The Betsy (1971) (13 page)

 Chapter Six

She fought her way up through the field of pain and opened her eyes. Her vision blurred, then cleared as she focused on the face of the doctor, leaning over her. As he straightened up, she saw the nurse behind him, and Loren.

Loren looked tired, as if he had been awake all night. The doctor stepped back and Loren came forward. He seemed so tall standing there beside the bed. So tall and so strong.

She tried to smile. “Loren.”

His voice was gentle. “Yes, Elizabeth.”

“It didn’t turn out to be much of a vacation, did it?” she whispered.

He reached for her hand. “We can always have a vacation. When you’re well again.”

She made no reply. There would be no more vacations. Not for her. But she didn’t have to say it. He knew that as well as she.

“Have you heard from the children?” she asked.

“I spoke to Junior on the telephone. He wanted to come down here. But I told him not to. Sally’s due any day now.”

“Good,” she whispered. “He should be with his wife. Especially after they waited so long for the first baby.”

“They didn’t wait so long.”

“They’ve been married almost four years,” she said. “I was beginning to feel I would never be a grandmother.”

“What’s so important about being a grandparent?” he asked. “I don’t feel like a grandfather.”

She smiled. He didn’t look like a grandfather. At fifty-one he was still a young man. Big and broad and virile. Bursting with the forces of life.

She turned her eyes toward the window. Outside the bright Florida sunshine fell from a clear blue sky and the breeze ruffled through the gently swaying palm trees. “Is it beautiful outside?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “It’s a lovely day.”

Her eyes were still on the window. “I love it here. I don’t want to go back to Detroit, Loren.”

“There’s no hurry,” he said. “First, you get well—”

She turned to look up at him, her eyes were steady on him. “You know what I mean, Loren. Afterwards. I want to stay here.”

He was silent.

She pressed his hand. “I’m sorry, Loren.”

His voice was husky. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“Yes, there is,” she said quickly. There was so much she had to say that she could never tell him until now. But now it was all clear. The triumphs, the failures, the laughter, the pain. There was so much they had shared together and so much more they might have shared that they had not. Now she could see it all. “I was never enough of a woman for you,” she whispered. “Not that I didn’t want to be. But I couldn’t. You knew that, didn’t you? That I wanted to be.”

“You’re talking like a ninny,” he said gruffly. “You’ve always been a good wife, the only wife I ever wanted.”

“Loren, I know I’ve been a good wife.” She smiled, almost reprovingly. “But that’s not what I was talking about.”

He was silent.

“I wanted you to know I never blamed you for the others. I knew what it was that you needed and in a curious sort of way was glad for you that you could have it. My only regret was that I, who wanted to give you everything, couldn’t find it in myself to give you that.”

“You gave me more than any woman ever gave a man, more than any woman ever gave me,” he said earnestly. “You never failed me. Maybe it was I who failed you. But I love you. I have always loved you. You believe that, don’t you, Elizabeth?”

She looked into his eyes for a long moment, then she nodded slightly. “And I have always loved you, Loren,” she whispered. “From the moment I walked into your little bicycle shop in Bethlehem all that time ago.”

Their hands tightened and memory flowed alive and present between them.

It had been a warm summer Sunday in Bethlehem; the great steel mills had banked their furnaces on Saturday night and only the faintest wisps of gray smoke came from the chimneys. The sun shone bright and high as Elizabeth walked her bicycle out the side door of her house to meet her girl friend.

The basket attached to the handlebars was filled with goodies for the picnic they had planned. She hadn’t told her mother but there were also going to be two young men. Her mother was very strict about those things. Before she would let Elizabeth see any man, he had to come to the house first for an inspection, and by the time that was over, he had been made to feel so uncomfortable that she rarely ever saw him again. Now she knew better. The young men were to meet them at the edge of town where there would be no chance of her parents seeing them.

Her girl friend had been waiting, the basket on the handlebars of her bicycle also packed tightly. They started off, the wide brims of their hats flapping in the breeze, pulling against the ribbons tied under their chins.

They chattered as they rode along the quiet streets. It was early in the morning and there wasn’t much traffic about. The carriages would be out later when it was time for church services. Then the streets would be filled and difficult to pass as each driver would try to urge his horse to step smartly.

