Thunder City

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Of course not. It won’t come to that.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “The A.L.A.M. is out to get to me. They don’t care who buys a Ford. They’re just trying to scare away business.”

  “Then you think they’re no threat?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Let ’em sue!” John Dodge banged the table with his glass, slopping out some of its contents.

  Ford smiled his tight smile. “I imagine they’ll do just that, with or without your permission.”

  “When do you expect to be served?” Harlan asked.

  “I’m surprised I haven’t been already. I expect my advertisement is being read by their lawyers right now.”

  “Let ’em!” John repeated. “Horace and I have a load of money invested that says the company will do good. We ain’t backed a losing horse yet.”

  Horace, quieter (and possibly not yet as inebriated), grinned. “I thought the whole point of this was to put all the horses out to pasture.”

  “They can’t win, can they?” Harlan pressed.

  “Maybe, maybe not. Commodore Whitney’s heading them up. He knows most of the judges.”

  “Then we’ll win on appeal?”

  “We’ll win in the end. Roosevelt don’t hold with trusts. At the rate he’s appointing judges—”

  “Federal judges?” Harlan broke in. “You think it will get that far?”

  “I was referring to justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

  The suit was not filed, although the threat of it hung above the plant on Mack Avenue like a guillotine blade for all to see. Infringement of patent was the charge discussed in the press. Henry Leland, Ransom E. Olds, and the makers of the Franklin, the Pierce, and the Locomobile joined the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, paying hefty fees for the privilege of making motorcars powered by gasoline. Entrepreneurs hoping to enter the field sent in money so they could show their licenses to potential backers. Ford stood alone. A lawyer representing the patent holders, granting a newspaper interview in his book-lined, cigar-smelling office overlooking New York’s Fifth Avenue, put the alliance’s philosophy into one succinct sentence: “When you buy a Ford, you buy a lawsuit.” Sales fell off. Rows of new Model Cs stood unadmired on the grounds of dealerships, where salesmen who had been all week visiting the homes of farmers and businessmen only to come potting back in their sample vehicles without a sale sat working newspaper puzzles and making appointments for job interviews at Oldsmobile and Cadillac.

  Parochial Windsor, a reflection in a delayed mirror of Detroit before the stove and shipbuilding industries came along to stretch its arms toward the sky, hunkered under a coat of flinty snow. Its docks and wooden warehouses were gaunt shadows amid white swirls whipped up from the surface of frozen Lake St. Clair. Record low temperatures even for Michigan, even for January, had constructed a thick shelf of ice as gray as iron and nearly as hard across the top of the watery international boundary. It was deceptive. The swift current of the Detroit River through the middle of the lake had hollowed it out from beneath. The mantel, two feet thick at the outer edges, thinned to six inches toward the center where the lake was deepest. There the half-buried remains of Indian dugouts, French bateaux, and American freighters rotted on the bottom, awaiting fresh arrivals. A cobwebby pattern of fine cracks intersected the surface, weaving a kind of reverse net to entrap the oblivious and foolhardy by the very nature of its weakness. Harlan Crownover, whose ears burned in the cold and whose feet had turned to sadirons in his uninsulated boots, thought of the black cold beneath the ice and knew again his childhood terror of the dark in his old tower bedroom on Jefferson.

  “I don’t like the look of those fissures.” Bundled in a navy peacoat with a fleece-lined leather helmet strapped under his chin, goggles on his forehead, Ford spoke through his teeth, barely loud enough for Harlan to hear. He might have been talking to himself.

  “Do you think it will hold?”

  “I’m less concerned about that than I am about maintaining control. At a hundred miles per hour it’ll be like driving over a cheese grater.”

  “Maybe we should postpone the race until Oldfield’s available.”

  “Barney’s chances wouldn’t be any better. I’m the one who taught him to drive. Anyway, he’d refuse. He’s smarter than I am.” Ford’s grin was a rictus.

