Onyx

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “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.”

  Tom, confused by the sudden change in the conversation, felt as if his blood were frozen: Antonia, he thought. Antonia?

  The Major was watching him closely. “Her mother came from a titled Italian family, an old and noble family. Mr. Dalzell’s father, like my own, was a gentleman. And her paternal grandmother, my mother, was a Cabot.”

  “What does Miss Dalzell’s ancestry have to do with my vehicle?”

  “You’re no fool, Bridger, so don’t try to act one. Before we enter into a business arrangement, I want it clear that it is just that. Business.” He paused for a moment, and then added, “I’m willing to back you.”

  “And in return you want a vow of abstinence?”

  “Bridger, what a sarcastic boy you are!” snapped the Major, then drew a calming breath. “Yes, I want you to stay away from my niece. I can see why she feels a curiosity about you, but I assure you curiosity is all that it is. And I certainly understand any interest you may have in her. But surely you must see that nothing can come of such a mismatched friendship. What do you know of
her world—of books, music, servants, fine clothes? You’re a mechanic. You live and belong in a workingman’s world.”

  Tom, smarting from the Major’s insults, remained silent.

  “I was wrong about the machines. Harper’s reports that the Prince of Wales is ordering one from Mr. Daimler. A certain group will take them up now. The custom trade. As an entrepreneur I’m forward-thinking. We’ll build them and patent your ideas.”

  “I don’t believe in patents.”

  “That’s nonsense. And you need a backer. I’ve presented myself.” The Major extended a handwritten sheet. “I’ll have Heldenstern draw up a proper legal agreement later.”

  Tom did not take the paper. The Major dropped it in front of him on the desk.

  In return for 25% (twenty-five percent) of any profits from the shop of T.K. Bridger, Major A. S. Stuart agrees to back his credit.

  “It’s the same magnificent offer you made when I rented the shop,” Tom said. “I work my balls off and you get twenty-five percent of them to put in your pocket.”

  “You have as much to learn about manners as business. How much is your credit at any store? Five dollars?” the Major asked. “With my backing you’ll be able to get the metal work done, a proper carriage. Nobody will buy a heap of wood and scrap metal—that’s your own account of the machine.”

  Tom wasn’t listening. As he stared down at the fine linen paper, he felt a hard anger and at the same time an infinite melancholy. He was a poor nobody and he knew only too well that poverty kills. Antonia Dalzell had a titled mother and a millionaire uncle. The Major was right. It was an unthinkable wrong to try to bring her into his world. Any thoughts he had about her might as well be scotched here and now. That Antonia might have had thoughts of him did not occur to Tom at all.

  The Major unscrewed a gold fountain pen. Watching Tom sign, he leaned back in relief. “Well, Bridger, I hope this is the beginning of a long and fruitful business relationship.” He spoke perfunctorily and stood to indicate the interview had ended.

  CHAPTER 3

  One bright afternoon in May of 1899 the Major sat in his office brooding over a large black-bound ledger. Next to his chair stood a well-worn, gold-cornered pigskin attaché case.

  In the four years since Tom had created that first quadricycle, the Major had altered considerably. He had put on flesh—his excellently tailored frock coat could not disguise his enormous paunch—yet his face had grown thin. Above the trimmed beard his cheeks were no longer round, and the sagging whorls of wrinkles had the crazed effect one sees on old china. Despite this aging and his worried concentration, he remained a prosperous, worldly figure.

  He tapped a manicured fingernail on numbers written in red ink, his self-indulgent mouth drawing into a downward curve. He dreaded his upcoming trip to New York. His only purpose was to ask J. P. Morgan, his banker and friend, for a loan. A loan had become stark necessity.

  The depression had flooded like a tidal wave across the decade, drowning innumerable businesses while others, like the Stuart Furniture Company, frantically struggled to stay afloat.

  The Major gazed at the quiet, sunlit yard. A dray of lumber was being unloaded by a single laborer wearing outlandishly wide trousers: where there had been three hundred employees were now eighty, most of them recently arrived foreigners willing to accept a pittance.

  His glance veered to Tom’s shop. Pale new shingles and brighter paint showed where last year’s addition had doubled its size. By the open doors stood one of the machines. The Major’s gloomy expression altered to one of disdain. Why, he thought, can’t Bridger build something substantial and rich-looking like the Daimler 12 motor that the Prince of Wales was photographed driving in? The Curved-Dash Bridger indeed! To the Major’s eyes the vehicle resembled a child’s sled perched atop a wheeled coffin. True, it could attain an amazing twenty-five miles an hour, but on his single ride, jouncing along at Bridger’s side, the Major had been positive his all too substantial flesh would be shaken from his bones, so what price speed? During that drive the Curved-Dash Bridger had halted twice, refusing even to bleat until its inventor had crawled underneath to tinker.

  Given the dismal economy, who would believe they had sold forty-two?

  Bridger had resisted each sale. About his machines he was as willful and vigorous as a salmon swimming upriver to spawn. He wants perfection, the Major thought irritably. As if this impossible toy could ever be reliable! The thing is to cash in before the fad ends. They cleared a profit on each machine, but Bridger insisted on wasting the money to develop the parts.

