Paul studied his cousin. She meant it.
28. Boom Times
For Christmas Carl spent much more than he could afford—$9—for Tess’s present. He couldn’t resist the gold bracelet in the jewelry case at Hudson’s. It was a twist design, one of the golden strands smooth, the other embossed with tiny flowers. A $5 gents’ vest chain he had his eye on for his father was bypassed in favor of a silk chain costing $1.90. His brother got a large two-blade pocketknife with a staghorn handle. To his mother and sister he sent souvenir plates hand-painted with a picture of the city’s Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument. The art of buying appropriate gifts for Ilsa and Fritzi eluded him.
Tess said she loved the bracelet. In return she gave him a fine steel razor with an onyx handle and a wide leather belt in brown alligator finish with a silver eagle buckle.
The gloomy Michigan winter dragged on. Carl was desperate for the March thaw, the drying of the roads and dirt tracks, the chance to climb into the new Edmunds Special under construction in Hoot’s five-bay carriage house behind his Jefferson Avenue mansion. Only Tess kept him sane, kept him crawling out of bed on sunless mornings, kept him trudging downstairs to hot gruel and battery-acid coffee with the three other lodgers, kept him trudging to the trolley stop through snow or fog or freezing rain to punch in at Piquette Avenue.
Through the winter their romance ripened, given an urgency by what Carl hoped and believed the eventual climax would be. He thought of that moment every time he took a nickel or a penny from the drawer where he kept miscellaneous articles, including a packet of safeties.
Was Tess a virgin? Given her bold ways, he guessed she wasn’t. The question bedeviled him because he’d never deflowered a girl and didn’t intend to make Tess the first. Yet he wondered about his own strength of will. Wondered whether he could hold back if she was unsullied but offered herself anyway.
Tess said the secrecy of their relationship was wearing her down. It went against her nature. She finally told her father she was seeing Carl; she didn’t inform Carl until afterward.
Carl hid his annoyance. “Does he know we meet once or twice a week?”
“I didn’t say so. I’m sure he can guess from all my absences. Besides, he was sufficiently exercised by the first piece of news. I’m afraid I got a little hot myself. I said he really had nothing to say about my beau. He hasn’t spoken to me for two days. He’ll get over it.”
“I’m sorry I cause you trouble.”
“Never say that.” She laid her fingers on his lips. “Never. I’d walk through fire for you, Carl.” She blushed. “One more shameless admission. With you I make a habit of them, don’t I?”
On their Sunday outings he and Tess sometimes took trolleys, but if the streets were clear of snow and ice, she drove her runabout. When they could find no other place for intimacy, they hid behind the isinglass side curtains that snapped to the folding top. They kissed passionately in the front seat. As time passed their embraces grew bolder and more heated—lip rouge smeared, cheeks rubbed red, clothing mussed, hair rumpled till both of them resembled vaudeville clowns in fright wigs. Why not? He loved her, and said so. She said she loved him. Each said it often, like a devotion recited in church. Tess never mentioned the future, nor did he, except to say he couldn’t wait to take her to a Tigers baseball game at Burns Park in the spring.
The popularity of the Model T created pressures at the factory. Hiring began for a second shift, but Detroit had a labor shortage. The motor car had finally caught on with a vast majority of the public; the auto plants were booming. Couzens complained that Ford had ten thousand orders for Model T’s on the books, and a legion of irate dealers who couldn’t get cars fast enough. Carl had no fear of losing his job unless it was by his own choice.
One night in April, Carl went to the repair shed to help Jesse but didn’t find him. He sat down to wait, puzzling about an auto he’d noticed when he left the Gibbs house. It was a black two-passenger Clymer, parked the wrong way on the other side of the street, the top closed, the motor running. As Carl walked to the front gate, the driver suddenly clashed the gears and shot away. A corner street lamp shone briefly on the driver’s face. Carl was almost sure it was Wayne Sykes. Walking to Jesse’s, he asked himself whether he should laugh, or worry. He still didn’t know. But he was damn sure he didn’t like to be spied on.
