Thunder City (18 page)

“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.”

“I knew that before you did. It was all there, in
The Coach King.
That’s not what I want you to talk to him about. I want you to tell him to call off his dogs.”

“Dogs?”

“His people. His lawyers. His money. The only use he makes of any of them anymore is to turn them loose on people. After you’ve got everything else out of them, that’s what’s left.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s no reason you should. But you will, if you ever get off the loading dock.”

The group was migrating in their direction. Ford’s bony fingers suddenly gripped Harlan’s upper arm like a bundle of wires and turned him. Now both their backs were to the world.

“Selden is a wooden owl, a decoy,” he said. “The A.L.A.M. paid him ten thousand for the right to exercise his patent. Any money they manage to extort from the other automobile companies is in the way of a bonus. They don’t need it; they’re all millionaires. They’re only working together to destroy me. Why do you think they wouldn’t let me join?”

“But why you?”

“Your family isn’t wrong about you. You’re slow. Who in this town hates me enough to close down my plant and put hundreds of people out of work?”

Harlan shook his head. “My father would never throw in with automobile men.”

“They aren’t automobile men. Have you ever seen Selden’s car? Of course you haven’t; there isn’t one. His patent doesn’t cover any practicable machine. None can be made from it or ever was. Or ever will. You’ll hear nothing more of the A.L.A.M. once the Ford shop closes. Your father will dismantle it like a coach that’s done its work.”

“He’s a businessman, not a buccaneer. Anyway, he’s convinced automobiles won’t catch on. As he sees it, you’re no threat.”

“Not to his business. His family is another matter. There’s no telling what a man will do if he thinks his son is being stolen from him.”

The others were near, reliving at the tops of their voices the details of the adventure they had all witnessed. Harlan started to say something. Ford squeezed his biceps painfully and it turned into a short cry. The automobile man leaned in uncomfortably close. Harlan felt his hot breath in his ear.

“Tell him to call off his dogs. If he won’t do it, tell him to go ahead and set them loose. I’m at fighting weight and he’s rusty. He can’t wear me down.”

Then they were enveloped. Huff piloted the Arrow up the bank to where the flatbed wagon that had brought it waited to take it away, Ford let go of Harlan’s arm, and the crowd drifted toward Jefferson, Ford in the center. Harlan was left alone on the edge of the lake.

Crazy Henry, he thought.

“
C
ARA
M
IA
, Y
OU’RE LOSING
your appetite. Are you feeling ill?”

The question, delivered in Maribel’s musical northern Italian accent, dripped with sincerity. There was concern in her great dark eyes, little inverted commas of worry at the corners of her wide mouth. The long fine fingers touching the back of his hand where it rested on the table held the power to love and heal. James Aloysius Dolan considered that in twenty years of politics he had never been lied to so successfully.