Coming out of the turn in a thick tan cloud, Carl took the middle of the straightaway by instinct alone. The dust blew away; the grandstand and pits loomed in the sunshine. Three more laps to catch Artie, who was already sprinting into the next turn, toward the backstretch. Through the oil-specked lenses of his secondhand Zeiss goggles, Carl saw spectators sitting on the white rail fence at the turn beyond the stands. Damn fools.
The track was in a northern suburb of Detroit. The race was the closing event of the day, a hot, dry Sunday in early summer. Carl worked six days a week at Henry Ford’s auto plant, and on the seventh day he raced.
Today, four earlier races had rutted the track and torn out chunks of the hard soil the drivers called gumbo. A piece of it flew up over the radiator and hit the windscreen, cracking it. Above the engine roar Carl heard his riding mechanic yell. It might have been, “Lord Jesus,” or “Oh, God,” because a chunk of flying gumbo could smash goggles and put out a driver’s eye. This piece luckily glanced away to the right, gone.
Four cars remained in the race, a Peugeot, a National, Artie’s Mason, and Carl’s Edmunds Special with lightning bolts painted on the cowl. The Peugeot and National were a lap and a half behind; they had no chance. Carl was on Artie’s tail, battling for the lead.
By now the race was taking its toll. His rear end hurt, and his legs were killing him, not only cramped but aching from working the accelerator and clutch pedal up and down, up and down, every few seconds. Carl looked like a mummy: long-sleeved shirt, leather gauntlets, leather helmet, goggles, chamois face mask. Underneath his shirt hot, itchy burlap wrapped his chest and belly to help absorb the severe vibration of the frame. It came through the wheel to his gloved hands, his arms, and his shoulders.
The first sections of the crowded grandstand flashed by on his right. Seated to his left, Jesse, his mechanic, was constantly in motion, peering at the gas and oil gauges, pumping up the gas pressure to spurt gas to the front carburetor from the rear tank, watching the four smooth rubber tires, especially the rear ones. They’d already changed two tires in the pit halfway through the race. Jesse also kept a lookout behind, signaling Carl if someone wanted to pass. The signal was one tap on Carl’s left knee. With all the noise, shouting and being understood was impossible.
Halfway past the grandstand now, clocking something like fifty mph. On the fence rail at the turn coming up, amid people wearing drab clothes, something bright white shone. Artie Flugel roared out of sight into the far back turn. Carl shoved the accelerator pedal down. Jesse tapped his knee frantically, twice. Tire going.
Carl looked at Jesse for a second. Jesse stabbed a finger over his right shoulder. Right rear. It always took the worst beating.
He knew he should slow down for the turn, but Artie was already showing him too much dust, and driving was more than a friendly sport, it was a game of high risks. Carl roared into the turn high up on the track near the fence where all those people roosted like crows on a wire. Jesse shouted another warning an instant before the rear tire blew like a Fourth of July torpedo.
Carl pushed his cars, took chances. This time, as the Special began to slew and slide, he knew he’d guessed wrong. The Special headed straight for the fence sitters, who were screaming and scrambling and trying to get down, get away, but couldn’t, not fast enough.
As the Special hurtled toward the fence through the sun-bright dust, Carl experienced a strange, suspended moment, the kind of moment that had come to him in tight places before. He was scared, terrified, but it was an exhilarating kind of fright—nearly unendurable, but if you survived it, if you tricked fate one more time, the fear would be followed by a giddy pride—fast breathing, laughter at nothing—when you walked away from the car. This time, unless he did something fast, he and Jesse wouldn’t walk away.
If he drove into the fence, a lot of people would die. At the fence’s far end, hay bales were banked in the turn. Carl yanked the wheel over left, stood on the brake. The rear end juddered and slid. The Special just cleared the end of the fence, where all the spectators were diving for their lives. Carl shouted a pointless “Hang on, Jess” as the Special hit the hay bales, burst through, slammed down into a ditch, and threw them both out of the car like rag dolls.
A tree limb raked the top of Carl’s head. He landed violently on his back in long grass, wind knocked out, ready to wet his pants because he reckoned that if he’d sailed an inch or two higher, the tree limb would have decapitated him, chop.
