United States of America vaporized,” he wrote in his preface to Age of Faith. “We like to believe they’re misinformed about Americans and if we just smile, shake their hand, and give them a cigarette or a chocolate bar, they’ll see the error of their ways. Perhaps we’re right. Or perhaps we’re naive. Can we really afford to find out? Maybe the world would be best served by a pax Americana, enforced by a globally deployed United States Marine Corps. Or perhaps the world would be best served if capitalist America were obliterated. Who knows? One thing is certain: most of this planet’s Chinese, Vietnamese, Africans, South Americans, Russian, and Arab populations are not America’s friends. And they’re out there. America had better be ready to protect itself. The subject of thoughtful sixties discussion of the Vietnam War was how best to protect America, what form the battle for survival would take, and on what terms and geographies that battle could most advantageously be fought.”

A service academy was Timm’s idea. Where he picked it up, even he does not remember. Part of the attraction, he recalls, was the challenge of getting in. “The United States Naval Academy is statistically the most selective college in the country. It admits one out of fifteen applicants. West Point is not far behind. When I was a high school senior, USNA represented the ultimate challenge. Just as flight school represented the ultimate challenge once I reached Annapolis. Just as the F/A 18 represented the ultimate challenge once I entered flight school. I’m a born pilot. I want to fly higher, further, tighter than anyone has ever flown before. I want to fly beyond the moon. It’s been that way since as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s something I got from dad.”

Part of the attraction was the academy’s unique combination of academics, athletics, and discipline. “If you look at colleges collectively, you notice that there are the brain schools and there are the sports schools,” Timm told me. “A few, like Michigan, have good athletic teams and good academics, but they’re the exception. Usually it’s a brain place like Northwestern or a football place like Ohio State. I liked the idea of a college that emphasized brains and body for each of its students.”

Another part of the attraction was financial: service academies offered a tuition-free college education. In 1986, even after moving to Novum State, Charles was bringing home about $2,000 a month, slightly over half of which went to Riverton to pay the mortgage and support Rose Marié, Jenny, and Timm. The balance (supplemented by savings, overload salary, payment for writing, and speaking honoraria) met his rent, room and board, and car payments. Not much remained for college tuition, although Jack never made an issue of the subject. “I’ll get you whatever it takes,” he promised his son. “Only one thing: I’m not paying for anything east of the Appalachians, west of the Rockies, or south of the Mason Dixon Line.”

Money was the least of Timm’s worries. An all-conference place kicker with a 4.0 average, he was heavily recruited by, and could have had a free ride to any one of a dozen colleges, including one in the Ivy League and three in the Big Ten. The academies, however, paid students a small salary . . . and guaranteed jobs to all graduates.

Jack supported his son’s interest. “The real problem with the United States military today,” Jack wrote in 1987, when Timm had pretty much made up his mind, “is that it’s in the hands of the bad people. The good people pulled out during Vietnam. ‘Killing? Not for this boy. Far too holy for killing. I’m going to Canada. I’m a conscientious objector. I’m in grad school.’ I was one of them. ‘What if they gave a war and nobody came?’ we used to ask. That’s a great idea, unless the other side shows up and you don’t.

“If the good people won’t do it, the assholes will. That’s who you’re going to run into, and that’s who you’re going to have to fight. Not the commies over there, but the assholes giving you orders. It ain’t ever easy, and it’s a lot harder inside the system than outside.

“Still, if the good people keep opting out, then the assholes remain in control. Somebody good has to go in there. . . .”

It was Jack himself who drove Timm to both West Point and Annapolis.

“At the time I preferred West Point,” Timm told me. “It was the summer before my senior year. I wasn’t thinking flight school—if I had, I’d have probably visited Colorado Springs. Army had most of the heroes, and my maternal grandfather was a World War II infantry veteran. Dad took Jen and me to West Point first, because it was convenient to the folks on Long Island. Then we swung by Annapolis on our way back to Illinois. I think I liked the buildings at Annapolis. Newer. Brighter. Cleaner. I’m not much of a fan of the Gothic.”

In August of 1987, after a long week in Lake-of-the-Woods, Charles Creed pointed the nose of Lloyd Cowley’s V-8 Ford F-10 pickup (with camper, containing tent, sleeping bags, fishing poles and tackle boxes) in the general direction of New York, Philadelphia and the Fabled East. He headed east and south across Wisconsin to Rhinelander, visiting briefly with T. V. Olson, whose work Cowley had recommended, then south and east through the dairy farms of America toward Green Bay. In an antique store in Shawano he spent $130 on a complete eight-setting service of the green Colonial style dinner plates off which he had eaten his childhood meals: cups, saucers, dinner plates, serving pieces, even two large platters. One platter he gave to his parents as an unChristmas present. The rest were for his use in his new life in Lake-of-the-Woods.

