ChapterTWO

Thomas Strongtree planned to send letters to individuals whose police records he found at a flea market. Phil Troxell advised him to approach each person individually and with respect. Thomas chose Patrick Williams, the superintendent of schools, as his first recipient. Patrick initially refused to cooperate, but after some correspondence, he agreed to meet with Thomas. They met at Patrick's office, where they discussed his arrest and its impact on his life. Chapter 2 PATRICK WILLIAMS' THE GREAT BANQUET Once I had the current addresses, I planned to write a letter, send out a copy of the letter, and respond to anyone who answered. I'm embarrassed to remember that idea today. I would have failed. There could be no such mailing. I ran this idea past Phil Troxell, who advised me against it. I liked the guy, and in subsequent discussions, Phil said I had to approach the caught thirty one at a time. He cautioned me that my first job would be to win them over. And that came from demonstrating respect. If I didn't show respect, the exercise would go from intriguing to a waste of time. He told me to take a step back, pick one name, and write to that person. If I made a mistake and said something wrong, I'd adjust for the next. I might lose one, but I wouldn't lose them all. I didn't know why at the time, but I picked Patrick Williams for my first try. Alongside the address for Patrick Williams, Phil noted PhD, Superintendent of Schools. Looking back on it now, I see I couldn't have started with a better guy. I sent him this letter. Dear Dr. Williams, my name is Thomas Strongtree, and I'm asking you to please share a part of your personal history with me. Several years ago, I bought a pack of police records at a flea market. I felt drawn to the people they represent. The documents are photos and fingerprint cards with names and addresses of young people living in the Jamestown, New York area during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, and I believe one of these records is yours. These are not complete records. They contain no information concerning accusations or verdicts. I'm writing to ask you what you remember about the incident that brought you into contact with the police. I'm wondering if your contact with the law at a young age had any lasting effect on your life, and what advice you would give to your younger self. I'm not with the police. I'm not a reporter. I have no affiliation with any institution. I'm not asking for money, nor am I offering money. Be assured I will maintain confidentiality and respect. Enclosed are my home address, phone number, and email address. Please get in touch however you feel most comfortable. I would like to meet you in person. You set the time and place. I will return the original record card and photo to you when we meet. I have made no copies. If you believe this police record does not concern you, please respond, alert me to my error, and I will search elsewhere. For your attention, I express my gratitude, Thomas Strongfree. I heard back from Dr. Williams a week later. He sent an email from his office to Thomas Strongfree from Dr. Patrick Williams, Ph.D., subject, police records. I don't know who you are or what you're trying to do, but I will not be blackmailed or intimidated. Those records have been sealed and expunged. You have no right to access them for any reason. If you persist in this activity, I will notify the authorities. A flush of embarrassment ran through me. My lawyer friend warned me about this, he told me, and now I told myself I had no business messing around with this information. I had to forget it. Well, I tried, but it didn't work. I had to get out before the whole project came crashing down around me. And forget Phil Troxell and the money, too. Lesson bought and lesson learned. I replied to the email. Reply to Dr. Patrick Williams, Ph.D., subject, police records. Dr. Williams, I understand and accept your refusal. I will not pursue the matter further. However, it might be good that I bought the arrest cards rather than someone who would otherwise misuse your personal information. I have shared this card and photo with no one other than the investigator who found your address. In that light, please tell me how to proceed. I will destroy the card and the photo, or if you prefer, I will send them to you by registered mail at my expense. I apologize for causing any anxiety. I ask your forgiveness, Thomas Strongtree. That's about all I could do. I had disobeyed good legal advice, and if this Williams guy didn't come after me, I'd dodge the bullet. I didn't get an immediate reply from Dr. Williams. He might have ignored me, and that would have been fine. But I needed to figure out what to do with this record card. My nerves had almost settled when I saw he'd sent another email. To Thomas Strongtree, from Patrick Williams, subject, police records. Hey, Thomas, I've been thinking about this police thing. Yes, it's me. I believe you meant no harm, but please put yourself in my place for a