The trouble came two blocks from her house when they turned off the cobblestoned street onto a dirt road. Elizabeth didn’t see the deep wagon rut on the side of the street and over she went, the picnic goodies spilling over the ground beside her.

“Are you hurt?” her girl friend asked, coming to a stop.

Elizabeth shook her head. “No.” She got to her feet and began to brush off her dress. It wasn’t too bad. “Help me pick up.”

She began to place the food back into the wire basket when she saw the front wheel of the bicycle. “Oh, no!” she groaned in dismay.

The wheel was bent out of shape. There was no way the bike could move. “What do we do now?” she asked. It was Sunday and all the repair shops would be closed. “That’s the end of the picnic for me,” she said. “I might as well go home.”

Her girl friend said quickly, “I know where you can get it fixed.” She picked up the last of the wrapped sandwiches. “My cousin just rented an old barn back of his house to a young man who repairs bicycles. He’s there all the time. Even on Sundays. He’s working on some kind of an invention.”

Twenty minutes later they were at the barn back of the house. The door was open as they came up. Inside they heard a man singing in a loud, untuneful voice. The song was mixed with the clanging of a hammer against metal. They knocked on the open barn door. Apparently they weren’t heard because the singing and the banging went on uninterrupted.

“Hello,” Elizabeth called. “Is there anyone in there?”

The singing stopped and so did the hammering. After a moment a voice came out of the dark interior. “Nope. Only some field mice.”

“Do the field mice know how to fix a bicycle?” Elizabeth called back.

There was a silence, then a young man appeared out of the darkness. He was tall and broad and covered with a light red-gold hair down to his waist which was bare. He stood there squinting at them in the bright sunlight. Then he smiled. It was a warm smile filled with a very masculine knowledge. “What can I do for you, ladies?”

“First you can put on a shirt,” Elizabeth said. “Then when you’re properly dressed, you can fix my wheel.”

Loren looked down at the bicycle for a moment, then back up at her. He stood there silently, just staring at her.

Elizabeth felt the color begin to flow into her face. “Don’t be all day about it!” she said sharply. “Can’t you see we’re going on a picnic?”

He nodded, almost as if to himself, and disappeared into the barn. A moment later the tuneless singing and hammering began again.

Five minutes later after waiting in vain for the young man to reappear, she went to the barn door and peered in. At the back of the barn there was a forge with an open fire and the young man stood in front of it, swinging a hammer against a piece of metal on an anvil. “Young man!” she called.

The hammer stopped in mid-air. He turned. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Are you going to fix my bicycle?” she asked.

The answer came promptly. “No, ma’am.”

“Why not?”

“Because you haven’t told me who you’re going to picnic with.”

“You have a nerve!” she snapped. “What business is it of yours who I picnic with?”

He put the hammer carefully down on a bench and walked toward her. “I think the man you’re going to marry has every right to know who you’re going to picnic with.”

She looked up into his face and there was something in his expression that turned her legs to water. She put a hand on the door to steady herself. “You?” she said breathlessly. “That’s silly, I don’t even know your name.”

“Loren Hardeman, ma’am,” he smiled. “What’s yours?”

“Elizabeth Frazer,” she said. Somehow the saying of her name seemed to strengthen her. “Now, will you fix my bicycle?”

“No, Elizabeth,” he said quietly. “What kind of a man would I be if I fixed your bicycle so that my girl could go off and picnic with another man?”

“But I’m not your girl!” she protested.

“Then you soon will be,” he said calmly. He reached out and took her hand.

She felt the weakness come back into her. “But, my parents,” she said in a confused voice. “You don’t—they don’t—know you.”

He didn’t answer. Just held onto her hand and looked down at her.

Her eyes fell. “Mr. Hardeman,” she said in a small voice, looking down at the floor, “now will you please fix my bike?”

He still didn’t answer.

She didn’t look up. Her voice grew even smaller. “I apologize for being rude to you when you came out, Mr. Hardeman.”

“Loren,” he said. “You might as well get used to the name. I’m not the old-fashioned kind who holds to the idea of wives calling their husbands ‘mister.’”

She looked up at him. Suddenly she smiled. “Loren,” she said tentatively as if trying its sound on her tongue.

