THE FATHERS (1) April in Valley Forge April. Purple riots of trees. Yellow madnesses along the vast parade ground, dandelion in training. White blossoms of fruits unnameable. A delicious air across the skin of George Beck’s bare arms. Clouds thin against the clearest sky. Too warm to be cool. Too cool to be warm. Beck should have been rising, like the season. Easter was just over and resurrection rang everywhere. Down with the old world. Here, in Valley Forge, in spring, he should have been feeling an American beginning. Suddenly, two deer amid the nearby trees. Their tails swished and ears pricked up. Young and protected in the park, they had small fear of him. Just the far side of insolence. They stood their ground as he skirted their perimeter. Beck wound up and lobbed a heavy rock. It cracked against a lying trunk. The animals turned their white tails in his face and kicked the turf as they fled. It made him feel a little better. Not much. A bit farther along, three more deer. Another Beckian ambuscade, another frantic escape. Still better. End of (1) April in Valley Forge Click at left on the next part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FATHERS (2) The rush of engagement He felt the rush of engagement. But it did not sweep away all funk. Age. Marginalization. Irrelevance. Being taken for granted. A little of each, and something else besides. The reminders of his death in the way others behaved toward him. His body felt fine. His place in the social galaxy did not. His light was going out and nobody gave a damn. "But--Beck. All your life you wanted to avoid the contact. You said you craved for a dark corner. Shy was your name as a boy. Your mother feared you were abnormal. Your father gave up on you." "Yes," Beck said to Beck. "All true. But I learned. In a whole lifetime I learned. I went out front and learned to take the heat. I took. I gave it back. I toughened. I said no. I said yes. In time, the habit overrode whatever shy instinct I held at the center of my self. I became a professional. People thought my outside was my inside. I came to think so too." "You said it was time to get out," Beck answered Beck. "You wanted rescue. You wanted to nurture who you were, out of the mesh of administrative machinery. You retired a couple of years sooner than necessary. You thought of your sister, dead too soon. You thought of others also dead (poor Tom), their story somehow unfinished. What story did you want to finish, Beck?" The interior dialogue halted. Beck stopped walking among the trees. A fallen tree gave him a seat. He breathed evenly, hands on knees, practicing the art of not thinking about what he was thinking about. The nervous itch that once made him perform now gave itself over to such discipline. He was able to halt himself, for a time. But not for good. He stood up, scanned the woods for deer, saw none, walked briskly onto the broad field. Washington’s general parade ground. Beyond, on the rise in the distance, he could see the bell tower of the chapel, not grand, rooted close to the Pennsylvania turf. An incongruity. A modest little memorial for America’s greatest man. Beck walked easily toward the tower through the rising grass of spring in Pennsylvania. He recently looked up George Washington on the website of the Library of Congress. The father of our country wrote syntactic nightmares of sentences. So what. He knew how to think about a material advantage. He kept his head up. When it was over, he went home. He gave the world a country. Period. "Take a lesson," Beck told himself. End of (2) The rush of engagement Click at left on the next part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FATHERS (3) Pregnant? "Pregnant?" Beck looked at Calvin. His son would soon be thirty-four. Nine years ago, Calvin ran into the wall of mental illness. "Incurable but treatable" was the medical mantra. Ten times since then, Beck went through the pain of committing Calvin against the patient’s will to the mental hospital. Cynthia was there a couple of times too when Calvin was there. Both bipolar. Manic depressive. She suicidal. He grandiose. In group sessions, they got to know one another at their worst. In the hallways. In their dirty pants. In her most withdrawn moments. In his bold marches down the locked corridors. After Calvin’s last release, she called him. He called her. They walked in the woods. They ate at the diner. They drove in his battered Chevy into the Pennsylvania Dutch country, where cows grazed, fields swept away from Route 23 in calm sane lines. Cynthia was restive under the roof of her parents. Calvin’s small apartment was a weekend refuge. He watched as his Penthouse images became realities in his tightly drawn bed. More than he had hoped for years. She was beautiful in his eyes. He was handsome in hers. They came together, as if mental illness were no impediment to love. "Think so," said Calvin. "What next?" Beck asked, sipping his coffee more slowly. "Wait and see," Calvin said. "I guess." "If she wants to have the child, are you going to agree with her?" "I guess." Beck said to himself: "You have no job. You get a slim check from Social Security. You know nothing of fatherhood. It doesn’t stop when you turn the switch off, the way your stereo works. Both of you will end up off the deep end, roaming the hospital halls behind locked doors. Who will take care of your baby then?" All the reasons why she should have an abortion ran through Beck’s mind. Even after the second cup of coffee, however, he did not say them to Calvin. He waited until he was home and said them to Marion, his wife. "Ogod," she said, unequipped. "Going for a walk," Beck said.   