Onyx (12 page)

Beyond the partition stood the racer.

“I must drive her out,” Hugh muttered.

The decision cut against every grain of his character, yet it was not born of panic. His mind had leaped to a shrewd calculation. Everything they had would go. The racer had cost a vast amount, and even if Tom could remember its every change and modification, they could not possibly afford to build another. With it Tom would win prize money. With it they would find a new backer. With it they could start over.

He opened the doors wide, recoiling from the yard's heat. His eyes streamed, he breathed with raspy, shallow coughs.

Turning the ignition, he pushed in the battery, and in his haste forgot to retard the spark. When he grabbed the crank, it spun. He fell back as if kicked by a mule. His thumb bent outward at a peculiar angle, yet he felt no real pain. He gripped the side of the racer, using his damaged right hand to aid the left. His long, slender body bent forward. As is often the case, terror endowed him with supernormal strength. Sobbing, gasping, he shoved. The outsize wheels turned.

IV

A system of alarm boxes was connected to the City Hall bell so that it pealed whenever there was a fire. Tom and Trelinack were in the shop on Anthon Street waiting for the rental agent when the wildly discordant ringing started.

“Another fire,” Trelinack said, and went over to the narrow window. His voice clotted. “My God, Tom. It's over near the Stuart!”

Tom ran outside, staring at the red glow, then he was pounding down Anthon Street. “Wait!” Trelinack shouted behind him. Tom did not slow.

Outside the factory a crowd was growing, stimulated as crowds are by a conflagration, getting in the way of a horse-drawn hose wagon that clanged up Fort Street, pressing around the hook and ladder. Police struggled to hold back thrill seekers.

The ten-foot iron letters,
STUART FURNITURE FACTORY
, glowed a dull crimson. Below, the windows of the stockrooms had exploded and smoke was pouring out. Sharp little teeth of fire showed in the roof of the entry passage.

“Tom!” O'Reardon clutched at his arm. “Praise God. Ye're safe.”

“Where's Hugh?”

“Hugh?”

“He was working in the shop.”

“Sweet Jesus! He was? I ain't seen him.”

Tom shrugged off the arthritic old hand, fighting his way through the crowd until he was pushing against a policeman's shoulder.

Deep in the passage he saw a glint and, peering, he recognized the racer's brass cooling jacket. It inched uncertainly along beneath the flames.

“Hugh!” he screamed. “Leave the fucker! Get the hell out!”

His voice was swallowed by the thermal roar. The racer continued nosing through smoke.

He elbowed by the policeman. A fireman turned on him, flinging out both arms to bar his way. “Get back, you damn fool! That front wall's about to go!”

Unhesitatingly Tom aimed a blow at the red, sweaty face and ran forward into heat so intense that it felt icy against his skin.

The racer's engine was afire.

“Saving … her …” In Hugh's blackened face the mouth was a moving open wound. “Saving …”

“Let go!” Tom tried to pull the burned hands from the chassis. Like the dark, obstinate claws of a bird of prey, they gripped and clutched. With the same unhesitating force that he had hit the fireman, Tom aimed at his brother's chin. As the boy fell he grabbed for him, lurching back to the street.

Ninety seconds later the front wall shivered. Molten letters swayed. Flames briefly receded into smoke. With a torrent of sound the two upper stories of stockrooms gave way, crashing into the tunnel, burying the blazing racer.

V

A few minutes before this the Major had been stamping up and down his study's Shirvan rug. In the hall the telephone gave its signal. He went to his desk, sitting there, waiting, his eyes fixed on the door. A knock.

“Yes?” he said.

Ida's troll face mingled sympathy with the satisfaction that comes from being first to report bad news. “Major, there's a Paddy O'Reardon on the line—”

“My night watchman. What does he want?”

“I'm afraid it's bad news. A fire at the factory, a big one.”

The Major was on his feet, leaning on his desk. “Has he called the fire brigade?”

“He said so.”

“Tell him I'll be there directly.” The Major spoke in a strangled voice. “And get Flaherty to hitch up.”

