Wheels Read online

  But on Tuesday, tiredness won. He failed to wake until, through the curtainless dirty window of his room, the sun shone directly on his face. Rollie got up sleepily, blinking, and went to the window to look down. A clock in the street below showed that it was almost noon.

  He knew he had blown it, that the job was gone. His reaction was indifference. He did not experience disappointment because, from the beginning, he had not expected any other outcome. How and when the ending came were merely details.

  Experience had never taught Rollie Knight—or tens of thousands like him—to take a long-term view of anything. When you were born with nothing, had gained nothing since, had learned to live with nothing, there was no long-term view—only today, this moment, here and now. Many in the white world—nescient, shallow thinkers—called the attitude “shiftless,” and condemned it. Sociologists, with more understanding and some sympathy, named the syndrome “present time orientation” or “distrust of the future.” Rollie had heard neither phrase, but his instincts embraced both. Instinct also told him, at this moment, he was still tired. He went back to sleep.

  He made no attempt, later, to return to the training center or the hiring hall. He went back to his haunts and street corner living, making a dollar when he could, and when he couldn’t, managing without. The cop he had antagonized—miraculously—left him alone.

  There was only one postscript—or so it seemed at the time—to Rollie’s employment.

  During an afternoon some four weeks later, he was visited at the rooming house, where he was still sharing space on sufferance, by an instructor from the factory training course. Rollie Knight remembered the man—a beefy, florid-faced ex-plant foreman with thinning hair and a paunch, now puffing from the three flights of stairs he had been forced to climb.

  He asked tersely, “Why’d you quit?”

  “I won the Irish Sweep, man. Doan need no job.”

  “You people!” The visitor surveyed the dismal quarters with disgust. “To think we have to support your kind with taxes. If I had my way …” He left the sentence unfinished and produced a paper. “You have to sign here. It says you’re not coming any more.”

  Indifferently, not wanting trouble, Rollie signed.

  “Oh, yes, and the company made out some checks. Now they have to be paid back in.” He riffled through some papers, of which there seemed to be a good many. “They want you to sign those, too.”

  Rollie endorsed the checks. There were four.

  “Another time,” the instructor said unpleasantly, “try not to cause other people so much trouble.”

  “Go screw yourself, fatso,” Rollie Knight said, and yawned.

  Neither Rollie nor his visitor was aware that while their exchange was taking place, an expensive, late-model car was parked across the street from the rooming house. The car’s sole occupant was a tall, distinguished-appearing, gray-haired Negro who had watched with interest while the training course instructor went inside. Now, as the beefy, florid-faced man left the building and drove his own car away, the other car followed, unobserved, at a discreet distance, as it had through most of the afternoon.

  10

  “C’mon baby, leave the goddam drink. I gotta bottle in the room.”

  Ollie, the machinery salesman, peered impatiently at Erica Trenton in the semidarkness, across the small black table separating them.

  It was early afternoon. They were in the bar of the Queensway Inn, not far from Bloomfield Hills, Erica dawdling over her second drink which she had asked for as a delaying device, even though recognizing that delay was pointless because either they were or weren’t going through with what they had come here for, and if they were they might as well get on with it.

  Erica touched her glass. “Let me finish this. I need it.”

  She thought: He wasn’t a bad-looking man, in a raffish kind of way. He was trimly built and his body was obviously better than his speech and manners, probably because he worked on it—she remembered him telling her with pride that he went to a gym somewhere for regular workouts. She supposed she could do worse, though wished she had done better.

  The occasion when he had told her about workouts in the gym had been at their first meeting, here in this same bar. Erica had come for a drink one afternoon, the way other lonely wives did sometimes, in the hope that something interesting might happen, and Ollie had struck up a conversation—Ollie, cynical, experienced, who knew this bar and why some women came to it. After that, their next meeting had been by arrangement, when he had taken a room in the residential section of the inn, and assumed she would go to it with him. But Erica, torn between a simple physical need and nagging conscience, had insisted on staying at the bar all afternoon, and in the end left for home, to Ollie’s anger and disgust. He had written her off, it seemed, until she telephoned him several weeks ago.