  It was a small group gathered on the snowy bank. Aside from a handful of curious spectators, stamping their feet and pounding their arms to assist circulation, it included Ford’s wife, Clara, a stately chestnut-haired woman wrapped in inexpensive furs, standing still as a piling in the bitter wind; Edsel, their eleven-year-old son, jumping up and down in a combination of nervous excitement and an effort to keep from freezing; Ed Huff, a Ford Motor Company employee and Ford’s copilot, whose nickname, Spider, seemed appropriate to his hunched posture and curious habit of shifting his weight rhythmically from one foot to the other in his impatience to start; and C. H. Wills, impervious to the cold as he bent over the motorcar’s engine, tightening plugs, testing petcocks, and inspecting wires for signs of corrosion.

  The motorcar itself, dubbed the Arrow, was a twin of the fabled 999, which Barney Oldfield had piloted to a winning five miles in five minutes and twenty-eight seconds in the Challenge Cup, and set a world’s record a few weeks later when he drove a mile in 1:01. It was essentially an engine on wheels. The manifold, exposed to the elements, straddled a pair of steel rails behind a radiator shaped like a whiskey flask. The seat and T-shaped tiller appeared to have been added at the last minute. The vehicle was twice as long as Ford’s little runabout and built closer to the ground; but the lake was much bigger, and the descent to the bottom was the same for everyone.

  The race this time, as advertised by Alexander Malcolmson, was against not another vehicle, but the clock. Sporting reporters from the local newspapers were expected to chronicle the attempt to break Ford’s own record for the mile. At length they arrived en masse on foot from the nearest streetcar stop, cheerfully profane men in long coats and hard derbies, smelling of gin and spitting tobacco at random targets in the snow. They were plainly grateful for the outing, which freed them from the overheated barns of their offices where they chucked balls of paper at distant wastebaskets and tried to fill their columns with stale speculations about off-season baseball trades during the long dormancy between football and spring training. Behind them hobbled an unkempt photographer with his box camera and tripod on one shoulder and carrying a cumbersome valise the size of a child’s doll trunk. He spent some time finding a level section of bank upon which to set up his equipment, then began fiddling with his glass plates, cursing when one dropped from his stiff fingers and shattered on the frozen ground, and pausing every few minutes to improve his circulation with the help of a hammered silver flask. A reporter Harlan recognized from the Evening News made his way among the journalists, collecting bets on the race’s outcome and recording them on a square of folded newsprint. The gentlemen of the Fourth Estate had been known to place wagers on everything from the Boxer Rebellion in China to the verdict in the trial of the assassin of King Umberto of Italy.

  “When do you start?” Harlan asked Ford.

  “Just as soon as my timekeeper shows up.”

  Ten more minutes went by, at the end of which Harlan’s face had lost all feeling. Fearing frostbite, he rubbed his cheeks and nose vigorously with the palms of his jersey gloves. He could only speculate on how it would be for Ford and Huff when they sped across the lake, faces naked to the wind.

  “I pray the publicity is worth it,” he heard himself saying.

  Ford grunted. “Prayers are a disease of the will.”

  A handsome carriage, with yellow wheels and decorated side panels, drew up on Jefferson, drawn by matched grays whose breath steamed as thick as meringue. When the passenger stepped down, awed conversation whirred through the crowd of spectators. James Phelan, Detroit Recorder’s Court judge and Big Jim Dolan’
s principal rival for the chairmanship of the state Democratic Party, picked his way down the bank with his stick, his long-tailed coat spreading behind him and his Viking’s mane of silver hair crawling in the wind. He made directly for the crowd, shaking hands and laughing his booming laugh from behind massive moustaches.

  “I didn’t know Phelan was an automobile enthusiast,” Harlan said to Ford.

  “He’s my timekeeper.”

  Harlan wondered if there would come a time when the automobile maker would cease to surprise him. Phelan, quite apart from his political influence and status as a thorn in the side of the Irish Pope, was the most popular public figure in the city of Detroit. His stout figure, Byronic tresses, and round spectacle lenses as thick as jar lids were caricatured on all the local editorial pages as often as Roosevelt’s teeth. With Jim Phelan keeping the time, no one in Detroit would dare to question the result.

