by Anthology
‘I didn’t expect any of it back this soon,’ he said.
‘It was very kind of you to trust a stranger the way you did,’ Kathy smiled.
‘I’d surely like to know you better, Miss Benedict. I hope we can be friends.’
‘Not if you keep calling me Miss Benedict.’
‘All right, then . . .’ He grinned. ‘Kate.’
‘Kate!’
‘Aye,’ said Willy. ‘Or would you prefer Katherine?’
‘Nope. Kate will do fine. It’s just that—nobody’s called me that since I was six. Hmmmmm . . .’ She nodded. ‘Willy and Kate. Has a certain ring to it!’
And, at that precise moment, looking at the handsome, red-haired young Irishman seated beside her, she realised that she had met a totally decent human being, full of warmth and honesty and manly virtue.
She decided to investigate the possibility of falling in love with him.
They rode in Willy’s carriage through the quiet suburbs of Detroit that Sunday, savouring the briskness of the autumn air and the fire-coloured woods. Sunlight rippled along the dark flanks of their slow-trotting horse and the faint sounds of a tinkling piano reached them from a passing farmhouse.
‘I love horses,’ said Kathy. ‘I used to ride them all the time in Missouri.’
‘They’re too slow for my taste,’ Willy declared. ‘I like to work with machines . . . Cycles, for instance. That’s how I got started in this business. Bought me a motor-tandem last year. Filed down the cylinder, raised the compression, then piped the exhaust around the carburettor. She went like Billy Blue Blazes!’
‘I don’t much care for motor-cycles. People get hurt on them.’
‘You can fall off a horse, too! Heck, I admit I’ve had me some spills on the two-wheelers, but nothin’ serious. Hey—how’d you like to see where I work?’
‘Love to,’ she said.
‘Giddy-up, Teddy!’ Willy ordered, snapping the reins. He grinned over at Kathy. ‘He’s named after the President!’
Willy stopped the carriage in front of a small shop at 81 Park Place—where she was introduced to a gaunt, solemn-faced man named Ed ‘Spider’ Huff.
‘Spider’s our chief mechanic, and I’m his assistant,’ Willy explained. ‘We work together here in the shop.’
‘On cycles?’
‘Not hardly, ma’am,’ said Huff in a rasping, humourless voice. ‘This here is the age of the horseless carriage. Do you know we’ve already got almost two hundred miles of paved road in this country? In New York State alone, they got darn near a thousand automobiles registered.’
‘I assume, then, that you are working on automobiles?’
‘We sure are,’ Huff replied. ‘But the plain truth of it is there ain’t no other automobile anywhere on this whole round globe to match what we got inside—a real thoroughbred racing machine!’
‘Spider’s right for dang sure!’ nodded Willy.
She was suddenly very curious. ‘Could I see it?’
Huff canted his head, squinting at her. He rubbed a gaunt hand slowly along his chin. ‘Wimminfolk don’t cotton to racing automobilies. Too much noise. Smoke. Get grease on your dress.’
‘Truly, I’d like to see it.’
Willy clapped Huff in the shoulder. ‘C’mon, Spider—she’s a real good sport. Let’s show her.’
‘All rightie,’ nodded Huff, ‘but I’ll wager she won’t favour it none.’
They led Kathy through the office to the shop’s inner garage. A long bulked shape dominated the floor area, draped in an oil-spattered blanket.
‘We keep her tucked in like a sweet babe when we ain’t workin’ on her,’ Huff declared.
‘So I see,’ nodded Kathy.
‘Well, dang it, Willy!’ growled Huff. ‘If you’re gonna show her, then show her!’
Willy peeled off the blanket. ‘There she is!’ he said, with obvious pride in his tone.
Kathy stared at the big, square, red-painted racing machine, with its front-mounted radiator, nakedly exposed engine, and high, wire-spoked wheels. In place of a steering wheel an iron tiller bar with raised hand-grips was installed for control—and the driver sat in an open bucket seat. There was no windscreen or body panelling.
‘It’s 999!’ Kathy murmured.
The two men blinked in shock.
‘How’d you know we call her that?’ Huff demanded.
‘Uh . . . rumour’s going around town that there’s a racing car here in Detroit named after the New York Central’s locomotive. Some of the typewriters were talking about it at work.’