He clawed his way out of the grass, ripped his goggles and helmet and mask off, sucking air. The Special lay nose down in the ditch, its front end crumpled like a tin can someone had stomped on. Oil smoke leaked out. The smell of gas was raw in the Sunday air. People were running from the fence, from the grandstand—the racetrack vultures who’d loot any available souvenir from a smashed-up car.
Carl didn’t see his riding mechanic. He had a queasy feeling that his friend lay in the ditch with a broken neck.
“Jesse?”
Nothing—silence, broken only by the greedy cries of the vultures around the Special and the faraway snarling of the cars finishing the race. The Special’s owner, Hoot Edmunds, walked slowly toward the looters. Hoot’s straw hat was tilted at its usual rakish angle. His striped seersucker blazer was properly buttoned, and he twirled his Malacca cane. Carl had just thrown away Hoot’s latest investment of several thousand dollars.
Then Carl saw the bright white person from the fence. The white was a shirtwaist, and the person was a girl with blond hair.
Curly black hair, a long-jawed head, coffee-and-cream skin poked up from the ditch. Blood ran from a gash over the man’s left eye, dripping on his coverall.
Jesse climbed out of the ditch with a dolorous expression. He was taller than Carl, starvation thin. He was colored, though clearly one or more ancestors had mixed a lot of white blood with his blackness. Jesse Shiner was ten years older than Carl, and lucky to be riding as a mechanician. He had the job because Carl had insisted Jess’s color didn’t matter, only his skill as a self-taught mechanic.
Jesse and Carl stood a foot apart, staring at each other. As if by thought transmission, they came to the same realization at the same moment: they were miraculously whole. Both started to laugh wildly.
“Jess, you crazy high-yellow bastard, are you all right?”
“Tell you later, when all my bones knit up again.” Giddy in the wake of fear, they threw their arms around each other and slapped each other on the back. Both men stank of sweat, and oil, and neither gave a damn. Hoot Edmunds strolled up, twirling his cane.
“Boys, are you in one piece?” Hoot liked to call them boys even though he was three years younger than Carl, twenty-two. Hoot was the only son of Magnus Edmunds, a man who’d made a fortune, as some other Detroiters had, manufacturing marine engines for Great Lakes steamers and freighters. The heir to Magnus Marine Motors (“Triple M”) hated his baptismal name, Elwood, so he’d looked around for something sportier.
“Think so, Hoot,” Carl said. “Those goddamn tires don’t last long enough. Firestone and his pals should be hung out to dry till they come up with better ones.”
Hoot took off his straw hat, revealing a head of brown ringlets above a bland pink face. He wiped his perspiring brow and agreed.
“That was a fine bit of driving at the last moment,” he said.
“Only thing to do.” Carl’s legs shook from the up-and-down pedal pressure. He waved toward the great sycamore that had nearly guillotined him. “Need to sit down.”
He sat with his spine against the bark. The vultures were all over the Special, cutting away, carving out pieces of the tires with pocket knives, working the windscreen back and forth to free it. My God, that man even brought his own tin snips.
“I’m sorry I wrecked the car, Hoot.”
“Don’t worry, there’s plenty of money to manufacture another.” Like a lot of young heirs to Detroit’s factories and machine shops, Hoot Edmunds had little to occupy his time,
and had adopted autos because of their speed, and sportiness, and aura of luxury.
“Why were those fools squatting on the rail?” Jesse complained. “Why didn’t the stewards drive ’em off?”
“They tried,” someone standing behind Hoot said in a sweet, light voice. “We refused to leave. It’s such an excellent vantage point.” The speech was overlapped by a man in the ditch who said loudly, “Say, look at that, Jack, his mechanic’s a nigger.”
Jesse rolled his eyes and turned away with a weary expression. Carl shot a look at the loud-mouthed man. The person behind Hoot stepped to one side, so as to be visible. Sycamore leaves threw a lovely shadow pattern onto the full bosom of her bright white shirtwaist.
“But you really did save lives. It was a very brave thing to do,” she said. Carl found himself looking at—drowning in—the loveliest dark blue eyes he’d ever seen.