minute. You'll understand my reluctance. A letter came out of the blue asking about the most embarrassing moment of my teenage years. It surprised me. But I've never kept anything about the arrest a secret. My family, friends, and employers are all aware of it. I consider it one of the worst days of my young life. But I also see it as the day my life began. You asked what I would tell my younger self. Ironically, I've built a career answering that question for the young people in my classrooms and for myself. I'll be glad to meet with you if you're on the level. I'm still interested in how you got whatever you say you have. Finding it at a flea market seems a little far-fetched, but you can tell me about that when we meet. I have this Friday off. I know that's only leaving you a couple of days to get here, but that's the most convenient for me. School's out that day. I have meetings in the morning, but we'd have plenty of time in the afternoon. Let's meet at my office in the administration building. How about 2 o'clock? I'll link to the Rochelle Park School's website for the address. If that's good, reply, okay. If that doesn't work, give me a few dates that would and we'll work it out. Regards, Patrick Williams. Well, that was all I needed. He added a link to the school system website. I replied okay and started packing. He wanted to meet on Friday and the email arrived on Tuesday, but that didn't bother me. My excitement got me to New Jersey on time. My first guy, and it felt like he had a winning story. How did Patrick Williams, a young guy arrested in Jamestown, New York, become Dr. Patrick Williams, a school superintendent in New Jersey? He seemed friendly enough in the second email, certainly no criminal and probably not dangerous. I felt a kind of similarity. I pulled into the parking lot of the administration building for Rochelle Park School's 10 minutes early on Friday. The place looked deserted and I had no trouble finding a spot. I walked through the front doors and stopped by the building directory in the entryway. The names listed had titles that read head of or assistant administrator of, but Patrick Williams had no title. It said Dr. Patrick Williams, Ph.D., room 5. To me, that means anyone looking for him knows who he is. I felt uncomfortable going any further, so I waited by the doors. He mentioned something about having a day off and it sure felt that way. No lights in the building and all the doors were closed. I didn't have long to wait. Dr. Williams arrived driving a gray Lexus. I knew from his record card he'd be 51 years old, and a tall man of medium build jumped out of the car. He wore a crisp navy blue suit, well-groomed salt and pepper hair, and black framed glasses. I wouldn't be surprised if he told me he shined his shoes every morning. He walked directly toward me, gave me a huge smile, and shook my hand. He said, you must be Thomas Strongtree. Yes, I answered as we shook hands, I'm glad to meet you, Dr. Williams, and please call me Tom. Well, I'm happy you could make it, Tom, and you please call me Patrick, he said. Let's go to my office where we can talk. We walked down a corridor and our footsteps echoed off the walls. From school days gone by, I felt correction all around me. If you don't know that feeling, I'm guessing you were a good kid who wanted to be in school. The harsh-sounding corridor of a school office building is last on the list of places I'd like to visit, but Patrick Williams' enthusiasm carried me on. He opened his office, turned on a light, and motioned me to a chair in front of his desk. While I sat in the chair, he hung a suit jacket on a coat tree and busied himself in a small sink. He switched on a coffee maker. I'll be able to offer you coffee in a minute, he said. Any other time, he would have made it all the time around here, but everyone's off for after test day. We have these quarterly exams now. The teachers get a Friday off now and then to compensate for the extra work. It's a fun little perk. Who doesn't like a Friday off? I said, I appreciate you taking time out of your day off for me. Well, I don't know if I ever get a day off, he said, but frankly, I'm interested in what you've uncovered. I opened the leather backpack I'd started using as a briefcase. I took out the manila envelope containing his record card and photo. After he found a place behind his large metal desk, I handed him the envelope and asked his permission to record our meeting. Sure, he said, as long as we keep it to the old days. That's what I'm here for, I agree. He opened the envelope and took out the card and photo. So, he said, this is it. He looked at it for a long time. He moved his eyes from the image to the card and back several times. When he looked up, he said, yeah, that's me. That's what I look like on my worst day. He went quiet again for a full minute and returned to looking at the picture. When he looked up, I saw a smile in his eyes. He said, things took a turn that day. He took off his glasses and put them on the desk in front