“That’s better,” he smiled back. He let go of her hand. “Now you wait right there.”

He started toward the rear of the barn. “Where are you going?” she called after him.

“To wash up and put on a clean shirt,” he said. “After all, a man should look his best when he goes to meet his future in-laws.”

“Now?” she asked in an incredulous voice. “Right now?”

“Of course,” he called back over his shoulder. “I’m not the type of man who believes in long engagements.”

But he still had to wait almost two years before they were married. That wasn’t until May of 1900 because her parents wouldn’t let her marry before she was eighteen years old. And during the time they waited he built his first automobile.

It wasn’t really an automobile. It was more of a quadricycle, with its strange bicycle wheels and tires and spindly frame. It ran well enough to get itself banned from the main streets in Bethlehem for causing a disturbance, but not well enough to satisfy him.

There was more he had to learn and he knew it. And only one place to get that knowledge. Detroit. There were more automobile builders there than anywhere else in the United States. Henry Ford. Ransom E. Olds. Billy Durant. Charles Nash. Walter Chrysler. Henry Leland. The Dodge Brothers. These men were his heroes and his gods. And it was to sit at their feet and to learn that, one week after their marriage, he and his already pregnant but unknowing bride moved to Detroit.

The memory was still warm within him. He glanced out the window at the sun and the swaying palms. “It was a day like this,” he said. “It was a beautiful Sunday.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m grateful for that. It was the first of many beautiful Sundays we had together.”

“We haven’t seen the last of them,” he said, turning to look down at her. “Just you get well and—” His voice suddenly broke. “Elizabeth!”

There were to be no more beautiful Sundays for her.

 Chapter Seven

Junior’s voice was unemotional, the figures rattling from his tongue as if he were a tabulating machine. “The 1928 report looks good,” he said. “The Sundancer passenger cars, all models, went over four hundred and twenty thousand units, eighty percent top of the line, mostly sedans. Accessories and extras were sold for over sixty percent of the units. The truck division also had a substantial increase, up twenty-one percent over the previous year, accounting for forty-one thousand units. The only line which did not show an increase was the Loren Two. There we had trouble holding our own and if it weren’t for the liberalization of the consumer credit terms and our own guarantees to the dealers we would have fallen back. As it is, we held even with thirty-four thousand units. It’s the only division in which we’re losing money. By the time the car is passed on to the consumer, we’re dropping almost four hundred and ten dollars per unit.”

Loren picked up a heavy Havana cigar from his desk and toyed with it. Slowly he clipped the end from it, then sniffed it gently. It smelled good. He lit a match and toasted the end of it carefully, then put it in his mouth and held the fire to it. After a moment, he blew out a gust of blue smoke which curled like a cloud over his head as it rose to the ceiling.

He pushed the box toward his son. “Have a cigar.”

Junior shook his head.

Loren took another deep puff and let the smoke out. “There are only two things that will ever get a man to wear perfume,” he said. “One is if they make it smell like a fine Havana, the other is if they make it smell like pussy.”

Junior didn’t smile. “The dealers don’t like the Loren Two either. Their big complaint is that there’s no service business on the car after they sell it.”

Loren looked at him shrewdly. “You mean they’re bitching because the car’s too good.”

“I didn’t say that,” Junior said. “But maybe that’s it. Most cars require oil changes every thousand miles, the Loren Two only once every four thousand miles. The same goes for brake adjustments. The Loren’s the only car on the road right now with self-adjusting brakes.”

“Are you suggesting we bring down the quality of the car?” his father asked.

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Junior said. “I’m just calling it to your attention because I think we ought to do something about it. We’re dropping almost fourteen million a year on it.”

Loren studied the fine gray ash on the end of his Havana. “That’s the best car I ever built,” he said. “Pound for dollar it’s the best car on the road today.”

“Nobody is going to dispute that fact,” Junior said calmly. “But what we’re talking about is money. People shop price, not quality. Give them a big average-quality car at an average price or a medium-size high-quality car at the same price and they’ll pick the big one every time. Buick, Olds, Chrysler, and Hudson are proving that every day. They’re walking away from us.”

Loren looked down at his cigar again. “What do you suggest?”