Ever the prescient young gentleman, Hoot saw Carl’s interest and excused himself. He strolled back to the crumpled Special. His presence did nothing to discourage the scavengers ripping and bending and cutting with abandon. Hoot put his cane over his shoulder and looked on with mingled wonder and dismay.
Jesse went the other way, off from the white people, to roll himself a smoke with Bull Durham from his pocket sack.
The girl said, “You’re a very accomplished driver.” Carl wondered where she got the experience that let her judge. “Have you been doing it long?”
“Started last summer. It isn’t that hard. You need strong arms and shoulders, and you have to be willing to be killed before you’re thirty.” He said it smiling. She laughed.
“You need a lot more than that, sir. There’s skill. In my estimation you possess a great deal of it.”
Carl had never met a young woman quite so forward. She wasn’t fresh in a sexual sense, just plain-spoken, direct. She was about his age, about his height, with a pleasing roundness to all her parts. Her hips were broad, her breasts big and full. She had a pretty, round face, blond curls, full lips that would be tasty to kiss. And those vivid eyes—dark blue as he imagined the South Seas to be. He planned to see the South Seas one day. Meantime, her eyes would do fine. She was nicely though not expensively dressed, with a ribboned straw hat and striped summer parasol.
He grabbed the sycamore trunk and stood, despite her protest that he needn’t. As he walked to her, he noticed Hoot watching them in a funny, speculative way.
“Well, I do thank you for the compliment, miss—”
“My name’s Teresa. I prefer Tess.”
“Carl. Carl Crown.” He put out his hand, still encased in a greasy leather glove, which he peeled off with embarrassed haste. Her fingers were cool and firm. He felt his body react; he hadn’t been with a woman in months.
“The kind of selflessness you exhibited should be rewarded in some way,” the girl said. “So many people think only of themselves. Might I invite you to supper at our house? I’m sure my father would enjoy meeting you.”
Surprised, Carl took a moment to react. “Sure, of course. But it isn’t necessary.”
“I know that. I would like it. I’m afraid I have to ask you to come a rather long way. Our residence is Woodward Avenue, but during the summer we live at Grosse Pointe.”
“The electric cars run out there, don’t they?”
“Indeed,” she said, dropping her parasol in the grass and opening her reticule. “Would Saturday evening be convenient?”
“Yes, fine, perfect,” he exclaimed. Then he grinned. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a pretty young woman who likes racing.”
“My father has a small connection with the auto business. That’s how I got interested. Father doesn’t like me to attend the races alone, though. He tries to forbid it, and I have to remind him I’m of legal age. He finds it very annoying. I seem to annoy a lot of men that way. That’s why I’m still single, don’t you suppose?” She said it teasingly, though he detected a certain hint of sadness. “May I borrow your shoulder?”
She put a slip of paper against it and wrote with a pencil. “This is the address. Is six o’clock convenient?”
“I don’t get off work until six.”
“Half past seven, then?”
“That should do fine, Miss—um, Tess.”
“I’ll see you then.” Solemnly, she shook his hand a second time, then walked away, opening her parasol as she crossed the ditch into the sunshine by the white fence. Carl watched the movement of her hips under her skirt. He was hard as a stick.
Panicked, he realized he hadn’t asked her about the proper attire. For Grosse Pointe, where the rich of Woodward and Jefferson Avenues had their second homes, he’d probably need a necktie. He didn’t own any. If he couldn’t borrow one from Jess, he’d have to buy one at Mabley’s or Rothman’s.
Tess disappeared behind the grandstand, taking Carl down from the heights abruptly. He noticed Artie Flugel talking to Hoot. He walked over to them, legs and shoulders aching. He kept a bottle of Mustang Liniment in his room at all times. Tonight he wouldn’t be able to get to it fast enough.
“Tough luck, kid.” Artie shook Carl’s hand. Artie was forty or so, stumpy, with a lined, wind-burned face.
“I’ll give you some dust next time.” Carl dug in his pocket and paid off the bet. Artie went away chuckling.
Hoot regarded him in a quizzical way. Carl said, “Something funny?”