‘Good thing she’s about ready to race,’ declared Willy. ‘Guess when you got a rig this fast word just leaks out.’
‘Anyway, it’s a wonderful name for her. Who’s the owner?’
‘Our boss, Tom Cooper,’ said Huff. ‘Had a lot of troubles with 999
out at the track on the test runs an’ old Hank got fed up and sold out to Tom. They came into this as partners—but Hank’s out now.’
‘Hank?’
‘Yeah,’ said Willy. ‘Hank Ford. Him an’ Tom designed her together.’
‘And not an extra pound of weight anywhere on ‘er,’ said Huff. ‘That’s why the engine’s mounted on a stripped chassis. She’s got special cast-iron cylinder walls, giving a seven-inch bore and stroke. And that, ma’am, is power!’
‘Yep,’ nodded Willy. ‘She’s the biggest four-cylinder rig in the States. Separate exhaust pipes for each cylinder. We can squeeze upward of seventy horse out of her! That means, with the throttle wide open, on a watered-down track, she’ll do close to a mile a minute—better’n fifty miles an hour!’
Kathy was excited; her assignment to research a race eighty years in the past had become a present-day reality. ‘And you’ve entered her against Alex Winton for the Manufacturers’ Challenge Cup at Grosse Pointe on October 25!’
They both stared at her.
‘But how—’ Willy began.
‘Rumour,’ she added quickly. ‘That’s the rumour I heard.’
‘Well, you heard right,’ declared Huff. ‘Ole Alex Winton thinks that Bullet of his can’t be beat. Him with his big money and his fancy reputation. He’s got a surprise comin’ right enough!’
Kathy smiled. ‘Indeed he has, Mr Huff. Indeed he has.’
Each afternoon after work Kathy began dropping by the shop on Park Place to watch the preparations on 999. She was introduced to the car’s owner, Tom Cooper—and to a brash, dark-haired young man from Ohio named Barney, an ex-bicycle racer who had been hired to tame the big red racing machine.
Of course she recognised him instantly, since he was destined to become as legendary as 999 itself. His full name was Berna Eli ‘Barney’ Oldfield, the barnstorming daredevil whose racing escapades on the dirt tracks of America would earn him more fame and glory than any driver of his era. In March of 1910, at Daytona Beach, he would become the official ‘Speed King of the World’ by driving a ‘Lightning’ Benz for a new land speed record of 131 miles per hour. But here, in this moment in time, he was just a raw-looking twenty-four-year-old youth on the verge of his first automobile race.
Kathy asked him if he smoked cigars.
‘No, ma’am, I don’t,’ said Oldfield.
And the next day she brought him one. He looked confused; ladies didn’t offer cigars to gentlemen.
‘Barney,’ she said. ‘I want you to have this for the race. It’s important.’
‘But I told you, ma’am, I don’t smoke cheroots!’
‘You don’t have to smoke it, just use it.’
‘You’ve lost me, ma’am.’
‘Horse tracks are bumpy, full of ruts and potholes. A cigar between your teeth will act to cushion the road shocks. Just do me a personal favour . . . try it!’
Oldfield slipped the fat, five-cent cigar into his coverall pocket. ‘I’ll try it, Miss Benedict, because when a pretty lady asks me a favour I don’t say no.’
Kathy felt a current of excitement shiver along her body.
When she’d been researching Oldfield, as part of her 999 assignment, she had difficulty in tracing the origin of Barney’s cigar, his famed trademark during the course of his racing career. Finally, she’d uncovered an interview with Oldfield, given a month before his death in 1946, in which a reporter had asked: ‘Just where did you get your first cigar?’
And Barney had replied: ‘From a lady I met just prior to my first race. But I’ll tell you the truth, son—I don’t recall her name.’
Kathy now realised that she was the woman whose name Barney had long since forgotten. The unique image of Barney Oldfield, hunched over a racing wheel, a cigar clenched between his teeth, began with Kathy Benedict.
They arrived at the Grosse Pointe track on Friday, October 24, a full day before the race, for test runs: Willy, Spider Huff, Cooper and Oldfield. Kathy had taken sick leave from the office to be with them.
