Onyx (17 page)

“Those cylinders, I've been thinking about those cylinders. There should be four, not two.” Tom's cheeks glowed from walking in frozen night air and from the ideas and visions clamoring within him. “How do I manage that financing?”

Hugh swallowed his resentment. Wasn't Tom coming around precisely as he wanted? “We could cut down.”

“There's still the medical bills. And we don't exactly lie in luxury's lap.”

“What if we found a shop with a room upstairs or in the back?”

“The end of double rents.” Tom laughed excitedly. “Come on, Hugh, more ideas.”

“Our old suppliers might trust us without a credit line. Horace and John know you pretty well.” The rowdy, hot-tempered, redheaded Dodge brothers were friends of Tom's. “And how about going to the men who own Curved-Dashes and seeing if they'll buy shares?”

“You
have
been thinking. Hugh, come on, let's hammer out that agreement with Trelinack.”

Hugh pulled on his overcoat and the two sat at the table, their breath showing in the chill as they argued. Tom wanted Trelinack to have twenty-five percent, while Hugh, never having intended the Cousin Jack foreman to get more than the ten he had asked for, demurred. To offer that much, he said, would be to insult a friend.

“Hugh, it's twenty-five,” Tom said abruptly. “Go ahead and write it up while I fix myself some supper.”

Hugh sat at the table, composing the agreement, reading the few sentences he had written aloud. “‘… 25% (twenty-five percent) to John Trelinack.…'”

“It has a fine legal ring,” Tom said. Then Hugh unscrewed the ink bottle to make the final draft. Though he was displeased at the amount they were giving away, he felt a peculiar lightness. It was a relief to know he could only sway Tom where Tom wished to be swayed: a boundary marker put an end to the more worrisome degrees of fraternal duplicity.

V

The next Sunday sleet hammered noisily on the rooftop and window. Just before one o'clock Trelinack lugged in a huge wicker hamper; his bundled wife and daughters followed, each carrying a basket.

The four women, uttering cries about the weather, took off their drenched outer garments. Mrs. Trelinack, a short, stocky woman with thick, wavy gray hair, had a fine fresh complexion and an air of being perpetually newly bathed. She unpacked the hamper swiftly, deprecating the golden Cornish pasties, the fat roast chicken, the fruit pies oozing richly aromatic juices, the trifle, the nuts preserved in honey. Each delicacy, made by her plump white hands, expressed her generosity.

The girls helped her. Maud. Skinny Melisande, who wore her sandy hair in elaborate thrusts copied from those girls drawn by Charles Dana Gibson. And the baby, Yseult, called Yssy (pronounced Yes-
see
), who at sixteen had attained a shelved bosom and her full height of four ten.

To avoid the feminine hubbub Tom and Trelinack retired to the hallway, which was lit by a single small window.

“I'll put in my free hours in the shop,” Trelinack promised.

“All help will be appreciated.”

Maud came out to stand with them. “Pa. If Yssy and Melisande would help me with the basting and pressing, we could put in more cash.”

“Miss Maud Trelinack, Miss Bossy Maud Trelinack,” boomed her father.

“The more money the shop has, the better,” she pointed out.

“The day I take help from my womenfolk, that's the day I lie down and die.”

“Trelinack. Maud,” called Mrs. Trelinack. “What is it now?”

“This lass of yours,” said Trelinack, hugging his favorite child's trim waist.

Mrs. Trelinack called, “Stop your bickering and come open the brandy.”

Trelinack went into the flat. Tom was about to follow, but Maud said, “Tom?”

“What ho?”

“I have a hundred and twenty-three dollars saved on my own. I'd like to invest with you.”

Touched, Tom swallowed a lump in his throat. “Why, thank you, honey. But I can't let you do that.” His mind switched to another time, Antonia offering him her pearls, her bar pin.

Maud watched his lips part and his expression soften, then grow bleak. She sighed. Her absolute candor left no room for ambiguities, and since she could not know what Tom was thinking, why should she have this attack of sadness? Why this increased consciousness of being an also-ran?
He calls me honey, doesn't he
?

“You're taking in others,” she said.

“Maud, you worked very hard for that money.”

“I'm a believer.”

