Onyx (6 page)

“Adore to!”

“Good. Then this afternoon we'll go to the Belle Isle pavilion,” he said. “I need something to cheer me. This morning I have a most unpleasant meeting with a debtor. Lewis Emporium, they're in Cleveland, has gone under, and they owe me a great deal of money. A nasty mess.”

Antonia handed him his homburg, her face solemn. “If I help more with Father, Nurse will have time for other work. We won't have to keep the extra laundress.” Mr. Dalzell required great piles of fresh linen daily.

The Major's eyes narrowed. He had come to resent every minute she spent with the invalid. “You know my feelings. I want you in the sickroom less, not more. It's painful for you—” He raised a silencing palm. “No, Antonia, don't argue. I've seen you leave pale and shaken. And it's so futile.” Again the broad palm went up. “Let me finish. Poor Oswald's not himself anymore, not at all.” The Major's tone went throaty with fraternal benevolence. “If he were merely paralyzed, you know I'd be delighted to spend my free evenings with him, it would be my dearest pleasure.” He glanced around to make certain they were alone, adding quietly, “Both specialists agree that the fever has destroyed his rational processes.”

“Dr. McKenzie says he'll recover.”

“McKenzie's not a specialist. He's a family doctor. And besides, he said it was only a remote possibility.”

Passionate, obstinate denial showed on Antonia's face. She said nothing.

“There's a delightful little café in the pavilion,” the Major coaxed consolingly. “Would you like to have a pastry there?”

Antonia did not reply.

She gets over her moods quickly, the Major articulated to himself, pulling his sable collar around his ears. “Flaherty'll bring you around at two,” he said.

VIII

Antonia had never been in this or any other factory. As the carriage jolted from the passageway into the yard, she pushed down both windows. Noise rushed at her with physical force. Involuntarily she hunched her shoulders, smiling. The roar and bustle were as exotic to her as Count Tolstoy's historical Russia.

Men in shirt sleeves packed crates, edging muslin-covered furniture into enormous raw-lumber boxes, wadding in the straw. Hammers glinted swiftly in the sun.

Antonia spied a freestanding cottage with a peaked roof.
That must be Mr. Bridger's shop
, she thought. The carriage brakes jarred and they came to a halt. They were in front of the offices, and Mr. Heldenstern was flying hatless down the steps to help her down. “Good afternoon, Miss Dalzell,” he shouted, his sour breath clouding the cold air. “The Major will be with you in a few minutes. He has several more telephone calls.”

“Oh, then, Mr. Heldenstern, you can give me a tour.”

“The Major asked me to bring you inside.”

Just then the cottage double doors opened and Tom emerged, stretching his arms.

“Mr. Bridger!” Antonia knew he could not hear her so she waved to attract his attention.

Heldenstern moistened his lips. “The Major gave instructions you were to wait in my office, Miss Dalzell.”

But Antonia was already skimming across the snow-cleared yard.

Before he saw her, Tom was bracing himself with deep, invigorating breaths of fresh air. For the past two days he had not gone home; Hugh had brought him food that he had heated on the forge and wolfed down. He had not slept, and though he had worked his normal twelve-hour shift, he was not weary. Exaltation raced through his blood, stronger than any drug. He took out his watch.
At 2:05 on the cold sunlit afternoon of March 12, 1895, T.K. Bridger completed his first horseless road vehicle
, he thought, grinning.

Then he saw Antonia, her narrow black boots twinkling toward him. He had not seen her since that excruciating day he'd blurted out that absurdity about her being the Major's whore. So his elation turned into embarrassment, which in no way interfered with his pleasure in seeing her.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Bridger,” she said breathlessly.

“Miss Dalzell,” he said. “So you're willing to talk to me.”

“
La Grande Horizontale
is always gracious.”

Tom reddened. “I … must have been crazy,” he managed.

“Ahh. So you don't believe men shower me with jewels?”

“I'd never met a real lady, like you.”

“I should hope not!”

“Tell me how to apologize?”

“Mention I'm worthy of my title, then let it go,” she said, smiling. “How are you doing with the horseless wagon?”

“She's ready.”

“You mean you've built one
already
!”

“Finished her a couple of minutes ago.”

