A Family Trust

by Ward Just

  Townsend rubbed his hands, rocking back and forth on his heels. Amos, he said aloud; and again, Amos. He understood the native-born restlessness and impatience that infected the times. Young men now had trouble locating their instincts; too much of what they saw and read and felt conflicted with the beat of life in Dement. His beat. He believed that the function of a newspaper was to supply a memory. The newspaper was not a check on government; it was a check on the passionate instincts of the people. Reliable instincts were nothing more than memories refined. A memory was a magnet attracting the filings of the present, and if the magnet were weak—well, it left a human being adrift and ill at ease on the surface of the earth. A man’s memory could not function properly unless there were familiar things to see and touch. Amos Rising had made his newspaper magnetic, as familiar as a downtown street or the face of a daughter. Reading it, a soul was reassured. The newspaper offered consolation.

  He spilled more smoke from his mouth, holding the cigar in front of him, regarding it with affection. He moved forward, lifting his head to look beyond the cornfield, the thick bogland lying ragged and dark against the horizon. Amos. Darkness closed around him now, and there were no lights between him and the horizon.

  A BREEZE crossed the lawn and he pushed off from the oak. The cigar was now firmly between his teeth, an incongruous sight; a bowsprit on an ocean liner. It was time for hard thinking, no more reminiscence. It was time now to get the facts straight and arranged properly He was obliged to separate money from power. He’d begin with that. Charles knew it all, the old man had explained it to him. So he, Townsend, would be addressing the other two boys. They were the ones whose understanding and support was vital. Speaking softly and slowly, so the three of them would have to lean forward to hear, he’d lay out the essentials. He’d say:

  It would have been better if your dad had explained this to you himself. It’s a complicated disttibution. However, it is not ambiguous. He has divided the stock into two classes, preferred and common.

  He would look first at Mitch, then Tony, then Charles.

  The preferred is divided forty, forty, twenty. Forty to Mitch, forty to Tony, twenty to Charles. The preferred pays a fixed dividend. It is in first position, so to speak. But as you. know, the preferred is nonvoting. (They didn’t—how could they? The old man had told them nothing, and there had never been a stockholders’ meeting.) The common stock, the voting stock, is divided sixty, twenty, twenty. Sixty to Charles, twenty to Mitch, twenty to Tony,

  A pause, to allow them to digest the information.

  Your father and I tried to reckon the distribution as evenly as we could on the basis of the profits of the newspaper. This is impossible to do with complete precision. But it is its close as we could get to it.

  Another pause, too brief to permit questions.

  It was intolerable to both of us, to your dad and to me, to see control of the paper split. Control must be in a single pair of hands. No successful newspaper was ever run by a committee.

  He would look at them again, all three, to assure himself that they were following him, every word. Their reactions would determine how he would present the next point. He believed they would be silent, listening carefully; they would betray very little, with the exception of Mitch, who would be waiting for the hook.

  Of course you boys are in harmony, you’ve always been in harmony. But unfortunately one cannot dictate the future, though God knows in the past your father and I have tried (ha-ha-ha). Who knows what might happen in a year or five years or ten. Illness, death, incapacitation; some other irregularity. No one knows the future. Of you three, your father believed that Charles was the better businessman. Therefore, he has been given control. Not, I hasten to say, control of the profits; he is in control of the policy. It was your father’s wish that the present assignments continue. Mitch will continue as general manager, Tony as circulation director, and Charles will of course become editor and publisher, It was your father’s wish that the two titles be joined. One cannot be an editor without being a publisher also; and of course the reverse is also true, The one authority strengthens the other. All of that is fairly straightforward.

  He would pause again, and consult the document in his hand.

  What follows, I’m afraid, is a bit mere out of the ordinary. It’s a codicil, and rather than read it, I’ll try to explain it in nonktwyer’s language. I’ll explain what it means. It has to do with any eventual disposition of the newsptiper stock. Your father has established a committee empowered to rule on any sale or transfer. It’s a committee of three, Mitch me, and Marge Reilly. It goes without saying that your father insists that the newspaper stay inside the family. As long as there is a family, this newspaper should belong to it. I am certain that the committee, will never meet. However, it is there if needs be.

  Then he would hand them the codicil.