At Green Bay Jack turned north up Wisconsin 57, crossing the Sturgeon Bay bridge onto the Door Peninsula, taking the eastern route through Jacksonport and Baileys Harbor, headed for Ellison Bay, home of Norbert Blei, another writer whose work he had come to admire. Blei blew him to a fish boil at the Ephriam Town Hall, lunch at the White Gull Inn, and dinner at Al Johnson’s. Also a breakfast on Washington Island, which, Jack reported, “was like traveling back in time to summers with my family at Silver Bay, New York, in 1957.” The A. C. Tap. was “straight out of Richard Bissell.” Two nights Charles Creed slept on the cot of the chicken coop Norbert Blei had refurbished into a writing den. He left with two autographed copies of Blei’s Door Way, one of which became another unChristmas gift to his folks, and plans to convert one of Harlan Everts’ outbuildings into a writing coop. He left Door County also with a Chick Peterson watercolor—“Ephriam Harbor in Winter”—which hung beside his bed for the rest of his life.

At Lloyd’s suggestion, Jack stopped briefly in Algoma to fish for brown trout. He caught nothing. Then he drove to Kewaunee, where he boarded a ferry for Ludington, Michigan.

On the Michigan side, Jack drifted south and east through Muskegon, Grand Rapids, Lansing, toward Detroit, where he tried unsuccessfully to hunt up another writer, Jim Harrison. Repulsed by the thought of northern Ohio, he toyed with the idea of a leisurely northern drive through London and Hamilton, Ontario, to Buffalo. Somewhere in the night, however, he thought he heard Kent State calling. The F-10 pickup nosed south to Toledo, then east across I-80. At exit 13 it turned south, entering Kent on Ohio 43.

“Gone,” Jack’s journal records. Everything gone. Bachelor pad by the airport demolished. Parking lot for the Maple Shade Inn. Which was no longer owned by my Mad Max [his former landlord]. Grad lounge now a writing center. Grad assistant office now a lecture hall. Cayuhoga Apartments nearly a slum. Timm’s birth place. Brand new when Rose Marié and I moved in. Hard to believe. So much good sex, good dope, good music. Gone. Good talk with good friends. Gone. Man, the Kent State I knew is gone and twice gone. Lily was right: ‘don’t never go backwards.’ ”

After a night of haunted sleep, Charles pressed east, through the forested center of Pennsylvania, arriving very late at his parents’ split level Colonial on Long Island. Breakfast the next morning was polite but perfunctory: Charles was mentally still in Wisconsin or Michigan, fishing, riding the ferry. Deer Park held as little for Jack as New York City. He borrowed his father’s Buick and drove to Hempstead to pick up Timm and Jenny Lynn. “Rose would shit if I showed up in Lloyd’s truck,” he explained. “Her dad would have a heart attack.”

Lunch with Rose Marié, her parents, and the kids was even more tense than breakfast, as was the drive to Atlantic City. The truce Jack and his in-laws had negotiated in 1973 had crumbled long ago. It had been years since he made even the pretense of liking, or even respecting them, their friends, their home, their home town. While Jack’s hostility was a given, even the grandchildren seemed irritable in 1987. Timm was preoccupied with football (practice had already begun, back in Riverton), with his up-coming senior year, and with the problem of college. Jenny Lynn was bored with everything: bored lying around the beach all day, bored dining in restaurants at night, bored at the night club, bored watching television in the motel room. She was too young to appreciate the attention of strange males, too old to bond easily with strange females, and completely divorced from the concerns of her mother and grandmother. Both Timm and Jenny had found the crowd hostile and pushy.

The meal was perfunctory. And silent.

“We’ll see West Point tomorrow,” Jack promised them. “We’ll spend two days max with grandma and grandpa Creed: tonight and tomorrow. We’ll hit the Naval Academy on our way home. I drive all night and you’ll be back in Riverton in five days.”

“I won’t be in Riverton for eight days,” Rose Marié objected. “You can’t just leave them there alone.”

“Your son will be leaving for college a year from now,” Jack reminded her.