of him. He said, that coffee should be ready by now. Would you like some? Well, thank you. That'd be great, Doctor. Please, call me Patrick. How do you take it? Black is fine. He brought two cups of coffee toward us, but this time he took a chair on the same side of the desk. He placed the cups with handles facing us, using the desk as a table. As he sat down, he reached for the card and photo. How did you get this again, he asked. I went through the story and ended by saying I'd begun the contact phase of my project. By the way, you're the first, I told him, and I almost gave up when it didn't go well with you. Yeah, he said. It did surprise me. I thought I'd heard the last of that over 35 years ago. I can imagine. I agreed. So, that's it. You responded, and here I am. Thank you so much for seeing me. Shoplifting, he said without preamble, and dropped the word dramatically. He waited a moment and continued 14-year-news at a department store in Jamestown called The Big N. Another kid and I were out looking for trouble. We tried to walk out of the store wearing shirts from the men's department. A big, ugly guy from the store stopped us and told us we had to come with him. He acted like a dick about the thing and took us to a grimy little office in the back. He made us sit on those dirty, worn-out plastic chairs and told us he saw us trying to steal the shirts. He said he'd already called the police. Dr. Williams' casual and off-color description of the man's demeanor surprised me, but I came to see it as his man-to-man way of communicating. I'd never been so frightened, he continued. A cop showed up and put us in the back of a police car. I looked around for the door handle, and the kid with me called me a fool. He said, everybody knows you can't open the back of a police car. Well, I learned two things at once. I experienced how trapped animals feel, and I found out the kid with me had been arrested before when I asked him how he knew about the back of police cars. So the cop took us to the police station and made us sit in a waiting room where we could see the cells. He didn't put us in a cell, but we knew not to leave. Another cop at the desk called our parents. The police told my mother she had to come get me from the station. They didn't let me talk to her. They just told her to come to the station. She drove down in the car, and I could see her hands shaking as the cop explained why he arrested me. We got in the car and didn't say a word all the way home. As we pulled onto the driveway, she said, we'll tell your father tonight. I've replayed that day in my mind a million times. I had to wait all afternoon for my father to come home, and rage overtook me. I hated the world, and I didn't know why. I didn't need that shirt. I didn't even want a shirt. I wanted to do something risky. I wanted to do something wrong and get away with it, and I'll admit this to you now. I'd gotten away with it before and got high on the rush. Talk about a teenager with an attitude, Patrick Williams continued. At home, we lived with constant talk about college and success. My parents were all about making me into what other people wanted me to be. I had to answer test questions correctly in school to get good grades. Good grades would get me into college. A diploma would make me good enough for some business to hire me. Then, I'd have to make my boss like me so he wouldn't fire me, and I'd have to make the customers like me, too, so they'd buy stuff. Making the sale became a way of life. I didn't want any part of it, and I couldn't see how anyone else would either. Well, my father got home, and when my mother told him, he turned livid. Not because I'd done anything wrong. He yelled at me about how we'd be embarrassed if anyone in town found out. During the rant, he came up with the idea that he wanted me to be a good person, but it didn't amount to more than moral wrapping paper. In the end, he couldn't help himself. He told me I'd better straighten up or I'd get arrested again. Then, I'd have a criminal record, and no company would ever hire me. He told me if I screwed up again, he'd buy me a one-way ticket to Greenwich Village, where I could go live with all the other kids who hated their parents. We all went to bed that night, exhausted. I repeated Dr. Williams' statement as a question, a one-way ticket to Greenwich Village? What did he mean by that? In his mind, Patrick explained, Greenwich Village existed for no other reason than to rebel against everything he believed in. The threat meant he would cut me off and throw me out to starve. I have to tell you, Dr. Williams said with a laugh, I thought about that night every time I paid for the bus or a plane ticket to get to Fordham or Columbia, where I went to college. We both smiled, and he took a sip of coffee. So, the store pressed charges, Patrick Williams continued. They had a policy to prosecute all shoplifters, and my parents and I had to go to juvenile court. My father's big hands gripped the arms of his chairs. He endured a guy in a robe pronouncing judgment on his son. The store policy also demanded restitution in all cases, which came to about 15 bucks. I had to pay for that. The court charged 125 court costs, and my father paid that. I also got 20 hours of community service, which saved my life. Patrick Williams took another sip of his coffee, and his countenance lightened. He said, Jamestown had done some renovation at the city hall. The building held the police department, the jail, the court, and offices for maintenance and administration. As part of the renovation, an old storeroom needed to be cleaned out. The police wanted to paint the walls and make space for some new desks. Racks of books and a few pieces of old furniture stood in the way. I had to help pack up and carry the old stuff out of the building for my community service. The police scheduled me to show up at 8 a.m. the following Monday at the police station the week before school started. At this point, Patrick Williams froze in place. I thought something hit him. He reminded me of a TV show I saw once where a guy went still in the same way. In the show, blood leaked onto the guy's white shirt as he realized he'd just been shot. Williams sat not moving like that. I didn't know what to do. I almost said something when he broke into a huge grin. He said, can guy, and shook his head back and forth, laughing to himself. He looked like he'd just got the punchline of a joke he'd heard a month ago. He fixed a look at me and said, did Foraker McCreevey have anything to do with this? I'm sorry, Dr. Williams, I don't know who that is. Are you sure, he asked. His fingerprints are all over it. Forgive me, I answered, I assumed they were your fingerprints, and no, I've never heard of anyone named Foraker McCreevey. Patrick Williams burst out laughing. He said, no, I don't mean they're actually his fingerprints. They're mine, but come to think of it, that's the kind of play on words he'd use himself. The superintendent took a long drink of his coffee and stared out the office window. For a moment, it looked like he might tear up. I'll tell you flat out, he said, that guy changed my life, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts before this is over, you'll find out McCreevey had something to do with it. Please tell me why, who is McCreevey, I asked. He looked at me and paused for a moment. Okay, he said, but it's a long story. I returned his look. I've come a long way, I said, and it sounds like this is part of why I'm here. All right, he began. The police scheduled me to report to this room at the city hall to move old books and furniture. They said a police officer would supervise and tell me what to do. I got there on time, my father made sure of that, and that's when I first met Officer McCreevey. I expected a policeman in uniform. Instead, I got this tall, good-looking guy wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He said he didn't have to wear his uniform that day because he'd be working with me doing the cleaning and moving. He seemed like a good guy, and he got to it immediately. He started with a stack of flattened cardboard boxes, opened out a few of them, and put them in a box. He started with a stack of flattened cardboard boxes, opened out a few of them, and taped the bottoms. He explained he wanted to sort through the books before throwing them away, and he told me if I saw anything I wanted, it was okay to take it. One by one, he threw the books into different boxes and gave me directions as we went along. Some of the boxes went to a truck he'd parked outside. Others went to a dumpster behind the building, and that's how we spent most of the day. I took boxes either over to the truck or out to the dumpster. He also had me help him load up a few of the old bookcases and shelves into the truck. At noon, he bought me a sub sandwich and a can of soda from Billings Bakery near the city hall. We sat on the truck's tailgate to eat our lunch, and McCreevey asked me what I liked to read. I told him I didn't read much, just what I had to for school. He asked if I'd seen anything interesting as we went through the old books that morning. I told him I didn't, but I hadn't been looking either. He told me he'd watch for something I might like. We went back to work, and by the end of the day, we'd just about cleared the room. He came up with a broom and had me sweep the floor while we talked with some of the other cops that came by. A few looked into the room and said I'd done a good job. One of the guys told me something I'll remember till my last day. He said, Ken Guy, lucky for you to work with the McCreevey today, kid. It confused me, but the other cops laughed, and I let it pass. My mother said she'd pick me up at 4 o'clock when the day ended, and McCreevey waited with me until she got there. While we waited, he gave me a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I still have it. On the inside, he'd written, to Patrick, whatever remains, however improbable, Foraker McCreevey. He asked me if I'd ever heard of Sherlock Holmes, and I told him I had. He asked me if I'd read any of the stories, and I said no. He told me I couldn't ask for much more on a hot August 9th than a good old Holmes story. Patrick Williams looked at me with a smile and added, I've found they're just as good on cold winter nights. As I took a sip of my coffee, he resumed the story. McCreevey said we had one more day for my community service. The next day, we'd unpack the truck. He told me to meet him again at 8 o'clock at the police station the following morning. He'd take me in the truck to help unload the books and the shelves. He told me that night I should read The Adventures of the Speckled Band from the book he gave me. He said however long I spent reading would count towards my community service. I read the story that night, and to this day, it's one of the best short stories I've ever read. I met up with Arthur McCreevey in the morning, and we took the truck and the books to his house. As we drove along, he told me he'd read many of the books before, but he couldn't stand to throw them away. He said he didn't mind having extra copies around, because he could give them away and not worry about getting them back. He asked me if I liked the story he told me to read. I told him I did, and he asked if I figured it out before the end. I said I didn't think anyone could have even guessed that, but that's what made Sherlock Holmes a great detective. He asked me how long I'd spent reading it, and I realized I didn't know. Somehow I'd lost track of time and didn't think to check on it. I didn't understand it then, but it's clear now. With that story, he taught me to read, and he also taught me how to teach. Patrick Williams finished up his coffee and got up to make more. Would you like another cup, he asked. Yes, please, I answered. He spoke to me over his shoulder as he worked the coffee maker and resumed the story. McCreevy had this old place out on Lake Chautauqua. That's a lake near Jamestown. Have you ever heard of it? I think I have, I answered. Does it have anything to do with the Chautauqua Institution? Yeah, that's it, he said. Same lake, but McCreevy lived across from the institution and closer to Jamestown. The lake is 20 miles long, so there's a fair amount to it. Anyway, we pulled into his driveway off Old Route 17, one of those driveways you don't see unless you're looking for it. He had a mailbox and all, it's just that it didn't stand out. He bounced the truck down this long driveway to his house. The driveway ended in a boathouse that looked like a garage on the lake. McCreevy backed the truck up to the side door of his house. He flipped down the tailgate and picked up a box. He told me to grab another one and follow him. I followed along through this crazy old house full of antiques. It seemed like everything in the place came from a long time ago. He brought me a room filled with hundreds of books already and told me he called it his library of life. First I helped him carry in the old shelves and cases, and then he showed me where to stack the rest of the boxes. That's what we did for the next few hours. McCreevy said he'd sort everything later. He said it would be an excellent job for next January. I asked him about his house, and he told me most of the people nearby only live in their places during the summer, but he had winterized his place. He said he put in a new furnace, water heater, windows, and insulation, so he could live there all year round. He said the driveway got interesting in the snow, but that's why he had a four wheel drive. He asked me about the home story again, and I told him I liked it, but asked why he wanted me to read it. He said he thought I'd like it, and it was a chance for me to meet with one of the greats. I didn't understand this at first, but McCreevy explained, you probably couldn't pick up the phone and talk to the President of the United States, or the Queen of England, or the quarterback of the team that won the Super Bowl last year, but you could talk with Arthur Conan Doyle. I said, I didn't talk to him, I read a story he wrote. McCreevy told me that's because I hadn't asked the question. When I asked him what question, he looked around at his room full of books. He said, why did he write it? What did Conan Doyle, one of the greatest storytellers ever, find so important in life that he had to write about it? McCreevy said the critical thing to understand about Holmes, Watson, and the criminals they fight is that they all came from one man's mind. Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to show how reason and emotion interact to fight evil. He said Conan Doyle wrote the story because his soul and spirit wanted to meet mine and show me how it's done. McCreevy looked for the experience in everything, and he taught me the trick to reading a book is to turn it into an experience. He said he never tried to learn anything, he set out to experience it. It's exhausting, but it's the way to live a whole life. He showed me how to connect with a book and collide with the characters, but it always went back to real people. He thought of reading as practice for the world. As a cop, he said he heard stories all day long that changed, depending on who wanted what. He marveled at how different people recounted the same events, and he said he wanted to open his mind to understand what he heard. When I asked McCreevy where he came up with these ideas, he mentioned a few teachers in school, but he said he got most of it from his parents. He also said he had two uncles and an aunt who taught him to question everything about books and life. His family had died by then, but he said they taught him to always start with the question, why? I asked him how long he'd been with the police, and he had a funny answer. He said he wasn't sure. He said he'd started with the police, but they kept asking him to do things cops usually don't do, and he liked that. I said, like watching kids on community service? I got a laugh out of him, which made me feel good, but he said the things he had in mind had to do with serious stuff, and that's all he said. He didn't elaborate, and he changed his subject. Here's another line I remember, it got me through undergrad. McCreevy said he liked working with me on community service. He said, I think you're a good kid, and you could be an interesting kid if you were better read. Dr. Williams stopped to top off our coffee cups. He took a tentative sip, and I sipped mine as well. I sat quietly, put his cup down. That's how I met Foraker McCreevy, and that's when I started reading, he said. I also started looking at art, and going to plays. McCreevy taught me I could read what someone wrote, or look at a scene someone painted hundreds of years ago, and communicate with them across time. I'd ask what they wanted to show me, what they found so important that they had to write about it, or paint it, or sing about it. I saw McCreevy around town after that, and I'd go out of my way to say hello. He always remembered me and asked what I had going on. It felt genuine, too, more than just friendly, and he never failed to ask what I'd been reading. School changed for me after that summer. I gave up worrying about grades, but the less I thought about them, the more they improved. McCreevy told me about that kind of stuff, too. He introduced me to the Zen paradox. That's when death comes before life, when you have to fall to rise, and how you can find freedom in confinement. Reading influenced my thinking process, but one event changed my perspective. It came on a Friday night that fall. My father and I ran into McCreevy at a high school football game. He'd taken a shift working as a security guard. We said hello to each other, and I introduced him to my father as the officer who supervised my community service. My father bragged to McCreevy about how I'd taken up reading and improved in school. He told McCreevy I got it together just in time to get into a decent college. He said, the last thing I want is my son to wind up a $20,000 a year in nothing, like a teacher or a cop. I could have died from embarrassment. I thought somehow my father didn't understand he shouldn't say that to a cop, while the cop stood there in full uniform. For a moment, I thought McCreevy might not have heard him. He did, of course, and later in life, it occurred to me that it might have been my father's way of getting in a jab. The real irony came years later, when we found out McCreevy had put millions aside even then. Wait, Patrick, I interrupted. You say this officer McCreevy had money? Millions, he answered, family money. He gave it away little by little and paid for things to improve people's lives. Then he gave it all away in his will, and everybody got something. After he died and the house went up for auction, I went through his library. The funny part is many of the books we cleared out from City Hall together, that day, ended up in a school library in Brooklyn. He gave me more than books, though. As my high school years ended, he helped me find a direction. We had hamburgers a few times at a restaurant in Jamestown called Jenny's Lunch, and I asked him about what my father said at the football game. He came up with another classic line I'll never forget. He said, your father isn't wrong, but he doesn't understand why he's right. McCreevy said I should think of life as a fancy dinner, and I'd been invited. He said he knew dinners aren't fun all the time. But he told me a day would come when I'd want to share my soul and spirit, and I'd want people around to share them with. If I didn't accept the invitation, I'd be alone. McCreevy could be dramatic sometimes. He said, you're nothing if you don't have anyone to share with. Dr. Williams paused and took a drink of his coffee. I got such a charge out of that idea, he said. I followed it into college. I said I didn't know what I wanted to do when I got there, but I did. I went into teaching. I went to Fordham, got a BA with a teaching certificate, and took a job at an