  How many hours had they spent together working on that provision? Hundreds of hours, literally hundreds, over twenty years’ time. He’d brought in an outside counsel, and while everyone agreed there were legal problems, they also agreed it would take years to resolve them. It was uncertain if the codicil could extend to the next generation, Amos’s grandchildren. They had created a device whereby all common stock was for practical purposes “in trust,” in the sense that it could not be sold or transferred without committee approval and he and Marge Reilly would always vote to withhold that approval (if the buyer were an outsider). Among the brothers only Charles possessed a majority to sell, and Mitch would never stand for that. So the cormmittee vote would most likely be unanimous. It had a kind of genius to it, this codicil; normally trusts were established to avoid taxes, Amos didn’t care about money all he wanted was the newspaper tied forever to the family (and vice versa). Specifically he wanted to tie to it Charles, whom he felt was best qualified to select a successor. Elliott Townsend tried to warn his friend that the boys wouldn’t understand this will, couldn’t understand it because they lived in different worlds; and because they were still young, all of them under fifty. It was just beginning to occur to them that they could be rich. Not as rich as Insull or McCormick but rich enough; very rich for Dement. Amos was indifferent to money, he was concerned only with the authority and influence of his newspaper, and he was determined to control its affairs from beyond the grave. He and the newspaper were the same thing; the soul of one was the soul of the other. Townsend didn’t know how the boys would react, though he believed that the apparent equality of financial interest would quiet any objections. Until they began to think about it carefully. or hired a good lawyer to think about it for them; then the questions would begin. The fact was, Charles had control. He controlled the assets and was therefore empowered, to choose his successor. It was the old man’s property and he was entitled to distribute it in any way he saw fit. But Townsend did not want a family quarrel, and would do what was necessary to prevent one.

  Trouble was, none of the boys understood or knew their father. He wasn’t a father in the modern sense, he was a symbol, a progenitor, an ancestor more remote than a mere parent. He didn’t take the boys into his confidence. He cared about them, they were his flesh and blood; he saw different parts of himself in each boy But he didn’t reveal himself to them, nor did he care to have them reveal themselves to him. He prepared for them an ethical sanctuary and supplied them with rules—what greater gift? Perhaps he felt that only in that way could he retain control. A single-minded man, he cared nothing for the role of paterfamilias; he had no interest in the personal lives of his children. any more than lie cared for ornaments for himself—clothes or expensive vacations or yachts or women, except of course for Ella and Jo. His clothes came off the rack at Levay’s downtown and he had never taken a vacation in his life. He and Jo had been married for fifty years, a union so thick it was impossible to think of one without thinking of the. other. The boys did not know about Ella, Townsend shook his head and turned back, looking now at the old Ashcroft house next to his own, his eye
s moving slowly upward from the first floor to the second, the deep-sloping roof with the belvedere at its crown. Other people lived there now, a young married couple. Amos’d said that when Ella died his desire died, too.

  The cigar was dead and he threw it away Of course Amos would be well today if she were still alive (either of them, in fact). If either Ella or Jo were still with him, he’d live to be a hundred. (Townsend smiled it that: how many times in his office had he heard a client curse the dead? If only old Uh had not had the discourtesy to die, all would be well ...) But it was true nevertheless, Amos had lived his life in compartments; and that one compartment, Ella’s, linked all the others. He remembered Amos’s labored breathing when they talked, three days ago; pausing between sentences, shaking his head, muttering a little, then his signal on the buzzer to summon the nurse. Another injection; he was hurting. He wanted to talk it all out, as if the act of speech might bring it back fully He said that in his whole life he’d only been with two women. He’d made love in only two beds, and those beds were scarcely a hundred yards from each other. They were second-floor beds, precisely the same height, both facing west.

  Amos said, “She was a fine woman and shrewd. Ella took an interest, you know Jo never cared much for the workings of things. Fine wire, fine mother; she was the one who raised the boys, kept the home fires. But Ella ... Ah God, I hated it when she died. But anyhow the suddenness of it was a blessing. There was no sunering, and I know what I’m talking about. But when she passed on—” Amos turned away, finding no need to finish the thought.

  Townsend, knowing the answer but irresistibly curious, had asked him: “Worse than Jo?” Ella was dead now live years; Jo three.

  “Different,” Amos replied.

  Townsend smiled sadly He looked again at the house, the severe gables, the second-Boor bedroom, the belvedere. It had begun in the winter of 1913; Townsend could name the day if pressed. Ella’s huns-band was ill and died in 1915. That year Amos bought the house without her knowledge and fixed an unreasonably low rent. He bought it because Jo asked him to—poor Ella, she’d said, Tom Ashcroft didn’t leave her much. It would be nice for her, a dear friend living next to Elliott, maybe she and Elliott... Amos said he’d look into it, and then he bought the house. Years later, when it became necessary to explain to Ella Ashcroft what he’d done, he told her the house was hers for as long as she wanted it. And the rent she’d paid for decades, he’d saved that; it was hers now. She was not to think of the house as either gift or loan, she was to think of it as her own by right. By right of occupytion. Then he handed her the deed. She’d told him, I’ve known for years. He looked at her, surprised. How? You, she said. It was obvious, you move around this house as if you owned it. As if it’s yours as well as mine. You’ve got a particular took about you when you’re around things you own, or think you own. Oh, he’d said, angry; he thought there’d been. a betrayal. She’d laughed then; I don’t mind. I like it. Why shouldn’t I like it? She said this with a sparkle. And it’s been fun for me, knowing you didn’t know. There’s so little that goes on that you don’t know. It’s been my secret, and I’ve loved keeping it.

