A Family Trust

by Ward Just

  She sat in the chair next to the television set, pulling off her gloves slowly, finger by finger. She glanced quickly around the office. Nothing had changed in eighteen months. Same photographs on the walls, same furnishings, except for the liquor cabinet. She thought her father looked older. “Town has changed,” she said, “since I was here last. It really has changed.” He nodded, his back to her, “Except for downtown. Downtown’s no different. And I saw that Jake’s got his shingle out.”

  Her father grunted, she could not tell whether in simple acknowledgment or disapproval. Then the telephone rang and he turned to answer it. She sat looking at the front page of the I, the paper lying on the secretary’s desk. She hardly read it anymore though it was sent to her in New York. She read the Times and the Herald Tribune now. The I arrived two days late. It was amazing, the paper had not changed since her grandfather’s day, its appearance replicated each day, an echo. The nameplate, one photograph above the fold (she could remember when there had been no photographs at all on page one), the big black line below the nameplate, CANDATES PREPARE FOR DEBATE, with the photograph of Richard Nixon climbing out of an automobile in the Loop, grinning and waving. She smiled. There were no photographs of the Democrat. There were ten stories on One, eight of them local; it was still a reader’s newspaper.

  “... you have him talk to Elliott Townsend,” her father was saying. “Elliott’s handling that for the estate and I’m certain the price will be a fair one. The rest of it we can handle from here...”

  She liked the office. It was strictly functional, the big safe in the corner, the heavy desk with the old Royal on a typewriter stand next to it. A water carafe and glasses rested on the table along the wall back of the desk.

  “... Harry Bohn says there will be no problem with the financing and. as for the zoning, there will be no difficulty there, either. But we need a commitment from the construction boys. We’re out on a limb and we don’t want to be sawn off, so next spring is ground-breaking ... Well, you talk to them and call me and I’ll call Bohn. Fine, Irish. And we’ll see you in a couple days? Fine.” He put the phone down any clapped his hands together and faced her. “So.”

  She nodded at the telephone. “Business?”

  “Guy wants to locate his plant here but there are some zoning problems. Or were. There aren’t anymore. One thousand people employed, half of them locals. This lousy economy, it’ll mean a lot to us. Especially if your friend Kennedy is elected President, which I devoutly hope he won’t be,”

  “Was Nixon really bad?”

  “Awful,” Charles said. “You know—” He paused, wondering whether to continue. He did not want to get into a political discusssion, an argument, with his daughter, not now, her first night home. And he most especially did not want to confess his doubts about the vice-president, poor square peg. “—it wouldn’t surprise me if he lost. It wouldn’t surprise me at all.”

  “But the I will support Nixon.”

  “Oh sure,” her father said. “More experienced. The other one’s dangerous.” She did not reply to that. “Hell,” he said suddenly. “They’re both good men. I don’t like Kennedy and don’t trust him but I suppose the country can survive him. Survived Truman, I suppose we can survive Kennedy.”

  “Don’t let Grandfather hear you say that.”

  He laughed. “God, no. For him, the sun rose and set on the Republicans. But times change. You know, the truth is”—he learned forward, resting his elbows on the desk—”it doesn’t make the difference now that it did. We used to think that if there was a Democrat in the courthouse here, the sky would fall. Well, there is and it hasn’t. The truth is, they’re all alike. Politicians. They’ve either got their hand in the till or in your pocket, one or the other ... ”

  “You don’t think Kennedy’s different?”

  “Hell, no,” he said.

  “But he’s another generation—”

  “He’s my generation,” Charles said.

  “Well,” she began doubtfully.

  “He’s only nine years younger than I am. Too damned young, if you want the truth.” Odd, Nixon was the same generation; but one did not think of Nixon in those terms.

  She looked at him and smiled. “That’s funny, you’re right so far as age is concerned. Funny, I’ve thought of him as closer to my age, though he isn’t really, now that I think about it.”

  He said, “Tell me about you. You look—fine. What’s new in New York? When are you coming home?”