“He’s not there yet. Jenny is only fourteen.”

“We’ll work this out later,” Jack suggested.

“Maybe we could just skip the Navy,” Timm suggested.

“Maybe we could skip both of them,” Jenny Lynn suggested.

“You’ll love it,” Jack promised.

“You’ve never been there, dad,” Jenny pointed out.

“Trust me.”

“Where are we going to stay?” Jenny wanted to know. “Not Atlantic City, I hope.”

Rose Marié scowled darkly at her daughter.

“We’re going to camp. I’ve got a tent and sleeping bags in the truck.”

“Dad!”

“You guys love to camp. Or used to.”

“Dad!”

Irving offered to spring for a motel if Jack could not afford one.

“I’m sick of motels,” Jenny complained. “Can’t we just say hello to Grandma and Grandpa Creed and drive right back to Riverton?”

“Trust me.”

“Maybe I’ll like West Point,” Timm said hopefully.

“I can’t imagine my son a professional killer,” Rose Marié mused aloud. “All that Vietnam business.”

“Where were you in ‘72?” Jack wanted to know.

Rose Marié scowled darkly at her husband.

“West Point is a lovely place,” Eunice said. “It would be very close to us. I think those boys in their uniforms are very handsome.”

Timm scowled at his grandmother.

“We’ll be going now,” Jack announced.

That evening it was Joseph and Lorraine Creeds’ turn: dinner at Amato’s, the finest Italian restaurant in Deer Park. The party of five arrived to discover their reservations had been lost and the waiting list was an hour and a half.

“Just like Atlantic City,” Jenny said wryly.

In the bar Jack nursed a $4.50 gin and tonic through ninety minutes of Mets baseball. “I hate the Metsees almost as much as I hate the Yankees,” he fumed.

“You always hated the Yankees,” Joe reminded him. “You were a Brooklyn fan as a kid. What ever happened to you and the Brooklyn Dodgers?”

“The Brooklyn Dodgers moved to L. A.”

“The Dodgers is the Dodgers.”

“I used to think that. Then I looked at them on television one night in 1984. Took a good long look at the players and the fans. The names. The faces. ‘These guys are not my Dodgers,’ I decided. Why lose sleep over a bunch of West Coast impostors?”

“They still wear Dodger blue.”

“The Cards have class. I’m goin’ with the Cards. The Mets? Try to be serious.”

Timm sat silent through two $1.50 Cokes.

Jennifer Lynn drank a glass of water. “I don’t want another one of those kiddie cocktails,” she announced.

“I was at a Pizza Hut down in Jersey,” Joe said, “And the walls were full of black and white photos taken by some guy named Amato. They looked to be Italian.”

“In Door County, Wisconsin, there is a Swedish restaurant with a sod roof. The owner is an old Swede, Al Johnson. He’s got goats up there grazing on the grass.”

“Sounds pretty progressive, dad,” said Jenny Lynn.

“They should get some of those Amato photographs for here,” suggested Lorraine Creed. “Although I don’t believe this place has changed in twenty years.”

“That’s longer than I’ve been alive,” Timm observed.

“Well, what’s young grows old,” Joe observed; “what’s old remains old.”

“I’m not ready to be old,” Jack told his parents. “Not yet.”

“You used to love this place.”

“I did, once. Now I could never return east of the Appalachians. I’m not even sure now if I could return to Riverton, even if I wanted to.”

Timm chuckled. “Not much chance of that, Dad.”

“Even if Busiris wanted me.”

“Not much chance of that, Dad,” Jenny added.

“Still, Amato’s is a fine restaurant and a fine family tradition,” Lorraine said. “I think it would be lovely if Timm attended a college close to us, and every year we could celebrate with a dinner at Amato’s.”

Jenny Lynn scowled darkly at her grandmother.

Jack and Timm spent the following day at West Point. Jenny stayed home because, she said, she was tired of driving. Although he went with high expectations, something in the place disappointed Timm: the admissions officer, the gray uniforms, the numbers, the architecture. “It just seemed old,” Timm recalled. “Maybe it was too close to Hempstead and Deer Park. And I don’t think dad was in the best mood either.”

The following day Timm and Jenny consented to spend in Deer Park “just chilling out.” No restaurants, no shows, no visits to grandparents’ friends. Television, some hoops at the local playground, barbecued ribs in the evening. Joe and Lorraine even managed to trap their granddaughter in some polite conversation.