After forty minutes Jesse walked in. A large gauze patch was taped below his left eye; a wound had bled through, staining the bandage.
“Where the devil did you get that?”
“Foundry,” Jesse said. “They had some boys waiting for a few of us when the whistle blew. Boys had lead pipes and brass knuckles. I got in some licks, but they pasted me good anyway.”
“Are you stirring up the shop issue again?”
“Not stirring up anything,” Jesse said with a flash of temper. “Just asking politely for what’s fair. We got up a petition for a vote on a union shop. I signed. No demand like last time, no strike, just a democratic vote. You see anything wrong with that?”
“No, but obviously Clymer does. Tear up the damn petition.”
“Hell we will.”
“Guess you don’t plan to live to a ripe old age.” He reached for pliers. “You be careful. I don’t want to scramble around for a new riding mechanic.”
“You one selfish white man. Use the nigger for all he’s worth, right?”
“I don’t like that word. Let’s say the gentleman—the gentleman—happens to be my friend.”
The very next week Carl and Jesse picked up a ride in a fifty-mile race over in Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County. The car was one of two entered by the small Belwin Motor Company of Pontiac. When the regular driver fell ill, Mr. Belwin himself called garages all over Detroit. Someone suggested Carl. Tuesday before the race Belwin left a message at the lodging house. Carl was hired over the telephone.
After work on Saturday, he and Jesse traveled to Ann Arbor in a car sent by Belwin. “Who drives for your team?” Carl asked the man chauffeuring them.
“Fellows from the Michigan zone.”
“Salesmen?” It wasn’t unheard of, but Carl had no faith in drivers with that background. “Do they have any experience?”
“They’ve got a hell of a lot of experience selling the cars,” the driver said testily. “I’m one of them. Murphy’s the name.”
Crowded in the rear seat of the Belwin, Carl and Jesse exchanged looks.
The Belwin company didn’t pay for lodging, so the two men rolled up in blankets under the grandstand. Luckily it was a mild night, though Carl woke chilly and stiff. Before eight o’clock he and Jesse looked over the Belwin Tiger they would race that afternoon. Following their usual pre-race routine, they gassed it and took it around the half-mile track. Carl braked, accelerated, tested the turns and straightaways until he had a sense of the track surface and how fast he could travel.
Turned out to be hardly worth it. In the lead in the seventh lap, the blustery Murphy broke wheel spokes on his Belwin, lost control, and smashed into a brick retaining wall at the front of the grandstand. Spectators in the first rows screamed and ran. Murphy’s car spewed smoke from the cowl, then flames. Murphy jumped out—no racecar had any kind of safety harness—while oil smoke black as midnight stretched a curtain across the track.
A Chalmers-Detroit in front of Carl steered wildly into the infield to avoid the smoke and fire. Jesse pointed straight ahead, Carl nodded, and they drove blindly into the smoke. Coming out, they saw a wheel from the wrecked Belwin lying in their path. Carl couldn’t avoid it. The undercarriage of their low-slung racer gave a tremendous crack as it struck the wheel and bounced over. In the next turn Jesse pounded the oil gauge. The line was broken. Coming around to the pit, their car was doing five miles an hour with smoke plumes from the overheated motor streaming out behind.
“God damn it,” Carl said, ripping off his helmet as he climbed out.
“My sentiments too,” Jesse said. They collected their pay, handed to
them reluctantly by a disgusted Mr. Belwin, and asked directions to the Interurban. Both men were in a foul mood when they came upon a gaudy poster at the track entrance.
WAYNE COUNTY FAIR GROUNDS SUNDAY MAY 9
ONE DAY ONLY!
SPECTACULAR EXHIBITION BY
“The Speed King of the World”
—IN PERSON!!—
BARNEY OLDFIELD
WILL ATTEMPT
NEW MILE RECORD!
Carl rolled a cigarette. “Ever see Oldfield come into a town? I haven’t, but I hear it’s something. A real carnival.”
“How’d you like to drive for that boy?” Jesse said.
“I’d sure as hell like it better than delivering Model T’s the rest of my life,” Carl said.