‘We’ll need all the practice time we can get,’ Willy told her. ‘Still some bugs to get out.’
‘McGuire!’ yelled Tom Cooper. ‘You gonna stand there all day gab-bin’ your fool head off—or are you gonna crank her up? Now, jump!’
And Willy jumped.
Cooper was a square-bodied, gruff-looking man wearing a fleece-lined jacket over a plaid cowboy shirt—and he had made it clear that he didn’t think women belonged around racing cars. Privately, Cooper had told Willy that he felt Kate Benedict would bring them bad luck in the race, but that he’d let her hang around so long as she ‘kept her place’ and stayed out of their way.
Tom Cooper had always had strong ideas about what a ‘good woman’ should be: ‘She ought to be a first-rate cook, be able to sing and play the piano, know how to raise kids and take care of a house, mind her manners, dress cleanly, be able to milk cows, feed chickens, tend the garden—know how to shop, be able to sew and knit, churn butter, make cheese, pickle cucumbers and drive cattle.’
He had ended this incredible list with a question: ‘And just how many of these talents do you possess, Miss Benedict?’
She lifted her chin, looking him squarely in the eye. ‘The only thing I’m really good at, Mr Cooper, is independent thinking.’
Then she’d turned on her heel and stalked away.
In practice around the mile dirt oval, Barney found that 999 was a savage beast to handle at anything approaching full throttle.
‘She’s got the power, all right, but she’s wild,’ he said after several runs. ‘Open her up and she goes for the fence. Dunno if I can keep her on the track.’
‘Are you willing to try?’ asked Cooper. ‘You’ll have to do better than fifty out there tomorrow to beat Winton’s Bullet. Can you handle her at that speed?’
Oldfield squinted down from his seat behind the tiller. ‘Well,’ he grinned, ‘this damn chariot may kill me—but they will have to say afterwards that I was goin’ like hell when she took me through the rail!’ He looked down sheepishly at Kathy: ‘And I beg yer pardon for my crude way of expression.’
The morning of October 25, 1902, dawned chill and grey, and by noon a gust of wind-driven rain had dampened the Grosse Pointe oval.
The popular horse track had originally been laid out over a stretch of low-lying marshland bordering the Detroit River, and many a spirited thoroughbred had galloped its dusty surface. On this particular afternoon, however, the crowd of two thousand excited citizens had come to see horsepower instead of horses, as a group of odd-looking machines lined up behind the starting tape. Alexander Winton, the millionaire founder of the Winton Motor Carriage Company and the man credited with the first commercial sale of an auto in the United States in 1898, was the odds-on favourite in his swift, flat-bodied Winton Bullet. Dapper and handsomely moustached, he waved a white-gloved hand to the crowd. They responded with cheers and encouragement: ‘Go get ‘em, Alex!’
Winton’s main competition was expected to come from the powerful Geneva Steamer, Detroit’s largest car, with its wide wheelbase, four massive boilers, and tall stack—looking more like a land-bound ship than a racing automobile. A Winton Pup, a White Steamer, and young Oldfield at the tiller of 999 filled out the five-car field.
Kathy spotted Henry Ford among the spectators in the main grandstand, looking tense and apprehensive; Ford was no longer the legal owner of 999, but the car had been built to his design, and he was anxious to see it win. In 1902, Ford was thirty-nine, with his whole legendary career as the nation’s auto king ahead of him. His empire was still a dream.
Kathy’s heart was pounding; she felt flushed, almost dizzy with excitement. The race she’d spent weeks reading about was actually going to happen in front of her; she was a vital, breathing part of the history she’d so carefully researched. At the starting line, she overheard Tom Cooper’s last-minute words to Oldfield.
‘All the money’s on Winton,’ he was saying. ‘But we’re betting you can whup him! What do you say, lad?’
‘I say let him eat my dust. Nobody’s gonna catch me out there on that track today.’
‘Do you think he can do it, Kate?’ asked Willy, gripping her elbow as they stood close to the fence. ‘Do you think Barney can beat Winton? The Bullet’s won a lot of races!’
‘We’ll just have to wait and see,’ she said, with a twinkle in her eyes. ‘But I can guarantee one thing—this race will go down in history!’
