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The Second Most Terrible Thing
by
Harry Buschman
From The Westlake Village Collection.
Windy Mullins is eighty-seven years old. His son, Frank, is close to seventy.
They are an ill-tempered and reclusive pair. In spite of their spleen, they
manage to live out their lives in a run-down frame house on Westwood Avenue.
If you're new in town and run into Windy and Frank in the Hollow Leg Saloon,
you'd never guess who was the father and who was the son. They're just two
cranky old men who mow lawns in the summer and plow driveways in the winter.
They've lived together so long, they've come to look alike and talk alike. They
even wear each others clothes. If there was ever a father/son relationship, I'm
sure it disappeared about the time Windy's wife, Faye, threw up her hands and
walked out on both of them.
The house they live in is rotting from the inside out. The windows are dirty and
the shades are pulled down at different levels, and upon closer observation, you
can see the curtains are torn. Their snow plow sits on their front lawn and
their mail box hangs askew by their front door. Across the street lies the
Village Deli. The two of them have their breakfast there every morning when it
opens at six, it consists of pale coffee in a plastic cup and a buttered bagel
wrapped in waxed paper. In summer, they sit outdoors on the bench by the bus
stop and wait for the two Central American handy-men who arrive to help them
with their lawn mowing business. In the late fall the landscaping business drops
off and the Central Americans go home to their families. Then, when winter
settles in, Windy and Frank put on their ear muffs and plow driveways together.
Old Windy was a tank driver in World War II. He and his crew arrived at Utah
Beach in June of '44, and in the chaos of that memorable morning, Windy couldn't
get the motor in his tank to kick over. He and his crew had to wade ashore
without rations or equipment. The tank was unceremoniously dumped into deep
water where it probably rests to this day. It is a story Windy has told again
and again with ever-increasing elaboration. His son, Frank, was too young for
World War II, but the perfect age for the Korean conflict. His battle adventures
were hampered by the fact that Korea was a war of lesser magnitude and his
stories can't hold a candle to Windy's. When Frank begins to tell the story of
his artillery unit shelling the nurses barracks in Seoul by mistake, Windy will
break in with the botched landing on Utah Beach. As each of them jockeys to
out-do themselves for audience attention, their faces redden and their voices
rise in pitch and volume.
These oft told tales of war are the personal triumphs of the two old men. As
other men might display their college diplomas and professional licenses, Windy
and Frank carry pictures of themselves in uniform. Wars were their centennial
highlights, and nothing that came before or after means as much to them. The ex
Mrs. Mullins, wife and mother, has no part in their memory.
Most of us in Westlake Village are veterans of one war or another. Were it not
for wars, potatoes would still be growing here. Like many Johnny-come-lately
towns in the U.S.A., we are the result of an influx of newly married veterans of
foreign wars fought for the defense of freedom, or democracy, or the right to do
this or that.
I no longer concern myself with freedom. It is a word to me -- a word like any
other. It doesn't mean today what it used to mean. As a member of the press,
(how presumptuous of me, the Guardian publishes biweekly) I see very few
examples of freedom. There is Mr. and Mrs. Hungerford across the street -- both
in
their seventies -- both of them eager to enjoy the fruits of senior citizenship,
such as they may be. Their son and daughter-in-law, (both in their fifties),
have recently divorced and left their children, (both in their teens) with the
elder Hungerfords, in escrow so to speak -- along with their freedom. To put it
bluntly, I think 'freedom' is a subjective illusion. It means something to Mr.
and Mrs. Hungerford, something else to me, and most likely something else to
you, and I'm no longer sure that another war will settle it to anyone's
satisfaction.
Freedom, to Windy and Frank, is nothing more than the time and space to spin
their tiresome tales of army life. As time goes by, their audience dwindles,
much as the audience found better things to do when King Henry's troops returned
from Agincourt or Jason and the Argonauts returned from their quest. Nothing is
more boring than an old hero, unless it is two old heroes.
Last Independence Day, Windy and Frank got to ride together in the back seat of
Mady Bergen's convertible. Windy is the oldest member of the American Legion
Post 278, and Frank is the present Commander. Of all the places one may sit in
the Independence Day Parade, the back seat of Mady Bergen's convertible is the
most desirable. It is, after all, a white Eldorado with beige leather
upholstery, and it rolls along at a stately two and a half miles per hour
between the Fire Department band and those few veterans of the American Legion
Post 278 still able to walk.
This Independence Day is different. Windy and Frank have won the Power Ball
Lottery!