Early on the morning of the fourth day, Timm, Jenny and their dad fought their way around Brooklyn to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, across Staten Island to Outerbridge Crossing Bridge, and down the New Jersey Turnpike. Jack tuned the radio to WABC, listened for half an hour, then spun the channels. “Nothing stays the same,” he reminded himself, “except Bob Dylan.” He put Blonde on Blonde into the tape deck.

By noon the truck had cleared Delaware, and Jack opened the hoagies, potato chips, and cream cheese and olive sandwiches his mother had packed for them. Jenny, sandwiched in the cab between her brother and her dad, slept uncomfortably.

“I can’t handle driving in New York anymore,” Jack told Timm at last.

Timm nodded. “Not to worry, dad. I don’t think I’ll be going to West Point.”

“It’s your call.”

“I know.”

“Funny,” Jack continued. “The very thought of this city used to crank me up. The pulse and the throb of it. Every holiday I used to flee from Busiris, land of the dead, to Greenwich Village, where everything was happening. All the energy was out here, in the East. The sixties was so much a Boston-New York-Philadelphia-D.C. thing, with a little California thrown in. The sixties didn’t really happen in the South, the Midwest, the Southwest or the Northwest. I realize that now. If America’s power had been decentralized in the sixties the way it is today. . . . Free love, anti-war demonstrations, and Woodstock don’t happen in Lake Wobegon. Not in Santa Fe or Atlanta either. I think the sixties would be impossible today because the nation is so pluralized.

“Of course, maybe the power shifted because the times changed,” Jack continued, mainly to himself. “I don’t know how I feel now. I know that A Prairie Home Companion is funny, and Saturday Night Live, lately, is not funny. I know that I feel 300% better in northern Wisconsin than I do on the Jersey Turnpike.”

Jenny Lynn shifted her position and went on sleeping.

“What if I don’t like the Navy either?” Timm fretted.

“There are a thousand colleges in this country. Almost all of them have football teams.”

“A lot of them are east of the Appalachians, west of the Rockies, and South of Mason-Dixon.”

“Well, that’s just talk.”

“No it isn’t. You just said yourself you’d rather be in Wisconsin than here.”

“At this stage of my life, my head is in western Wisconsin. If I were young like you. . . .”

“You’re not exactly an old man, Dad.”

“If I had your opportunities, I don’t think I’d exactly pick Novum State.”

“After this last week, I’m not so sure.”

“I wouldn’t pick Columbia or NYU, but I don’t think I’d pick Novum.”

“Illinois and Iowa have been writing me. Coach Becker says they’ve talked to him about me.”

“You go where you want to go. Your grandfather Creed sure as hell didn’t want me to get a Kent State Ph. D., I can tell you that. But he supported me, and I think it was right for me. Do what’s right for you, and I’ll support you.”

“How do you know what’s right? Aren’t parents supposed to give you a little advice?”

“I’m sorry I’ve been away so much.”

“You’ve been great. You gave up a lot for us.”

“I just did what I had to do. The truth is, I was selfish. I didn’t give up anything. That’s the example I’ve given you: do what feels right for you, because if you don’t, your family and friends feel guilty, and you feel resentful. Altruism creates a bigger mess than selfishness. Maybe.

“Anyway, I’ll respect you more for living your own life than if you try to live mine. I can’t live my might-have-beens in you, and you can’t look to me for your ought-to-bes.”

Maryland 2 junctioned U.S. 150 and after some construction bypasses transformed itself into tree-lined King George Street, route 450.

Jenny Lynn awoke. “Are we there yet?” she wanted to know.

“Pretty town,” Jack observed to his son. “Very picturesque. I always wanted to live on water.”

The boulevard arced right and downhill, past Jonas Green State Park, with a small picnic area, toward the Old Severn River Bridge. A dramatic break in the trees opened on a scenic vista. Across the river, the buildings and fields of the United States Naval Academy shone in the August sun: Bancroft Hall, the Chapel, Dahlgren Hall and Lejeun, Rickover, Halsey Field House.

“Nice place,” Timm said aloud. “Very picturesque.”

Following signs bearing blue and gold tridents, the truck with the Wisconsin plates passed St. John’s College, negotiated narrow streets flanked by clapboard frame houses: white with green shutters, blue with gray shutters, gray with maroon trim.

“We’re here to visit admissions,” Jack told the Marine on the guard duty.

“Park to your right, sir. Then you want Leahy Hall.” The Marine saluted Charles Creed.

