Onyx (2 page)

Tom salted his. The Major shook on brown spoonfuls of Demerara sugar that oozed downward, liquid bronze on lashings of yellow cream. The ugly cook carried in a silver platter mounded with pink fried ham slabs and fried steaks while an elderly, rawboned servant limped after her with golden scrambled eggs and beaten biscuits. Next came fluffy croquettes of Lake Michigan sturgeon. Delicate pancakes—crepes, the Major called them—nestled around crimson stewed cherries. A tray of cream cheeses surrounded by homemade crackers. Tom, a spare eater by both necessity and inclination, took little of the enormous breakfast. He tasted nothing. The Major enjoyed second helpings.

The Major wore his graying beard trimmed in the style made popular by the Prince of Wales, to whom he bore a marked resemblance—flesh-sunken eyes, pink lips, benignly self-indulgent expression; a similar stoutness.

This resemblance went beyond the physical. Like the aging heir to the British throne, the Major was a roué, and his gray slate roof sheltered a succession of lushly constructed young women directed here, or so it was said at Stuart Furniture, by the infamous Mrs. Corbett in New York. Tom himself had seen brightly dressed young women preening at the Major's side as his matched black pair trotted around the Grand Circus Park or across the Belle Isle Bridge. After several months' residence each guest would depart from the Union Station amid a volcano of new hat boxes, brass-bound steamer trunks, gladstones, dressing cases, jewel cases.

The Major's imperturbability to gossip, his unimpeachable social position—both sides of his family were old Boston—his youthfully distinguished military record with the Grand Army of the Republic, the three-story frame structure of the Stuart Furniture Factory along the Detroit River, enabled people to overlook the trollops revolving through his front door, and though no lady would enter this house, the Major was welcomed in the city's best homes, many of which clustered around this recent extension of Woodward Avenue.

The Major set down his coffee cup. “Not much of an eater are you, my boy?”

“A minnow compared to you, sir.”

“So you have a tongue, and a witty one.” The Major chuckled. “How long have you worked at Stuart Furniture?”

“Eight months.”

“Trelinack tells me you have a vocation. ‘What a mechanic the boy is, what a born mechanic!'” The Major mimicked Trelinack's Cornish lilt. “He told me when the Beck steam engine broke down the other day you merely touched it and—presto! It worked. He called you a regular Merlin.”

“No wand, sir. A couple of bolts had worked loose, that's all.”

“Trelinack's a good foreman; he doesn't exaggerate. Besides, I know the table shop had to close down five hours while the other mechanics tinkered with the engine, Bridge.”

“It's Bridger, sir. With an
r
on the end.”

“Bridger, then. Where did you get your mechanical training?”

Tom looked down at the black lines tattooing his palms. As long as he could remember he'd had the touch, and even when he was only seven or eight his father had let him fix the threshing machine, the pump. At the forge he'd experienced a mysterious easy joy unconnected to the drudgery of farm work. “I worked at Hallam Arms Works for two years.”

“Mmm, yes. Hallam uses precision machinery on their rifles. Why did you and Hallam come to a parting of the ways?”

Tom had had qualms that he was manufacturing death. But he simply said, “I quit.”

“Don't talk much about yourself, do you?”

“Sir, you're the one with the gift of gab.”

“That I am,” the Major said. “Well, my boy, what is it you wished to talk to me about?”

Tom drew a breath. “The small building in the yard, the one near the street entry—”

“My show room.”

“Yes. It's empty and I have a use for it—I'd pay you rent, sir, of course.”

The Major's chair groaned as he leaned back. “Well, well, well. Bridge—”

“Bridger.”

“You'd be surprised at how unique an occasion this is. When a man at the factory wants something from me, it's invariably a raise in salary. So I've evolved a little trick. I make him come here to ask for it. This house overwhelms him, as does dour Ida's excellent table. Besides, there's my august presence. Few get out their request, Bridger—I got it correct this time, didn't I? You're the first to come here requesting to pay
me
.”

“Then I can rent the building?”

“What do you want it for?”

“A shop. Trelinack generally asks me to stay overtime on call. This way I could keep busy in between repairs.”

