Wheels

by Arthur Hailey

  “You bastard!” But Braithwaite was grinning. He told Castaldy, “Sorry! Let’s go on.”

  “What I really meant, Mr. Braithwaite …”

  “Elroy …”

  “Yes, sir. What I meant was—it’s part of the whole picture.”

  They talked about environment and mankind’s problems: overpopulation, a shortage of square footage everywhere, pollution in all forms, antagonisms, rebellion, new concepts and values among young people—the young who would soon rule the world. Yet, despite changes, cars would still be around for the foreseeable future; experience showed it. But what kind of cars? Some would be the same as now, or similar, but there must be other kinds, too, more closely reflecting society’s needs.

  “Speaking of needs,” Adam queried, “can we sum them up?”

  “If you wanted a word,” Castaldy answered, “I’d say ‘utility.’”

  Brett DeLosanto tried it on his tongue. “The Age of Utility.”

  “I’ll buy that in part,” the Silver Fox said. “But not entirely.” He motioned for silence while gathering thoughts. The others waited. At length he intoned slowly, “Okay, so utility’s ‘in.’ It’s the newest status symbol, or reverse-status—and we’re agreed that whatever name you call it it means the same thing. I’ll concede it’s probably for the future, too. But that still doesn’t allow for the rest of human nature: the impulse to mobility which is with us from the day we’re born, and later a craving for power, speed, excitement which we never grow out of wholly. We’re all Walter Mittys somewhere inside and, utility or not, pizzazz is ‘in,’ too. It’s never been out. It never will be.”

  “I go with that,” Brett said. “To prove your point, look at the guys who build dune buggies. They’re small car people who’ve found a Walter Mitty outlet.”

  Castaldy added thoughtfully, “And there are thousands and thousands of dune buggies. More all the time. Nowadays you even see them in cities.”

  The Silver Fox shrugged. “They take a utility Volkswagen without pizzazz, strip it to the chassis, then build pizzazz on.”

  A thought stirred in Adam’s mind. It related to what had been said … to the torn-down Volkswagen he had seen earlier tonight … and to something else, hazy: a phrase which eluded him … He searched his mind while the others talked.

  When the phrase failed to come he remembered a magazine illustration he had seen a day or two ago. The magazine was still in his office. He retrieved it from a pile across the room and opened it. The others watched curiously.

  The illustration was in color. It showed a dune buggy on a rugged beach, in action, banked steeply on its side. All wheels were fighting for traction, sand spewing behind. Cleverly, the photographer had slowed his shutter speed so that the dune buggy was blurred with movement. The text with the picture said the ranks of dune buggy owners were “growing like mad”; nearly a hundred manufacturers were engaged in building bodies; California alone had eight thousand dune buggies.

  Brett, glancing over Adam’s shoulder, asked amusedly, “You’re not thinking of building dune buggies?”

  Adam shook his head. No matter how large the dune buggy population became, they were still a fad, a specialist’s creation, not the Big Three’s business. Adam knew that. But the phrase which eluded him was somehow linked … Still not remembering, he tossed the magazine on a table, open.

  Chance, as happens so often in life, stepped in.

  Above the table where Adam tossed the magazine was a framed photo of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module during the first moon landing. It had been given to Adam, who liked it, and had had it framed and hung. In the photo, the module dominated; an astronaut stood beneath.

  Brett picked up the magazine with the dune buggy picture and showed it to the others. He remarked, “Those things go like hell!—I’ve driven one.” He studied the illustration again. “But it’s an ugly son-of-a-bitch.”

  Adam thought: So was the lunar module.

  Ugly indeed: all edges, corners, projections, oddities, imbalance; little symmetry, few clean curves. But because the lunar module did its job superbly, it defeated ugliness and, in the end, took on a beauty of its own.

  The missing phrase came to him.

  It was Rowena’s. The morning after their night together she had said, “You know what I’d say today? I’d say, ‘ugly is beautiful.’”

  Ugly is Beautiful!

