In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Where He Went Under
  • Richard Spilman (bio)

On November 5, 2008, as a brilliant Indian summer day turned to dusk, a man drowned thirty yards from the shore of our lakefront property. The water was perhaps twelve feet deep but cold. In Wisconsin, even on a warm autumn afternoon, the water can steal your strength. Many a time I have staggered onto shore barely able to feel my legs.

From the boat pier where I was painting, I watched him flounder and sink, and ran to the house to call 911. By the time the emergency people arrived he was dead. I did not try to rescue him. When I returned, I wasn't even sure where to look. I watched the reflections on the water deepen from crimson to magenta and felt no fear, no urgency, no sorrow—only beauty.

Bill Adkins, a truck driver. He left a wife and three children, one still in school, none of whom, as far as I know, have complained that I didn't do more. Unlike others I could name. For a month or so after his death, when I went to town, the air was thick with censure. Clerks ignored me, passersby stared. Our minister preached on sins of omission. And there were rumors—drugs, guns, gambling, women—all the good stuff.

A year before the drowning, I had been a stockbroker, but a lawsuit had ended my career. The suit involved trusts administered for the son and daughter of a local contractor, who had died, fittingly, in the collapse of a warehouse he had built. The will demanded a conservative investment posture, but the children wanted more. Their friends had told them about hedge funds up 20 or 30 percent, and they could not understand why they were getting between 6 and 7. For a while I resisted, explaining the risks, but then I thought, "What the hell?" The result was a liaison of mutual greed. About half the portfolio went into tech stocks, which I churned shamelessly, and into hedge funds that invested heavily in subprime derivatives. We made a lot of money. [End Page 5]

There was the gambler's rush and the pleasure of using people who wanted so desperately to be used—and also a perverse passion: nearly everyone in the business knew the subprime fiasco was coming, just not when, and I longed for destruction as a man does making love to a designing woman he knows will ruin him. Every quarter I sent the kids a statement, which I'm sure they never read, accurately assessing the risks and listing my commissions. At the trial they seemed appalled that I even earned commissions, but it was there in black and white. All they had to do was add.

Eventually, when the market stalled, some of our tech stocks tanked and the subprime bubble collapsed like an overwatched soufflé. The kids were still making money, but their income was halved, so they sued.

In my defense I produced the monthly statements and the documents they had signed, but a trustee, as the judge made clear in her charge to the jury, must listen to the law and to the originator of the trust, not the beneficiaries. At first it appeared I might have to pay them, but when the son took the stand and accused me of forging his signature, even the judge was appalled. In law, unnecessary lies are considered bad taste.

Though I survived, the vote 10-2 in my favor, my career was shot. The brokerage fired me, and before the licensing board could take up the case, I retired.

Financially, retirement posed no hardship. As a young man, I had invested in Microsoft and Walgreens, and there was stock in my investment company, which ironically surged on merger rumors the day I divested. But I had few friends and, since my wife had no desire to leave—either me or the community, nowhere to go. We have a summerhouse on Bartle's Lake, and I decided, with my wife's consent, to winter there.

As a boy, I had dreamed of becoming a magician—master of transformations of one thing into...

pdf

Share