"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
f amilies in this city'll
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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. "Sorryt"
"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 of 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,
wheels-1 67
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. Thafs 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. Mostl~
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 somewho 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
168-wheels
they have the notion we're so inflexible, it means automatically they've
lost their jobs."
"And they haven't?"
"Christ, not We give a guy every possible break because we want the
thing to work. Something else we do is give people who have trouble
getting to work a cheap alarm clock; you'd be surprised how many have
never owned one. The company let me buy a gross. In my office I've got
alarm clocks the way other men have paper clips."
Brett said, "I'll be damned!" It seemed incongruous to think of a
gargantuan auto company, with annual wage bills running into billions,
worrying about a few sleepyhead employees waking up.
"The point I'm getting at," Leonard Wingate said, "is that if a hard
core worker doesn't show up, either to finish a training course or at
the plant, whoever's in charge is supposed to notify one of my special
people. Then, unless it's a hopeless case, they follow through."
"But that hasn't been happening? It's why you're frustrated?"
"That's part of it. There's a whole lot more." The Personnel man downed
the last of his Scotch. "Those courses we have where the hard core
people get oriented-they last eight weeks; there are maybe two hundred
on a course."
Brett motioned for a refill to their drinks. When the bartender had
gone, he prompted, "Okay, so a course with two hundred people."
"Right. An instructor and a woman secretary are in charge. Between them,
those two keep all course records, including attendance. They pass out
paychecks, which arrive weekly in a bunch from Headquarters Accounting.
Naturally, the checks are made out on the basis of the course records."
Wingate said bitterly, "It's the instructor
wheels-1 69
and the secretary-one particular pair. They're the ones."
"The ones what?"
-Who've been lying, cheating, stealing from the people they're employed
to help."
"I guess I can figure some of it," Brett said. "But tell me, anyway."
"Well, as the course goes along, there are dropouts-for the reasons I
told you, and for others. It always happens; we expect it. As I said,
if our department's told, we try to persuade some of the people to come
back. But what this instructor and secretary have been doing is not
reporting the dropouts, and recording them present. So that checks for
the dropouts have kept coming in, and then that precious pair has kept
those checks themselves."
"But the checks are made out by name. They can't cash them."
Wingate shook his head. "They can and they have. What happens is
eventually this pair does report that certain people have stopped
coming, so the company checks stop, too. Then the instructor goes around
with the checks he's saved and finds the people they're made out to. It
isn't difficult; all addresses are on file. The instructor tells a
cock-and-bull story about the company wanting the money back, and gets
the checks endorsed. After that, he can cash them anywhere. I know it
happens that way. I followed the instructor for an af ternoon."
"But how about later, when your employee relations people go visiting?
You say they hear about the dropouts eventually. Don't they find out
about the checks?"
"Not necessarily. Remember, the people we're dealing with aren't
communicative. They're dropouts in more ways than one, usually, and
never
170-wheels
volunteer information. It's hard enough getting answers to questions.
Besides that, I happen to think there've been some bribes passed around.
I can't prove it, but there's a certain smell."
"The whole thing stinks."
Brett thought: Compared with what Leonard Wingate had told him, his own
irritations of today seemed minor. He asked, 'Were you the one who
uncovered all this?"
"Mostly, though one of my assistants got the idea first. He was
suspicious of the course attendance figures; they looked too good. So
the two of us started checking, comparing the new figures with our own
previous ones, then we got comparable figures from other companies. They
showed what was going on, all right. After that, it was a question of
watching, catching the people. Well, we did."
"So what happens now?"
Wingate shrugged, his figure hunched over the bar counter. "Security's
taken over; it's out of my hands. This afternoon they brought the
instructor and the secretary downtown-separately. I was there. The two
of them broke down, admitted everything. The guy cried, if you'll be-
lieve it."
"I believe it," Brett said. "I feel like crying in a different way. Will
the company prosecute?"
"The guy and his girl friend think so, but I know they won't." The tall
Negro straightened up; he was almost a head higher than Brett DeLosanto.
He said mockingly, "Bad public relations, y'know. Wouldn't want it in
the papers, with our company's name. Besides, the way my bosses see it,
the main thing is to get the money back; seems there's quite a few
thousand."
'What about the other people? The ones who dropped out, who might have
come back, gone on working..."
wheels-1 71
"Oh come, my friend, you're being ridiculously sentimental."
Brett said sharply, "Knock it off I I didn't steal the goddam checks."
"No, you didn't. Well, about those people, let me tell you. If I had a
staff six times the size I have, and if we could go back through all the
records and be sure which names to follow up on, and if we could locate
them after all these weeks..."
The bartender appeared. Wingate's glass was empty, but he shook his head.
For Brett's benefit he added, 'We'll do what we can. It may not be much."
"I'm sorry," Brett said. "Damn sorry." He paused, then asked, "You
married?"
"Yes, but not working at it."
"Listen, my girl friend's cooking dinner at my place. Why not join us?"
