A Family Trust

by Ward Just

  “If Dad made a deal, we’ll keep it,” Mitch said.

  Townsend ignored him. “You shouldn’t have to ask that, Charles. I’m with you boys on everything and anything. But you’ll get my opinion, full and without editing, just as your father did. We’ll thrash out whatever it is and reach an agreement and then I’ll go do whatever it is that you want done. That’s the way we worked it. But he’d know where I stood, first. However, when the decision was made there wasn’t any doubt in my mind, or in his either. About loyalty.”

  Charles held up his hand. He apologized, he hadn’t meant that the way it sounded. They’d talk about the housing project later, they’d already spent too much time on it. Now it was time for a refill. He motioned to Jake, standing next to Dana. “Stoke us up, Jake.” Then, to Dana: “How are you feeling, honey?”

  She nodded. “Fine.”

  “Not bedtime Yet?”

  She shook her head. No. It was only eight o’clock.

  “You look a little tired.”

  “It’s only eight o’clock, Daddy.”

  “Seems like three in the morning to me,” he said.

  Mitch turned to Charles. “You ought to offer the kid a drink.” He meant Jake, but then he turned and nodded at Dana. “Both of them, Let ’em join us.” Charles muttered something Dana could not hear. “Hell, Charlie. They’re listening to every word we say anyway.”

  “They’re kids,” Charles said.

  “They’re not going to he kids forever,” Mitch said.

  Charles said, “Is that a promise?”

  The three of them turned to watch the boy self-consciously marking the drinks. Charles saw that he was going heavy on the ice and water and light on the whiskey He sighed. Then he said, “Get yourself a beer, son. Join us if you want. You too, Dana. We’re just talking family business, one way or another.” He said, “You might as well listen to it. But it’s private, understand that. Confidential.”

  Jake smiled and nodded, evidently pleased. He brought them the drinks and then went into the kitchen to fetch himself a beer. Returning, he said, “Aunt Lee wants to know when to put the phone on the hook. She says the buzzing’s driving her crazy”

  “Tell her ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes!” he yelled and sat down on the floor. Jake sat just apart from the three of them, and took rapid sips from a bottle of Miller’s. Dana had not moved.

  Charles turned to her and to Jake. “We’re trying to figure out pallbearers for Grandpa’s funeral.” Suddenly and unexpectedly his voice caught and tears came to his eyes. He looked away, biting his lip. Then he took a long drink, swallowing in huge gulps. When he finished the tears had vanished. “Goddam drink hasn’t any whiskey in it,” he said roughly, not looking at anyone. He lifted himself slowly off the davenport and walked to the drinks tray and poured an additional finger of whiskey into his glass. The others were sitting silently. He said, “What do you think, Elliott?”

  “Well, we’ve just described the political route.”

  “Yeah,” Charles said without enthusiasm.

  “And there are damn few old friends left. There’s just me.” He smiled mechanically. “And I’m too old to lift a casket all by myself.” Then, “Of course you could go to the paper.”

  There was something in Townsend’s voice. Charles felt outmaneuvered, He understood then that they had been negotiating and the old fox had put it over on him. Charles surrendered gracefully. He said, “Well, that’s it of course. The other way, it’s a damned political convention. Just like the cornroast, no different. I don’t think that’s what we want.”

  “Well, it’s a family matter,” Townsend said smoothly.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it solves a lot of problems.”

  “I had a feeling that you might,” Charles said. They were talking to each other now. “Perhaps you could spell it out.”

  “I meant that you could have the department heads of the newspaper. You three, me, and the department heads. That would be about twelve men. That way you avoid any ... political considerations, hurt feelings, misunderstandings. You simply don’t get into them.”

  “Um,” Charles said.

  “That avoids the politics of it.”

  “The politics of what?” Jake asked.

  Charles said, “You’ve got a point, there are advantages—”

  But Townsend was turning to the boy. “Your grandfather was an important man, in many ways the most important man in town p’litically. He had many friends who were, are, in the political game. These friends would expect to be pallbearers at his funeral and would be hurt if they were not chosen. But there were many, many friends. To select one over another is difficult. Many of them were ... business friends rather than personal friends. There might be hurt feelings and misunderstandings. That’s what we’re thrashing out here.” The lawyer smiled, his words closing over them like cotton wool.