“This place is too clean” Jenny Lynn said as she passed the tennis courts on the way to Leahy Hall.

“These guys don’t even see dirt,” said Jack.

Timm remained silent.

“You’ve got quite a record,” an admissions officer told Timm.

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re playing football this fall?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hasn’t practice started?”

“Backfield reported two weeks ago, line this week. I’m the place kicker, sir. I report this Monday.”

“Says here you were all-conference last year.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There were games last year when Navy could have used you.”

“You won the one that counted.”

“Napoleon McCallum received his commission last spring. He’s now in the fleet.”

“No one is irreplaceable.”

“Think you can keep that 4.0 over this next year? With football and, says here, class president?”

“I hope so. With physics and calculus this year, it could be tough.”

“There’s a lot of physics and calculus in the Academy curriculum.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Must be tough following an older brother like him,” the officer said to Jenny.

“I can hang,” she told him.

“They’re a pair,” Jack said.

“The Academy is always looking for good female midshipmen. And good men. Why are you interested in the Academy?”

Timm paused. “I can’t exactly say,” he began. “I like a structured life and I’m a pretty organized guy. I like athletics and I like academics. I’m not definite about the Academy, really. We visited West Point two days ago, and I’m looking at Illinois in a couple of weeks. I didn’t much like West Point.”

“That’s not the correct answer, son,” the officer told him. “You’re supposed to say something like ‘All my life my only goal has been to become an officer in the United States Navy. I have lived, eaten, dreamt and breathed Navy. I can give you play-by-play of every Army-Navy game for the past ten years. I love uniforms.’

“That’s what you say to get yourself a free $100,000 education.

“At least you gave the honest answer . . . which turns out to be the right answer. It’s not an answer I hear very often, I might add. At the Academy we can teach a midshipman anything we want him to learn . . . except for honesty. Honesty a man either has or doesn’t have. And honesty is the most important thing. Maybe it’s the only thing. You’ve got a fine son, Mr. Creed.”

“I can’t say I had a lot to do with it,” Jack admitted.

“Admission to the Academy is by appointment,” the officer told Timm. “If you decide you want to come here, you should write to your state congressman. Illinois is a pretty populous state, but not all congressmen use all their appointments. We can arrange an appointment for you . . . if you decide you need one. Your dad’s in Wisconsin?”

“Yes, sir,” Timm answered.

“You should introduce yourself to Coach Tranquil before you leave. You’ll probably find him on Farragut Field. You ready to kick a few?”

Timm did not kick speak to Coach Tranquil on this visit, although the three did watch half an hour of football drills from the sidelines.

“It was kind of a laid back visit,” Timm recalls. “We didn’t even join any of the tourist groups they have wandering all over campus in the summer. Dad picked up a few brochures, and we walked into every building that was open. I don’t think we bought any souvenirs. I never saw a dorm room until I flew out alone. That’s when I talked to Coach, too.

“We wandered out of the yard to the old harbor area. Ate dinner in Chick and Ruth’s kosher deli. Very East Coast, and Dad loved it. The green awning, the tight red booths, the framed photos and newspaper articles covering every inch of the wall. All that East Coast accent and signage. On the Island and in Jersey, Dad hated this stuff. Here, for some reason, it was okay. It brought him home to his childhood.

“After that, every time he visited, we had to have at least one meal at Chick and Ruth’s. It became a ritual: a Reuben sandwich at Chick and Ruth’s, and a pizza in Dahlgren Hall. The Reuben was better than the pizza, but my plebe year we were not allowed out of the yard, and all I could do was meet Dad at the desk in Bancroft, walk around the yard, head over to Dahlgren for food or television or maybe a hockey game.

“We’d eat at table, passing time together. I would study. He would grade papers. Maybe revise something he was working on. I read Songs of the North Country, in various stages of completion, over pizza in Dahlgren Hall. It made no sense to me at the time. Dad would usually say something like, ‘That’s one for the book: Charles Creed, Bob Dylan, and Robert Bly at the U. S. Naval Academy.’ He was no help at all with my engineering or math, but sometimes I’d ask him to look over something I was writing. We didn’t do a lot of talking, just sat calm and delighted for a few hours. Then I would return to quarters, and he’d drift off to a motel. Even during commissioning week he maintained the ritual: Reuben at Chick and Ruth’s, pizza at Dahlgren. Dad was kind of like that.”