At the drop of the starter’s flag all five cars surged forward, the high, whistling kettle-boil scream of the steamers drowned by the thunder-pistoned roar of 999 and the Winton Bullet.
Sliding wide as he throttled the bouncing red hell wagon around the first turn, Barney immediately took the lead away from Winton. But could he hold it?
‘Winton’s a fox!’ declared Willy as they watched the cars roar into the back stretch. ‘He’s given Barney some room just to find out what 999 can do. See! He’s starting his move now!’
Which was true. It was a five-mile event, and by the end of the first mile Alex Winton had Oldfield firmly in his sights, and was closing steadily with the Bullet as the two steamers and the Pup dropped back.
It was a two-care race.
Barney knew he was in trouble. He was getting a continuous oil bath from the exposed crankshaft, and almost lost control as his goggles filmed with oil. He pushed them up on his forehead, knowing they were useless. But there was a greater problem: bouncing over the ruts and deep-gouged potholes, the car’s rigid ashwood-and-steel chassis was giving Oldfield a terrible pounding, and he was losing the sharp edge of concentration needed to win. On some of the rougher sections of the track the entire car became airborne.
Watching the Bullet’s relentless progress, as Winton closed the gap between himself and Oldfield, Kathy experienced a sharp sense of frustration. At this rate, within another mile the Bullet would overhaul 999 and take the lead.
But that must not happen, she told herself. It could not happen. The pattern of the race was already fixed in history!
Suddenly, she had the answer.
‘He forgot it!’ she yelled to Willy.
‘Forgot what?’
‘Never mind! Just wait here. I’ll be back.’
And she pushed through the spectators, knocking off a fat man’s bowler and dislodging several straw boaters; she had a destination and there was no time to waste in getting there.
When Oldfield neared the far turn, at the end of the back stretch, each new wheel hole in the track’s surface rattling his teeth, he saw Kathy Benedict straddling the fence.
She was waving him closer to the rail, pointing to something in her hand, yelling at him, her voice without sound in the Gatling-gun roar of 999’s engine.
Closer.
And yet closer.
What in the devil’s name did this mad girl want with him?
Then she tossed something—and he caught it. By damn!
The cigar!
It was just what he needed—and he jammed the cushioning cheroot between his teeth, lowered his body over the iron control bar, and opened the throttle. In a whi
rling plume of yellow dust, 999 hurtled forward.
Now let old Winton try and catch him!
‘Look at that!’ shouted Willy when Kathy was back with him at the fence. ‘He’s pullin’ away!’
Oldfield was driving brilliantly now, throwing the big red wagon into each turn with fearless energy, sliding wide, almost clipping the fence, yet maintaining that hairline edge of control at the tiller. The blast from the red car’s four open exhausts was deafening—and the crowd cheered wildly as 999 whipped past the main grandstand in a crimson blur.
By the third mile, Alex Winton was out, his overstrained engine misfiring as the Bullet slowed to a crawl in Barney’s dust.
And when Oldfield boomed under the finish flag, to a sea of cheering from the stands, he had lapped the second-place Geneva Steamer and left the other competitors far, far behind.
Willy jumped up and down, hugged Kathy, lifting her from the ground and spinning her in a circle, yelling out his delight.
Sure enough, just as she’d promised it would be, this one had been a race for the history books.
The morning papers proclaimed 999’s triumph in bold black headlines:
WINTON LOSES!
OLDFIELD WINS!
And the lurid copy described Barney as ‘hatless, his long, tawny hair flying out behind him with the speed of his mount, seeming a dozen times on the verge of capsize, he became a human comet behind the tiller of his incredible machine.’
Reporters asked Barney what it was like to travel at a truly astonishing fifty miles per hour! How could mortal man stand the bullet-like speed?
Oldfield was quoted in detail: ‘You have every sensation of being hurled through space. The machine is throbbing under you with its cylinders beating a drummer’s tattoo, and the air tears past you in a gale. In its maddening dash through the swirling dust the machine takes on the attributes of a sentient thing . . . I tell you, gentlemen, no man can drive faster and live!’
Henry Ford was quick to claim credit for the design and manufacture of 999, and the nation’s papers headlined his name next to Oldfield’s, touting the victory at Grosse Pointe as ‘the real beginning of the Auto Age’.