  “Gan I get in on this?” It was Tony Rising, the middle son, Jake’s father. He had been at the window, motionless, staring into the night. Mitch thumbed him to a chair.

  “We’re talking about the politics of funerals,” Mitch said.

  “That isn’t funny” said Tony.

  “Wasn’t meant to be,” Mitch said.

  Charles looked at Mitch, He was unsteady himself but could see that Mitch was worse. He had never been able to hold his liquor, Charles said, “We’re trying to figure out the pallbearers. Elliott had a pretty good suggestion. What do you think about having the three of us, Elliott, and the department heads? That would make about twelve.”

  “Not us,” Tony said.

  “Why not?”

  “We should be with our families, not carrying ...” He paused and bit his lip. “We can be honorary pallbearers, if that’s what you want.”

  The telephone rang then and they were silent. Lee appeared at the door and turned toward her husband. She said that a Mr. Irish was on the telephone, he only wanted a minute ...

  “That’s Bill Eurich,” Charles said. “I’ll take that one.”

  “Who’s Bill Eurich?” Tony asked.

  Townsend watched Charles disappear into the hall. “That’s the Chicago fellow who’s putting together the housing project out by the bog.” Tony Rising followed his brother to the telephone. They could hear his voice, thin and querulous. Didn’t Charles think they ought to take the phone off the hook? What the hell, it was only eight-thirty; couldn’t they have a drink in peace ... Charles said it didn’t make any difference to him. But the calls had to be taken sometime. There was no avoiding them. Tony returned to the den where the others were sitting silently.

  “How the hell did this Eurich find out?”

  “Tom-toms,” Mitch said. “The jungle telegraph.”

  Then the women were in the room, bearing trays of food, There was a cold turkey and a ham and potato salad and potato chips. The women hunted for clear surfaces to put the platters on. Ashtrays and table lamps were moved to one side or placed on the floor out of sight. The men stayed out of the way, standing awkwardly in the doorway, drinks in their hands.

  Charles put his hand on Mitch’s shoulder. “Bill Eurich sent condolences to all. A hell of a guy,” Charles said, shaking his head. “He was gracious about it. More gracious than the governor—” Mitch moved away when the telephone rang again. Tony said he didn’t want to answer the phone and Charles said that was all right, he’d take the next one. The food and silverware were placed on the coffee table and everyone remarked how good it looked, particularly the cold turkey, the breast meat white and ragged, looking like freshly split wood. It was time for conversation to become general. It was time now to tell old stories and reminisce and allow emotions to work their way to the surface. They all helped themselves to small portions, then resumed drinking. The conversation became louder. Dana excused herself and went upstairs, to her own room.

  Charles found himself alone on the couch, staring at a photograph in a silver frame. It was stuck in the b
ookshelf between two of John Gunther’s “Inside” books, a faded snapshot of himself and his father and Dana, Elliott Townsend’s dark cornfield in the background. Dana was in the middle, much smaller than either of the men. His father had his arm around Dana’s shoulders, pulling her close, his big hand enveloping the little girl’s bicep. She looked off-balance, as if she might fall. Dana looked straight into the camera, a wide, pleased smile on her face. Amos stood with one hand on his hip, looking down at the girl. It was a photograph taken five years before, the second of October, 1948. He remembered, the first few guests had already arrived. A spectacular year for the cornroast. They had all expected Truman to lose. They hated Dewey but they hated Truman more. Dana, so delicate in white organdy; she looked like a flower between two thorns, his father eighty and looking sixty and he, Charles, not yet forty and looking fifty. The family resemblance, the nose and the set of the shoulders, was striking. No mistaking grandfather and granddaughter in that picture. Yet no part of Dana now reminded him of the old man, though of course why should it? It was Frank who had taken after Amos; Frank the spitting image. He shook his head sadly and the tears began again. However, he fought them back and joined the others standing around the fireplace. They were telling the Capone story, family legend. Two of Capone’s lieutenants thrown on their asses into Blake Street by the hick newspaper editor in Dement who’d refused their offer of “cooperation.” Amos and Sheriff Tommy Haight and that gorilla Haight had hired—what was his name? Cavaretta—standing in the doorway of the I, arms folded, “... and don’t come back!” Charles moved closer to the roaring fire, smiling at the mix of fact and legend, a Roquefort of a story. Then someone handed him a knife to carve the bird again.