End of (3) Pregnant? Click at left on the next part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FATHERS (4) The old managerial habit Back in the park, he felt responsibility, the old managerial habit, reaching for his hand, as if a big bear had jumped out of the thicket and pawed at him. "Not your job, Beck." He paused on an earthwork overlooking the open fields. Washington surely had stood here, commanding. Teeth aching besides, no doubt. The commander-in-chief, stoic. "I need to help," Beck answered. Hands on hips, shoulders squared up, chin a little elevated. "But you have gone to Mount Vernon," Beck said. "Stay there." "The slaves are restless, the crops are scrawny, bills are going unpaid, Martha has headaches. Give me a horse. Duty calls me away." "Your honor is in your consistency," Beck said insistently. "Let the young deal with the young. Stay with the plows in your fields and take solace in them." Beck left the position of command and walked toward trees. Luckily, he then came upon a pregnant doe. She lay in the shade, unstirred by his approach, though her eyes were bright and hot with attention. The immediacy of the encounter, the absurd congruity of it, stopped his see-saw argument with himself. His shoe accidentally kicked a stone on the path. He wished he had not stumbled. She stirred but did not move. He returned to his car and drove home. It was time to act.   End of (4) The old managerial habit Click at left on the next part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FATHERS (5) Father to son "But what should we do?" asked Marion. "Make them stop?" "Help them," Beck said. George did not know what he would do. Command demanded it. Character. Commitment. Country, family--all the same. "It will cost us more money," Marion said. "They cannot work. They cannot live on their disability checks." George Beck agreed. He was prepared. Sacred honor. Ultimate sacrifices. "We will go crazy ourselves if this baby comes into the world," Marion reminded him. "We will endure," said Beck. Snows of winter. Lack of materiel. The dread doubt, riding ice chunks down the Schuylkill River. Will the outcome be fair? Or is defeat our destiny? A knee in the snow, a lowered brow in a hand, eyes closed. The prayer of a country’s father. When Beck went to lunch again with Calvin, he wore his tie and jacket. He dipped deeply into his pool of charity. "Have this woman and child if you feel it is right," he said to his son. Beck’s memory then flashed him a sobering scene. He stood behind a nearby tree in the dark, watching the emergency team take Calvin off to the mental hospital for the first time. Calvin strapped to a stretcher. Arms bound to his sides by restraints. Head bobbing, straining to see. Looking for Nazis. Looking for the hazard exceeding all the world’s hazard. Looking for his father, who had blown the whistle on him. Beck staying out of his sight on the advice of the emergency men. Another flash. Accused! Calvin shouting in his face in the hospital. "You bastard! You screwed me over! You put me here! You double-crossing prick. Get out of here!" Stomping like a prince down the hall, giving Beck his back. He knew it was the illness speaking, not Calvin. But. Picking at his burger, Beck said, "Calvin, you may not know what you are getting into. You may want to get out of it before it is too late." Calvin was excited but not out of control. He knew what he was doing and he did not want to get out of it. "I’ll help you, then," said Beck. A tiny connection across the plastic table. Father to son. Progeny. Country. Beck ate. Beck drank. Calvin wolfed his hot roast beef sandwich.   End of (5) Father to son Click at left on the next part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FATHERS (6) Forty wedding invitations Calvin and Cynthia sent out forty invitations to their church wedding. A little while before the big date, Calvin screamed in Cynthia's face. Cynthia swung to her depressive state and stayed there, blind to her baby growing. Then Beck picked up a rock and threw it. He went to the hospital and requested that the emergency service go and pick up Calvin. He was "decompensating" seriously, Beck told the man, in the jargon of the business. Since Beck failed to show enough evidence that Calvin was a clear and immediate threat to the safety of others or himself, according to the way the law worked, the service denied his request. Calvin shouted in Beck's face. He shouted in his mother’s face. He shouted at the arrangement of the world that made him shout so much. Then he just shouted. Then he made telephone calls for twelve hours to all the people that he knew, telling them of his sexual problem. The doctors did it to him. His father did it to him. His previous girlfriends did it to him. Everybody did it to him. Stabbed. Damaged for the rest of his life. When Beck went back, the emergency service reconsidered. The ambulance went out and brought him in. Locked doors again. Somehow, the forty invitees found out that there would be no wedding.   End of (6) Forty wedding invitations Click at left on the next part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FATHERS (7) What next? Beck in the park. He ignored the deer. He went to the chapel in memory of Washington. Mute unfeeling stones. George Beck, alone at Valley Forge, walked slowly onto the grand parade ground and surveyed his situation. Spring gone. Summer coming in. Snows not even a memory. "What next?" he asked himself uncertainly. He felt the pull of the turf. Slaves. Crops. Privacy. Fatherhood takes many shapes. Speaks its own language. It was better than no thought at all. He went home to Marion. "What?" she asked. "Don’t ask me," Beck answered. But she heard a familiar sound. He did too. Resolution. Assurance. "Our asparagus is ready for picking," Marion said. She wore her straw hat and gardening shoes. "We’ll have it for dinner." "Good," said George. His eye swept over his property.   End of (7) What next? Click at left on the next part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FATHERS (8) A kind of destiny Calvin became a father. Cynthia became a mother. Their mental illness continued. They rose and they fell. They went in and they came out. The years went on. Their child, Calvin, Jr., grew. They had moments of ultimate crisis. Marion, the grandmother, helped as much as she could. No one could know how much help they needed. It became a way of living for the Becks. The grandfather, Beck, saw these things as if from a field, calmly and surely. He was there, in the act of command, in the midst of distress. When he died, they spoke well of him. In the years after his death, when Calvin, Jr., learned the things of his family, Beck grew in the young man's mind to legendary size. Had he been there, George Beck could have believed that it was a kind of destiny.   End of (8) A kind of destiny End of THE FATHERS To leave the story and remain in the rpr/WORKS website, direct your browser to http://webpages.ursinus.edu/rrichter/