  Even since then, they had had to delay their arrangement because Ollie had not come back from Cleveland as expected, and instead went on to two other cities—Erica had forgotten where. But they were here now, and Ollie was becoming impatient.

  He asked, “How about it, baby?”

  Suddenly she remembered, with a mixture of wryness and sadness, a maxim on Adam’s office wall: Do IT TODAY!

  “All right,” Erica said. She pushed back her chair and stood up.

  Walking beside Ollie, down the inn’s attractive, picture-hung corridors—where many others had walked before her on the same kind of assignation—she felt her heart beat faster, and tried not to hurry.

  Several hours later, thinking about it calmly, Erica decided the experience was neither as good as she had hoped for, nor as bad as she had feared. In a basic, here-and-now way, she had found sensual satisfaction; in another way, which was harder to define, she hadn’t. She was sure, though, of two things. First, such satisfaction as she had known was not lasting, as it had been in the old days when Adam was an aggressive lover and the effect of their love-making stayed with her, sometimes for days. Second, she would not repeat the experience—at least, with Ollie.

  In such a mood, from the Queensway Inn in late afternoon, Erica went shopping in Birmingham. She bought a few things she needed, and some others she didn’t, but most of her pleasure came from what proved to be an exciting, challenging game—removing items from stores without payment. She did so three times, with increasing confidence, acquiring an ornamental clothes hanger, a tube of shampoo, and—especial triumph!—an expensive fountain pen.

  Erica’s earlier experience, when she had purloined the ounce of Norell, had showed that successful shoplifting was not difficult. The requirements, she decided now, were intelligence, quickness, and cool nerve. She felt proud of herself for demonstrating that she possessed all three.

  11

  On a dismal, grimy, wet November day, six weeks after the meeting with Adam Trenton at the proving ground, Brett DeLosanto was in downtown Detroit—in a gray, bleak mood which matched the weather.

  His mood was uncharacteristic. Normally, whatever pressures, worries and—more recently—doubts assailed the young car designer, he remained cheerful and good-natured. But on a day like today, he thought, to a native Californian like himself, Detroit in winter was just too much, too awful.

  He had reached his car, moments earlier, on a parking lot near Congress and Shelby, having battled his way to it on foot, through wind and rain and traffic, the last seeming to flow interminably the instant he sought to cross any intersection, so that he was left standing impatiently on curbs, already miserably sodden, and getting wetter still.

  As for the inner city around him … ugh! Always dirty, preponderantly ugly and depressing at any time, today’s leaden skies and rain-as Brett’s imagination saw it—were like spreading soot on a charnel house. Only one worse time of year existed: in March and April, when winter’s heavy snows, frozen and turned black, began to melt. Even then, he supposed, there were people who became used to the city’s hideousness eventually. So far, he hadn’t.

  Inside his c
ar, Brett started the motor and got the heater and windshield wipers going. He was glad to be sheltered at last; outside, the rain was still beating down heavily. The parking lot was crowded, and he was boxed in, and would have to wait while two cars ahead of him were moved to let him out. But he had signaled an attendant as he came into the lot, and could see the man now, several rows of cars away.

  Waiting, Brett remembered it was on such a day as this that he had first come to Detroit himself, to live and work.

  The ranks of auto company designers were heavy with expatriate Californians whose route to Detroit, like his own, had been through the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, which operated on a trimester system. For those who graduated in winter and came to Detroit to work, the shock of seeing the city at its seasonal worst was so depressing that a few promptly returned West and sought some other design field as a livelihood. But most, though jolted badly, stayed on as Brett had done, and later the city revealed compensations. Detroit was an outstanding cultural center, notably in art, music, and drama, while beyond the city, the State of Michigan was a superb sports-vacation arena, winter and summer, boasting some of the lovelier unspoiled lakes and country in the world.

