Wheels

by Arthur Hailey

  Also down the line he could see Frank Parkland near his regular foreman’s station; presumably Parkland had gone back to his job, assuming his own part in the now-settled dispute to be over. Well, Zaleski supposed it was, though he suspected the foreman would find it harder, from now on, to maintain discipline when he had to. But, hell!—everybody had their problems. Parkland would have to cope with his.

  As Matt Zaleski recrossed the assembly line, Newkirk and the union committeeman walked to meet him. The black man moved casually;standing up, he seemed even bigger than he had at the table. His facial features were large and prominent, matching his build, and he was grinning.

  Illas announced, “I’ve told Brother Newkirk about the decision I won for him. He’s agreed to go back to work and understands he’ll be paid for time lost.”

  The assistant plant manager nodded; he had no wish to rob the union man of kudos, and if Illas wanted to make a small skirmish sound like the Battle of the Overpass, Zaleski would not object. But he told New-kirk sharply, “You can take the grin off. There’s nothing funny.” He queried Illas, “You told him it’ll be even less funny if it happens again?”

  “He told me what he was supposed to,” Newkirk said. “It won’t happen no more, not if there ain’t no cause.”

  “You’re pretty cocky,” Zaleski said. “Considering you’ve just been fired and unfired.”

  “Not cocky, mister, angry!” The black man made a gesture which included Illas. “That’s a thing you people, all of you, won’t ever understand.”

  Zaleski snapped, “I can get pretty damned angry about brawls upsetting this plant.”

  “Not deep soul angry. Not so it burns, a rage.”

  “Don’t push me. I might show you otherwise.”

  The other shook his head. For one so huge, his voice and movements were surprisingly gentle; only his eyes burned—an intense gray-green. “Man, you ain’t black, you don’t know what it means; not rage, not anger. It’s a million goddam pins bein’ stuck in from time you was born, then one day some white motha’ calls a man ‘boy,’ an’ it’s a million ’n one too many.”

  “Now then,” the union man said, “we settled all that. We don’t have to get into it again.”

  Newkirk dismissed him. “You hush up!” His eyes remained fixed, challengingly, on the assistant plant manager.

  Not for the first time, Matt Zaleski wondered: Had the whole freewheeling world gone crazy? To people like Newkirk and millions of others, including Zaleski’s own daughter, Barbara, it seemed a basic credo that everything which used to matter—authority, order, respect, moral decency—no longer counted in any recognizable way. Insolence was a norm—the kind Newkirk used with his voice and now his eyes. The familiar phrases were a part of it: Newkirk’s rage and deep soulangry were interchangeable, it seemed, with a hundred others like generation gap, strung out, hanging loose, taking your own trip, turned on, most of which Matt Zaleski didn’t comprehend and—the more he heard them—didn’t want to. The changes which, nowadays, he could neither keep pace with nor truly understand, left him subdued and wearied.

  In a strange way, at this moment, he found himself equating the big black man, Newkirk, with Barbara who was pretty, twenty-nine, college educated, and white. If Barbara Zaleski were here now, automatically, predictably, she would see things Newkirk’s way, and not her father’s. Christ!—he wished he were half as sure of things himself.

  Tiredly, though it was still early morning, and not at all convinced that he had handled this situation the way he should, Matt Zaleski told Newkirk brusquely, “Get back to your job.”

  When Newkirk had gone, Illas said, “There’ll be no walkout. Word’s going around.”

  “Am I supposed to say thanks?” Zaleski asked sourly. “For not being raped?”

  The union man shrugged and moved away.

  The mist-green sedan which Zaleski had been curious about had moved still farther forward on the line. Walking quickly, the assistant plant manager caught up with it.

  He checked the papers, including a scheduling order and specifications, in a cardboard folder hanging over the front grille. As he had half-expected, as well as being a “special”—a car which received more careful attention than routine—it was also a “foreman’s friend.”