  The lunar module was ugly. So was a dune buggy. But both were functional, utilitarian; they were built for a purpose and performed it. So why not a car? Why not a deliberate, daring attempt to produce a car, ugly by existing standards, yet so suited to needs, environment, and present time—the Age of Utility—that it would become beautiful?

  “I may have an idea about Farstar,” Adam said. “Don’t rush me. Let me put it out slowly.”

  The others were silent. Marshaling thoughts, choosing words carefully, Adam began.

  They were too experienced—all of them in the group—to go overboard, instantly, for a single idea. Yet he was aware of a sudden tension, missing before, and a quickening interest as he continued to speak. The Silver Fox was thoughtful, his eyes half-closed. Young Castaldy scratched an ear lobe—a habit when he concentrated—while the other product planner, who had said little so far, kept his eyes on Adam steadily. Brett DeLosanto’s fingers seemed restless. As if instinctually, Brett drew a sketch pad toward him.

  It was Brett, too, who jumped up when Adam finished, and began pacing the room. He tossed off thoughts, incomplete sentences, like fragments of a jigsaw … Artists for centuries have seen beauty in ugliness … Consider distorted, tortured sculpture from Michelangelo to Henry Moore … And in modern times, scrap metal welded in jumbles—shapeless to some, who scoff, but many don’t … Take painting: the avant-garde forms; egg crates, soup cans in collages … Or life itself!—a pretty young girl or a pregnant hag: which is more beautiful? … It depended always on the way you saw it. Form, symmetry, style, beauty were never arbitrary.

  Brett thumped a fist into a palm. “With Picasso in our nostrils, we’ve been designing cars like they rolled off a Gainsborough canvas.”

  “There’s a line in Genesis somewhere,” the Silver Fox said. “I think it goes, ‘Your eyes shall be opened.’” He added cautiously, “But let’s not get carried away. We may have something. Even if we do, though, there’s a long road ahead.”

  Brett was already sketching, his pencil racing through shapes, then discarding them. As he ripped off sheets from his pad, they dropped to the floor. It was a designer’s way of thinking, just as others exchanged ideas through words. Adam reminded himself to retrieve the sheets later and save them; if something came of this night, they would be historic.

  But he knew that what Elroy Braithwaite had said was true. The Silver Fox, through more years than any of the others here, had seen new cars develop from first ideas to finished products, but had suffered, too, through projects which looked promising at birth, only to be snuffed out later for unforeseen reasons, or sometimes for no reason at all.

  Within the company a new car concept had countless barriers to pass, innumerable critiques to survive, interminable meetings, with opposition to overcome. And even if an idea survived all these, the executive vice-president, president, and chairman of the board had veto powers …

  But some ideas got through and became reality.

  The Orion had. So … just barely possibly … might this early, inchoate concept, the seed sown here and now, for Farstar.

  Someone brought more coffee, and they talked on, far into the night.

  18

  The OJL advertising agency, in the person of Keith Yates-Brown, was nervous and edgy because the documentary film Auto City was proceeding without a shooting script.

  “There has to be a script,” Yates-Brown had protested to Barbara Zaleski on the telephone from New York a day or two ago. “If there isn’t, how can we protect the client’s interests from here and make suggestions?”

  Barbara, in Detroit, had f
elt like telling the management supervisor that the last thing the project needed was Madison Avenue meddling. It could transform the honest, perceptive film now taking shape into a glossy, innocuous mélange. But, instead, she repeated the views of the director, Wes Gropetti, a talented man with enough solid credits behind him to make his viewpoint count.

  “You won’t grab the mood of inner city Detroit by putting a lot of crud on paper because we don’t know what the mood is yet,” Gropetti had declared. “We’re here with all this fancy camera and sound gear to find out.”

