The carriage was an awesome conveyance of horseless magnitude. The Barretts had been relegated to infantry service in the main for hundreds of years. So, it felt like a redemption when father had purchased this device, powered by folk they had plenty of, rather than horses which they had to purchase from those snooty breeders.
The design was no different than a stage coach. O’Neal sat high upon the coachman’s pulpit—for a machine fueled by steam was piloted by no mere perch, but a pulpit. This was an industrial carriage framed in wrought iron, paneled in red painted clapboard. O’Neal, rather than horses' reins in his hands, as was still the make of the common carriage, worked two levers. The right hand lever was for regulation of the gear box, the left hand for steering. His feet had work too, the left foot near the brake, the right foot upon the clutch. With all of these mechanics, there was no room for a man to ride “shotgun” in the American fashion.
Security was provided by LaFono clutching like a pale, Irish monkey in black to the brass rails and hanging off the running boards. Deterrence was provided by the Union Jack flying from the top, where the baggage was strapped, and the fact, that a Barrett rode within! The steam carriage had been developed in 1931. The expense of crewing it, and the offense of what spewed from it, limited these machines to one for every hundred horse-drawn carriages.
The real wonder of the thing was the miniature locomotive that drove the carried by its own four wheels, that was bolted and in some places bolt-welded to the traditional carriage frame, which must be cast in iron to prevent the failure of wooden parts. This tiny steam engine, adapted from a simple coal stove, and in the west burning wood, was manned by the collier, Blackie Pimpton. He was the assistant mechanic as well, with O’Neal as the senior mechanic. Steam carriage services maintained a mechanic opposite the foot man and as well a coal monkey. But the Barrett budget had its very real limits.
Richard slid into the low coach, Color Sergeant Major holding the door for him, before entering, both from the Manor side. Richard faced back, his sergeant forward LaFono gave the, “Go,” signal upon the tipping of Color Sergeant Major’s pith helmet. Blackie had his own back section of the carriage to himself, as he shoveled coal into the hopper according to signals relayed by O’Neal, to do with shift of gears and, stoking, damping and such. Color Sergeant Major watched the left side of the road with his one keen eye, and LaFono the right—onward, upon the highway, they rushed burly as a bull built from a box, a box of eight wheels, into the night!
[1]
Richard waved to his wonderful siblings, to his loyal staff, and up to that widow walk where he new Mother peered out in prayer from behind her curtained window. There were room for two other persons to sit comfortable, if but one were as tall as the Sergeant. So they did not sit across from each other, each man sitting next to his expeditionary kit.
…
It was not yet dark when O’Neal signaled Blackie to damp the boiler. The great red thing, the Union Jack now hanging rather than flying, came to a hissing stop upon its eight, wide, India rubber wheels. They were down about the cabins where the negro staff did live. Richard checked the forward mirror as LaFono dismounted, extracting a low tone of disapproval from the sergeant, “Get to it, Buck, a quick goodbye.”
In the middle of the drive stood, Suzy, the wet nurse, a child on each more than ample hip, one clinging to her apron strings, three cavorting about, a few young men dressed in Sunday best as if advertising themselves for service, affecting a better salute then their sire ever had. One precocious lad, another dithering, and another chirping, the speaker looking more Hebrew than mսlatto, was asking, “Daddy, you off ta whoop up on some a dem Russian potato niggas?”
“Well, Son, we whoopin’ up on whoever gives Boss Barrett any guff!”
‘Good God, as if I’m a robber baron!’ thought Richard, who was rescued from his inner indignation by his towering nanny, “Captain, Sir, the right honorable wet nurse, Sir.”
A great swell of hip, an enormous sweep of breast, and a wide welcoming smile under huge approving eyes, a red rag wrapped about her head, came into view, her younger, and more cultured children hanging and standing about. Richard blushed, even though she had been too young to nurse him when he came along, but that her mother, cooking no doubt in that long cabin, had. Suzy was some 40 years, still fresh in the face, seeming to have some 15 children… that being the type of account keeping that was left to Mother.