“Where's the champagne?”

“We're pouring tonight—if she runs.”

“May I see?”

He opened the door wider, expecting her to peek. Instead she walked into the shadows, circling a peculiar machine that resembled nothing so much as an enormous wheeled dragonfly.

“Definitely not a buggy or a carriage,” she said. The racket was muted in here, and she did not have to raise her voice.

“I call her a quadricycle.”

Its relationship to a bicycle showed everywhere in the spare little body. The suspension wheels, propped on wood blocks eighteen inches above the floor, had nickel spokes and pneumatic rubber tires. A brown leather bicycle saddle rested between the rear wheels. The drive chains came from a Pope Bicycle. There was a bicycle bell affixed to the steering tiller.

But the uncovered engine was something never seen before: a labyrinth of tubes, oil cups, polished brass cylinder casings, valves, nuts, bolts, gears, flywheel. There was a circular steel carburetor and a battery in a varnished cherrywood box.

“You built everything?”

Tom was choked with pride. “Some of the parts were made in machine shops to my specifications. I had to modify them all. I'm rotten at planning on paper. A trial-and-error man. A couple of fellows helped me put her together. Charlie Bixby. Trelinack.”

“Mr. Trelinack … isn't he Uncle's head foreman?”

“Yes. That's him out here, checking the shipment.”

“The foreman worked for
you
?”

“That's my one talent, getting people to lend me a hand around machinery,” Tom said. “Well, what's the verdict?”

“I expected some sort of locomotive in front.”

Tom heard too many arguments favoring steam over gasoline for Antonia's remark not to strike him as criticism, and he said hastily, “Steam engines are heavy. A free-moving road vehicle has to be light, the one thing that counts is lightness. She weighs less than five hundred pounds, and the motor has the power of four horses.”

“But what will you use to pull it?”

Tom's smile gleamed in the dimness as he pointed to the engine. “This.”

“I'm not very bright, am I?” She circled the machine again. “I don't understand how the motor pulls.”

“Want a demonstration?”

“Could you?”

Tom bowed smartly. “At your service, Miss Dalzell.”

He grasped the lever set at the side of the vehicle, cranking it around. A metallic grating. His torso twisted and pivoted as he threw his strength into each revolution: the result, a series of impotent, grating coughs.
She started ten minutes ago
, he thought, cursing the faithless machine. His shoulder muscles bulged, sweat beaded his forehead. Suddenly smoke exploded with a bang. Antonia jumped. The engine sang putt-a-pop, putt-a-pop—a tune that would become the anthem of the unborn century. Tom listened, his eyes intent, his mouth dreamy. The quadricycle shivered on its blocks, increasing its resemblance to a hovering dragonfly.

He swung his leg over the bicycle seat and the machine shook him in its embrace as he pointed to the gears that would transmit power to the chain drive. Antonia, her hands clasped under a white fox muff, gazed at him in rapt concentration. Sharing this moment of creation, they were closer than a man and woman joined in a sweet, damp sexual embrace.

He turned off the machine. It continued to clank and putt as he turned wordlessly to her.

She let the muff dangle by its cord as she opened her arms wide, in a gesture of wonderment. She did not lower her lashes but gazed steadily at him. Tom, dizzy from exhaust fumes, thought without concern about falling into huge dark eyes, drowning.

Above the roar of the factory and the fading sounds of the quadricycle, came the imperious bass of a carriage horn. Antonia blinked. Without saying good-bye, she ran across the yard to where the Major, a bearded, square figure in a sable-collared coat, stamped impatiently around his matched trotting pair.

IX

Later there was a good deal of cloudiness about which pioneer leaped into his machine and putted along in the first American-made automobile. Each man had tunneled like a mole toward his dream, each was buffeted by the laughter of doubters, each labored mightily before he gripped the steering tiller and
moved
. So what does primacy matter? They earned their triumphs: Frank Duryea of Springfield, Elwood Haynes in Kokomo, Ransom Olds in Lansing, Hiram Percy Maxim, whose father had invented the Maxim gun, Alexander Winton, Charles King, Henry Ford, Tom Bridger.