  The director, heavily bearded but diminutive in stature, seemed like a shaggy sparrow. He wore a black beret which he was never without, and was less sensitive about words than he was with visual images. He went on, “I want the inner city jokers, broads, and kids to tell us what they really think about themselves, and how they look on the rest of us lousy bums. That means their hates, hopes, frustrations, joys, as well as how they breathe, eat, sleep, fornicate, sweat, and what they see and smell. I’ll get all that on film—their mugs, voices, everything unrehearsed. As to language, we’ll let the crud fall where it may. Maybe I’ll prick a few people in the ass to get them mad, but either way they’ll talk, then while they do, I’ll let the camera wander like a whore’s attention, and we’ll see Detroit the way they see it, through inner city eyes.”

  And it was working, Barbara assured Yates-Brown.

  Using cinéma vérité technique, with a hand-held camera and a minimum of paraphernalia to distract, Gropetti was roaming the inner city with a crew, persuading people to talk frankly, freely, and sometimes movingly, on film. Barbara, who usually accompanied the expeditions, knew that part of Gropetti’s genius lay in his instinct for selection, then making those he chose forget that a lens and lights were focused on them. No one knew what the little director whispered into ears before their owners began talking; sometimes he would bend his head down, confidentially, for minutes at a time. But it produced reactions: amusement, defiance, rapport, disagreement, sullenness, impudence, alertness, anger and once—from a young black militant who became impressively eloquent—a blazing hatred.

  When he was sure of a reaction, Gropetti would spring instantly back so that the camera—already operating at the director’s covert signal—would catch full facial expressions and spontaneous words. Afterward, with limitless patience, Gropetti would repeat the process until he had what he sought—a glimpse of personality, good or bad, amiable or savage, but vital and real, and without the clumsy intrusion of an interviewer.

  Barbara had already seen rushes and rough cuts of the results, and was excited. Photographically, they had the quality and depth of Karsh portraits, plus Gropetti’s magic mix of vibrant animation.

  “Since we’re calling the film Auto City,” Keith Yates-Brown had commented when she told him all that, “maybe you should wise up Gropetti that there are motorcars around as well as people, and we’ll expect to see some—preferably our client’s—on the screen.”

  Barbara sensed that the agency supervisor was having second thoughts about the over-all authority she had been given. But he would also know that any film project needed to have someone firmly in charge and, until the OJL agency removed or fired her, Barbara was.

  She assured Yates-Brown, “There will be cars in the picture—the client’s. We’re not emphasizing them, but we’re not concealing them either, so most people will recognize the kind they are.” She had gone on to describe the filming already done in the auto company’s assembly plant, with emphasis on inner city hard core hiring—and Rollie Knight.

  During the assembly plant filming, other workers nearby had been unaware that Rollie was the center of the camera’s attention. Partly, this was out of consideration for Rollie, who wanted it that way, and partly to keep the atmosphere realistic.

  Leonard Wingate of Personnel, who became interested in Barbara’s project the night they met at Brett DeLosanto’s apartment, had arranged the whole thing without fuss. All that anyone in the plant knew was that a portion of Assembly was being filmed, for purposes unexplained, while regular work went on. Only Wes Gropetti, Barbara, and the camera- and soundmen realized that a good deal of the time they appeared to be shooting, they were not, and that most of the footage taken featured Rollie Knight.

  The only sound recording at this point was of assembly plant noises while they happened, and afterward Barbara had listened to the sound tape played back. It was a nightmare cacophony, incredibly effective as a background to the visual sequence.

  Rollie Knight’s voice, which would be dubbed in later, was to be recorded during a visit by Gropetti and the film crew to the inner city apartment house where Rollie and May Lou, his girl friend, lived. Leonard Wingate would be there. So—though Barbara did not report the fact to Keith Yates-Brown—would Brett DeLosanto.

  On the telephone, Keith Yates-Brown had cautioned, “Just remember we’re spending a lot of the client’s money which we’ll have to account for.”

  “We’ve stayed within budget,” Barbara reported. “And the client seems to like what we’ve done so far. At least, the chairman of the board does.”

  She heard a sound on the telephone which could have been Keith Yates-Brown leaping from his chair.

  “You’ve been in touch with the client’s chairman of the board!” The reaction could not have been greater if she had said the Pope or the President of the United States.