“The market in electrical refrigerators and ranges is growing every day,” Junior said. “I have a chance to buy a small company that’s turning out a very commercial line and is in trouble. They need capital for expansion and can’t get it. I figured out that I can move them into the Loren plant and we’d wind up making a lot of money.”

“Nothing will ever replace the icebox,” Loren said. “Did you ever smell anything that comes out of those electric refrigerators?”

“That was years ago,” Junior said. “Now it’s different. General Electric, Nash, General Motors, even, they all are in it. It’s the coming thing.”

“And what about the Loren Two?” his father asked.

Junior looked at him. “We’ll drop it. We’re licked and we might as well admit it.”

Loren put the cigar carefully into a tray on the desk. He rose from the chair and walked over to the window of his office. Everywhere he looked there was activity.

Down at the far end of the plant, a train was beginning to move out slowly, trailing flatbed cars filled with automobiles. On the river side of the plant, a cargo ship was unloading coal to stoke the furnaces of the refining mill near the docks. The long, almost tunnel-like assembly plants were humming with activity as the raw materials went in one end and came out as automobiles at the other. And over it all hung the heavy gray pall of the smoke called industry.

“No,” he said finally, without turning around. “We keep building the Loren Two. We’ll find a way to make it go. I can’t believe that in the middle of the greatest prosperity this country has ever known a quality car won’t sell. Remember what the President said—two cars in every garage, two chickens in every pot. And Mr. Hoover knows what he’s talking about. It’s up to us to make sure that in this year of our Lord, 1929, one of those two cars in every garage will be ours.”

Junior was silent for a moment. “Then we’ll have to do something about getting the cost down. At the present rate, the more we sell, the more we lose.”

Loren turned from the window. “We’ll get on that right away. You tell that young man, what’s his name, in production-engineering, to come up and see me. I like his spirit.”

“You mean John Duncan?”

“That’s the one,” Loren said. “I hired him away from Charlie Sorenson at Ford. We’ll turn him loose on the Loren production line. Let’s see what he can come up with.”

“Bannigan will be angry,” Junior said.

Bannigan was the chief production engineer and head of the department. “Too bad,” said Loren. “We pay off on work, not temper.”

“He might quit,” Junior said. “He’s got that offer from Chrysler.”

“Good,” Loren said. “In that case don’t give him a choice. Tell him to take the offer.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“You’re president of the company now, fire him anyway,” Loren said. “I’m sick and tired of listening to him tell me why it can’t be done. I want someone who will do it.”

“Okay,” Junior said. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” Loren answered. The tone of his voice changed. “How’s my grandson?”

Junior smiled his first smile of the meeting. “Growing. You ought to see him. He’s almost eleven pounds now and only two and a half months old. We think he’s going to be big like you.”

Loren returned the smile. “Sounds great. Maybe I’ll take a run out there one morning.”

“You do that,” Junior said. “Sally will be glad to see you too.”

“How is she?”

“Fine. She’s got her figure back but she keeps complaining she’s too heavy.”

“Don’t give her a chance to get set,” Loren laughed. “Have another real quick. And make it a girl this time. I think it would be nice to name her after your mother.”

“I don’t know. Sally had a pretty rough time with this one.”

“She’s all right, isn’t she?” Loren asked quickly. “Nothing wrong with her?”

“She’s perfect,” Junior replied.

“Then pay no attention to her, son. Women always have to have something to bitch about. You just do your job and you’ll find soon enough that she’ll have no complaints.”

“We’ll see.” Junior was noncommittal. He started to leave. His father called him back. “Yes?”

“That icebox company you were talking about. You really think it’s a good deal?”

“I do.”

“Then buy it.”

Junior looked at him. “But where will we put it? I was figuring on the Loren building.”

“Come over here,” Loren said. He walked to the window and opened it. The roar of the factory came flooding into the room. He leaned out the window and pointed. “How about there?”

Junior stuck his head out the window and looked. “But that’s the old warehouse.”

Loren nodded. “It’s also a hundred and ten thousand square feet of production space that ain’t doing nothing but gathering dust and rust.”

“It’s also where we store parts and replacements,” said Junior.

“Get rid of it,” Loren said. “Why the hell did we establish regional parts depots all over the country if we’re going to keep that junk in our own backyard?” He walked back to his desk and picked up his cigar. He smelled it with obvious satisfaction. “Ship it all out to the depots and tell them what a great favor we’re doing them. Instead of the usual ten days or tenth of the month, they won’t have to pay us for ninety days.”