  Where in hell, Brett wondered, was the parking-lot guy to move those other cars?

  It was this kind of frustration—nothing major—which had induced his present bad temper. He had had a luncheon date at the Pontchartrain Hotel with a man named Hank Kreisel, an auto parts manufacturer and friend, and Brett had driven to the hotel, only to find the parking garage full. As a result he had to park blocks away, and got wet walking back. At the Pontchartrain there had been a message from Kreisel, apologizing, but to say he couldn’t make it, so Brett lunched alone, having driven fifteen miles to do so. He had several other errands downtown, and these occupied the rest of the afternoon; but in walking from one place to the next, a series of rude, horn-happy drivers refused to give him the slightest break on pedestrian crossings, despite the heavy rain.

  The near-savage drivers distressed him most. In no other city that he knew—including New York, which was bad enough—were motorists as boorish, inconsiderate, and unyielding as on Detroit streets and freeways. Perhaps it was because the city lived by automobiles, which became symbols of power, but for whatever reason a Detroiter behind the wheel seemed changed into a Frankenstein. Most newcomers, at first shaken by the “no quarter asked or given” driving, soon learned to behave similarly, in self-defense. Brett never had. Used to inherent courtesy in California, Detroit driving remained a nightmare to him, and a source of anger.

  The parking-lot attendant had obviously forgotten about moving the cars ahead. Brett knew he would have to get out and locate the man, rain or not. Seething, he did. When he saw the attendant, however, he made no complaint. The man looked bedraggled, weary, and was soaked. Brett tipped him instead and pointed to the blocking cars.

  At least, Brett thought, returning to his car, he had a warm and comfortable apartment to go home to, which probably the attendant hadn’t. Brett’s apartment was in Birmingham, a part of swanky Country Club Manor, and he remembered that Barbara was coming in tonight to cook dinner for the two of them. The style of Brett’s living, plus an absence of money worries which his fifty thousand dollars a year salary and bonus made possible, were compensations which Detroit had given him, and he made no secret of enjoying them.

  At last the cars obstructing him were being moved. As the one immediately ahead swung clear, Brett eased his own car forward.

  The exit from the parking lot was fifty yards ahead. One other car was in front, also on the way out. Brett DeLosanto accelerated slightly to close the gap and reached for money to pay the exit cashier.

  Suddenly, appearing as if from nowhere, a third car—a dark green sedan—shot directly across the front of Brett’s, swung sharply right and slammed into second place in the exit line. Brett trod on his brakes hard, skidded, regained control, stopped and swore. “You goddam maniac!”

  All the frustrations of the day, added to his fixation about Detroit drivers, were synthesized in Brett’s actions through the next five seconds. He leaped from his car, stormed to the dark green sedan and wrathfully wrenched open the driver’s door.

  “You son-of-a …” It was as far as he got before he stopped.

  “Yes?” the other driver said. He was a tall, graying, well-dressed black man in his fifties. “You were saying something?”

  “Never mind,” Brett growled. He moved to close the door.

  “Please wait! I do mind! I may even complain to the Human Rights Commission. I shall tell them: A young white man opened my car door with every intention of punching me in the nose. When he discovered I was of a different race, he stopped. That’s discrimination, you know. The human rights people won’t like it.”

  “It sure would be a new angle.” Brett laughed. “Would you prefer me to finish?”

  “I suppose, if you must,” the graying Negro said. “But I’d much rather buy you a drink, then I can apologize for cutting in front like that, and explain it was a foolish, irrational impulse at the end of a frustrating day.”

  “You had one of those days, too?”

  “Obviously we both did.”

  Brett nodded. “Okay, I’ll take the drink.”

  “Shall we say Jim’s Garage, right now? It’s three blocks from here and the doorman will park your car. By the way, my name is Leonard Wingate.”

  The green sedan led the way.