  I thought it was my secret, he said stiffly

  Well it isn’t, she said. It never was.

  She’d been right about that; not very much went on that Amos Rising didn’t know about and approve. Next day he’d come to Townsend’s office, blood in his eye, demanding an explanation as prelude to telling him that he was through as his lawyer and as his friend. An indiscreet lawyer was worse than useless, he was a positive menace. They’d argued back and forth for an hour, and Townsend finally convinced him that he’d said nothing, and that Ella had told the truth. She’d made an accurate guess (as women sometimes do).

  He’d said to Amos, Women have intuition. She’s known from the beginning. And truthfully, so what? It doesn’t matter any in the fact. She’s grateful. It’s just your pride that’s hurt.

  Amos nodded noncommittally and Townsend answered the next, unspoken question. He said, And I suspect that Jo knows, too, about you and Ella. Or knew at one time. I expect that she both knows and doesn’t brow.

  Impatient with lawyers’ paradoxes, Rising had growled that he didn’t think that was likely Never, ever, had Jo so much as—

  Townsend smiled his professional smile. Yes, he said. Do you really believe that? Do you think you married a nitwit? You live with someone as closely as you and Jo live. For Pete’s sake, she’s got to know. But she doesn’t choose to make an issue of it. Perhaps she’s forgotten now, she’s pushed it off to one side for reasons of her own. That’s hard for you to understand, but people do it all the while. In any event, don’t you make an issue of it ... He remembered Amos rising, and moving to the door. He thought then that he should go farther with his friend. He said, And let me tell you something else. I know, and have known all along.

  Is that right? Amos said. Then, It’s private. Turning away, he collected his hat from the rack in the corner. It’s private, he said, and that’s the way I like it.

  That was the last time they’d spoken of it until three days before. When Ella died she willed the house to her sister. Amos instructed Townsend to quietly offer the sister five thousand dollars above the market price, buyer unknown. He wanted the house back. Coolly, the sister demanded ten. And coldly, without consulting Amos, Townsend had met her price.

  He stepped around the barbecue pit and into the cornfield, his big head moving above the tassels, The air was still, and cold. The only sounds were the crunch of his shoes on the furrowed soil, and the rustle of the stalks as he shouldered by them. Ella dead five years, Jo dead three. Now Amos, today or tomorrow. It was hard to imagine life without Amos. He grunted and snapped one of the cornstalks between his fingers, and it made a crack! like a pistol shot.

  HE PUSHED through the corn, stumbling a little in the furrow. He loved the look of it and the rough texture, though he had no desire to farm. Whatever desire he had, or might have had, died in Nebraska; that desire, among other desires. Nature did not interest him, or things either. He was truly interested only in human beings and the rules they lived by and the preservation of his civilization. All his life Townsend had tried to think clearly and with realism. He was a conservator. That was what he did. He conserved things, as trustee or guardian or custodian; a curator of personal histories. He conserved people’s estates, businesses, marriages; he held things together. Now he was obliged to hold things together for these sons: Charles, forty-three; Tony, forty-five; and Mitch, forty-nine. “The boys,” mature in reverse order of their ages. But they would have to learn sometime. He could render advice, but it was up to Charles to maintain for himself and his family the authority that Amos had so carefully accumulated over the years. He was not sure that Charles had an instinct for it, though he was very good in other ways. He was an excellent businessman. Amos had accumulated authority by creating illusions, and none of them understood it except Ella. Now he was eighty-five and everyone thought he was indestructible, they believed he’d go on forever. Townsend had mentioned that to him, along with the other things, when they’d spoken privately three days before. Amos had laughed loudly, it had hurt him to do so. Sure, he’d said. Indestructible. Dizzy spells, a prostate as big as a golf ball, insomnia, heart trouble, varicose veins and lately “this damnable thing” that had put him on the fourth floor of Mercy Memorial Hospital. And this for a man who had never been sick or in a hospital, ever. But he was lucky in his own way: Amos Rising was not a man preoccupied by pain, his own or anyone else’s.

  Well, all that was interesting in its way A diverting digression. But it did not solve, the problem at hand. The essence of the codicil was that a committee dominated by outsiders would rule on any transfers of stock. That was plain enough. But there, was one other passage that would require an explanation. It was inserted in the codicil at Amos’s insistence, despite his lawyer’s objection that it was in no way enforceable. It was no better than idle talk but Amos demanded its in
clusion. So Townsend knew that he would have to speak in Amos’s voice, and convince them as if he were their father, because he himself despised unenforceable rules. It was his intention to insist that nothing had changed. Their father was dead but nothing had changed, the newspaper would go on as before. It was extremely important that the community understand the true situation.

  Nothing has changed.

  There would be continuity of management and of policy The policy of the newspaper would not change. He would say that plainly, glancing obliquely at Mitch; he would let it settle, then go farther.

  He meant the spirit. What the newspaper stands for, and has always stood for. That’s his main concern, really his only concern.