Dalva by Jim Harrison

books, marriage and divorce, daughter in private school which cost him a full third of his take-home pay, six years of teaching at Stanford but still without tenure.
    The bottom line was on the last page, in the form of a supplication and an offer. He had just returned from Loreto on Baja to meet with my uncle Paul in the hopes that my denial to see family papers could be circumvented. Uncle Paul, whom he “adored,” said it was still up to me. The problem was his sabbatical, for which he had been given a large additional foundation grant, would begin in the summer. Tenure depended on the book he would write during his sabbatical. The center of the difficulty was that a professor from the Universityof Wisconsin on the grants committee had previously been denied access to our papers and had demanded proof of Michael’s access as a contingency to the grant. He had to deliver this permission in a week’s time to his own chairman at Stanford. At this point, if he couldn’t do so, he would lose his grant, sabbatical, and very probably his job due to “moral turpitude”— i.e., lying—no matter that the students had voted him teacher of the year for his lecturing techniques, his wonderfully amusing oratory. If he lost his job his daughter would have to be withdrawn from private school which would break her heart. He rented an apartment and there was a loan on his BMW exceeding its current value due to a minor collision with his mailbox. In other words, his fate was entirely in my hands.
    It was such a sorry mess I began to laugh, reminding me as it did of a more grotesque version of parts of my own life, and the lives of many of those I knew. His offer, however, brought me to despair; I lost my breath and wandered out to the balcony but my tears blurred the Pacific. “Remember that night,” he wrote, “when you ridiculed my mustache, or at least teased me about it? I grabbed your arm and you became justifiably angry. I don’t think I have any violence in me or perhaps it all comes out my mouth, or is subdued in drinking! My ex-wife used to slap me and I never defended myself. Coleridge said somewhere that we are like spiders who spin webs of deceit out of our asses. Perhaps along with my scholarly bent I have the temperament of an unsuccessful horse-player, a binge gambler. My frantic quarreling with you over at Ted’s was a signal of the depth of trouble I was in. Anyway, the night at your place you mentioned that you wanted to find your son, or you were going to write something to explain yourself and your background. You could monitor my project which would cover the background. And I could find your son. I know I could because I am trained as a researcher and have a great deal of credibility. This is all I have to offer and perhaps you would rather do it without me. I beg, I implore you to consider my situation. To be sure, I have lied repeatedly to my collective profession thinking I could bend your will. I truly care for you, but that’s another matter. Frankly, I have wondered why you bothered with me in the first place, traveling in the circles that you do. Ted spends more than my salary in wine everyyear. Finding your son is all I have to offer. Please call me the minute you finish this letter. I have given serious consideration to suicide but couldn’t do it because of my daughter. Otherwise I would threaten you with it.”
    Out on the balcony I thought that certain kinds of suffering are altogether too ambitious. I remembered childhood stories of abandoned dogs who found their way, after numberless torments of weather, bridges, highways, dogcatchers, a thousand miles back home. Their compass evidently was their longing to be there. It’s a nice story but what of all the young people I’ve worked with who have run away from some impossible situation, then return to find the door closed? It is difficult to help someone who feels discarded. They think