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Founding Father
by
Harry Buschman
From The Westlake Village Collection.
Somewhere in Westlake Village someone is dying, or 'passing on' as we like to
say. But since we are a biweekly, it may be two weeks before his or her
obituary appears in the "Guardian."
If our paper printed every day, each and every elderly person in town would
have an obituary pre-written and ready to slip into that old necrology page at
a drop of a hat. But, as I said, we are a biweekly and we have the luxury of
waiting until old man Springer dies before we eulogize him. He may, in fact, be
all settled in before his obituary hits the street.
When Lucas, (my publisher) and I were in the big time, obituaries were
written so far in advance that the deceased would have difficulty recognizing
him or
herself. The term, "is survived by," often neglected the fact that the
deceased had remarried and had a new set of survivors, or that his or her spouse
had
'passed on' previously and was in no condition to be a survivor.
Lucas Crosby looked wet and very sober when he walked in. He hung his black
fedora on the hook next to my baseball cap, then he draped his dripping
raincoat over the back of a chair in front of the hissing radiator.
"Helluva day to visit the hospital," he said.
Stacey looked up from buffing her nails, "still raining?" She asked.
"Like a bitch," he grumbled. "Hadda walk a mile from the parking lot to
emergency."
"Shoulda brung yer umbrella," she grinned. "Y'forgot it -- it's right there
hangin' on the hook."
One of the benefits of being a girl, especially one as pretty as Stacey, is
that you know you're not going to get punched in the mouth when you say
something like that to Lucas. Therefore, he turned to glare at me.
"Better get ready on that obituary. Y'only gotta week, and y'know how slow
you are."
"Come on Lucas, the man's still living -- wait'll he's dead for God's sake."
"I guarantee he's outta here by the morning."
"My five to your ten?" I suggested, knowing that Stacey would put up half of
my five.
"You got it, he's a goner." He looked at Stacy and me and wiped a crocodile
tear from his eye, "One of the greats." He sniveled.
Manny Springer, or more accurately Emanuel P. Springer owned the "Guardian"
lock, stock, and barrel. He had been rushed to the hospital the previous
evening with chest pains. He is one of those people you often hear called, "a
founding father.' However, he is nothing of the kind. His great grandfather was
a
founding father. Manny is a wimp. A bloodless offspring clinging to the
outermost branch of the Springer family tree; out so far that the sap never
reached
him.
The Springer's were second class to begin with. They had none of the panache
of the Astor's, the Cabot's or the Rockefeller's. The Springer's merely owned
"Frog Hollow," a depression in the earth of Long Island in which potatoes were
grown. It is now a debt ridden and polluted suburban wasteland called
Westlake Village, and while it is very dear to me for personal reasons, I've got
to
admit, a passerby wouldn't slow down to look at it twice.
I waited for the rain to let up then drove off to the library to brush up on
my Springer's. Mrs. Kibbens, the librarian, does not take kindly to newspaper
people, especially when they request reference material on founding fathers.
She owes her job and the library itself to the Springer family.
"It's not our policy to divulge private family information." She drew herself
up to her full height of five feet two and straightened her glasses.
"It's not private information, Mrs. Kibbens. They've been written up in
"Who's Who."
"Well, you're not getting any of their private correspondence or the pictures
of the old farm, so there! Some day a legitimate biographer will come here
looking for them and what will he think? I ask you -- what will he think when he
finds that you and that disgraceful Marcus Crosby have been rooting around in
them?"
"His name is Lucas, Ma'am."
"Whatever!" She narrowed her eyes and looked at me suspiciously. "Why are you
spying on the Springer family anyway?"
"Manny Springer's dying, Mrs. Kibbens. I have to write his obituary for the
Guardian."
Her mouth described a tiny "o," as though she were about to blow a smoke
ring. I suppose it was cruel of me to put it so bluntly, but she's such an
ill-mannered old biddy. In the thirty years I've known her she's considered the
library to be her personal property. Kids must be as still as statues and leave
at
five o'clock; they can't come in at all on Sunday, and God help them if they
have to ask her a question. She'll shake her finger at them and say in a
sing-song voice, "That's what the card file is for."
I sat down with "Who's Who," then filled myself in on some old newspapers in
the microfilm file. Before the rain had started again I knew more about the
Springer family than anyone would ever want to know. I wondered what might
happen to me if I wrote this obituary truthfully. Old Manny Springer had sold
his
grandfather's farm to a shopping mall management company in which he was the
major stockholder. He sold all the retail properties along Westwood Avenue to a
holding company, and owned a controlling interest in that as well. On top of
that, he was able to wangle a ridiculously low tax rate out of the town
assessor. He pays less in property taxes than I do!
That's the kind of thing people like to read about. If I wanted, I could have
included the messy details of his first two divorces. Another juicy tidbit
would have been his involvement in a pedophile round-up last summer in which a
Grand jury judge decreed he was only attending a boy scout overnight sleep-out.
I printed out the old newspapers and said a pleasant good afternoon to Mrs.
Kibbens. She had been on the phone ever since I broke the news. There was a box
of tissues on her desk; tears dribbled down her puffy cheeks and her glasses
were fogged over.
In spite of the weather, I arrived at the Guardian in a bouncy mood.
"How do you want me to handle it, Lucas?"
"Wadd'ya mean, handle it?"
"Manny Springer. Look," I zipped open my briefcase and spilled out the
clippings and photocopies. "The guy's a menace. There's the record. 'Who's Who,'
newspapers, school taxes, property taxes, a fortune in alimony, the vice squad
--
everything."