Tom felt his cheeks grow hot.

Mrs. Trelinack called, “We're ready.”

“I don't have any doubts, Tom. Not a one.”

After a long pause he shook her short, wide hand. “Partners,” he said.

She smiled her frank, open smile, and they joined the others at the laden table.

Trelinack poured his wife's homemade peach brandy into the Bridgers' assortment of chipped tumblers, mugs, and a mason jar. Raising the jar, he said, “To the Bridger Automobile Company.”

“No,” Tom said sharply.

“What?” Trelinack asked.

“An unlucky name,” Tom said.

“I have my drink raised, Tom, and that's one thing you cannot do to a Cousin Jack, stop him in the middle of a toast. Pick another name.”

“Onyx,” Hugh said from the bedroom doorway.

“What was that?” Tom asked.

“Onyx,” Hugh repeated.

He had thought much about the new car's name, and had decided that Curved-Dash Bridger sounded lumbering and heavy. He had looked up the word
onyx
in his dictionary. It was an agate, a variety of quartz. People thought of it as a jewel, yet it was not too precious or rarified.
Onyx
was a strong word.
Onyx
was an interesting word that would look well affixed to a brass radiator.

“Onyx …” Tom said. “Yes, it has a ring.”

“Then I give you the Onyx Automobile Company,” boomed Trelinack.

The others echoed, “The Onyx Automobile Company.” The sound reverberated around the shabby room. “To the Onyx Automobile Company.”

BOOK TWO

The Fiver

The Fiver was an instant success. Years ahead of its time and priced at the bottom of the low-price field, it had innovations galore.

The Model Five Onyx, A Look at the Changes in an Unchanging Car
by Bruce McCalley

CHAPTER 9

At the turn of the century the automotive industry was an explosive burst, atoms whirling in a vacuum without a solar system. Onyx was only one of the hundreds of small shops in various parts of the country, manufacturers that for the most part trickled out a machine or two, then folded.

On April 4, 1900, Tom climbed from his four-cylinder racer, oil blackening him from the top rim of his goggles to the soles of his boots, recognizable only by his uneven white grin. His time on the one-mile track was 5:28 for five laps, less than 1:06 per mile, the new American record.

Two days later he and Maud stood up together, a double wedding with plump little Yssy Trelinack and Rogers Sinclair, who was a salesman for Eclipse bicycles. Few Americans had seen an automobile, and at the beginning it was only because of Tom's racing fame that Rogers could convince the bicycle dealers in his territory to take on his brother-in-law's machines. The first four models of Onyx were the most reliable automobiles on the market, and among the cheapest, from $650 to $870. Onyx, like Marmon, Cadillac, Buick, Franklin, Wayne, Packard, Maxwell, Ford, Olds, was a still-nebulous star in the automotive void.

Then, in 1907, Tom unveiled his Onyx 5 at the Detroit Auto Show.

The Fiver …

An odd, high-bodied little terrier with a brass radiator that gleamed like a healthy nose, big round acetylene eyes, a gamely sturdy engine that snapped and barked up the steepest mountains. The Fiver had her peculiarities and you better learn them: She kicked out when you cranked her on cold mornings, and to learn when she thirsted for oil you had to crawl underneath and fiddle with two pet cocks. Once you were her master, though, she repaid you with endless loyalty. She bounced over the worst roads—and American roads
were
the worst. In emergencies, or so owners swore, she grumbled along without gasoline. She came with a year's guarantee, unprecedented in the dubious business, and her parts were interchangeable (a revolutionary idea of Tom's) and easy to replace. The breed had no vanity. Roadsters, touring cars, runabouts, and delivery wagons alike had the same chassis and wore the same dull, very dark gray. Onyx gray.

Her chief virtue was her humbleness.

That first model cost $465.

That spring of 1907 farmers, doctors, shopkeepers—ordinary people who never dreamed they could afford the luxury of an automobile—lined up in windstorms and torrential rains to buy a Fiver. The success was unbelievable, even to Tom. Orders continued flooding in, and he hired Albert Kahn, the industrial architect, to plan a factory with sawtooth glass roofs, and here he synchronized thousands of employees with a fortune in machine tooling.