  There were cordialities to observe. Ford went over to shake the jurist’s hand and answer reporters’ questions about how fit he felt and whether he entertained the same confidence in the untested Arrow that he had in the now legendary 999 and if the absence of Barney Oldfield in the pilot’s seat would affect his chances of meeting or breaking his own machine’s record. Then it was Phelan’s turn. Asked why he had agreed to accept an official role in an event so far outside his jurisdiction, he replied that nothing that took place in this great city could be so described; moreover, as it was his privilege to fish that same section of the lake in fair weather, he welcomed the opportunity to reconnoiter the area in the dead of winter, when his piscatorial opponent least expected him.

  “And will Your Honor be falling out of the boat again this spring?” asked Nick Stark of the Free Press.

  The judge riposted with nought but a frosty silence; a rare event. He had not forgiven the journalist his published observation last May that Phelan had survived “his annual narrow escape from drowning yesterday.” The great man, who did not hold with the vices of tobacco, profanity, and gambling—beyond the occasional friendly wager at Bennett Park—seldom rowed away from shore without a bottle of rye packed securely among his tackle.

  Finally, C. H. Wills stepped back from the Arrow, wrench in hand, and shrugged at Ford. The motorist of the hour took his leave of the press, leaned over to peck Clara on the cheek and tug down playfully on the bill of young Edsel’s cap, and approached the machine with a bounce in his step. All of these acts, Harlan suspected, were showmanship. In all his meetings with Ford he had never seen the man display outward affection toward his family, or exhibit anything lighter than a preacherlike solemnity when it came to automobiles and their operation. He was, in his way, every inch the politician that Jim Phelan was, only much more insidiously subtle. The demonstrative Dodges hadn’t the capacity to learn from such an example.

  Ford mounted the seat and adjusted his goggles. Spider Huff climbed aboard and crouched behind him with his gloved hands gripping the backrest. The pilot looked over at Phelan, posed dramatically on the bank with a turnip watch in his palm. Ford gave the throttle lever three or four sharp jerks, mixing the fuel and advancing the spark, then flipped the ignition switch. The spark ignited the fumes with two hoarse wheezing coughs, then the engine caught with an explosive bark. Ford reduced the throttle, and the pistons settled into a chuck-chuck idle. When he was satisfied that the engine would not stall, he pushed the throttle forward. The percussive barking blended into a rumble, which when he released the brake climbed to a roar, echoing across the lake’s flat surface like winter thunder as the car shot forward.

  Harlan knew the instant when the vehicle struck the first of the fissures that had concerned Ford. It leaped into the air, just like a spooked horse, and struck down with a bang that Harlan thought must shatter the ice and send the car and its occupants to the bottom of the lake. But the ice held. Ford let out the throttle with a sustained, reverberating boom that surely inspired the uninitiated in Detroit and Windsor to look to the sky. The car bucked and banged, turned in the air and skidded on the ice, its tires sloughing like sled runners. At one highflying point Huff’s feet actually left the floorboards and he was holding on by his hands alone. When the vehicle landed, the copilot’s knees buckled nearly to his chin. Comically, both his helmet and his attached goggles flew off and flapped behind his head from the strap around his neck. That, Harlan thought, was one for a cartoonist, if any were present.

  But men the car was sliding again, the rear attempting to overtake the front, and Harlan forgot to laugh as he watched Ford working the tiller frantically to maintain speed without rolling over. The entire contraption tipped up on one side, then slammed down with a noise like a cannon shot, spewing white lines in every direction from the point of impact. What kept the lake from opening up and swallowing men and machine there and then, aside from Ford’s own stubborn Yankee faith, was a mystery Harlan would never be able to answer.

  A mile had been measured across the lake, marked at the end with a five-gallon paint can painted a bright yellow. The Arrow skidded past within inches, blowing it over with its own wind; the bucket bounded end over end three times, landed on its side, and rolled, momentarily distracting attention from the object that was spinning and sliding to a ragged stop near the Windsor side.