When he got back to Detroit after the Ann Arbor fiasco, he met Tess at a chili parlor on Grand Boulevard. He came right out with what was on his mind:
“It was a miserable, rotten race, and yet after I calmed down, I decided that winning or losing didn’t matter half so much as driving. I love the speed of a race, the way it challenges you every second, fills you with this rush of excitement—and I’ll never get enough of that working a steady job. I just don’t know how much longer I can stand that damn factory.”
Tess stirred her chili; dropped in some oyster crackers. “You are what you are, Carl. Do what you want. I’ll never interfere.”
But she looked troubled, and said little the rest of the meal.
29. “Speed King of the World”
Berna Eli Oldfield claimed to be the world’s fastest driver. He held all kinds of speed records, had in fact broken many that he himself set. If someone thirty-one years old could be a legend, Barney Oldfield was legendary, in Europe as well as in the States.
Automakers offered him fast cars and fat contracts if he’d drive for them. He switched cars and loyalties like a sleight-of-hand magician. The somewhat snooty American Automobile Association had once branded him an outlaw and banned him from its sanctioned events for failing to show up at a starting line. He went on the barnstorming circuit until he recovered his status.
Wherever he appeared he drew crowds. People loved him because he was fearless and colorful. He wore gaudy vests and striped shirts, a thousand-dollar ankle-length sealskin coat, a knockout of a diamond ring. He smoked two-dollar Cuban cigars and passed out five-dollar tips like candy. Many a time on a drinking spree he passed out.
He traveled in a private railway car with his second wife, Bess, and his pet Irish terrier. His barnstorming team included an advance man, two other drivers, and a pit crew. When he raced he chewed on a cigar. He had a reputation as a boozer, woman chaser, a confirmed gambler with bad luck. He made three thousand dollars for an afternoon’s exhibition, not bad for an unlettered kid born in a cabin in the woods of northwest Ohio.
Oldfield’s advance man arrived in Detroit on Monday before the exhibition. He spoke at the Detroit Athletic Club, the Rotary, and other civic organizations. He drummed up excitement for Oldfield’s attempt on his own one-mile speed record, and for the arrival in the Michigan Central yards of the boxcar carrying Oldfield’s three racecars. Both sides of the boxcar carried huge bright lettering.
BARNEY OLDFIELD SPEED KING OF THE WORLD
On Friday Barney and entourage rolled into Detroit in the private rail car. The mayor and several hundred citizens welcomed the Speed King when he stepped to the rear platform, shot his arms over his head, and shouted his favorite greeting, “You know me—Barney Oldfield.” The crowd’s roar said they certainly did.
Carl could catch up on all this only by doing something rare for him, reading the papers. They printed photos and lengthy copy about the famous driver. Carl thought him a pretty ordinary-looking fellow, round faced and dark haired, though his smile had a certain pixie charm.
Carl invited Tess to the fairgrounds, but she declined, saying she didn’t want to hold him back when he tried to meet Oldfield, as he said he wanted. Carl knew Tess well enough to suspect that she looked on the reckless world of auto racing the same way Sykes looked at him—as competition. She wasn’t overt about it or the least bitter. But she was firm. It made him uneasy. He didn’t want to face a choice between two loves.
Sunday turned out bright and beautiful, with the fairgrounds grandstand packed to capacity. Carl had a cheap seat, high up in the shade under the roof. His heart started beating fast the moment he sat down with his five-cent program in hand.
Trotting races took up the first hour, building the crowd’s anticipation. After the last sulky left the track, a water wagon drawn by two heavy Clydesdales circled the dirt oval to wet it down. Barney’s advance man stepped in front of the grandstand with a megaphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, here’s the moment you’ve awaited—the man you came to see. You know him as the Old Master. World’s Champion Automobilist. The Speed King of the World. Please give a warm welcome to Barney Oldfield.”
From behind the grandstand, pit mechanics pushed Barney’s National racecar, painted with red and white stripes and white stars on a blue field. The stripes ran the length of the cowl, the stars decorated the front end. At the wheel, solo, Barney Old-field waved to the crowd, a familiar figure from scores of news pictures: white coverall, goggles, cotton plugs in his ears, half-smoked cigar between his teeth. He shouted greetings to the stands, unheard because of the cheers and stomping and whistling.