By the time the Major arrived, the barrels of resin in the storeroom had exploded and every building was aflame. There was no way to save any of the bone-dry wooden structures, so the firemen were wetting down the surrounding factories and giving thanks for a windless night.

The crowd parted for the Major's carriage, gazing in respectful awe.

The chief himself came over. “I'm Chief Beldon,” he said, raising his leather helmet to wipe his forehead. “We did all we could, but the blaze was too far along before we got here. I'm sorry.”

The Major's eyes dully refracted the glare. “My grandfather opened his cabinet shop before I was born …”

“A terrible personal loss,” said the chief. “On the bright side, there was only one man inside.”

“O'Reardon, my night watchman.”

“The old Mick was out in plenty of time. No, somebody was trying to rescue one of those damn horselesses. I shouldn't be surprised if the gasoline didn't have something to do with this fire—gasoline's highly volatile, you know.”

The Major gripped his cane. “Bridger was in there?”

“I think that was the name. Yes, the older brother said so. They took him over to Providence.”

“So it's the young boy. He's in the hospital, you say?”

“With a fire this size,” the chief soothed, “one fatality's nothing.”

The Major's hands shook more violently. His cane fell, rolling across the carriage floor. “The boy's dead?” he whispered.

“He won't last through the night. I've seen enough like him. Oh, excuse me, Major Stuart.” A fireman had come over to consult with him.

There was a maddened roar as the shingled roof of Tom's shop collapsed. Enormous sparks showered into the street, and the crowd jostled back. Long after Flaherty had calmed the bucking horses, the Major's thighs shuddered, twitching as if both legs had been amputated.

He sat through the night in his Jacobean dining room, as he had when each of his parents had died. He did not drink the whiskey or the cups of tea that Antonia brought him, but he asked her to stay with him. In the little room off the hall the telephone sounded constantly. Ida brought messages: he found himself unable to speak even to his oldest friends, and only after newsmen persisted in an unpleasantly threatening manner did he agree to meet with the press at ten in the morning.

When the mantel clock, the antique that Tom had repaired, struck the hour, he went into the study, leaning heavily on his cane. Antonia followed, sitting quietly next to him, a fact that every reporter jotted down. Most of the questions, unsubtle to the point of crudity, pointed toward how the losses would affect him financially. The Major explained that he had been in the process of retiring from business life and his banker, the famed international financier, J.P. Morgan, had procured him an excellent offer: he had forfeited a large sum, but his loss went far deeper than money. “My grandfather opened his cabinet shop before I was born.… This means the end of the Stuart name.”

“What about the serious injury at Providence Hospital?” asked the man from the
Detroit Tribune
.

“When the fire broke out, the brother of my partner in an automobile venture was at work.” He heard Antonia's small groan and went on more rapidly, “I'm certain that the young man is on the road to recovery.”

After Ida ushered out the group, the Major slumped back in his chair. “They were like a pack of wolves, waiting for me to falter.” An accurate enough summation. In Detroit's eyes, Major Andrew Stuart had too long existed rich, carefree, publicly flouting the moral laws that everybody else had the decency to break behind drawn curtains. The reporters knew that his comeuppance would sell out the special editions.

Antonia sighed. “How can they think only of money? Why couldn't they understand how terrible this is for you?” She went to the tantalus, pouring him a drink. “Uncle, you need this.”

He took the snifter with both hands, not to warm the brandy but because he trembled so much that he could not have held the glass otherwise. “I never could have faced them without you, my dear. Having you with me made all the difference in the world.”

“They're gone, Uncle. It's over.”

“Thank God.”

Touching his shoulder lightly, she asked, “Can Flaherty drive me to the Providence Hospital?”

A few drops of brandy trickled from the side of the Major's mouth, and he, normally fastidious, did not wipe his beard. “What?” he asked. “Why?”

“The reporter said Hugh's there.”

“That boy's nothing to you, nothing.”

“I've been seeing Tom,” she said evenly. “I've kept on meeting him. When I shop downtown. Sometimes when I walk in the evenings. If I can't have the carriage, I'll find the way on the trolley.”