The Ford pickup left Annapolis shortly after 7:00 p.m., a little late so as to avoid D. C. rush-hour traffic.

“Anybody want to see Washington?” Jack called and asked as the truck approached the Beltway.

“How long would it take?” Jenny wanted to know.

“Just a drive-through,” Jack told her.

“I would,” Timm said.

8:00 found Lloyd Cowley’s Ford pickup on Constitution Avenue, White House to the right, Washington Memorial on your left. Capital behind, Lincoln Memorial ahead. The truck did not stop.

“Who was the greatest president, Dad?” Jenny wanted to know.

“I suppose Lincoln would be the popular choice. Kind of democracy in action. Good common sense, simple eloquence, dedication to a moral purpose. I always felt a certain affinity with him: the man from Illinois, the man far from home. That statue of him in there, him meditating, the immensity of America to his back, Kentucky and Illinois lost in personal and geographical distances. That great sorrow on his face as he looks out over Washington. I always think of that phrase from the Gettysburg Address: ‘whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.’ It’s like he has really wondered if democracy stands a snowball’s chance. Yet he committed to the idea.”

Timm nodded his head. “I’ve always been a Lincoln man,” he said.

“Jefferson would be the intellectual’s choice. It’s easy to underestimate Jefferson. Not much sorrow, but talk about faith! Talk about vision! America isn’t a place, it’s an idea. And the idea is Jefferson’s. Thomas Jefferson invented America. With a little help from Franklin and Adams.”

“So you like Jefferson?”

“Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes I think Washington was the greatest of them all.”

“Because he stuck it out until he won?”

“Because he quit. The greatest thing Washington ever did was quit after two terms as president. Nobody expected him to do anything other than become a king for life. Think about it. There was no precedent for stepping down. None. Washington quit after two, and gave somebody else the chance. That’s the essence of democracy. That’s the greatest thing Washington ever did. It made America possible.”

“What about President Reagan?” Jenny Lynn wanted to know.

“They took a poll at school last year,” Timm said. “Reagan was number two, behind Lincoln.”

Jack nearly drove off the road. “What’s this country coming to?” he wanted to know. “We been talkin’ Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln . . . and then you talk Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan. Lincoln was right. Democracy will never survive. There are too many assholes.”

By 8:10 p.m., Jack and the children had left the nation’s capital. They were headed west.

l0:30 p.m. found them in the Alleghenies, tent pitched on the shore of the Potomac River in Green Ridge State Forest, campfire burning in front of them.

“We came a long way today,” Jack mused aloud. “Early this morning we were in New York City. Then we drove through New Jersey and south Philly when we got off the Turnpike. We were in Baltimore and ate dinner at some deli in the Annapolis. We saw Washington and the White House. A grand tour of Colonial America in one day. Think of it. Now we’re here, lost in the primitive dark. We quit it all. It’s like none of that exists. What an incredible world.”

“We were in five states today,” Jenny counted. “And the District of Columbia.”

“That’s West Virginia right over there,” said Charles, pointing across the river. “Timm could kick a football into Virginia from some of the places we’ve been today.”

“And we’re still nowhere close to Illinois,” Jenny said with a sigh.

“Let alone Wisconsin,” Jack added.

“This is the biggest decision of my life,” Timm said, staring into the fire.

“It is,” Jack told his son. “In my life, it made all the difference.

“Then again, it isn’t. The right school gives you a great start. But life is one big highway system, and you can always get there from here. It’s just a little easier to get there from some places than others.”

“You really think that, dad?”

“That memorial we passed a few hours ago in Washington was to a man who grew up in a log cabin not far from where you live.”

“A century ago. It took a war to get him there.”

“Ronald Reagan made it to the White House from Eureka College, which is even closer to where you live. Before he was president, he was a movie actor. Dick Nixon, whom everybody in America hated, got to the White House from Whittier College, via several lost elections. Jack Kennedy, whom half the country loved and half the country hated, got to the White House from Harvard College. Kennedy got shot. Nixon and Reagan are alive and well. Your classmates rank Reagan right behind Lincoln. Go figure.”

“Do you think you can be a famous writer living in Wisconsin?”

“I talked to two famous writers in Wisconsin on my way out here.”

“I mean really famous. I mean best-seller.”

“I won a Pulitzer Prize. Once.”

“Mom says you were a lot closer to New York in those days.”

