There had been an earlier prophetic incursion of Citadel basketball when I was foundering in the writing of Beach Music. Living alone on Fripp Island, I was in the middle of a most terrible breakdown where I could not shake the obsessional urge to end my life. I found myself shopping for pistols in pawn shops, studying the veins of wrists and throat, and learning how to get to the roof of the DeSoto Hilton in Savannah. Guilt and despair overwhelmed me and I could see no honorable way out of the mess I had made of my life. Finally I imagined a perfect suicide in which I rowed my johnboat out into the Atlantic at the precise moment of a spring tide’s turning, tied an anchor around my waist before I cut my wrists and carotid artery, then slipped into the water and out of the hours I could no longer bear. I had decided on this course when another Citadel point guard came roaring out of time to save my life.
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