Wheels (62 page)

Then the
legendary soft drink bottle, left loose inside a rocker panel so it would
rattle through a car's lifetime, was apt to become reality. A loose tool
or chunk of metal served the same purpose. Another trick was to weld the
trunk lid closed from inside; a skilled welder, reaching through the back
seat could do it in seconds. Or a strategic bolt or two might be left
untightened. These were reasons why Matt and others like him used
fictitious names when putting their own cars through production.
Matt put the next day's schedule down. There had been no need to review
it, anyway, since he had gone over it earlier in the day.
It was time to go home. As he rose from the desk, he thought again of
Barbara and wondered where she was. He was suddenly very tired.
On his way down from the mezzanine, Matt Zaleski was aware of some kind
of disturbance
,
shouting, the sound of running feet. Automatically, because
most things which happened in the plant were his business, he stopped,
searching for the source. It appeared to be near the south cafeteria. He
heard an urgent cry: "For God's s
ake get somebody from Security!
"
Seconds later, as he hurried toward the disturbance, he heard sirens
approaching from outside. A janitor who discovered the huddled bodies of the two vending machine
collectors and Frank Parkland, had the good sense to go promptly to a
telephone. By the time Matt Zaleski heard the shouts, which were from
others who had come on the scene subsequently, an ambulance, plant security men, and outside police were already on the way.
But Matt still reached the janitor's closet on the lower floor before any
of the outside aid. Bulling his way through an excited group around it,
he was in time to see that one of the three recumbent forms was that of
Frank Parkland whom Matt had last seen at the foremen's meeting about an
hour and a half before. Parkland's eyes were closed, his skin ashen,
except where blood had trickled through his hair and clotted on his face.
One of the night shift office clerks who had run in with a first-aid kit,
now lying unused beside him, had Parkland's head cradled in his lap and
was feeling for a pulse. The clerk looked at Matt. I guess he's alive, Mr.
Zaleski; so's one of the others. Though I wouldn't want to say for how
long
.”

Security and the ambulance people had come in then, and taken charge. The
local police-uniformed men first, then plainclothes detectives
quickly
joined them.
There was little for Matt to do, but he could no longer leave the plant,
which had been sealed by a cordon of police cars. Obviously the police
believed that whoever perpetrated the murder
robbery-it had been confirmed
that one of the three victims was dead-might still be inside.
After a while, Matt retu
rned to his office on the mezzan
ine where he
sat, mentally numbed and listless.
The sight of Frank Parkland, who was clearly gravely hurt, had shocked
Matt deeply. So had the knife protruding from the body of the man with
the Indian face. But the dead man had been unknown to Matt, whereas
Parkland was his friend. Though the assistant plant chief and foreman
had had run-ins, and once-a year ago-exchanged strong words, such
differences had been the result of work pressures. Normally, they liked
and respected each other.
Matt thought: Why did it have to happen to a good man? There were others
he knew over whom he would have grieved less.
At that moment, precisely, Matt Zaleski became aware of a sudden
breathlessness and a fluttering in his chest, as if a bird were inside,
beating its wings and trying to get out. The sensation frightened him.
He sweated with the same kind of fear he had known years before in B-17F
bombers over Europe when the German flak was barreling up, and now, as
then, he knew it was the fear of death.
Matt knew, too, he was having some kind of attack and needed help. He
began thinking in a detached way: He would telephone, and whoever came
and whatever was done, he would ask them to send for Barbara because
there was something he wanted to tell her. He was not sure exactly what,
but if she came the words would find themselves.
The trouble was, when he made up his mind to reach for the telephone,
he discovered he no longer had the power to move. Something strange was
happening to his body. On the right side there was no feeling
anymore
;
he seemed to have no arm or leg, or any idea where either was. He tried
to cry out but found, to his amazement and frustration, he could not. Nor,
when he tried again, could he make any sound at all.
Now he knew what it was that he wanted to tell Barbara: That despite the
differences they had had, she was still his daughter and he loved her,
just as he had loved her mother, whom Barbara resembled in so many ways.
He wanted to say, too, that if they could somehow resolve their present
quarrel he would try to understand her, and her friends, better from now
on . . .
Matt discovered he did have some feeling and power of movement in his left
side. He tried to get up, using his left arm as a lever, but the rest of
his body failed him and he slid to the floor between the desk and chair.
It was in that position he was found soon after, conscious, his eyes mirroring an agony of frustration because the words he wanted to say could
find no exit route.
Then, for the second time that night, an ambulance was summoned to the
plant. "You're aware," the doctor at Ford Hospital said to Barbara next day,
"that your father had a stroke before
.”

She told him, "I know now. I didn't until today
.”

This morning, a plant secretary, Mrs. Einfeld, had reported,
conscience-stricken, Matt Zaleski's mild attack a few weeks earlier when
she had driven him home and he persuaded her to say nothing. The company's
Personnel department had passed the information on.
"Taken together," the doctor said, "the two incidents fit a classic
pattern
.”

He was a specialist -a cardiologist-balding and sallow-faced,
with a slight tic beneath one eye. Like so many in Detroit, Barbara
thought, he looked as if he worked too hard.
"If my f
ather hadn't concealed the first stroke, would it have changed
anything
.”