  A “foreman’s friend” was a very special car. It was also illegal in any plant and, in this case, involved several hundred dollars’ worth of dishonesty. Matt Zaleski, who had a knack of storing away tidbits of information and later piecing them together, had more than a shrewd idea who was involved with the mist-green sedan, and why.

  The car was for a company public relations man. Its official specifications were Spartan and included few, if any, extras, yet the sedan was (as auto men expressed it) “loaded up” with special items. Even without a close inspection, Matt Zaleski could see a de-luxe steering wheel, extra-ply whitewall tires, styled steel wheels, tinted glass, and a stereo-tape player, none of which were in the specifications he was holding. It looked, too, as if the car had received a double paint job, which helped durability. It was this last item which had caught Zaleski’s eye earlier.

  The almost-certain explanation matched several facts which the assistant plant manager already knew. Two weeks earlier the daughter of a senior foreman in the plant had been married. As a favor, the public relations man, whose car this was, had arranged publicity, getting wedding pictures featured prominently in Detroit and suburban papers. The bride’s father was delighted. There had been a good deal of talk about it around the plant.

  The rest was easy to guess.

  The p.r. man could readily find out in advance which day his car was scheduled for production. He would then have telephoned his foreman friend, who had clearly arranged special attention for the mist-green sedan all the way through assembly.

  Matt Zaleski knew what he ought to do. He ought to check out his suspicions by sending for the foreman concerned, and afterward make a written report to the plant manager, McKernon, who would have no choice except to act on it. After that there would be seventeen kinds of hell let loose, extending—because of the p.r. man’s involvement-all the way up to staff headquarters.

  Matt Zaleski also knew he wasn’t going to.

  There were problems enough already. The Parkland-Newkirk-Illas embroilment had been one; and predictably, by now, back in the glass-paneled office were others requiring decisions, in addition to those already on his desk this morning. These, he reminded himself, he still hadn’t looked at.

  On his car radio, driving to work an hour or so ago from Royal Oak, he had heard Emerson Vale, the auto critic whom Zaleski thought of as an idiot, firing buckshot at the industry again. Matt Zaleski had wished then, as now, that he could install Vale on a production hot seat for a few days and let the son-of-a-bitch find out what it really took, in terms of effort, grief, compromise, and human exhaustion to get cars built at all.

  Matt Zaleski walked away from the mist-green sedan. In running a plant, you had to learn that there were moments when some things had to be ignored, and this was one.

  But at least today was Wednesday.

  3

  At 7:30 A.M., while tens of thousands in greater Detroit had been up for hours and were already working, others—either through choice or the nature of their work—were still abed.

  One who remained there by choice was Erica Trenton.

  In a wide, French Provincial bed, between satin sheets which were smooth against the firm surface of her young body, she was awake, but drifting back to sleep, and had no intention of getting up for at least two hours more.

  Drowsily, only half-conscious of her own thoughts, she dreamed of a man … no particular man, simply a vague figure … arousing her sensually, thrusting her deeply—again! again! … as her own husband had not, for at least three weeks and probably a month.

  While she drifted, as on a gently flooding tide between wakefulness and a return to sleep, Erica mused that she had not always been a late riser. In th
e Bahamas, where she was born, and lived until her marriage to Adam five years ago, she had often risen before dawn and helped launch a dinghy from the beach, afterward running the outboard while her father trolled and the sun rose. Her father enjoyed fresh fish at breakfast and, in her later years at home, it was Erica who cooked it when they returned.

  During her initiation to marriage, in Detroit, she had followed the same pattern, rising early with Adam and preparing breakfast which they ate together—he zestfully, and loudly appreciative of Erica’s natural talent for cooking which she used with imagination, even for simplest meals. By her own wish they had no live-in help, and Erica kept busy, especially since Adam’s twin sons, Greg and Kirk, who were at prep school nearby, came home during most weekends and holidays.