  She said, “I’m editing a really fascinating book.” She watched him rise and move to the liquor cabinet. “A man who was an ambassador for the past four years. You’d recognize the name, McGee. He’s written a kind of journal of his work in Eastern Europe, the bloc countries.” He was fussing with the ice tray, his back to her. “Some of the things that happened in the bloc in the past three or four years.” He’d freed the ice and was dropping cubes into his glass. “A remarkable man. He’s out of government now and lives in Boston. He’s a lawyer.” Her father poured Scotch and added a splash of water. He’d gained weight and stood at the cabinet with his shoulders bowed. She was reminded of the photograph, her and her father and grandfather. He did not look so much like Amos now. She thought. He looks old.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, his back still to her.

  She wondered if he’d heard a single word and concluded that he’d heard everything, and understood almost nothing. Not that she’d been very helpful in that regard. There was silence between them and she added, “He’s separated from his wife.”

  Her father shook his head. “I don’t know why it is that people can’t keep their marriages together.”

  She said, “I don’t think they liked each other very much.”

  “Well, then they shouldn’t’ve gotten married. Or they should have worked it out. That’s what people do. I suppose there are children.”

  “Three,” she said.

  He said, “The poor children.”

  She had not met the children. She knew them only through McGee’s conversation. “Yes,” she said.

  “What was his name? McGee?” She nodded. “Don’t know the name,” he said firmly.

  “Well,” she said, definitely irritated now. “Of course he’s concerned with foreign affairs.”

  He went back to his desk and sat down. “Your mother and I are thinking about going to New York the first of the year.”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “It’s not settled yet.”

  “I’d like it. You could see my apartment. Maybe we could all have dinner together.”

  He looked at her. “Your mother of course is very disturbed about the apartment. She’s been disturbed for a year, though of course she wouldn’t say anything to you about it.”

  “Um,” Dana said.

  “She’s worried about your safety”

  “I’m perfectly safe,” Dana said.

  “She worries and so do I.” He said, “I think it’s the greatest mistake I ever made, letting you go there. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking of, there isn’t any telling what might happen. It’s dangerous in New York, the people—. A young girl alone in an apartment.”

  “Not always,” she murmured.

  But he had not heard her. She listened to him talk about New York and its perilous culture, and her attention wandered and finally slipped free altogether. She was walking with McGee down Fifth Avenue to the Plaza, the day gorgeous with sunlight and syncopated, cab horns and the click of high heels on the pavement. The afternoon sun slanted down Fifty-ninth Street like a river of gold, and they stopped to look in the window at Tiffany. There was an owl with ruby eyes and a fox with a diamond nose. She felt his pressure on her arm, and turned to him and they both smiled and leaned against each other, looking at Tiffany’s animals in their glass and velvet zoo ...

  “—she wishes so badly you’d come home ...”

  They’d strolled slowly up the street and into the Sherry Netherland for a drink and he’d
excused himself and was gone it seemed like forever and when he returned he handed her a tiny box wrapped with silver paper. Inside was the owl and she’d thrown her arms around his neck and kissed him fiercely and conversation in the bar died, and she felt envies by the entire world.

  “—and you haven’t written very much, and that distresses her ...”

  “Daddy,” she said. “I have a job.”

  “Well, of course if that’s more important.”

  “Than what?”

  “Your mother’s happiness,” he said. They sat in silence a moment. At last Dana rose and stood behind the secretary’s desk, her shoulders against the wall. Her father looked at her from his big leather chair.

  She said, “I’ve been bad about writing.”

  “We can talk about it later.”

  She nodded gratefully. “What’s new with you? The I looks the same, maybe a little fatter.”

  “We’re having a hell of a year,” he said. “I get an offer every month.”

  She looked at him blankly. “An offer for what?”

  “To buy the I.” Charles was enjoying himself now, talking business. “One very interesting proposal.”

  “Buy it?”

  “Buy it,” her father repeated. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing at all,” Dana said hastily. She could not conceive of the I being sold. “Who wants to buy it?”

  “An attorney.”

  “What would a lawyer know about running a newspaper?” She thought at once of Harold McGee. She could not imagine him in Amos Rising’s chair.

  Charles said patiently, “I think, Dana, that this attorney is acting for someone else. He is the point man.”

