Howard Klass stuck out like a sore thumb in Westlake Village. He was a bachelor in a town where single, unattached males above a certain age and below a certain age were never seen. Widowers are rarely considered single, or even male for that matter, even though they wear their wedding rings until the end. But a single man of marriageable age is always under scrutiny in a town like ours.
I wouldn't have known his name was Howard Klass except for the basketball backstop. He had one delivered and mounted it on the back wall of his garage, and quite by accident, I happened to read his name on the empty carton left at the curb. That was the first thing: what was a single man of his age doing with a basketball backstop? The second thing was his bull mastiff! A frightening animal! Nobody needs a dog like that. Howard exercised the dog by letting him run with his leash looped over the side view mirror of his convertible as he drove at a steady twenty miles an hour on the service road of Northern State Parkway.
The third thing was he owned a Saab convertible. What kind of car is that? Everybody in town drove American cars like Hondas and Toyotas, but Howard Klass drove a Saab! Whoever heard of a country like Sweden up there in the Arctic Circle making convertibles in the first place?
The men of Westlake Village discussed Howard in hushed tones at the barber shop – the retirees on Fridays, and the men who still worked on Saturdays. Whatever the conversation began with, it often drifted around to the subject of Howard Klass. He lived near me; his property, in fact, shared a corner with mine. I was bullied into monitoring his moves after dark and to check on the comings and goings of the visitors he might have.
Since I retire early and rise early, there wasn't much to report. I couldn't imagine that Howard Klass would do anything during the night that would be worth losing sleep over. I would look over there just before I turned out my light at night and see a light burning in what I thought might be Howard's bedroom. I would assume that he, too, was calling it a day and, like me, had decided to read in bed.
Tony Sargasso thought otherwise, "You don't know that. Maybe it ain't his bedroom, or if it is, maybe he's got women up there with him -- how many haircuts I gotta get before you come up with somethin' . . . ?"
The nosiness wasn't confined to the males of Westlake Village, Mrs. Petrasek, a widow, and Clare Hardy, a widow of the grass variety, cornered me almost daily in the street, both together and singly, to ask me how my neighbor was.
"He's not my neighbor, Mrs. Petrasek . . . he lives on the street behind me."
"We must be more neighborly, Mr. Buschman. We don't extend the hand of welcome as God says we should."
"No, Clare, really . . . on the street behind mine. I've never spoken to him . . . really."
"Where has the spirit of friendliness gone, Mr. Buschman? . . . the poor man must be lonely. I think I'll make him a cheesecake." From the size of her, Miss Hardy had made more cheesecakes than she bequeathed. The little I knew of Howard Klass convinced me that he would not be interested in either Mrs. Petrasek or Clare Hardy and her cheesecakes. He did not appear to be the sort to surrender to neighborliness or bribery.
He appeared to be on the sunny side of forty. He read a lot on weekends while stretched out in a plastic chaise under an apple tree in his back yard, with his murderous bull mastiff chained to a stake in the ground. He read from several books, making notes in them as he read, as though comparing the facts in one with the facts in another. He would often seem puzzled and stare at the sky through the dappled green cover of the apple tree. When he did so, the dog (whom I later learned he called Winston) would sit up alertly and stare into the apple tree with him. He gave no parties and entertained no visitors.
Although it doesn't sound like it, I am normally not an inquisitive person. My interest in Howard Klass was provoked by the likes of Tony Sargasso, "Old" Dick Donahue, the lavender Mrs. Petrasek, and the cheesecake lady. I am ashamed of myself now for what seems like an almost Gestapo-like surveillance of someone's privacy, but the prodding and constant questioning of these people persuaded me that Howard Klass was a man of mystery and deserving of constant observation.
His work habits were erratic. He would commute later than most men, and not daily. He carried the thinnest attache case I have ever seen, far too thin to carry his lunch in. It was obvious from the size of his trash bags that he did not eat at home. The food he threw away, I believe, is what the dog would not eat.
I fell back on religion as a final means of research into the mysterious Howard Klass, but that, too, proved unavailing. I looked for him vainly in Our Lady of Perpetual Hope, then later stood watch at St. Bartholmew's Congregational and at Jesus Is Light -- Pentecostal. On Friday evening I waited patiently at Temple Shalom, but…he was neither a church- nor a temple-goer.
Throughout the late days of spring and early into August I exhausted all avenues of investigation. In addition to feeling ashamed of myself, I had developed a resentment toward Howard Klass that was born of frustration. I could pass on no significant intelligence to my neighbors. I had none to give. I could have disclosed my conjectures and suppositions, but they would have none of that. They demanded hard evidence, and I had none.
On the Friday before Labor Day the mystery of Howard Klass was solved. I had walked down to the deli to get the Times and on the way back I noticed that Howard had strung gaily colored balloons from the filigree molding of his porch. He was in the process of stretching a blue ribbon between the columns over the front steps. "WELCOME, Nattie, Chuck and Dave," it said. It was too much to bear . . .
"Having a party?" I ventured.
He turned to me and smiled, "You bet! Family gets here today. Family and furniture, too." It was the first time I'd seen him that closely, and he radiated a kind of barely concealed private happiness that he seemed eager to share. "God," he went on, "I've been alone here, just me and Winston, nearly two months now."
"Where's your family?"
"They're in Cleveland. I had to start this job at the Times, so I came on ahead."
Things were beginning to make sense after all.
"You work for the Times?" I asked.
"That's right. You got the Times there...look in the sports section." I did so. "See the article on the pennant race? Byline's Howard Klass...that's me."
"Pleased to meet you, Howard; my name's Harry Buschman." I looked up at the banner. "Chuck and Dave are the kids? -- how old are they?"
He reached in his back pocket for his wallet. "Chuck's ten and little Davy's eight." He pulled a picture out and said, "There they are, took this just before I left . . . that's Nattie, my wife, in the middle."
Octogenarians are rarely at a loss for words. They've seen a lot and done a lot, and there isn't much the world has to offer that it hasn't offered them before. But I hadn't expected it. Nattie was black and the two boys were brown and Howard, on the bottom step of his porch staring down at me, was as white as me.
"Nice family, Howard. I can see why you're anxious to have them with you again."
Did I do well, I wondered? Did I say the right thing? How many times had Howard straddled this wall that separates us to make friends on both sides? In that short, short space of time I could see Tony Sargasso swallow hard and shake his head. I saw Mrs. Petrasek's frozen smile, and I wondered if Clare Hardy would take her cheesecake home with her.
"Drop over when they get here," he said. "It's not easy breaking into a new neighborhood."
"I will, I will, Howard -- it's a long weekend -- nice meeting you." I was uneasy and anxious to get away, and I'm sure it showed. Take it easy, I said to myself, it's a new world, much wider than the narrow one you've lived in for the last eighty years. Look at the friends you've made. There's Ramash on Lavender Street, Paoxing and his brother Rongli on Maple, Seymour on Oak Drive. Isn't it about time for Mr. and Mrs. Klass?
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Letter to the Author:
Harry Buschman at HBusch8659@aol.com