“That’s not fair, Father, and you know it. They’ll never sell at least fifty percent of that stuff.”

Loren relit the cigar and puffed on it. “Who said anything about being fair? Shove it to them just like they shove it to us when they get the chance. One thing you better learn and learn real good. There’s no such thing as an honest car dealer. They’re the direct descendants of the old horse thieves. And they’ll steal from anybody who gives them the opportunity. You, me, their customers, even their mothers. You didn’t hear them weeping when they hit us for the extra two hundred dollars a car on the Loren Two when they knew we were losing over two hundred a unit at that time. Oh, no, they promised to pass it on to the customer. But you and I know better. They kept it for themselves. So don’t go feeling sorry for them. Save your sympathy for where it counts. For us.”

Junior was quiet for a moment. “Somehow I can’t believe that. Not all of them can be that bad.”

Loren laughed. “Did you ever meet a poor automobile dealer?”

Junior didn’t answer.

“Tell you what, I’ll make you an offer,” Loren said. “You take a lamp and go like Diogenes to look for one honest car dealer. Just one, no more. And when you find him, you bring him here to me and I will give you all the rest of my stock in this here company and quit the business!”

“Will there be anything else, Mr. Hardeman?” his secretary asked.

Junior shook his head wearily. “I think that should do it, Miss Fisher.”

He watched her gather up the papers and leave the office. The door closed silently and respectfully behind her. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. It seemed that the details never ended. It was always a surprise to him how much his father knew about what was taking place in the business without seeming to exert any effort. He had to exhaust himself just to keep up with the tiny day-to-day affairs, much less the over-all management of the company.

Right now, he could use an administrative vice-president just to keep the organization moving smoothly. But his father was against it.

“The only way to run a business is to run it yourself,” he had said when Junior asked for permission to hire an assistant. “That way everyone knows who is the boss. I did it that way all my life and it worked.”

It didn’t make any difference how much Junior explained that times were changing and the demands were greater. His father’s final word on the subject was that he hadn’t made him president of the company so that he could shirk his responsibilities. That he was not about to go off and leave his business in the hands of strangers. And that the only reason he felt secure in leaving for Europe in May for the first vacation he had ever taken in his life was because his son was in charge.

Junior had listened with a certain kind of inner skepticism. He had heard those tales before. He would believe them when his father got on the boat. He took out his watch and looked at it.

It was nine forty-five. He reached for the telephone. His secretary answered.

“Would you get Mrs. Hardeman for me?”

There was a buzz on the line and a moment later Sally answered. “Hello.”

“Hello, darling,” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late. I hope you didn’t wait dinner for me.”

Her voice was cool. “When I didn’t hear from you by eight, I figured you were tied up and had something.”

“Good,” he said. “How’s the baby?”

“Fine.”

“Look, it’s late,” he said. “And I don’t feel up to that hour’s drive home tonight. Especially when I have a seven o’clock appointment back here tomorrow morning. Do you mind if I stay down at the club?”

There was the barest hesitation in her voice. “No. Not if you’re that tired.”

“I’ll make it home early tomorrow night,” he promised.

“Okay,” she said. “You get a good night’s rest.”

“You, too. Good night, darling.”

A click told him she had gone off the line. Slowly he put the telephone down. She was angry. He knew that. It was the second time this week he had stayed in town. His father had been right. It had been a big mistake moving all the way out to Ann Arbor. This weekend he would have a long talk with Sally about moving to Grosse Pointe.

He picked up the phone again. “Call the club,” he told his secretary. “Tell them I’ll be in and to have Samuel wait for me. I’ll want a massage before I turn in.”

He began to feel better almost before putting down the phone. That was the ticket. A very light dinner, then a hot, relaxed bath. Afterwards he would climb into bed nude and Samuel would come in with his mixture of soothing oils and alcohol. The tensions would leave him almost at the first laying on of his hands and languor would overcome him. He would be fast asleep by the time the masseur left. A deep, safe, dreamless sleep.

Sally put down the telephone and walked back into the living room. Loren looked up at her from the couch. “Is there anything wrong?”