  “Oh.”

  “The attorney is a nominee.” He stared thoughtfully into his glass. “Acting for downstate fellas. I know the lawyer, played golf with him a few times.”

  “How can you sell the newspaper without knowing who you’re going to sell it to?”

  He sighed. “Of course you don’t, Dana. That isn’t the way it works. Do you want to know how it works? Are you interested in the way things work? It doesn’t have anything to do with Eastern Europe but it’s interesting in its small way.” He paused, avoiding her gaze. His eyes were fastened on the ceiling, his hands locked behind his head. Then he turned to look at her, seated now and casual in her high heels and tailored suit and jewelry and careless curly hair. She looked—“smart,” he supposed that was the word. He had told no one about the offer, not even Elliott Townsend, but he thought about it every morning when he drove to work and every evening when he drove home. He thought he might as well tell his daughter, this smart-looking woman who sat now in his office; it would be no different from telling a stranger. She had not replied to him, and he correctly interpreted her silence as a rebuke. He said, “What I’m supposed to do is get in touch with the attorney. I tell him I’m not interested in selling the I unless the price is X dollars. Twice what I’d take, way more than they’d pay. He tells me my price is way out of line but he’ll talk to his principals. Won’t do any good, he says, but he’ll talk to them anyway. Then a month later I get another call from him—a call, not a letter—and he tells me he’s going to be in Chicago having lunch with a guy and would I like to have lunch with him. I say that by an odd coincidence I’m going to be in Chicago myself that day, so I’d be glad to have lunch with him. And the guy he’s got with him is a guy who’s a little closer to the action. A guy who’s authorized to speak for the principals, but only so far. Attorney asks me if I’d mind bringing last year’s audit with me and I tell him, ‘Hell no, the audit’s private.’ But I have most of the numbers in my head, any number he’s likely to be interested in I have in my memory.”

  Charles paused, amused at his own narration; his daughter was listening carefully, saying nothing. “So I get to Chicago and lo and behold there’s my old friend Butler. Butler is an auditor of newspapers, a sort of independent accountant and tax consultant. Good man. Butler’s got a pretty good idea of the value of the I, with or without the audit. We have a nice lunch; the attorney pays. Butler tells me he’ll be in Dement in a month or so and maybe he’ll bring some fellas with him. I know who his clients are so already I’ve narrowed down the possibilities. He says that he knows some guys who like to tour newspaper plants and would I give them lunch in my office, I tell him that my office is not a restaurant but I’ll be glad to pop for soup at the country club. Fine, he says. I ask him if these fellas have names. He says they do but he doesn’t want to spoil any surprise by revealing them. This is all bushwa, if I pressed Butler he would tell me; but I know who they are already. Anyhow the mouthpiece is out of it by now and Butler is the guy putting the deal together. A month goes by and I get a call from Butler and sure enough he’s got a couple of guys with him and could they come up to see me tomorrow. And when they arrive I find it’s my old friend Harold Dows and his kid, who own the morning in McLean and the afternoon in Berlin; the kid’s still in high school but he goes everywhere with his old man. Nice kid. The Dowses have got their mechanical man and their circulation man with them. They’ll get together with their opposite numbers at the I ostensibly for the purpose of picking up any fresh tricks we might have. That happens all the time, newspaper publishers stick together. After lunch it’ll just be the four of us, the Dowses and Butler on one side of the table and me on the other. They’ll offer me a deal, after first looking at the audit and talking privately with their circulation and mechanical men. Of course they’ll already have a damn good idea of the value of the I. I’ll look at them and say, ‘Not a chance.’ They’ll laugh and offer me another deal, the same deal only more complicated; it’ll sound better but it’ll be the same deal. I’ll tell them thanks but no thanks and it’s been nice seeing you but I’m not in the charity business. Then they’ll get serious, and so will I. And what we’ll finally get down to is cash and an exchange of stock, and a payout spread over maybe five years to avoid some taxes. Our family will get cash and maybe thirty percent of stock in Dows Communications, Inc. And they’ll have a hell of a deal because the I kicks over more cash than Berlin and McLean put together. Jonah swallows the whale. The profits aren’t as large as Berlin and McLean because that’s the way I choose to run this place. But they could be. Dows and Butler have sense enough to know that and they’re already salivating over the possibilities. The profits could be three times what they are. And with Dows and Butler in charge, you can bet your booties they would be.” Charles was silent a moment, his eyes again on the ceiling. “The bastards.”