“New York was closer to me in those days.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, your mom’s right. I don’t think I’m going to win any Pulitzer Prizes from Wisconsin. Once upon a time, the fact would have kept me awake nights. Now, I’m no longer sure that matters. Thoreau never won a Pulitzer. Who would have bet on Thoreau in 1845? Or Walt Whitman? Publishing his own book! Or Vachel Lindsay, handing his poems out on the street corners of Springfield. Talk about whacko! Or Emily Dickinson, for shit’s sake, holed up in her little white house and never even sending her stuff out. All you can do is do what you feel is right, and don’t look back.”

“I don’t know what feels right.”

“You seemed to like Annapolis.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I found myself walking a little straighter there myself.”

“That was just a few hours.”

“Whatever you do, someday you’ll catch yourself wondering, ‘What if I’d taken that other road?’ Either way, you’re going to wonder. Maybe there is no right decision. Only what you do with the decision you make.”

“Was marrying mom the right decision?” Jenny wanted to know.

“It was just a decision.”

“Do you ever look back?”

“I spent a lot of years looking back,” Charles admitted. “Then I finally realized what a very smart woman told me a long time ago: you can’t go back. If I’d remembered my Fitzgerald, I’d have understood that from Gatsby. Walking around with my head backwards, I couldn’t see what was going on beside me. I was losing what I had for a bunch of woulda, coulda, shoulda that maybe I shouldn’t have. Then I quit looking backwards and started enjoying my kids. If I hadn’t married your mother, we wouldn’t be here now. And everybody knows, I have the greatest kids in the world.”

“All parents say that,” Jenny said.

“That’s what they tell their kids,” Jack said. “What they tell me is, ‘What did you do right, Charles?’ I tell them ‘nothing.’”

“You’re a good dad,” Timm assured Jack.

“I’ve been a distant dad lately. I can’t say I’ve done much for your mother, and I think sometimes she takes out her frustrations. . . .”

“She’s a little happier now that you’re away,” Timm said candidly. “You weren’t really a good match.”

“I think we were a better match when we started than we are now. We kind of grew apart.”

“She thinks you’ve changed a lot.”

“She’s changed a bit herself. No, I’m not going to get into that. Life is change. What’s young . . . grows old. I learned a few things in the past fifteen years.”

“Like what?” Timm wanted to know.

“For one thing, people change. For another thing, if you’re not happy with yourself, then your anger gets shot out at those around you, maybe the people you love. Maybe the people you were trying to support in making the compromises that made you unhappy with yourself. So it’s better for everyone if you’re a little selfish.”

Jack paused.

“I also learned that you can survive anything that doesn’t kill you right away.

“And I learned that there are real snakes in the world, and they come in both sexes.” Charles stirred the fire with a walking stick. “You’ll meet some at the Academy, or wherever you go. Either side of the Appalachians. They’re not all that easy to get rid of. You got to watch them twenty-five hours a day, and just when you think you’ve got them holed up, they sneak out the back door and bite you from behind. But you survive the bite.”

“You should write this down for us,” said Jenny Lynn. “Seriously, Dad.”

“When you’re eighteen,” Charles laughed. “Father Creed’s Axioms For Life.”

“Be a best seller.”

“Mom wants me to go to the University of Illinois,” Timm said. “She didn’t even want me to look at the academies. She says they probably won’t take me anyway.”

“There’s no guarantee,” Charles told his son, “even with your record.”

“That’s not what she meant. She said they would never take me because of my father’s record.”

“Well, son, that’s possible. I’m sure there are files on me somewhere. If my files keep you out of the academies where you want to go . . . I could not be more apologetic.”

“You did what you thought was right.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“And you were right about Vietnam. Even mom agrees with you now.”

“It wasn’t that I opposed the idea of an army or a navy. You have to fight to defend yourself. I believe that. I just thought Vietnam was a bad idea tactically and morally. We’re still paying for that war.”

“So you did the right thing.”

“I’m not sure. Maybe I should have joined the army and fought the war from within.”

“I don’t see you as a soldier, Dad.”

“You’re right about that. But I always come against things from outside. All my life I’ve been the force from without that necessitates compromise inside the power structure. I still believe you need that threat from outside, because the system understands only power, and compromises only with power. We used to call it throwing ourselves in the gears of the machine, becoming the friction that wears the system down. Well okay, but you can get pretty ground up that way.”

“So maybe it’s better to be inside?”