“So you tinker in your free time, too, ehh? What miraculous contraption are you building?”

Tom's upper lip raised as he smiled, making him appear vulnerable. His teeth were uneven and very white. “Sir, do you know anything about horseless road vehicles?”

The Major had been selecting a cigar from his tortoiseshell humidor. He shot Tom a sharp look, and then with a secret smile busied himself lighting the Havana. “I've heard the usual idle talk about a mechanical replacement for the horse,” he said finally.

“It's more than idle talk. There have been articles in
American Machinist
. I'm working on an engine right now, and so is a friend of mine, Henry Ford.”

“Ford? Is he here in Detroit?”

“Yes. Chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company. There's work going on all around the country. So far, though, the successful vehicles are in France and Germany, made by Daimler, Benz, Panhard, the Peugeot brothers.”

“And you're tossing your cap into the American horseless carriage ring, I take it.”

“Yes.”

“Won't you need cash for your experiments, a good deal of cash?” The Major's questioning tone was sincere, his bearded face sober; however, he was a stout cat relishing his game.

Tom, clenching scarred, oil-grimed hands on the table, did not recognize he was a mouse. “You pay me well.”

“Yes, but you're young. Why play Faust? Why waste youth on foolish inventions?”

“A machine faster than a horse, more reliable, never needing to be rested or watered, never bolting—is that foolish? Sir, with this vehicle farmers wouldn't be nailed down to their farms, people could move around, life would be better for factory workers.”

“So your machine will be cheap enough for everyone?”

“Eventually, yes. Most families will own one.”

The Major hid his smile by clamping down on his cigar. “Mmm, I see. What sort of power plant will your carriage run on? A steam engine?”

Tom shook his head. “Some people are thinking about steam, but as far as I'm concerned, the furnace and boiler are far too heavy. The internal-combustion engine's light. It runs on gasoline—that's a by-product of crude petroleum.”

“Last month, when I was in Paris …” The Major blew a ring of smoke before pulling out his plum. “Last month in Paris I saw one of these petrol wagons. It was built in the Panhard and Levassor shop.”

Redness blotched Tom's neck. “Then I've just made a horse's ass of myself, explaining the machines. You already knew …”

“Ancient as I'm sure I seem to you, Bridger, I'm no dinosaur. I keep up on modern invention, I keep up. Naturally I was curious to see this new idiocy.”

Two white marks showed in Tom's flushed jaw. Yet neither anger nor embarrassment could stay his excitement. “How far did you go? How fast?”

“Great God, Bridger! Petroleum's highly volatile. The machine might have exploded at any minute. Naturally I didn't entrust myself to it.”

“But you saw it run?”

The Major wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Run? It rattled at a snail's pace down Avenue d'Ivry leaving a trail of foul odors and shying horses. Then it shuddered violently. And stopped. The driver jumped out and began tinkering with the engine. As far as I know, he's still tinkering.”

“I wish I could have been there!”

“Bridger, I realize you're an enthusiast, but if you had heard the devilish rattling and jarring, got a whiff of the stink, seen that driver drenched in black oil from his hat to his boots, you'd accept that only a certifiable lunatic would travel in such a machine.”

“The engine must have been faulty.”

“Believe me, not even a sorcerer like you could keep one of those things in running order. The whole idea's preposterous. If this were a sound commercial venture, why, the carriage manufacturers and bankers would be fighting like cocks to get a toehold. But none of this matters. I can't let you have the building.”

“What, sir?”

“We need storage for the overstock of adjustable bedside tables. They aren't selling.”

Tom's pride would not allow him to show disappointment. “Then I guess I'll have to find some other millionaire to pay rent to.”

The caustic remark relieved the Major. He had given himself over to the delights of ragging the boy, yet an innate softness shrank from viewing the pain he had inflicted. He rose. His gray-striped morning suit adroitly concealed an enormous belly. “I'm not going right to work, but I'll give you a lift down Woodward—in a horse-powered vehicle, of course.”

Tom hesitated. He was off today because tonight he would overhaul the three-drum traveling belt sander. He lived a few blocks from the factory, though, and having correctly read a command into the Major's good-natured offer, he said, “Thank you, sir.”