  “And that’s the way it would go.”

  “Would go, sure.”

  She looked at her father. “But won’t.”

  He shrugged. “No.”

  Dana smiled. “I’m glad to hear that.” Charles looked at her strangely. “Tell me, though. How would Dows and Butler turn over three times as much profit?”

  He said, “It would be Butler. Butler would sit in McLean applying his own monthly audit, and each department would have a budget not to be exceeded. And when a guy got sick or had family trouble they’d say the hell with him and cut him loose. No matter that he’s been with you since before the war and you’ve known his wife since grade school. They’d say the hell with him. Then they’d close down the pension program, which they’re entitled to do because it’s a company-funded program. And then they’d really start to trim. They’d make a deal with the unions and cut editorial by maybe twenty, twenty-five percent. Freeze salaries. Eliminate expense accounts. There’d be centralized purchasing and you couldn’t buy a paper clip without clearing it through Butler. And before you know it, the I looks like that sheet Dows runs in Berlin.” He hesitated. “And of course Mitch and Tony would be retired.”

  “What happens to you?”

  “A sweet deal. I go on the board, representing the family. It’s done to signal continuity, but they’ve got me outvoted eight to one. Maybe I could force another seat, Townsend if he were younger, or Mitch.” He smi
led. “Even you. So that means instead of being outvoted eight to one I’d be outvoted seven to two. If they were smart, they’d try to keep me on as publisher. A front man to deal with the big advertisers and developers. But that wouldn’t be so good for me because I’d have to go to Butler for my paper clips. A nightmare. And I’ll tell you where the crunch would come. I’d try to get contracts for our key people, Desmond and the others; those who are part of the family. And I can tell you what the answer to that would be. Harold Dows and his kid would look me in the eye and say, ‘Why would we want to break up the Yankees?’ Dows would say, ‘There’ll be no changes at the I. You have my solemn word.’ And that and a dime would buy me a phone call.” Charles laughed. “You want a nightmare, you’ve got it,” He lapsed into silence.

  “What’s Dows like?”

  Charles shrugged and waved his hand vaguely, “He’s all right.”

  “You don’t like him much?”

  “No. He’s a loudmouth. Chases after women.” Then, “He tried to buy me out a year ago. I said no and he said he’d be back. And so he is. This new deal just came up a week ago.”

  “The way you explain it, it’s like selling a family.”

  He said, “That’s close enough.”

  “How much do you think you could get for it?”

  “Hell,” he said. “That’s not the point. That doesn’t have anything to do with it at all.” He rose and walked slowly to the cabinet and refilled his glass with Scotch and ice. Then he went to the window. “You’d turn this town over to people who have no interest in it or knowledge of it. People who have no interest in the way the town goes or whether it goes. Your grandfather was wrong about a lot of things but he was right about that. They’d sit there”—he indicated his own chair—“and use the paper as a license to print money. And by God they’d do it, too, and to hell with the”—he groped for a word—“spirit. A newspaper isn’t a shoe store or a movie theater, to be sold at will and to hell with the consequences. It doesn’t matter a damn who owns a shoe store. It matters a hell of a lot who owns the newspaper because nothing happens in Dement that the I doesn’t want to happen. I mean the important things, the developments and the new industries and highways. Or new streetlights for downtown or a tax break for a guy who’s going to build a plant employing a thousand people. You’re too young, you wouldn’t remember the hassle over the Reilly property ...” She listened to him and thought to herself that he was far removed from myth, her grandfather’s pursuit; the public memory. Now the I was the catalyst for change, her father leading the revolution that his father had feared with all his heart. ”... best thing that ever happened to this town. Our Rubicon, we finally broke the eastern boundary. There wasn’t anything that would have happened if the Reilly had fallen through. Bill Eurich and I and lucky Harry Bohn put it across—”