While the three ruffian children adored their rude father, who avoided this conversation begun by his unwed mate, she ordered her three eldest boys and two cute and proper girls, decked out in very well done homespun, to stand to the left at attention. She then approached the door closely, somewhat hiding the child on her right hip, her voice like a butter basted song, “Master Barrett, Sir, Amelia there has baked bread and biscuit for your journey—now come ‘ere girl!”
That nervous, awkward girl brought fourth a fine smelling basket of bread. Suzy then shooed her off and waved fourth another girl who had churned the very crock of butter she handed through the window.
“Your daughters reflect well upon you, Suzy.”
“Thank you, Captain, Sir—and about my three eldest boys here…”
As she recommended her various youths in their as varied hues for jobs, Richard simply nodded, his eyes glazed and looked to Color Sergeant Major, who took over, “Now Suzy, a fine brood you have here. These three elder boys in suits, send then to the Marshal daily for the muster. Those three over their with our footman, encourage them in Rugby and braining feral cats and raccoons for the time being.”
“Yes, Sergeant, I got you, know what you mean. Will do.”
Then as these younger children literally climbed her skirt and apron like apes and the one on her left hip, merely a babe, slept under the roof of her mighty breast, Suzy came close with a conspiratorial nod, and Richard thought he smelled mustache wax as she unburdened her right hip with an arm that could have launched a ship, and pressed the tiny man in a suit it seemed, a man attired like Richard but tailored in scrap, complete with a felt derby made from the green of an old billiards table and dyed with shoe polish. This child was, by all appearances… white.
Richard’s jaw dropped as Suzy said, “Young Master Rich, as handsome as you is, you will come back with a fine little lady. And in case your first is a son, Lookie here, at Billy!”
Richard saw that his pomade of proud rooster hair had been imitated to perfection with the use of the presumed father’s mustache wax!
He was speechless, and she was not, as she hissed, “Sir, you an important man, destined for important enemies. Your first born son, he should have a body guard that looks and dresses just like him! Here he is, your baby son’s very own footman! Why, the moonshiners that did fo yer Granddaddy wouldn’t know who to shoot!”
“Oh, my, yes, Suzy, of course… all of your children will have honorable appointments according to their ken, and little Billy here, he’s the genuine article. He will be brought up as you suggest.”
Suzy then managed to thrust her great wide head through the window and kiss Richard on the cheek most pleasantly, “God Bless you, Master Rich.”
She then whispered, “Please, don’t let O’Neal stop down in Loch Hollow where them red-headed green-eyed hussies live… mah man’s been dallyin’ down that way…”
“A hundred percent, Suzy. You’ve got it.”
As soon as Suzy stood back the voice of the Color Sergeant Major boomed out, “Out of the way!”
LaFono leaped back on, his more savage boys running along side, the cultivated ones standing in line on the other side. Richard looked up at his conscience and guide, leaned forward, and asked, “Billy looks like a Barrett!”
“So he does sir, so he does.”
‘That is it?’
Richard sat back in astonishment.
‘Oh, my.’
Loch Hollow was a bit comic, as two redheaded wenches, one pregnant, the other carrying a child and casting a stone at the same time, called after his footman that he had promised to leave some coin. As the steam carriage rocked, jostled and rolled at a jog, affording the more savage wench an opportunity for three running casts of stone and crockery, at her chuckling lover who dared the shower with a wry smile, the lanterns extended forward of the pulpit dancing like devils in the dark, wooded night…
Bobbing like a top, the Sergeant, somehow stiff and unmoving, as if bolted to the rugged conveyance, Richard looked to his towering conscience, whose face twitched as he quipped, “Gaelic bloodlines, Sir—a thing quite beyond science, I am afraid.”
…
Notes
-1. “Naturalism” activists sometimes sabotaged these machines. As well, civic equine societies, “worshipers of horse manure,” Father had said, sponsored anti steam carriage advertisements that often depicted these elegant machines in newspapers and billboards as angry belching bull heads mounted on rolling box cars.