“We are now ready for Barney’s attempt on his one-mile speed record. Barney, are you all set?”
“All set, Mr. Pickens.”
“Judges in the grandstand ready?” They waved handkerchiefs. “Start your engine.”
The crowd roared. One of the pit mechanics spun the crank. And again. With a cough and a mighty backfire explosion, the engine of “Old Glory” started. But something was wrong, and Barney jumped out. A wave of silence swept upward through the stands. In the hush everyone heard the roughness of the motor.
Looking grim, Barney pushed his goggles up on his forehead and unlatched the cowl on the side away from the stands. He lifted the hinged cowl, held it with one hand, and reached into the guts of the car with the other. After a minute or so he suddenly withdrew his hand, grinned, and gave the thumbs-up sign. Carl and several thousand others shouted deliriously when they heard the motor running smoothly.
Barney latched the cowl, jumped in the car, and waited as the advance man lifted his starting pistol. Barney snugged his goggles on his nose; chomped his cigar. The pistol fired. The crowd screamed.
Barney sped away to the first turn, spewing dust behind. The National circled the track and blazed past the grandstand, this time taking the green flag to signal the start of the test lap. Carl was on his feet, yelling. He tried to time Barney by taking his pulse but soon lost the count in the excitement.
Barney took the checkered flag and slowed down. He U-turned at the head of the backstretch and drove to the stands. Just as he arrived, the advance man rushed down from the judge’s booth, where he’d collected timing slips. Barney chugged to a stop in front of the center stand, timing it perfectly to hear the advance man shout through his megaphone:
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have the official results. The Speed King of the World has just set a new record for the measured mile—forty-three and two-tenths seconds, which breaks his previous record by one-tenth of a second!”
Pandemonium. People tossed programs, threw confetti; Carl’s head was draped with crepe paper streamers. In his excitement Tess was completely forgotten.
Barney and his team followed the speed run with three five-mile heat races. The competing cars were a Peerless and a Stearns. Barney took the first heat by two car lengths. In the second heat the driver of the Peerless, Red Fletcher, passed him going into the final lap. Barney fought back, gunning it and trying to maneuver around Fletcher. He failed, and the Peerless won by a length.
At the start of the final heat Barney looked grim as a man on death row. The race was a heart-stopping duel between
the Peerless and “Old Glory,” one nosing ahead, then the other as they ran wheel to wheel, dangerously close. Going into the last lap, Barney trailing on the outside, it looked like a repeat of the second heat. As the two leaders screamed down the home stretch—the Stearns was still rounding the far back turn—Barney suddenly wheeled over behind the Peerless, accelerating between his rival and the fence.
Too narrow, you’ll crash! Carl didn’t know whether he shouted it out loud or only in his head. Barney drove relentlessly, never looking to right or left. He roared over the finish line half a length ahead of his rival, who slowed down, shaking his head in despair.
Carl had a brief suspicion about the outcome. Was it rigged? Didn’t matter, the spectacle was thrilling. The celebration in the stands was as great or greater than that after the speed run. Barney leaped out of his car, tore off his goggles, made nearly opaque by dust, shot both arms over his head triumphantly. The standing ovation lasted five minutes.
Carl limped down the grandstand stairs, exhausted. As the May twilight settled, he leaned against the stand and rolled a cigarette. He knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
After the crowds dispersed, Carl loitered near the livestock barn being used as a garage. The evening was cool, the red of the western horizon shifting chameleon-like through shades of delicate blue-green, pale blue, dark blue high up where the stars winked. Eventually Barney emerged from the barn with his teammates, pit mechanics, and his wife, a brunette with a lush figure and smoky good looks. Barney wore his long sealskin coat. Laughing and chattering, they all climbed into two Chalmers touring cars provided by the track. Carl heard someone say there was a good roadhouse a half mile up the pike. The open autos drove away. Carl flipped his cigarette into the dust and followed on foot.