III

As they emerged into the hall a girl was descending the staircase, moving swiftly through the varicolored light of the Tiffany glass window, one hand skimming down the thick banister, her navy skirt catching on each step for an infinitesimal fraction of time to reveal a white foam of petticoats.

When she reached the bottom the Major said, “Antonia, my dear, you're up with the birds. Come here and let me introduce one of my most valued men. May I present Mr. Bridger. Bridger, this is my niece, Miss Dalzell.”

The previous March, Tom, along with all Stuart employees and members of Detroit's best families, had stood in the driving sleet by the open grave of the Major's father, Isaac Stuart. The Major was the only relative at Woodmere Cemetery. Tom, therefore, knew
niece
was a euphemism. For mistress. Factory gossip had it that the Major always referred to his mistresses as “niece,” or “my young cousin.”

The girl smiled at him.

She's beautiful, he thought. An instant later he was changing his mind. The shiny mass of black hair loosely confined by a bow, the large, thickly lashed eyes, also very dark, were certainly beautiful. So was the luminous skin. But the impetuous thrust of her narrow nose was not. And the eagerly smiling mouth was too full in the sparely fleshed face. Too tall, Tom decided, and entirely too thin. Her white cambric shirtwaist barely hinted at breasts, her shoulders were childishly fragile, her hips narrow. She can't be more than sixteen, he thought.

But the poignancy of her youth dissolved for him when she linked her arm in the Major's meaty one. “How nice to meet you, Mr. Bridger,” she said. “You're the first Detroiter I've met.”

“My niece arrived the day before yesterday.”

“A shame for you, Miss Dalzell. You missed our summer. Heat brings out mosquitoes, and the largest, finest mosquitoes in North America are found in Detroit.” Tom attempted a bantering tone. He always did with girls. They flurried him, all of them, including the chippies he paid upstairs in the Golden Age Saloon.

“Ah, well,” said Antonia Dalzell. “I'll have to imagine I've been bitten.”

“You won't be able to conjure up our mugginess. It's the envy of Turkish baths.”

“Alas for me, so deprived.”

“Maybe we can manage an Indian summer for you.”

She laughed, a musical sound.

The Major frowned. “I hear the carriage. My dear, I'll see you this evening.”

“You better be on time,” she warned.

Obviously this was a joke between them. The Major chuckled. “I'll be devilishly on time.”

Antonia extended a narrow, ringless hand, and her fingers briefly warmed Tom's. “I'll be expecting that Indian summer, Mr. Bridger. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

“Likewise, Miss Dalzell,” Tom said. She was beautiful, he had decided, breathtakingly beautiful. And when the Major kissed her cheek, Tom was charged with an emotion that he had never experienced before and that he could not comprehend. How could Antonia Dalzell be a “niece” of the Major's?

IV

Woodward Avenue was broad, seventy-five feet wide, and the Major's lacquered victoria joined the smart equipages now rolling toward downtown. Hooves drummed cheerfully on the uneven cedar paving blocks and the bells rang as bicycles swerved around steaming fresh horse apples.

In Cadillac Square the Major reined at the raffishly ornate marble wedding cake that was the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. “I have an appointment with Senator McMillan at the Federal Building,” he announced. “I'll let you off here.”

Tom plunged into the industrial warren paralleling the Detroit River. The busy waterway was hidden from him by enormous sheds and tall factories with smoke-blackened chimneys. As he neared Union Station the bustle grew furious with hacks, drays, wagons: a team of Percherons crushed him into a line of foreign laborers waiting outside Fulton Iron Works employment window.

The particles of soot drifting like black snow, the roar clattering from every window were the breathing pulse of the new age. His age. Burdens were being lifted and incalculable gifts bestowed by machinery, and he was part of it. He forgot the hurt imposed by the Major.

He turned onto an unpaved alley. Three ragged boys stopped their game of floating stick boats in a puddle to watch with respectful eyes as he climbed sagging front steps. The inhabitants were considered aristocracy because the subdivided old house had electricity.