“I don't want to argue with you, I can't.” The Major forced himself to sit more erectly. “But there's no point for you to visit, no point at all. Providence is a Catholic hospital, very strict. You won't get through the doors. Only close relatives of ward patients are permitted inside the building, only the nearest family.” He was not positive of this, but he would get McKenzie to back him up.

Antonia was passing the cut-crystal decanter stopper from hand to hand, an unconscious habit of hers, he had noted, playing with some small object when she was distraught.

“The reporter said he was seriously injured.”

“He did?”

She nodded.

“I didn't hear that. Well, this
is
worrying news. Don't cry, my dear, please don't, I can't bear it. Antonia, don't. I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll ask McKenzie to go over and find out about the boy's condition. No, better yet, I'll ask him to take the case. McKenzie's the best doctor in Detroit. He'll keep us informed.”

CHAPTER 6

When Hugh arrived at Providence Hospital, it was not discussed whether he could survive the lung damage or the third-degree burns sweeping over the upper half of his body. He was in shock. A few hours in deep shock is irreversible. A stomach tube was jammed into his raw nostril and he was fed glucose water, his blackened clothing was scissored from him, he was bundled in quilts, surrounded by heated bricks.

In the dispensary a nursing Sister of Charity smeared carron oil on Tom's burns: his palms and fingerpads were painfully blistered, so she bandaged his hands before leading him to the high-ceilinged, dimly lit corridor where a few scattered figures sat clasping their rosaries in the gloom.

“Wait here,” she said.

“But what about my brother? How is he?”

“You'll be told if there's any news.”

Tom sat on the hard bench, his body leaden.
Will he die
? he wondered, at the same time reproaching himself bitterly for letting Hugh work late. Was he so besotted with building the racer, with marrying Antonia, that he ignored all other human obligations? How could he have left his younger brother alone in a deserted factory piled with seasoned wood? Tom forgot his own far younger, more rabidly dangerous struggles to survive—and support his brother into the bargain.
Will he die
?

The few times a nurse or orderly moved along the dim corridor, he jerked erect as if expecting the worst, holding his breath until the figure passed him. He left the bench only once, to relieve his bladder.

Somehow first light was touching the clerestory windows. Dawn brought a bustle of attendants.

At two in the afternoon visitors began straggling in, and at three a tall, enormously stout nursing nun opened the ward door.

Tom rose, moving his numb legs from the stiffened hip joints like a wooden soldier.

Hugh's bed, in the far corner, was set off and heavily shadowed by a tall screen. Slow, wheezing breaths emerged from the figure of a mummy. The card attached to the foot of the iron cot told Tom nothing of his brother's condition. The ward sister said there was no change, an ambiguous comment that she either would not or could not clarify.

At the close of visiting hour Tom searched the maze of hallways until he found an intern.

“Doctor, tell me about Hugh Bridger's condition.”

“We have a hundred beds here, so—”

“B-R-I-D-G-E-R. In the accident ward.”

“Wait a second, I did hear something. Bridger—isn't that the burn case?”

“Yes.”

“McKenzie's patient.”

“McKenzie?” Tom stared. “
McKenzie
?”

“How did you get a member of the gracious staff at Harper, a high-toned society doctor like him, to come to our humble hospital?”

Tom's eyes went momentarily flat. Who had sent McKenzie? Antonia? The Major? What difference did it make?
Will he live
? “What about my brother? He seems in bad shape.”

“Didn't McKenzie explain to you? He's on the critical list. That means it could go either way.”

The second afternoon the ominous screen still remained, shadowing Hugh's bed. He was muttering, “Racer … racer, must save it.…”

“She's fine, Hugh. Just a little sooty.”

“Heavy … push …”

“You got her out.” Tom bent over the swathed head. “Hugh, you sure saved our bacon.”

“Tommy?”

“Me, yes.”

“Help push,” Hugh whimpered in a shrill, childlike voice. “Tommy, hurts so bad …”

Tom ran the length of the ward to the duty desk by the door, returning with his bandaged hand clamped on the ward sister's full round arm.