The Haunted Man

Gary Smith
48B Gadsden Street
Charleston, SC  29401


Reprinted from Esquire, August 1990, with author's permission 

Slowly, so the bed wouldn't creak, the millionaire who couldn't sleep rose and walked to the bookshelves. Tonight. Please let it happen tonight. 
	He turned on the lamp. His eyes moved past the two framed rectangles on the wall-his college diploma, his teaching certificate- and fell upon a book. His thumb riffled its pages. Don't force it. Just stay calm and let the words come in.
	How long would he have to play this game? All his life? He lay back down in bed and looked at his wife, Kathy. No one else knew his secret. Not his two children. Not his friends. Not his old college professors, not the high-school students he'd taught for 18 years, not the business associates in his multimillion-dollar real-estate company in Southern California. Only his wife Kathy knew.
	They would take everything if they found out-the diploma and teaching certificate, the apartment complexes and shopping centers and rental properties, the luxury car and the big house overlooking the ocean. So he could play the part, trick them all. But at midnight, the moment of truth, the millionaire stood alone in his pajamas with a book in his hands. He knew what night sweat could do to a man. 
	Even now, he couldn't understand why he had stayed in a classroom for 35 years, why he had gone back for 80 more credits after graduating college. It was an absolutely crazy thing for a man who couldn't read or write.
	For as long as John Corcoran could remember, words had mocked him. The letters in sentences traded places, vowel sounds lost themselves in the tunnels of his ears. In school he'd sat at his desk, stupid and silent as a stone, knowing he would be different from everyone else forever. If only someone had sat next to that little boy, put an arm around his shoulder and said, "I'll help you. Don't be scared."
	But no one had heard of dyslexia then. And John couldn't tell them that the left side of his brain, the lobe humans use to arrange symbols logically in a sequence, had always misfired.
	Instead, in second grade they put him in the "dumb" row. In third grade an instructor handed a yardstick to the other children when John refused to read or write and let each student have a crack at his legs. In fourth grade his teacher called on him to read and let one minute of quiet pile upon another until the child thought he would suffocate. Then he was passed on to the next grade, and the next. John Corcoran never failed a year in his life.
	His dad, a teacher, consumed words as if they were food: two newspapers a day and Gone with the Wind in one sitting. How could John tell him the truth? His father would come home at 6 p.m., scramble eggs for his five girls and one boy, then rush off to a second job teaching night school or selling cars. His mom worked the evening shift at the local drugstore.
	They'd rent houses for twice what they could afford, go without furniture or new clothes so their children could live in good neighborhoods, attend good schools. The Corcorans don't settle second best-reach for the stars. This was the gift, and the curse, they gave to their son who couldn't read. When the two weren't working, they were packing up the six kids and the rented trailer, following their dream. By the time he graduated high school, John had lived in 35 houses and attended 18 schools.
	Sometimes, when another town was receding behind them, his sisters cried. Not John. Each town was a place to start over. Maybe the light would be different in Albuquerque or Los Alamos. Maybe the letters wouldn't switch places and swim. Maybe in the next town he could read.     r
	He entered junior high. Now he had to hide his secret from six teachers instead on one. He had to walk into a classroom and size it up in a heartbeat. What strategy would work best? Should he sit in the front row and become the teacher's pet? Or act so crazed that they would be afraid to call his name? He ached to be the all-American boy, not the class clown. But any label was better than the unspeakable one: illiterate.
	He orchestrated everything. The girls to help him write essays. The pals to read him the math problem. "What does this mean to you?" he would say. "What do they want here?" And before they knew him well enough to catch the fear in his eyes, he was packed and gone.
	In tenth grade, he made the decision. He would play out the masquerade always. Watch the others in class to see when he should turn the page. Scrawl something, anything in his notebook, then cover the paper so no one would see. He would never let down his guard.
	Senior year, John was voted homecoming king, went steady with the valedictorian, starred on the basketball team. His mom kissed him when he graduated-and kept talking about college. College? It would be insane to consider. But he finally decided on the University of Texas at El Paso, where he could try out for the basketball team. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes . . . and recrossed enemy lines.
	On campus, John quizzed each new friend. Which teacher gave essay tests? Which gave multiple choice? The minute he stepped out of a class, he tore the pages of scribble from his notebook, in case anyone asked to see his notes. He stared at thick textbooks in the evening so his roommate wouldn't doubt. And he lay in bed, exhausted but unable to sleep, unable to make his whirring mind let go. John promised he'd go to Mass 30 days straight, crack of dawn, if only God would let him get this degree.