“One of the other things I’ve learned is sometimes you have to hold back a little. I’m not saying you compromise, not all the time. That doesn’t work either. But you have to put up with a little shit. I never accepted shit. At the Academy, you’d have to put up with a ton of shit just to get your commission. But without the commission, you’re not an officer in the Navy. Then you put up with more shit if you want to get promoted.”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is, somewhere down the line—I don’t know where—a bunch of people are sitting in a room deciding whether or not to drop a bomb on Japan, whether or not to spray 2, 4-D all over North Vietnam, whether or not to start a war with Russia. The ones who got their commissions, made their rank, got their promotions, are the ones sitting in that room. The ones who opted against the system are outside the room. If the people outside are vocal and strong, the people inside might consider their reactions to the decision being made. Or they might not. Either way, it’s the ones inside the room that make the decisions.”

“Kind of like playing sports. You have to be on the team.”

“Yeah, kind of like making the team. One thing about me: as much as I like sports, I’ve never been a team player. I’m not on the team. Not in that room. I cut myself out. I just hope that I didn’t cut you out. I think you’d be a good, humane, intelligent officer. And decision-maker. I would trust you with my country.”

“But you said I can always get there from here.”

“Yeah, I guess I did,” Charles admitted uneasily. “The guy who really makes the decision these days is President Reagan from Eureka College. One day we might even have a president who opposed the Vietnam War. It’s theoretically possible. Let’s just say it’s a lot easier to get there from some places than from others.”

“Dad,” Jenny Lynn said softly.

“Yeah?”

“I’m awful glad we came here.”

“Me too, daughter. Me too.”

The three sat quietly together, staring at the dying fire.

“Dad,” Timm said finally. “I think I could make it at the Naval Academy.”

“I think you could too, son,” Charles told him. “And I couldn’t be more surprised.”

On December 30, 1987, Timm Creed received his appointment to the U. S. Naval Academy. After a two-hour long-distance phone conversation with his father, he accepted that appointment on January 4, 1988. The entire family accompanied him to his induction, the family joining him and his mates for sit-down steak dinner in Bancroft Hall. Throughout July and August, Jack wrote daily letters to his son, mostly to provide him the distraction of mail, but also to support him as best he could in the absence of any response. With the start of the academic year, those letters tapered to one or two a week.

Jack visited Annapolis three times during the 1988-89 year, twice each of the following three years. Twice he saw Timm dress and play for Navy football. Other games he watched on videotape. He had a nearly complete collection, which Kelly Creed returned to Timm shortly after Jack’s death, along with Timm’s home jersey, which Jack had hanging from his den wall, beside a pair of Jenny Lynn’s ballet slippers, Kelly’s college volleyball jersey, and the battered pair of Air Jordans Kelly had sold Charles when they first began seeing each other.

Timm and Jack talked by phone every weekend during the academic years, through the good times and the not so good times. When one of his political science instructors made reference to Age of Faith, Timm sought and actually found the book in the Academy library. He read it then for the first time. “You’re famous, dad,” he wrote. “Even here. My prof wanted to know what you’re doing now. Said next time you’re here, introduce you.”

On the afternoon of service selection in spring of 1991, Timm spent another two hours on the phone to his father. They sweated together while those with class rankings 1 through 125 were called to selection. Over the loud speaker and radio they heard constant updates on what billets remained open, what options had closed. Jack and Timm both were pleased that flight school openings remained when numbers 125-150 were called for selection.

‘Go get ‘em, Tiger,” Jack said as Timm hung up.

Half an hour later Timm phoned briefly: “It’s air corps.”

Jack was prouder of his son’s commission and of his wings than he was of his own Ph. D. or his Pulitzer Prize.

The circle encompassing Jack, Busiris, the Naval Academy, and Timm closed finally after Timm had completed flight school and reported to Mirimar in California. In a letter, Timm wrote his father,

This information gave tremendous satisfaction to the man who once said, “You know, Tucker, all I really want out of life is for my kids to look back and say, ‘My old man was an okay guy.’”

The document which most embodies Charles’ love for his son is the list of “Father Creed’s Axioms for Life” which Charles sent Timm not long after that night in Green Ridge State Forest. The axioms are contradictory and paradoxical, vintage Creed from beginning to end, the distilled wisdom of Jack’s forty years on the planet. The letter, and the list, are the most private of documents and thus the most honest. Had it been introduced at Charles’ trial, or read to VPAA Reich or Dean Hauptman, it would, I believe, have clarified Charles’ position on any number of issues. In that interest Timm Creed has given me permission to reproduce it, unedited, here: