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was born. It was late March, which is not spring in New Hampshire. I remember driving my motorcycle home from the hospital. (A friend had driven Shyla to the hospital, because I’d been in class—in Tom Williams’s Creative Writing class.) I remember watching out for the patches of ice and snow that were still evident on the roads; I drove home very slowly, put the motorcycle in the garage, and never drove it again—I would sell it that summer. It was a 750cc Royal Enfield, black and chrome, with a customized tomato-red gas tank the shape of a teardrop—I would never miss it. I was a father; fathers didn’t drive motorcycles.
    The night Colin was born, George Bennett died in the same hospital; I have called George my first “critic and encourager”—he was my first
reader.
I remember going back and forth in the hospital between Shyla and Colin and George. During the years I’d grown up in Exeter, especially before I attended the academy, George’s son had been my best friend. (I would dedicate my first novel
in memory of
George, and to his widow and son.)
    George Bennett took me to my first Ingmar Bergman film; it would have been 1958 or ‘59 when I saw
The Seventh Seal
—the movie was almost new (it was released in the U.S. in ‘57). It’s not psychologically complicated why, when Death came for George, I saw Death as that relentless chess player in the black robe (Bengt Ekerot) who defeats the Knight (Max von Sydow) and claims the lives of the Knight’s wife and the Knight’s squire, too.
    I have since read that
The Seventh Seal
is a “medieval fantasy,” and this I don’t understand at all . . . well, “medieval,” maybe, although most of Bergman’s work is timeless to me. But
The Seventh Seal
is no “fantasy.” That Death takes the Knight and allows the young family to live . . . well, that was how it happened to me, too. At the moment my son Colin was born, George was gone.
    In 1982, when Ingmar Bergman retired as a filmmaker—with
Fanny and Alexander
, the stunning memoir of his childhood—I felt another loss. Bergman was the only major novelist making movies. My interest in the movies, which was never great, has grown fainter since his retirement. I hope that Mr. Bergman is happy in the theater (where he continues to direct), although I have difficulty seeing him there—my interest in the theater was never great either.

Not Even A Zebra
    Upon my return from Europe, Ted Seabrooke had made me feel welcome in the Exeter wrestling room, but something had changed in me; I was so happy to be wrestling again I didn’t care how I compared to the competition—I didn’t enter a single tournament. I worked out, hard, every day; I coached the kids at Exeter—I thought more about
their
wrestling than I did about mine—and I became certified as a referee. (I’d always disliked referees until I became one.)
    That winter of ‘65, there was an additional wrestling coach in the Exeter room—a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Cliff Gallagher. Cliff was the famous Ed Gallagher’s brother. (Between 1928 and 1940, E. C. Gallagher coached Oklahoma State to 11 national team titles.) Born in Kansas, Cliff had wrestled at Oklahoma A & M—he was never beaten in a wrestling match—and he’d played football at Kansas State (he was a All-American halfback). Cliff had once held the world record in the 50-yard low hurdles, too, and he’d received a doctorate from Kansas State in 1921—in veterinary medicine, although he’d never been a practicing veterinarian. Cliff Gallagher was also a certified referee. We frequently refereed tournaments together.
    As a wrestling coach, Cliff was a little dangerous; he showed the Exeter boys a great number of holds that had been illegal for many years—the key-lock, the Japanese wrist-lock, various choke-holds and other holds that dated