We post the winning numbers in the front window of the Guardian as a public
service, and that's where Frank first got the news of his windfall. Our
fly-specked window faces Westwood Avenue and we can look out and watch people
stop by to check their numbers. They will stand there with their mouths open and
carefully compare the numbers we post with the numbers on their tickets.
On the Friday before Independence Day, the jackpot was 8.3 million dollars,
(pretty small potatoes in the jackpot business) and though we heard someone had
won, no one had, as yet come forth with the winning number. Clancy walked up,
checked his number, shook his head sadly and walked on. So did Mae Pfieffer,
Seymour Slansky, and Don Javits.
So did Frank Mullins. Frank pulled up to the curb in his truck and trailer. Old
Windy was asleep in the passenger seat and the two Central Americans were
sitting in the trailer with the lawn mowers and the grass clippings. Frank
checked his numbers in the window and seemed to fidget, shifting his weight from
foot to foot, like the last man in line in a crowded public lavatory. He walked
back to the truck, took a look at his father asleep in the passenger seat, then
walked back and pulled one of the Central Americans out of the trailer. He
handed him a piece of paper and walked him up to our front window. The two of
them carefully compared the piece of paper with the Power Ball numbers in our
window.
They stood there. Frank seemed confused, and the Central American seemed anxious
to get back in the trailer. It appeared to me that something was afoot so I went
to the front door and opened it.
"Good news, Frank? Are you a millionaire?" He eyed me warily and shooed the
Central American back to the trailer. His voice was an octave higher than it
should have been.
"Them numbers in yer winda -- the ones fer the Power Ball -- y'sure they're
right?"
"Right as rain, Frank, why?"
I've only run across one other millionaire in my time. That was Nelson
Rockefeller as he rode up Fifth Avenue in a black Cadillac in a St. Patrick's
Day Parade. Nelson Rockefeller looked at me that day just as Frank Mullins did
on the Friday before Independence Day -- warily, as you would a six legged
creature in the kitchen sink.
Frank turned his back on me and walked back to the truck. He rapped on the
window to wake his father, then opened the door and shook him. They talked a bit
and Windy climbed stiffly out of the truck and the two of them went back to the
trailer and had a chat with the Central Americans. They were apparently through
for the day for they gathered up their lunch pails and undershirts and walked
off. I was left with no other alternative than to assume that Frank and Windy
had hit it big. I hoped they would accept their new-found wealth wisely and with
Christian generosity -- but knowing them, it didn't seem likely.
If they were reclusive before, they were now antisocial. Little could be seen of
them. I walked the aisles of the supermarket hoping to catch a glimpse of one of
them, but apparently someone was doing their shopping for them, or perhaps they
were dining out -- but that seemed unlikely. They were not epicures. Their
preference in cuisine did not extend further than IHOP and Chicken Delight --
and if they had eaten in such places I would probably have seen them. The widow
Clare Hardy stopped by their house one afternoon and brought them a cheesecake.
She stood knocking at their front door for nearly fifteen minutes. There was no
answer, although she said she could see the flickering light of a black and
white television through the torn curtains of the living room window. She
finally gave up and went home.
Then there was the town lawyer Wally Venturi; Wally is not as discreet as he
should be. As we stood shoulder to shoulder at the Hollow Leg Saloon, he told me
that Windy and Frank had opted to claim the lump sum payment rather than the
monthly allotment. Because of that, the 8.3 million was immediately whittled
down to 3.7 million. "Then," he said, "the IRS jumped in and claimed 1.8
million, and the state took another million for themselves."
"Holy Smokes, Wally! Was there anything left?"
"Well, I guess five hundred thousand or so. About two fifty each I'd say. Then
there was my fee, of course, and the settlement with the two Central Americans."
"The two guys in the trailer?"
"Yeah, them. See -- Frank signed for them down at immigration for the season.
Then he left them hangin' -- so they sued."
"What I think you're tellin' me, Wally, is that there may not be any money left
at all -- right?" The specter of Windy and Frank, our two Power Ball winners
applying for food stamps flashed across my mind.
"Lemme' put it this way. By the time they pay off court costs and lawyer's fees,
even if they settle out of court with the lawn mower's lawyers, they might break
even, except .... " Wally finished his beer, took a deep breath and shuddered.
"Except what?" I asked.
"Well there's old Faye Mullins, y' see. She got wind of it -- read it in the
paper or something. She wants her third."
"But a third of nothing is nothing, right?"
"That's where you're wrong. It's a third off the top, not a third off the
bottom."
©Harry Buschman 1999
(1880)
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