  Now every head turned toward Judge Phelan, standing as still as Liberty with his watch resting like a compass on the flat of his palm. The old politico knew a dramatic moment when it presented itself; but in his own obvious excitement he nearly waited it out too long, at that.

  “Thirty-six seconds!”

  A volume of sound rose from the spectators that Harlan would not have thought possible from so small a group. An electric rush charged through his body, banishing the cold. He knew then that he had witnessed history. And any misgivings he had felt during his first disillusioning ride in a motorcar with Henry Ford at the controls were as gone as this moment was permanent.

  Ford swung the Arrow around in a wide loop and headed back to shore at a cautious eight to ten miles per hour. Suddenly the ice hammocked; Harlan’s stomach slipped a full notch. Ford, however, did not stop, but piloted the vehicle through small geysers of white water hemorrhaging through the network of cracks. Presently the automobile rolled to a gentle stop against the frozen berm where water met earth and Ford leaped out, followed by Huff. Wife and son embraced Ford simultaneously. Harlan, who had stepped forward to shake his hand, retreated instead as the reporters pushed in, hammering him with questions. Harlan understood then the full meaning of the word press.

  And he realized, even if Ford himself did not, that from this time forward, the automobile man’s every move and utterance would be public record. He had left the shore just another motorman in a city top-heavy with them and come back Marco Polo.

  “Did you think the ice would break?”

  “Let’s just say I had more faith in my machine than I had in the lake.”

  “Does this mean you won’t be employing Oldfield anymore?”

  “Certainly not. At this moment I retire from racing. I’m a manufacturer, not a sportsman.”

  “Where do you go from here?”

  “To the Hotel Chesterfield. I’m treating Wills and Huff to a dinner of muskrats.”

  “Are you planning to incorporate any of the Arrow’s features into the Model C?”

  “I’m through making the C. We’ve already begun production on a new model. It’s easier to make and will sell for less than its predecessor.”

  “Is that the six-cylinder model Malcolmson and the Dodge brothers are pressing for?”

  Ford scowled at Nick Stark, who had asked the question.

  “A car should not have any more cylinders than a cow has teats.”

  Stark looked up from his notes. “Does this mean you plan to break with the Dodges and Malcolmson?”

  There was a short silence, during which the wind squealed across the lake. Ford removed his leather gauntlets and flexed his long skinny fingers. “It’s a mistake to make or have
too strong attachments, because it weakens your will and character.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  Harlan felt suddenly cold again. He’d never heard his partner express dissatisfaction with any of his associates in public.

  The other reporters, however, took advantage of the pause to ask questions of their own, and Stark’s was lost in the chorus. Nevertheless it was the quiet but persistent man from the Free Press who took the inquisition in a new direction.

  “What defense are you planning to use against the Selden suit?”

  A smudge of oil and smoke coated Ford’s face, leaving only a figure eight of pale skin across his eyes where his goggles had covered. His brow darkened visibly beneath the soot.

  “Who is Selden?” he demanded. “Where is the Selden motorcar? When he produces an automobile that predates the one I made in 1896, I’ll retire from auto manufacture and go back to work at Edison.”

  More questions followed, during which Ford’s native belligerence—plainly put, his love of conflict for its own sake—seemed to restore his good humor. He traded jibes with the reporters, always a friendly and boisterous crew when they had either a triumph or a crushing failure to write about, and shook hands with Wills and Huff for the photographer. It worried Harlan that Ford did not seem worried. Had he given up, without telling his partners? It’s a mistake to make or have too strong attachments … Like the cold, the statement lay like metal against his spine and would not leave.

  Ford broke loose from the crowd with an explosive movement and strode Harlan’s way, stripping off his leather helmet. The wind caught his dark hair, usually as well maintained as his engines, and swept it into hawk’s wings from the center part. There was no humor in that spare face. That had been a pose.

  “I want you to talk to your father,” he said.

  It was the last statement Harlan would have anticipated in that time and at that place. A moment went by before he answered.

  “We almost never talk as it is. He’ll never connect himself with the Ford Motor Company or any other automobile maker.”