  The first thing they discovered, after ordering Scotches on the rocks, was that they worked for the same company. Leonard Wingate was an executive in Personnel and, Brett gathered from their conversation, about two rungs down from vice-president level. Later, he would learn that his drinking companion was the highest-ranking Negro in the company.

  “I’ve heard your name,” Wingate told Brett. “You’ve been Michelangelo-ing the Orion, haven’t you?”

  “Well, we hope it turns out that way. Have you seen the prototype?”

  The other shook his head.

  “I could arrange it, if you’d like to.”

  “I would like. Another drink?”

  “My turn.” Brett beckoned a bartender.

  The bar of Jim’s Garage, colorfully festooned with historic artifacts of the auto industry, was currently an “in” place in downtown Detroit. Now, in early evening, it was beginning to fill, the level of business and voices rising simultaneously.

  “A whole lot riding on that Orion baby,” Wingate said.

  “Damn right.”

  “Especially jobs for my people.”

  “Your people?”

  “Hourly paid ones, black and white. The way the Orion goes, so a lot of families in this city’ll go: the hours they work, what their take-home is—and that means the way they live, eat, whether they can meet mortgage payments, have new clothes, a vacation, what happens to their kids.”

  Brett mused. “You never think of that when you’re sketching a new car or throwing clay to shape a fender.”

  “Don’t see how you could. None of us ever knows the half of what goes on with other people; all kinds of walls get built between us—brick, the other kind. Even when you do get through a wall once in a while, and find out what’s behind it, then maybe try to help somebody, you find you haven’t helped because of other stinking, rotten, conniving parasites …” Leonard Wingate clenched his fist and hammered it twice, silently but intensely, on the bar counter. He looked sideways at Brett, then grinned crookedly. “Sorry!”

  “Here comes your other drink, friend. I think you need it.” The designer sipped his own before asking, “Does this have something to do with those lousy aerobatics in the parking lot?”

  Wingate nodded. “I’m sorry about that, too. I was blowing steam.” He smiled, this time less tensely. “Now, I guess, I’ve let the rest of it out.”

  “Steam is only a white cloud,” Brett said. “Is the source of it classified?”

  “Not really. You’ve heard o
f hard core hiring?”

  “I’ve heard. I don’t know all the details.” But he did know that Barbara Zaleski had become interested in the subject lately because of a new project she had been assigned by the OJL advertising agency.

  The gray-haired Personnel man summarized the hard core hiring program: its objective in regard to the inner city and former unemployables; the Big Three hiring halls downtown; how, in relation to individuals, the program sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

  “It’s been worth doing, though, despite some disappointments. Our retention rate—that is, people who’ve held on to jobs we’ve given them—has been better than fifty percent, which is more than we expected. The unions have cooperated; news media give publicity which helps; there’s been other aid in other ways. That’s why it hurts to get knifed in the back by your own people, in your own company.”

  Brett asked, “Who knifed you? How?”

  “Let me go back a bit.” Wingate put the tip of a long, lean finger in his drink and stirred the ice. “A lot of people we’ve hired under the program have never, in their lives before, kept regular hours. Mostly they’ve had no reason to. Working regularly, the way most of us do, breeds habits: like getting up in the morning, being on time to catch a bus, becoming used to working five days of the week. But if you’ve never done any of that, if you don’t have the habits, it’s like learning another language; what’s more, it takes time. You could call it changing attitudes, or changing gears. Well, we’ve learned a lot about all that since we started hard core hiring. We also learned that some people—not all, but some—who don’t acquire those habits on their own, can get them if they’re given help.”

  “You’d better help me,” Brett said. “I have trouble getting up.”

  His companion smiled. “If we did try to help, I’d send someone from employee relations staff to see you. If you’d dropped out, quit coming to work, he’d ask you why. There’s another thing: some of these new people will miss one day, or even be an hour or two late, then simply give up. Maybe they didn’t intend to miss; it just happened. But they have the notion we’re so inflexible, it means automatically they’ve lost their jobs.”