  That was the time when she had been worried about her acceptance by the boys—Adam had divorced their mother earlier the same year, only a few months before meeting Erica and the beginning of their brief, jet-speed courtship. But Erica had been accepted at once by Greg and Kirk—even gratefully, it seemed, since they had seen little of either of their parents over several preceding years, Adam being immersed in his work, and the boys’ mother, Francine, traveling frequently abroad, as she still did. Besides, Erica was closer to the boys’ own age. She had been barely twenty-one then, Adam eighteen years her senior, though the differences in ages hadn’t seemed to matter. Of course, the gap of years between Adam and Erica was still the same, except that nowadays—five years later—it seemed wider.

  A reason, obviously, was that at the beginning they had devoured each other sexually. They first made love—tempestuously—on a moonlit Bahamas beach. Erica remembered still: the warm, jasmine-scented night, white sand, softly lapping water, a breeze stirring palm trees, music drifting from a lighted cruise ship in Nassau harbor. They had known each other for a few days only. Adam had been holidaying—an aftermath to his divorce—with friends at Lyford Cay who introduced him to Erica at a Nassau night spot, Charley Charley’s. They spent all next day together, and others afterward.

  The night on the beach was not their first time there. But on the earlier occasions she had resisted Adam; now, she learned, she could resist no longer, and only whisper helplessly, “I can get pregnant.”

  He had whispered back, “You’re going to marry me. So it doesn’t matter.”

  She had not become pregnant, though many times since she wished she had.

  From then on, and into marriage a month later, they made love frequently and passionately—almost unfailingly each night, then expending themselves further (but, oh, how gloriously) on awakening in the morning. Even back in Detroit the night and morning love-making persisted, despite Adam’s early work start which, Erica quickly discovered, was part of an auto executive’s life.

  But as months went by and, after that, the first few years, Adam’s passion lessened. For either of them it could never have sustained itself at the original fevered pace; Erica realized that. But what she had not expected was that the decline would come as early as it had, or be so near-complete. Undoubtedly she became more conscious of the change because other activities were less. Greg and Kirk now came home seldom, having left Michigan for college—Greg to Columbia, en route to medical school; Kirk to the University of Oklahoma to major in journalism.

  She was still drifting … Still not quite asleep. The house, near Quarton Lake in the northern suburb of Birmingham, was quiet. Adam had gone. Like most in the auto industry’s top echelon, he was at his desk by half-past seven, had done an hour’s work before the secretaries came. Also, as usual, Adam had risen in time to do exercises, take a ten-minute run outside, then, after showering, get his own breakfast, as he always did these days. Erica had slipped out of the habit of preparing it after Adam told her candidly that the meal was taking too long; unlike their early years together, he chafed impatiently, wanting to be on his way, no longer enjoying their relaxed quarter hour together at the table. One morning he had simply said, “Honey, you stay in bed. I’ll get breakfast for myself.” And he had, doing the same thing next day, and on other mornings after that, so they had drifted into the present pattern, though it depressed Erica to know she was no longer useful to Adam at the beginning of his day, that her imaginative breakfast menus, the cheerfully set table and her own presence there, were more irritating to him than pleasing.

  Erica found Adam’s diminishing concern about what went on at home, along with total dedication to his job, more and more an aggravating combination nowadays. He was also tediously considerate. When his alarm clock sounded, Adam snapped it off promptly before it could penetrate Erica’s sleep too deeply, and got out of bed at once, though it seemed not long ago that they had reached for each other instinctively on waking, and sometimes coupled quickly, finding that each could bring the other, feverishly, to a swifter climax than at night. Then, while Erica still lay, lingering for a moment breathlessly, her heart beating hard, Adam would whisper as he slipped from her and from the bed, “What better way to start a day?”

  But not any more. Never in the morning, and only rarely, now, at night. And in the mornings, for all the contact they had, they might as well be strangers. Adam awakened quickly, performed his wift routines, and then was gone.