  Dana, upstairs, smoked a cigarette and stared at her bookcase. The titles blurred into one another, the Nancy Drew mysteries with her brother’s Hardy Boys and the newer books, the Modern Libraries and paperbacks, Opus 21, Dodsworth, The Amboy Dukes, The Stories of E Scott Fitzgerald, Light in August, and the book she was reading now, Lie Down in Darkness, a story that spoke to her with an intensity more fierce than the others, The story of Peyton Loftis was more real than her own life. The emotions were. She herself could not always separate what she felt from what she was supposed to feel. Sometimes she did not feel anything. She turned to the photograph in the bookcase. She was eleven when it was taken. She remembered the cornroast but she could not connect to her younger self, wrapped in organdy. Her grandfather: it had never occurred to her that he could die. Her grandfather was like a great house on a hill, one of Tolstoy’s mansions, dominating everything around it, dwarfing the countryside. Beside him, every other natural landmark was in miniature. But the old man’s interior was always in shadows. Dana looked again at herself, standing between her father and her grandfather, these kin. A lock of hair hung over her forehead. She was a bit closer to the camera than the others were, leaning into the lens. She remembered her mother telling them to move closer together and her grandfather’s huge hand on her upper arm. But she was apart, definitely apart, her smile frozen and her arms stiff at her sides. They had made copies of the picture; one was downstairs in the den and another was in the old man’s office. The year was 1948. Now her grandfather was dead and she could already see something of the older man in the younger; the younger as he was now, not then. This evening she had seen her grandfather in her father; did death transfer his spirit? There was nothing similar about them in 1948, they were utterly unalike in look and gesture. She could see nothing of her father in herself. She supposed she would in time. She bent closer to the picture, running her finger along its edge, wondering what it was that a father transmitted to a daughter. It was obvious what he transmitted to a son, but what about a daughter? Freud talked of images, archetypes, exemplars, and various sources of envy. Were these legacies that could be refused? She stared at the books. Nicole Diver hadn’t known either; Peyton Loftis knew but was helpless. Her brother had known and waited for it with open arms, an eager lover. He wanted it more than anything and knew moreover that he could get it, seeing himself “in a line.” But her brother was dead and there were no remains. No, she would not be helpless. These legacies, of course they could be refused—refused or ignored, whatever they were, however they were defined. Suddenly she felt elated. Perhaps she was lucky after all; it was possible that legacies did not apply to women. Looking at the photograph again, she smiled—confident that she was consciously standing apart. She remembered now that the old man’s grip was tight and how she struggled against it. Of course he had relaxed his dry fingers when he felt the pressure. Who would want to bring distress to a little girl? Not him, her grandfather. He was gentle as a tight rain to women. Now in two days she would attend his funeral, this apparently political ceremony, Well, there were ways and ways to honor the dead. She would find her own way. Dana turned then to her record player and stacked six of her best: old. dark music; the blues.

  3.

  THEY all awakened late. Her mother and father had coffee in their bedroom, as was their custom. Dana breakfasted alone, the house completely silent at ten o’clock. She was excused from school for the day and spent the morning reading. At eleven she knocked on her parents’ door and found them still in robes and pajamas, drinking coffee and talking. They changed the subject when she walked in. Evidently it was family business; adult business. Her mother explained to her about the funeral, what would be said and done and where they would sit. She told her what to wear and what to say. The family would be in the front pew. entering from the side of the church. Her father said nothing, just sat on the edge of his bed sipping coffee and staring into space. Then he went into the bathroom and presently she heard the shower.