“That girl. You were quite friendly.”
“Why not? She’s pretty. She invited me to supper on Saturday.”
“Really. I assume you know who she is?”
“Her name’s Teresa. Should I know more than that?”
“I suppose not, you don’t hang out with the Detroit elite. Especially the ones who build automobiles. Teresa Clymer is Lorenzo Clymer’s daughter.”
Jesse strolled up in time to hear. “You mean Clymer as in Clymer, the Quality Car for Quality People?”
“That’s the one.”
“He owns foundries,” Jesse said to Carl. “Owns the one I work at.” Doing the miserable, dangerous work with molten metal that white men wouldn’t touch. Jesse didn’t say that to Hoot, but he and Carl were friends, and he’d said it to him. Jesse called it “the nigger work.”
“Clymer doesn’t actually run an auto plant,” Hoot explained. “He merely lends his name to the company. That’s common, J. L. Hudson does the same thing. Clymer’s put money into auto ventures for some years now. I suggest you develop a sudden bellyache Saturday night. Clymer and the rest of his friends who make autos costing $2,000 think your employer is a man with stupid ideas. Clymer owned shares in Henry’s second company, the one Henry walked away from—it’s Cadillac now. I’d say most of the Grosse Pointe crowd hates Henry’s guts, and to my knowledge it’s mutual.”
Carl stood speechless. The Henry referred to was Ford, proprietor and resident genius of the Ford Motor Company.
14. Paul’s Anchor
The flat on Cheyne Walk was quiet. Betsy, three, still took an afternoon nap. Seven-year-old Shad sat next to his father in the bay window seat, examining a book with a look of wonderment. Paul and Julie called the boy Shad because too many Joes in the family created confusion.
It was June, Sunday, warm and drowsy. The casements were cranked open. Against the lush green background of Battersea Park on the far riverbank, barges and slow sightseeing boats moved along the Thames between the bridges. The boy traced a finger across his father’s name under the book’s title, I Witness History.
“You really wrote this, Papa?”
Paul smiled, stuck a match to his cigar. Vest unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, he rested one arm companionably on his son’s shoulders.
“Every word, good or bad.”
“Oh, it’s all good, Papa, isn’t it?” Shad was a bright-faced, sturdy boy whose dark brown eyes, from Paul, complemented the thick ink-black hair inherited from Julie.
“Well, people seem to think so. It’s only been in the stalls since March, and they’re printing a s
econd edition.” He’d called at the publisher’s offices in Bridewell Place, Blackfriars. Everyone including the proprietor, Collins, had congratulated Paul on the book’s success.
Success had certainly surprised the first-time author. Paul had hooted when Julie first showed him Fritzi’s letter suggesting he write about his experiences. Julie was the one who’d encouraged him whenever he could find a week or two at home to write in the midnight hours. She was the one who’d hired a female typewriter to prepare the manuscript, which she’d carried personally to several publishers. The fourth she called on took it immediately. Paul had just signed a contract with a New York firm, Century, for an American edition.
Shad turned pages. “I can’t read a lot of these big words.”
Paul ruffled the boy’s hair. The children, Julie, the two-story flat on the upper floors of the Cheyne Walk town house were anchors that held him secure when he ventured to remote parts of the world where life was cheap and survival uncertain.
“You’ll understand them when you’re a little older.”
Like all youngsters, Shad kept his attention focused on one subject only for a few minutes. He gripped his father’s knee to show his earnestness. “Can we go to the zoo next week?”
“Saturday. My ship sails from Liverpool on Sunday.”
“You’re going back to America?”
“To make more pictures, and to give a few lectures. I’ve never done that before.”
“What’s a lecture?”
“A talk to an audience. Mine’s all about some of the places I’ve been, things I’ve seen. I’ve fixed up two reels of film to show during the talk.” A man in New York, one William Schwimmer at a company called American Platform Artists, had gotten a copy of his book and written to say he could arrange some lucrative auditorium appearances on Paul’s next trip. Nervously, Paul agreed to try it. Lord Yorke didn’t object, in fact thought the exposure might help open doors for his star cameraman.