At ten thirty that night Hugh peddled into the yard, heavily bundled, a scowl on his angelic face. Tom had borrowed this Pope so that Hugh could ride ahead ringing the bell to warn anybody who might still be about.
I could be killed, as if that matters to him
, Hugh thought. A cloud obscured the full moon: Tom's shop, with its doors wide open, formed a cavern of light.

“Tom?” Hugh called.

“All set.” Tom had his cap on, and the wheels off the blocks. “Let's go.”

The engine refused to cooperate. Tom cranked until the shop resounded with his panted-out gasps. The brothers, each coiled in separate anxieties, stared at one another.

“Why not put it off until tomorrow night?” Hugh said, hoping to postpone this insanity.

“Like hell,” Tom said, redoubling his efforts. When, finally, the quadricycle putt-popped, he jumped into the seat, gripping the tiller. Pneumatic tires turned, wheels inched forward. The quadricycle jolted down the shallow step onto the cobbles.

Tom was preoccupied in the unfamiliar, unknowable task of coaxing and guiding his invention. But Hugh, who had lived—uncooperatively—through the machine's creation, understood that for Tom this was the culmination of three years of sleepless nights, the pettiest economies and denials, of painful burns, of trial and seemingly limitless error. As his brother jounced down the step, he shouted, “Hooray! Tom, hooray! You've done it.”

One of the night watchmen emerged, his lantern casting wavery shadows. It was old O'Reardon. “Holy Mother of God,” he cried, “Save me!”

Hugh peddled well ahead of the machine through the passage and onto Fort Street. This being the week of the full moon, Detroit's towered arc lights were not on, and the Pope's small nickel-plated acetylene lamp could not dispel the darkness. The road, not properly cleared from the storm, was mounded with snow and slick with frozen puddles. Hugh, ringing the bell for dear life, was afraid to go too fast and even more afraid to go slower. The horrendous machine snapped and barked at him. He hated his brother for giving him this terrifying task, but his anger and fear were overwhelmed by a fierce fraternal pride.
Tom's done it
, he thought,
Tom's done it
! Soon he was thinking,
We've done it
.

They had prearranged a circular route of six blocks. A knot of excited people were being held outside the passage by three night watchmen.

A couple of Stuart mechanics waited in the yard.

“Hey, Tom. Why waste all your time and money on something a horse can do a thousand percent better?”

Hugh shouted, “Let's see you build one!”

And at the same time Tom laughed. “I don't enjoy looking at horses' asses, that's why.”

The others helped them push the still clattering machine into the shop. Alone, the brothers embraced.

“Jesus,” Tom said excitedly. “I never dreamed she'd run that smooth.”

“I'm going to help, Tom.”

“You? When? Here?”

“I'm not much around machines, but my penmanship's the best in class. I can write the letters. Keep the accounts, too. And with my drawing, I'll learn draftsmanship easy.”

“What about Central High? You've got to finish.” Tom, who had no schooling, spoke adamantly.

“I'll work part time.” Hugh's sincerity was marred by a whine. It was difficult, surrendering those spacious dreams of Hugh Bridger, significant, powerful, wealthy—and out from under his older brother.

Tom's face was gaunt with fatigue. Selecting a small screwdriver, he said, “The motor stopped as she came into the yard. I'll check out why, then we'll head home.”

Hugh blinked, rebuffed at Tom's seeming indifference to his offer, telling himself it was the icy wind blowing on the ride that caused the tears in his eyes.

X

The following morning around ten the Major sent for Tom. A coal heater warmed the crowded office that smelled of cigar smoke. The stuffiness was more unpleasant to Tom than the penetrating chill of his shop.

“Sit down,” said the Major, indicating a rungback chair facing his kneehole desk. “Everybody in the plant is jabbering about your machine.”

“I ran her last night.”

“You sound less than overjoyed.”

“I was plenty proud last night. But I need a braking device; the transmission chains make a terrible racket. The spring of a sparker broke and we had to push her into the shop.… A million things wrong.”

The Major leaned back. “There is something I want to say to you, Bridger. It concerns my niece. She was raised in Europe. She has no female relatives, no intimate older woman friend to advise her. She is quite unprepared. A complete innocent. One mustn't take her natural enthusiasm as proof of friendship.”