  “Dad’s very upset,” her mother said. “We must do ... everything we can.” Dana nodded. “Sunday night was a trial for him.” Dana nodded again. “It was difficult.”

  “Uncle Mitch?”

  Her mother shrugged. “Mitch wears his heart on his sleeve sometimes. So we’ll stick close to Dad today.”

  “What did he do?”

  “I don’t think he knew what he was doing,” her mother said, “He was upset. All of us were.”

  Dana said, “Who was Mrs. Ashcroft?”

  “You remember her, don’t you? A friend of the family, a dear friend of your grandfather’s.”

  “Uncle Mitch didn’t like her.”

  “No, dear. He didn’t. Let’s get dressed now, Luther will be here at twelve-thirty.”

  Luther Roberts, Ammos Rising’s hired man, was driving a Cadillac limousine. The three of them climbed into the rear seat and at a few minutes after one began the journey to the church. Luther drove very slowly and none of them spoke. The car was redolent of old men. Cigar smoke clung to the seats and roof, and a pair of battered black rubbers was on the carpeted floor. When they crossed the narrow bridge into Dement proper and saw the courthouse looming ahead her father murmured, “Dad’s kitchen cabinet. They’ll all be here today.”

  THE COURTHOUSE was Dement’s landmark, its dome and spire visible from the state highway. Strangers were uncertain at first whether it was the silhouette of a courthouse or a church. This courthouse, less old than the town, was guarded by a bronze infantryman, symbol of the Union. Its formidable steps led to a navelike lobby where a blind man sold chewing gum and coffee under a portrait of Elmer Tilberg, Sr., first chairman of the county board of supervisors. The building had always functioned as the political center of the region. Nine to five the lobby was crowded with men in groups, overcoats slung over their forearms, fists tight against their hips, The men collected along the walls of the lobby, their padded shoulders polishing the marble. These were lawyers and their agents, assessors, township supervisors, office-holders and office seekers, and in every group an older man who had no official business at all but was there by virtue of seniority. Their conversations related to power and paper. Certificates of births, deaths, marriages and divorces, deeds, titles, suits in chancery, tax rolls, civil proceedings
, all of the raw material of the public memory and the men who processed it: the county clerk and the judges (county, circult, juvenile and probate), the recorder of deeds, the treasurer, the state’s attorney, and the twenty-eight members of the county board of supervisors—administrators of the various colonies and baronies that comprise the dark continent of American government. In a low-slung building attached to but not part of the main structure were the sheriff’s office and county tail, a separate hemisphere, emphatic and visible evidence of independent status. The jail, six cells and a bull pen, was barely adequate to the needs of the county.

  The unloving bronze infantryman stood rifle aloft, one fist pointed east, bandages binding his temples, eyes bold and cast upward the better to see Missionary Ridge. From the monument one glazed down Blake Street to the river, a long slope ending in low river buildings, brick warehouses, and the narrow ribbon of gray water. On summer and fall mornings a mist hung over the river until midday, obscuring the bog and the prairie beyond. On those days it appeared that the town was an island, its borderlands obscure, unknown and sun-knowable. Then when the mist cleared the fields of corn and wheat materialized as if by magic, extending beyond the limits of eyesight, an infinite sea under a limitless sky.

  Townspeople were bound now for the Presbyterian church. In the courthouse, trials were recessed and offices left in the hands of subordinates. Appointments were cancelled and lunch dates cut short. Everyone in the courthouse wore a dark suit and conservative tie. It was a ten-block walk from the courthouse to the church and. most of the mourners walked the distance. They began leaving the building at one-thirty in groups of two and three and as they walked down Blake Street to Elm the ranks began to swell. Businessmen and lawyers emerged from their stores and offices and soon there was a steady now, almost a procession, of mourners moving to the church. Two city policemen were at every corner, astride their idling motorcycles. It was understood that at the church the crowd would be handled by sheriff’s deputies. Sheriff Haight himself was there on the curb, dressed in a sober blue suit and observing the conduct of his men.