Wingate demurred politely. Brett insisted.
Five minutes later they left for Country Club Manor.
Barbara Zaleski had a key to Brett's apartment and was there when they
arrived, already busy in the kitchen. An aroma of roasting lamb was
drifting out.
"Hey, sculliont" Brett called from the hallway. "Come, meet a guest."
"If it's another woman," Barbara's voice sailed back, "you can cook your
own dinner. Oh, it isn't. Hi I"
She appeared with a tiny apron over the smart, knit suit she had arrived
in, having come directly from the OJL agency's Detroit office. The suit,
Brett thought appreciatively, did justice to Barbara's figure; he sensed
Leonard Wingate observing the same thing. As usual, Barbara had dark
glasses pushed up into her thick, chestnut-
172-wheels
brown hair, which she had undoubtedly forgotten. Brett reached out, removed
the glasses and kissed her lightly.
He introduced them, informing Wingate, "Tbis is my mistress."
"He'd like me to be," Barbara said, "but I'm not. Telling people I am is
his way of getting even."
As Brett had expected, Barbara and Leonard Wingate achieved a rapport
quickly. While they talked, Brett opened a bottle of Dom Perignon which
the three of them shared. Occasionally Barbara excused herself to check
on progress in the kitchen.
During one of her absences, Wingate looked around the spacious apartment
living room. "Pretty nice pad."
"Thanks." When Brett leased the apartment a year and a half ago he had
been his own interior decorator, and the furnishings reflected his per-
sonal taste for modern design and flamboyant coloring. Bright yellows,
mauves, vermilions, cobalt greens predominated, yet were used imag-
inatively, so that they merged as an attractive whole. Lighting
complemented the colors, highlighting some areas, diminishing others. The
effect was to create-ingeniously-a series of moods within a single room.
At one end of the living room was an open door to another room.
Wingate asked, "Do you do much of your work here?"
"Some." Brett nodded toward the open door. "There's my Thinkolarium. For
when I need to get creative and be uninterrupted away from that
wired-for-sound Taj Mahal we work in." He motioned vaguely in the
direction of the company's Design-Styling Center.
"He does other things there, too," Barbara
wheels-1 73
said. She had returned as Brett spoke. "Come in, Leonard. I'll show you."
Wingate followed her, Brett trailing.
The other room, while colorful and pleasant also, was equipped as a
studio, with the paraphernalia of an artist-designer. A pile of tissue
flimsies on the floor beside a drafting table showed where Brett had raced
through a series of sketches, tearing off each flimsy, using a new one
from the pad beneath as the design took shape. The last sketch in the
series-a rear fender style-was pinned to a cork board.
Wingate pointed to it. "Will that one be for real?"
Brett shook his head. "You play with ideas, get them out of your system,
like belching. Sometimes, that way, you get a notion which will lead to
something permanent in the end. This isn't one." He pulled the flimsy down
and crumpled it. "If you took all the sketches which precede any new car,
you could fill Cobo Hall with paper."
Barbara switched on a light. It was in a corner of the room where an easel
stood, covered by a cloth. She removed the cloth carefully.
"And then there's this," Barbara said. "This isn't for discarding."
Beneath the cloth was a painting in oils, almost-but not quite-finished.
"Don't count on it," Brett said. He added, "Barbara's very loyal. At times
it warps her judgment."
The tall, gray-haired Negro shook his head. "Not this time, it hasn't."
He studied the painting with admiration.
It was of a collection of automotive discards, heaped together. Brett had
assembled the materials for his model-laid out on a board ahead of the
easel, and lighted by a spotlight-from an auto wrecker's junk pile. There
were several burned-
174-wheels
brown spark plugs, a broken camshaft, a discarded oil can, the entrails of
a carburetor, a battered headlight, a moldy twelve-volt battery, a window
handle, a section of radiator, a broken wrench, some assorted rusty nuts and
washers. A steering wheel, its horn ring missing, hung lopsidedly above.
No collection could have been more ordinary, less likely to inspire great
art. Yet, remarkably, Brett had made the junk assortment come alive, had
conveyed to his canvas both rugged beauty and a mood of sadness and
nostalgia. These were broken relics, the painting seemed to say: burned-
out, unwanted, all usefulness departed; nothing was ahead save total
disintegration. Yet once, however briefly, they had had a life, had func-
tioned, representing dreams, ambitions, achievements of mankind. One knew
that all other achievements-past, present, future, no matter how
acclaimed-were doomed to end similarly, would write their epilogues in
garbage dumps. Yet was not the dream, the brief achievement-of itself
-enough?
Leonard Wingate had remained, unmoving, before the canvas. He said slowly,
"I know a little about art. You're good. You could be great."
"That's what I tell him." After a moment, Barbara replaced the cloth on
the easel and turned out the light. They went back into the living room.
"What Barbara means," Brett said, pouring more Dom Perignon, "is that I've
sold my soul for a mess of pottage." He glanced around the apartment. "Or
maybe a pot of messuage."