"Aw, I din't ask ya to dig up that stuff! that's rumor -- you know that! A
lotta people, people just like you by the way, pig out on that stuff." His eyes
grew misty. "Don't you have no respect? Where would this town be without guys
like Manny Springer?"
"We'd be paying less property taxes and the police would be patrolling the
neighborhoods instead of Westlake Mall, and sure as hell the old ancestral
Springer estate would still be standing."
You can push Lucas just so far and I figured I had gone about as far as it
was safe to go. I knew that Lucas owed Manny Springer a lot. The Guardian's
property assessment was laughably low, lower than the bungalow I live in.
Springer
had seen to it that the Guardian was permitted to have a telephone tie-line
to the Police and Fire Departments, free refuse removal, and all the political
advertising for the local Republican Party. Lucas wanted a glowing obituary to
Manny Springer more than he wanted one for himself.
He gathered up my research and deposited it in his waste basket. "I want
NICE, see! Somethin' nice! You go back to that fancy word processor of yours,
Mr.
Crusader -- Mr. Fourth Estate -- and you tell all the good people of this here
Westlake Village that when Manny Springer was taken from us we lost a friggin
saint, understand!!"
I can take a hint as well as the next one. Jobs don't come easily to men my
age, and besides, Stacey was giving me that, "Go sit down, you know how he is,"
look.
It's quite easy to write fiction, and making a saint out of Manny Springer
went down easier than chicken soup. I ignored the ex-wives and the sordid affair
at the boy scout sleep-out. I forgot all about the bull-dozing of the
ancestral estate and the fact that Manny now owns the mall it once stood on. I
concentrated on his contributions to Westlake Village, which were largely the
efforts of his father and grandfather.
Lucas loved it. He held it in front of him as a man might admire a precious
illuminated manuscript, then he walked across the room and pinned it to the
bulletin board. He set it in a tasteful black border and announced that it would
be in the center of the front page above the fold, "Not below, mind you, above
the damn fold!"
"Hey, Stacey -- looka that. How d'ya like that?" He always liked to get a
woman's opinion on matters of taste.
She tilted her head critically and chewed her gum slowly. "Jeez, that's
heavy, Mr. Crosby. Y'want I should read it too?"
"No, that ain't important. I read it. Just tell me if it looks O.K."
"Looks great, he'll love it."
We had a slight argument, a discussion really, on the spelling of the title,
"In Memoriam." For some reason Lucas thought it was spelled, 'memorium'. The
finer points of the English language are difficult for Lucas, it's only
recently I convinced him that the Guardian was a biweekly. He thought it was a
bimonthly -- "Twice a month, right?"
He left later that afternoon to visit Manny at the hospital again. He wanted
to be in at the kill, so to speak, to ingratiate himself with the ragtag
remnants of the Springer family.
It was nearly 10 a.m. the next morning when he showed up at the paper. He was
not in black. I took that to mean he owed me ten dollars.
"How's Manny, Lucas? Still hangin' in there?"
"Yeah, they took him off oxygen and he was sittin' up this morning." He
almost looked disappointed as he fished in his back pocket for his wallet. He
pointed at Stacey while looking at me. "You two go halfies like always? Here,
make
your own change."
After four days in the hospital, Manny Springer was sprung. He was in better
shape than he'd been in years. Matter of fact, he and the third Mrs. Springer
took off for Aruba. Lucas, on the other hand, did not look well at all.
"What's up with you, Lucas?
"Nothin,' I'm fine, lemme alone."
Stacey stepped in, "You ain't been the same since Manny Springer got outta
the hospital." She popped one of her Olympic sized bubbles and sat in the
visitor's chair in front of his desk. "We're family, Mr. Crosby -- you can tell
y'family."
"Get outta here, Stacey. Pull'ya skirt down and .... and get outta here. I'm
all right, go -- lemme alone."
She sighed and flounced off to her desk. Lucas watched her go. I sat by the
word processor watching the blinking cursor. The post office clock on the wall
seemed to tick with it in an un-syncopated rhythm. Stacey and I looked at each
other and shrugged.
Finally Lucas leaned back in his ratty old executive chair and shook his head
. . .
"Family, huh?"
There was a long pause, so I broke in, "Well, in a manner of speaking, Lucas.
But .... yeah, I guess maybe we'd like to know what the hell's wrong with
you."
"Manny Springer! That no good bastard -- he's what's wrong with me!" A rosy
blush was creepy out of his collar and inching its way up his neck. "Know what
he went and done? He sold out, that's what he done! Sold the mall and all
these properties along Westwood -- this building here, home of the Guardian,
he's
dumped it. Pulled outta Westlake Village! Like a thief in the night, like his
name wasn't Springer!"
"So what?" I ventured.
"What are you -- some kinda air-head? Stacey, I can understand -- but you
oughtta know better. Manny's dumped everything, he's stayin' in Aruba -- ain't
comin' back. Remember his big black open limousine that used to glide down
Westlake on the Memorial Day Parade with him and that floozy third wife of his
in
the back seat? Well, no more you won't. He's pulled out, that's what he's done.
He's sold out to a holding company, a bunch'a shysters from New York!"
It began to dawn on me. All the perks -- the cheap rent -- the Republican
Party camaraderie -- the tax breaks -- the advertising -- the police protection,
everything that made life easy and profitable for Lucas had been snatched away
from him. His party was over.
"Take the day off, you two. I gotta go home and think this thing over." He
turned his head slowly to the wall where he'd pinned the obituary. He tore it
off and turned to me, "Tell ya what, this town's gonna be a hell of a lot better
off without creeps like that Manny Springer."
©Harry Buschman 1999
(2230)
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