  This morning, when Erica heard Adam moving around in the bathroom and downstairs, she considered changing the routine and joining him. Then she reminded herself that all he wanted was to move fast like the go-go cars his Product Planning team conceived; the latest, the soon-to-be-unveiled Orion—and be on his way. Also, with his damned efficiency, Adam could make breakfast just as speedily as Erica—for a half-dozen people if necessary, as he sometimes had. Despite this, she debated getting up, and was still debating when she heard Adam’s car start, and leave. Then it was too late.

  Where have all the flowers gone? Where the love, the life, the vanished idyll of Adam and Erica Trenton, young lovers not so long ago? O where, O where!

  Erica slept.

  When she awakened it was midmorning, and a watery autumn sun was slanting in through slats of the venetian blinds.

  Downstairs, a vacuum cleaner whined and thumped, and Erica was relieved that Mrs. Gooch, who cleaned twice a week, had let herself in and was already at work. It meant that today Erica need not bother with the house, though lately, in any case, she had paid much less attention to it than she used to do.

  A morning paper was beside the bed. Adam must have left it there, as he sometimes did. Propping herself up with pillows, her long ash-blond hair tumbling over them, Erica unfolded it.

  A sizable portion of page one was given over to an attack on the auto industry by Emerson Vale. Erica skipped most of the news story, which didn’t interest her, even though there were times when she felt like attacking the auto world herself. She had never cared for it, not since first coming to Detroit, though she had tried, for Adam’s sake. But the all-consuming interest in their occupations which so many auto people had, leaving time for little else, repelled her. Erica’s own father, an airline captain, had been good at his job, but always put it behind him mentally when he left an Island Airways cockpit to come home. His greater interests were being with his family, fishing, pottering at carpentry, reading, strumming a guitar, and sometimes just sitting in the sun. Erica knew that even now her own mother and father spent far more time together than she and Adam did.

  It was her father who had said, when she announced her sudden plans to marry Adam: “You’re your own girl and always have been. So I won’t oppose this because, even if I did, it would make no difference and I’d sooner you go with my blessing than without. And maybe, in time, I’ll get used to having a son-in-law almost my own age. He seems a decent man; I like him. But one thing I’ll warn you of: He’s ambitious, and you don’t know yet what ambition means, especially up there in Detroit. If the two of you have trouble, that’ll be the cause of it.” She sometimes thought how observant—and how right—her father had been.

  Erica’s thoughts returned to the ne
wspaper and Emerson Vale, whose face glared out from a two-column cut. She wondered if the youthful auto critic was any good in bed, then thought: probably not. She had heard there were no women in his nor men either, despite abortive efforts to smear him with a homosexual tag. Humanity, it seemed, had a depressing proportion of capons and worn-out males. Listlessly, she turned the page.

  There was little that held interest, from international affairs—the world was in as much a mess as on any other day—through to the social section, which contained the usual auto names: the Fords had entertained an Italian princess, the Roches were in New York, the Town-sends at the Symphony, and the Chapins duck hunting in North Dakota. On another page Erica stopped at Ann Landers’ column, then mentally began composing a letter of her own: My problem, Ann, is a married woman’s cliché. There are jokes about it, but the jokes are made by people it isn’t happening to. The plain truth is—if I can speak frankly as one woman to another—I’m simply not getting enough … Just lately I’ve not been getting any …

  With an impatient, angry gesture Erica crumpled the newspaper and pulled the bedclothes aside. She slid from the bed and went to the window where she tugged vigorously at the blind cord so that full daylight streamed in. Her eyes searched the room for a brown alligator handbag she had used yesterday; it was on a dressing table. Opening the bag, she riffled through until she found a small, leather-covered notebook which she took—turning pages as she went—to a telephone by Adam’s side of the bed.

  She dialed quickly—before she could change her mind—the number she had found in the book. As she finished, Erica found her hand trembling and put it on the bed to steady herself. A woman’s voice answered, “Detroit Bearing and Gear.”

  Erica asked for the name she had written in the notebook, in handwriting so indecipherable that only she could read it.

  “What department is he in?”