"Brett might have managed to do designing and fine art," Barbara told
Wingate, "if he hadn't been so darned successful at designing. Now, all
he has time to do where painting's concerned is to dabble occasionally.
With his talent, it's a tragedy."
wheels-175
Brett grinned. "Barbara has never seen the high beam--that designing a car
is every bit as creative as painting. Or that cars are my thing," He
remembered what he had told the two students only a few weeks ago: You
breathe, eat, sleep cars... wake up in the night, it's cars you think
about... like a religion. Well, he still felt that way himself, didn't
he? Maybe not with the same intensity as when he first came to Detroit.
But did anyone really keep that up? There were days when he looked at
others working with him, wondering. Also, if he were honest, there were
other reasons why cars should stay his "thing." Like what you could do
with fifty thousand dollars a year, to say nothing of the fact that he was
only twenty-six and much bigger loot would come in a few years more. He
asked Barbara lightly, "Would you still breeze in to cook dinner if I
lived in a garret and smelled of turpentine?"
She looked at him directly. "You know I would."
While they talked of other things, Brett decided: He would finish the
canvas, which he hadn't touched in weeks. The reason he had stayed away
from it was simple. Once he started painting, it absorbed him totally and
there was just so much total absorption which any life could stand.
Over dinner, which tasted as good as it had smelled, Brett steered the
conversation to what Leonard Wingate had told him in the bar downtown.
Barbara, after hearing of the cheating and victimization of hard core
workers, was shocked and even angrier than Brett.
She asked the question which Brett DeLosanto hadn't. "What color are
tbey-the instructor and the secretary who took the cheeks?"
Wingate raised his eyebrows. "Does it make a difference?"
176-wheels
"Lis,ten," Brett said. "You know damn well it does."
Wingate answered tersely, "They're white. What else?"
"They could have been black." It was Barbara, thoughtf ully.
"Yes, but the odds are against it." Wingate hesitated. "Look, I'm a guest
here..."
Brett waved a hand. "Forget it I"
There was a silence between them, then the gray-haired Negro said, "I like
to make certain things clear, even among friends. So don't let this
uniform fool you: the Oxford suit, a college diploma, the job I have. Oh,
sure, I'm the real front office nigger, the one they point to when they
say: You see, a black man can go high. Well, it's true for me, because I
was one of the few with a daddy who could pay for a real education, which
is the only way a black man climbs. So I've climbed, and maybe I'll make
it to the top and be a company director yet. I'm still young enough, and
I'll admit I'd like it; so would the company. I know one thing. If there's
a choice between me and a white man, and providing I can cut the mustard,
I'll get the job. That's the way the dice are rolling, baby; they're
weighted my way because the p.r. department and some others would just
love to shout: Look at usl We've got a board room blackl"
Leonard Wingate sipped his coffee, which Barbara had served.
'Well, as I said, don't let the f agade fool you. I'm still a member of
my race." Abruptly he put the cup down. Across the dining table his eyes
glared at Brett and Barbara. "When something happens like it did today,
I don't just get angry. I burn and loathe and hate-everything that's
white."
wheels-177
The glare f aded. Wingate raised his coffee cup again, though his hand
was shaking.
After a moment he said, "James Baldwin wrote this: 'Negroes in this
country are treated as none of you would dream of treating a dog or a
cat.' And it's true-in Detroit, just as other places. And for all that's
happened in the past few years, nothing's really changed in most white
people's attitudes, below the surface. Even the little that's being done
to ease white consciences-like hard core hiring, which that white pair
tried to screw, and did-is only surface scratching. Schools, housing,
medicine, hospitals, are so bad here it's unbelievable -unless you're
black; then you believe it because you know, the hard way. But one day,
if the auto industry intends to survive in this town-because the auto
industry is Detroit-it will have to come to grips with improving the
black life of the community, because no one else is going to do it, or
has the resources or the brains to." He added, "Just the same, I don't
believe they will."
"Then there's nothing," Barbara said. "Nothing to hope for." There was
emotion in her voice.
"No harm in hoping," Leonard Wingate answered. He added mockingly, "Hope
don't cost none. But no good fooling yourself either."
Barbara said slowly, "Thank you for being honest, for telling it like
it is. Not everyone does that, as I've reason to know."
"Tell. him," Brett urged. "Tell him about your new assignment."
"I've been given a job to do," Barbara told Wingate. "By the advertising
agency I work for, acting for the company. It's to make a film. An
honest film about Detroit-the inner city."
She was aware of the other's instant interest.
"I first heard about it," Barbara explained, six weeks ago."
178-wheels
She described her briefing in New York by Keith Yates-Brown.
It had been the day after the abortive "rustle pile" session at which
the OJL agency's initial ideas for Orion advertising had been routinely
presented and, just as routinely, brushed aside.
As the creative director, Teddy Osch, predicted (luring their
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