  The chair creaked as the Major swiveled back to face his desk. Taking a small key from his vest pocket, he unlocked a drawer, removing two rolls of blueprints, slapping one thoughtfully against his palm before packing both into his pigskin briefcase. He locked the case with a small gold key affixed to the same chain as the drawer key.

  With an unhappy glance at the ledger he reached for the brass bell.

  Heldenstern poked in his head. “Yes, Major?”

  The Major tapped the ledger. “Excellent work here,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Heldenstern gratefully said.

  “Come in, Heldenstern. That’s right, close the door. Sit down.” The Major leaned across the desk, saying in a low, confidential voice, “While I’m in New York there will be meetings with financiers. I always say, what’s the point of cluttering minds with unnecessary figures.”

  Heldenstern’s wrinkled eyelids descended uneasily. The Major knew the obsequious little secretary was thinking about his crippled wife, his two plain spinster daughters, the mortgaged brick house on Bagley Street, the scarcity of jobs in Detroit, his fifty-seven years. After the briefest hesitation Heldenstern replied, “Perhaps I better clarify the … details, as I did for your last trip East.”

  “I’m taking the 10:08 tomorrow morning.”

  “Then I’ll return here after supper. It’s easier for me to work, sir, when the factory is quiet.”

  “Much more efficient to be alone when there’s accounting,” the Major agreed. “Bring the two ledgers to me at the station.”

  II

  To see him off, Antonia wore her new fawn spring outfit with the matching high-collared pelisse trimmed in crimson braid.

  “That red sets off your cheeks and black hair,” said the Major, leaning back in the carriage pillows to survey her fondly.

  For long stretches of time he forgot Antonia was not his child. He doted on her, he suffered with her, he was irritated by her trivial faults. She made him forget his problems, of which she hadn’t a clue. Life in the chateau did not reflect his financial difficulties. The Major himself could still obliterate his worries during a lusty cavort, and the one bright spot of his trip to New York was his arrangements for rooms in Mrs. Corbett’s luxurious brownstone bordello on Madison Avenue. Yet it was Antonia alone who somehow managed to make his money problems less calamitous.

  “You must promise me one thing, Antonia.”

  “A final request? Uncle, you make it sound as if you’re going to New York to face a firing squad.”

  The Major winced. “I want you to spend more time with young Hutchinson.”

  “More? He drops by so often.”

  “I know, I know,” said the Major sympathetically.

  “Oh, why does he have to be so very nice? It would be much easier if he were just a stodge.”

  “I admit he’s no brilliant wit, and he has those buck teeth. Still, he’s the one eligible bachelor in Detroit who isn’t embarrassed to come to our house. He keeps you out of the sickroom.”

  A bright morning, the carriage top was down and the horses had their yellow fly-nets over them: the ear cutouts were ornamented with gold-braid tassels. Antonia, holding her parasol straighter, watched the tassels bounce. “Uncle, you know how ill Father has been. Doctor McKenzie believes the grippe might go into his lungs if he doesn’t move about. I need to walk him.”

  “That’s Nurse’s job,” snapped the Maj
or. “For the life of me I cannot understand why a pretty young girl would rather immerse herself in sickroom details than enjoy a young man’s company.”

  “It’s not fair to encourage him.”

  “Use him to practice your wiles, then. A teething ring of sorts.”

  “You’re wicked.” She attempted a stern look, then collapsed back in laughter.

  Claude Hutchinson’s large, handsome face was marred by protruding upper teeth. Nearly thirty, a lawyer with an income of his own, he had met Antonia with the Major at the Belle Isle skating pavilion two years earlier, and since then had visited at least once a week, stolidly ignoring both Antonia’s lack of interest and the invisible pentagram that Detroit society had drawn around the girl. Though behind Claude Hutchinson’s back the Major mimicked him, he thought him a steady young man and made him welcome. An eligible suitor bearing flowers and satin-tied boxes of Antonia’s favorite chocolates relieved the Major’s guilt about her nonexistent social life.

  “My affairs might keep me awhile in New York, and after that there’s some business in Washington. It’s probable I’ll be gone several weeks. Invite him to lunch or tea; it won’t hurt you and I’ll be happier knowing you have company.”

  The train gave three long, piercing shrieks. Flaherty had already seen to the Major’s steamer trunk and put his gladstone in his compartment. The Major held only his briefcase. He peered along the crowded platform looking for Heldenstern, who was nowhere in sight. But outside the elaborately carved Pullman Palace Car stood Bridger.

  The Major had dealt in a way he calculated would insure no further meetings between the two young people, and his instincts had proved sound. Bridger, though obsessed about his machines and caustic of tongue, was honest. Bridger understood they had struck a bargain. Or did he? The Major examined Tom. The twill serge, though obviously inexpensive ready-to-wear, fit his lean body well: with his lightly tanned skin and air of vitality he could have been a rising young doctor. The Major never underestimated the power of physical attraction.