The specialist shrugged. "Perhaps; perhaps not. He'd have received
medication, but the end result could have been the same. Either way, the
question's academic now
.”

They were in an annex to an intensive care unit of the hospital. Through
a glass window she could see her father in one of the four beds inside,
a red rubber tube running from his mouth to a gray-green respirator on a
stand close by. The respirator, wheezing evenly, was breathing for him.
Matt Zaleski's eyes were open and the doctor had told Barbara that
although her father was presently under sedation, at other times he could
undoubtedly see and hear. She wondered if he was aware of the young black
woman, also in extremis in the bed nearest to him.
"It's probable," the doctor said, "that at some earlier period your father
sustained valvular heart damage. Then, when he had the first mild stroke,
a small clot broke off from the heart and went to the right side of his
brain which, in a right
-
handed person, controls the body's left side
.”

It was all so impersonal, Barbara thought, as if a routine piece of
machinery were being described, and not the sudden breakdown of a human
being.
The cardiologist went on: "With the kind of stroke which your father had
first, almost certainly the recovery was only apparent. It wasn't a real
recovery. The body's fail-safe mechanism remained damaged and that was why
the second stroke, to the left side of the brain, produced the devastating
effect it did last night
.”

Barbara had been with Brett last night when a message was telephoned that
her father had had a sudden stroke and been rushed to the hospital. Brett
had driven her there, though he waited
out
s
ide
. "I'll come if you need me," he had said, taking her hand
reassuringly before she went in, "but your old man doesn't like me,
anyway, and being ill isn't going to change his mind. It might upset him
more if he saw me with you
.”

On the way to the hospital, Barbara had had a guilty feeling, wondering
how much her own act of leaving home precipitated whatever had happened
to her father. Brett's gentleness, of which she saw more each day and
loved him increasingly for, underlined the tragedy that the two men she
cared most about had failed to know each other better. On balance, she
believed her father mainly to blame; just the same, Barbara wished now
that she had telephoned him, as she had considered doing several times
since their estrangement.
At the hospital last night they had let her speak to her father briefly,
and a young resident told her, "He can't communicate with you, but he
knows you're there
.”

She had murmured the things she expected Matt would
want to hear: that she was sorry about his illness, would not be far
away, and would come to the hospital frequently. While speaking, Barbara
had looked directly into his eyes and while there was no flicker of
recognition she had an impression the eyes were straining to tell her
something. Was it imagination? She wondered again now.
Barbara asked the cardiologist, 'What are my father's chances
.”

"Of recovery
.”

He looked at her interrogatively.
"Yes. And please be completely candid. I want to know
.”

"Sometimes people don't
"I do
.”

The cardiologist said quietly, "Your father's chances of any substantial
recovery are nil. My
prognosis is that he will be a hemiplegic invalid as long as he lives, with
complete loss of power on the right side, including speech
.”

There was a silence, then Barbara said, "If you don't mind, I'd like to
sit down
.”

"Of course
.”

He guided her to a chair. "It's a big shock. If you like,
I'll give you something
.”

She shook her head. "No
.”

"You had to know sometime," the doctor said, and you asked
.”

They looked, together, through the window of the intensive care unit, at
Matt Zaleski, still recumbent, motionless, the machine breathing f or him.
The cardiologist said, "Your father was with the auto industry, wasn't he?
In a manufacturing plant, I believe
.”

For the first time, the doctor
seemed warmer, more human than before.
"Yes
.”

"I get a good many patients from that source. Too many
.”

He motioned
vaguely beyond the hospital walls toward Detroit. "It's always seemed to
me like a battleground out there, with casualties. Your father, I'm
afraid, was one
.”

Chapter
twenty-seven

No aid was to be given Hank Kreisel in the manufacture or promotion of his
thresher.
The decision, by the board of directors' executive policy committee,
reached Adam Trenton in a memo routed through the Product Development
chief, Elroy Braithwaite.
Braithwaite brought in the memo personally and tossed it on Adam's desk.
"Sorry," the Silver Fox said, "I know you were interested. You turned me
on, too, and you might like to know we were in good company because the
chairman felt the same way
.”

The last news was not surprising. The chairman of the board was noted for
his wide-ranging interests and liberal views, but only on rare occasions
did he make autocratic rulings and obviously this had not been one.
The real pressure for the negative decision, Adam learned later, came from
the executive vice
-
president, Hub
Hewitson, who swayed the trium
virate-the
chairman, president, and Hewitson himself-which comprised the executive
policy committee.
Reportedly, Hub Hewitson argued on the lines: The company's principal
business was building cars and trucks. If the thresher didn't look like
a money-making item to farm products division, it should not be foisted
on any segment of the corporation merely on public-spirited grounds. As
to extramural activities generally, there were already enormous problems
in coping with public and legislative pressures for increased safety, less
air pollution, employment of the dis
-
advantaged, and kindred matters.
The argument concluded: We are not a philanthropic body but a private enterprise whose objective is to make profits
for shareholders.
After brief discussion, the president supported Hub Hewitson's view, so
that the chairman was outnumbered, and conceded.
"It's been lef t to us to inform your friend, Kreisel," the Silver Fox
told Adam, "so you'd better do it
.”