elementary school in the Bronx. I read deep poems out loud. I lived for those moments when I got to show poor kids famous paintings in museums and open their worlds. I stayed with teaching and went from job to job, looking for the kind of school where I wanted to work. I didn't find it, so I returned and got an administrator's certificate. I tried rebuilding a single school and making it go the way I thought it should. That worked until I ran into district rules. That's when I went back and got the PhD. But these days, I'm spending so much time dealing with political pressures, I'm afraid I've lost contact with the kids. I remind myself of my father. And I've got to admit, there are times when my career considerations hold the kids back. Now and then, though, something comes along that reminds me of why I got into it in the first place. Something like you, Tom Strongfree, contacting me out of the blue. He smiled and shook his head back and forth slightly. Then he repeated it. He drew in his breath, and as he let it out, he whispered, Tim Guy. What does that mean, I asked. That's the third time you've said that, he answered with a laugh. That's another thing I got from McCreevy, he said. It's something he said, an expression that he had a hundred meanings with, and everybody who knew him wound up imitating it. He said it started years before I knew him. McCreevy had a summer job working at Jamestown Finishes during his college years. Please excuse the vulgarity here, but I'm sure it's nothing you haven't heard before. I'd rather not, but it's part of the expression. You'll see. McCreevy described Jamestown Finishes as an old-time factory that made industrial baking enamels. He told this story about a forklift operator named Blake, who would drive around the factory all day complaining about, and I quote, the fucking guys around here. He said that all day, every day, about everything, repeatedly. Well, McCreevy couldn't get over how this guy, Blake, could be so negative about everything so much of the time. He started mimicking Blake and mocking him to his face. Whenever he saw the forklift coming, he'd say, the fucking guys around here to anyone nearby. The other guys got the joke, and they started saying it, too. Every time Blake turned a corner on his forklift, he'd hear someone mocking him with his own words. The guys used the expression so many times, they shortened it. They left words out and dropped the G. The phrase became fucking guys. Then the women in the office civilized it by dropping the F, and the phrase morphed into can guys. It became a term that bonded the group and united everyone against negativity. Blake finally got the message and had a serious talk with himself. The expression became a catch-all for anything anyone did wrong, but with a twist. The mistakes became forgivable. If someone spilled some paint, the other guys around would just clean it up and say, can guy. It would be even better if you said it with Blake's twangy Midwestern drawl and hung on the last I sound, as in, can guy. Tremendous. McCreevy turned a negative expression into a company chant and a signal that said, all is forgiven. There aren't enough guys like that. Patrick Williams laughed aloud, and I couldn't help smiling with him. He said, McCreevy told everyone that story, and he'd get everyone saying it. He had only one rule. You can never use it in anger. Patrick Williams sat for a moment with his coffee. No offense brings anger. He said, all is forgiven. We talk about forgiveness in different points of view. When I graduated with a doctorate, McCreevy sent me a 1905 first edition copy of a collection of stories by O. Henry called The Four Million. He marked a story, The Gift of the Magi, with a graduation card. I don't know where you stand on spiritual matters, Tom, but that story brought me back to God. Again, the church only confused me with ideas about faith I didn't understand and suffering I'd rather avoid. That story taught me how to be good. Patrick Williams sat quietly again. We'd come to the end of our coffee. He looked tired and distant. One last thing I asked, why do you think this Foraker McCreevy had anything to do with the police cards? I can't say for sure, he answered, but I'd bet on it. If you stay with your project, you'll hear more about old Officer McCreevy. He knew everybody in Jamestown. Dr. Williams paused again. Thank you, Tom, he said. Even if you never hear about him again, telling you about McCreevy has helped me more than you know. It reminded me of a few things. I'm glad it did. I'm honored to have met you, Patrick. Thanks so much for meeting with me. The superintendent of schools, Dr. Patrick Williams, Ph.D., showed me to the door. I'd completed my first interview, and it drained me. When I got to my hotel room that evening, I called Phil Troxell and left a message. I said, Phil, this is Tom. Please see what you can find out about a policeman named Foraker McCreevy. He worked in Jamestown at about the same time as those kids. Thanks. I'll be in touch.