Over this airy expanse, as over the still operating earlier plant, hung a sword of Damocles, poised to destroy.

The Selden patent case.

II

In 1879, George B. Selden, a Rochester, New York, attorney, had filed a patent application for a gasoline-powered road vehicle, delaying its issuance by filing additions and changes. Not until 1895 did he obtain a patent for his carriage. He claimed that every automobile manufactured or sold during the seventeen-year life of his patent must be licensed by him. At first the men laughed in their automobile shops. Who was this Selden? Why, the man never had even built a machine! But then Selden sued Alexander Winton of Cleveland for infringement. The judge, who knew little of patents and—understandably—nothing of automobiles, declared Selden's patent valid. As is often the case when men are shocked into fear, the herd instinct took over, and like sheep they rushed to join Selden's Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers. ALAM. Once securely penned, they saw the advantages. ALAM could set production limits, could fix prices. ALAM was a monopoly. A trust. Hooray!

In early 1902 a delegation arrived at Tom's new plant on Rock Avenue to explain the association's advantages. Tom told them, “I'm in this to bring prices down so everyone can buy.”

“That's insane. If we put an end to destructive competition, if the industry regulates itself, every shop in ALAM will survive.”

“I don't believe in patents or monopolies.”

“You're going to have to join, Bridger. And in the long run you'll see, Selden's patent is the best thing for all of us.”

Tom lost his temper. “You can take that damn patent and shove it!” he shouted, and ordered them off his property.

ALAM told Henry Ford that any application for his shaky new company would be looked upon unfavorably.

On October 22, 1903, Selden, through ALAM, filed suit against Onyx and the Ford Motor Company. To lose meant that the two then-struggling little companies would have to ante up ruinous penalties on each car they had already built. It meant bankruptcy. Going broke did not frighten Tom—he had been there before. But not to make cars? Never to attain his dream, the universal transportation?

The legal battle moved with glacial slowness.

In September 1909 the blow fell.

Judge Charles M. Hough of the federal court for southern New York State upheld the Selden patent.

Tom Bridger and Henry Ford had remained outwardly cordial to each other, yet the inevitable comparisons of the Model T to the Fiver had sapped the old. friendship. The two were photographed, grim and stiff together, as they promised to battle ALAM—the automotive trust, they called it. They hired a fresh battalion of lawyers to appeal the decision.

III

Hugh had never recovered from his horror of himself.

When Onyx had begun to prosper and the two brothers had for the first time in their lives money, a lot of it, Hugh had built a Tudor manor house on an isolated tract bordering Lake St. Clair beyond Grosse Pointe Shores. Surrounding his estate was a ten-foot brick wall topped with iron spikes. And he had left the original stands of timber to further hide his domain. He kept to his acreage, seen by nobody but his servants, his two secretaries, and the family. Yet in March 1910, when Mitchell Polhemus telephoned for an appointment, Hugh unhesitatingly invited him to the house. Mitchell Polhemus was chief counsel for Selden and ALAM.

Hugh received the lawyer in his office, a long oak-paneled room with clerestory windows designed so that sunlight never hit the Elizabethan table he used as a desk. In front of him were three telephones, the means through which he ruled Onyx's accounting, public relations and advertising departments.

The fact that Mitchell Polhemus was a hunchback made Hugh feel more comfortable than he might have, yet he remained in the shadows and spoke stiffly.

“Mr. Polhemus, you take me by surprise. Hearing from the enemy camp! Dare I hope you're bearing an olive branch?”

“I'm here on behalf of another client,” replied Mitchell Polhemus. “Mr. Bridger, let me get right to the point. My client has blueprints for automotive inventions that predate Selden's patent—”

“
What
?”

“—and they are to be offered to you.”

In his shocked surprise Hugh found himself mouthing irrelevancies. “Isn't this a conflict of interest for you?”

“My clients accept that I have a large and catholic legal practice.”

Hugh clasped his fingers, trying to sound judicious. “How much must we pay?”

“There are two conditions. Neither has to do with money.”

“Mr. Polhemus, everything has to do with money.”

The lawyer's pale, wrinkled face contorted into a smile. “Not for this client,” he said warmly.

“Tell me the conditions, then.”