  “He came to visit our shooting on location. The day after, Wes Gropetti took some of the film and screened it in the chairman’s office.”

  “You let that foul-mouthed hippie Gropetti loose on the fifteenth floor!”

  “Wes seemed to think that he and the chairman got along well.”

  “He thought so! You didn’t even go yourself?”

  “I couldn’t that day.”

  “Oh, my God!” Barbara could visualize the agency supervisor, his face paling, a hand clapped to his head.

  She reminded him, “You told me yourself that the chairman was interested, and I might report to him occasionally.”

  “But not casually! Not without letting us know here, in advance, so we could plan what you should say. And as for sending Gropetti on his own …”

  “I was going to tell you,” Barbara said, “the client’s chairman phoned me next day. He said he thought our agency had shown commendable imagination—those were his words—in getting Wes Gropetti to begin with, and urged us to go on giving Wes his head because this was the kind of thing which ought to be a director’s film. The chairman said he was putting all that in a letter to the agency.”

  She heard heavy breathing on the line. “We haven’t got the letter yet. When it comes …” A pause. “Barbara, I guess you’re doing fine.” Yates-Brown’s voice became pleading. “But don’t, please don’t, take chances, and let me know anything instantly about the client’s chairman of the board.”

  She had promised that she would, after which Keith Yates-Brown—still nervously—repeated that he wished they had a script.

  Now, several days later and scriptless as ever, Wes Gropetti was ready to film the final sequence involving hard core hiring and Rollie Knight.

  Early evening.

  Eight of them, altogether, were packed into the stiflingly hot, sketchily furnished room.

  For Detroit generally, and especially the inner city, it had been a baking, windless summer day. Even now, with the sun gone, most of the heat—inside and out—remained.

  Rollie Knight and May Lou were two of the eight because this was where—for the time being—they lived. Though the room was tiny by any standard, it served the dual purpose of living and sleeping, while a closet-sized “kitchen” adjoining housed a sink with cold water only, a decrepit gas cooker, and a few plain board shelves. There was no toilet or bath. These facilities, such as they were, were one floor down and shared with a half dozen other apartments.

  Rollie looked morose, as if wishing he had not agreed to be involved with this. May Lou, childlike and s
eeming to have sprouted like a weed with skinny legs and bony arms, appeared scared, though she was becoming less so as Wes Gropetti, his black beret in place despite the heat, talked quietly to her.

  Behind the director were the camera operator and soundman, their equipment deployed awkwardly in the confined space. Barbara Zaleski stood with them, her notebook opened.

  Brett DeLosanto, watching, was amused to see that Barbara, as usual, had dark glasses pushed up into her hair.

  The camera lights were off. Everyone knew that when they went on, the room would become hotter still.

  Leonard Wingate, from the auto maker’s Personnel department and also the company’s ranking Negro executive, mopped his perspiring face with a fresh linen handkerchief. Both he and Brett were backed against a wall, trying to take as little space as possible.

  Suddenly, though only the two technicians had seen Gropetti’s signal, the lights were on, the sound tape running.

  May Lou blinked. But as the director continued to talk softly, she nodded and her face adjusted. Then swiftly, smoothly, Gropetti eased rearward, out of camera range.

  May Lou said naturally, as if unaware of anything but her own thoughts, “Ain’t no good worryin’, not about no future like they say we should, ’cos it ain’t ever looked as if there’d be one for some like us.” She shrugged. “Don’t look no different now.”

  Gropetti’s voice. “Cut!”

  Camera lights went out. The director moved in, whispering in May Lou’s ear once more. After several minutes, while the others waited silently, the camera lights went on. Gropetti slid back.

  May Lou’s face was animated. “Sure they took our color TV.” She glanced across the room toward an empty corner. “Two guys come for it, said we hadn’t made no payments after the first. One of the guys wanted to know, why’d we buy it? I told him, ‘Mister, if I got a down payment today, I can watch TV tonight. Some days that’s all that matters.’” Her voice slipped lower. “I shoulda told him, ‘Who knows about tomorrow?’”