	A year-long course in American government: "The Monster." Four essay tests. Required for graduation. John took a seat in the back by the open window. His eyes stole around the room. Slowly his hand moved to the window, and he dropped the exam book to the grass. Outside, the smart, skinny kid, the one John was setting up a date for, began writing. John watched the clock, sweating. The booklet slid through the window to him. Bingo! Four times, never caught! It's not cheating when you don't have a choice, John told himself. It's not a sin . . . is it?
	He got the diploma. He gave God his 30 days of Mass.
	Now what? Maybe he was addicted to the edge. Maybe the thing he felt most insecure about-his mind-was what he needed most to have admired. Maybe that's why, in 1961, John became a teacher.
	It was the perfect cover. He called his father from El Paso. "Dad," he said, "I had the application sent to your house. Won't be home in time to turn it in. Think you could fill it out? Thanks!"
	John taught in California in the Oceanside/Carlsbad area and at Corcoran High in Corcoran. Each day he had a student read the textbook to the class. He gave standardized tests that he could grade by placing a form with holes over each correct answer. And he lay in bed for hours on weekend mornings, depressed.
	Then he met Kathy, an A student, a nurse. Not a leaf, like John. A rock. "There's something I have to tell you, Kathy," he said one night in 1965 before their marriage. "I . . . I can't read . . . ."
	He's a teacher, she thought. He must mean he can't read well. Kathy didn't understand until years later, when she saw John unable to read a children's book to their 18-month-old daughter.
	Eventually, John taught social studies and sociology at California's Oceanside High. He used innovative teaching methods. Many of his tests were oral; he brought in films, videos, and guest speakers by the score. He volunteered to take on some of the school's toughest and slowest learners. He could reach their anger and hurt. Because it was his.
	Through it all, he kept his vigil. The morning bulletin? He let a student read it. A discipline problem? He handled it himself-if it went to the principal, he'd have to write a report. A stomachache, a fever? He went to school anyway, so he wouldn't have to write the substitute a lesson plan.
	Kathy filled out his forms, read and wrote his letters. Why didn't he simply ask her to teach him to read and write? He couldn't believe that anyone could teach him.
	At age 28, John borrowed $2,500, bought a second house, fixed it up, and rented it. He bought and rented another. And another. His business got bigger and bigger until he needed a secretary, a lawyer, a partner.
	Then one day his accountant told him he was a millionaire. Perfect. Who'd notice that a millionaire always pulled on the doors that said PUSH, or paused before entering public restrooms, waiting to see which one the men walked out of?
	He quit teaching in 1979. His staff grew to 20 people. Investors backed him; 25 limited partners joined his stable. He was pulling it off, wasn't he? But if he was home free, why was he still so desperate for magic or miracle to solder the short circuit in his head.
	In 1982 the bottom began to fall out. His properties started to sit empty; investors pulled out. Threats of foreclosures and law suits tumbled out of envelopes. Every waking moment, it seemed, he was pleading with bankers to extend his loans, coaxing builders to stay on the job, trying to make sense of the pyramid of paper. Soon, he knew, they'd have him on the witness stand, and the man in the black robes would say: The truth, John Corcoran. Can you not even read?
	Finally, in the fall of 1986, at age 48, John did two things he swore he never would. He put up his house as collateral to obtain one last construction loan. And he walked into the Carlsbad City Library. There he told the woman in charge of the tutoring program, "I can't read."
	Then he cried.
	He was placed with a 65-year-old grandmother named Eleanor Condit. Strange, she didn't seem horrified. She just encouraged him to go on. Painstakingly-letter by letter, phonetically-she began teaching him. Within 14 months, his land-development company began to revive. And John Corcoran was learning to read.
	The next step was confession, a speech before 300 stunned businessmen in San Diego. To heal, he had to come clean. He was placed on the board of directors of the San Diego Council on Literacy and began travelling across the country to give speeches.
	"Illiteracy is a form of slavery!" he would cry. "We can't waste time blaming anyone. We need to become obsessed with teaching people to read!"
	He read every book or magazine he could get his hands on, every road sign he passed, out loud as long as Kathy could bear it. It was glorious, like singing! And now he could sleep.
	Then one day it occurred to him-one more thing he could finally do. Yes, that dusty box in his office, that sheaf of papers bound by ribbon . . . . A quarter-century later, John Corcoran could read his wife's love letters.     s