Electric Dreams: Excerpt

“Miller, is this car gonna run?” people were asking Harold.  People like a few members of the school board who knew the money that had been funneled into this EV project and worried about the criticism that would arise if it didn’t go well.  It was evident that many of them were not-so-privately thinking the answer to their question was “no.”

The mutterers had kept up their steady thrum of discontents through the winter.  There were people who insisted the car would never work, and people who complained that this farfetched plan was as good as guaranteeing another chance for Northampton County to be humiliated and held up to ridicule, and people who hoped for the best but expected a debacle. 

“Sure it’s gonna run,” was all Harold ever said, with his big, trust-me smile. “And we’ll be bringing home the blue ribbon for you from Richmond.” 

It definitely sounded good to say that.  Most of the time, Harold believed it more than possible.  Yet what would happen if the car didn’t run was a matter of some niggling concern even to an indefatigable optimist like Harold Miller.

It wasn’t that any one piece of the system was in doubt, so much as that nobody was absolutely confident that the whole would prove greater than, or at least equal to, the sum of the parts.  It was all still theoretical—a grand experiment built on more than occasional guesswork.

***

It was a Saturday morning, early in April, cool and clear.  Officially speaking, Monday was supposed to be, finally, Official Test Day, the day they’d check every connection and wire and charge one more time and then put it all together, press the accelerator, and see what happened.   It was to be hoped that what would happen would be all the naysayers dining on a hearty meal of crow.

“What do you say we have a little unofficial sneaky test day first?” Harold suggested, quietly, to Eric.  Just to see if the car would go, and to be sure nothing could go wrong that would endanger the kids, then back in the shop and no one the wiser.

Eric was game.  He was dying to see if the car would go.  

Harold thought George Hawkins should be there too.  If something didn’t work, George in his methodical, exacting way would puzzle it out.  Only Harold wasn’t sure what George Hawkins would say to the idea of covert operations.  George’s idea of sneaky, suspected Harold, was rounding off to the third decimal place. George, in Harold’s estimation, was serious as a heart attack.

George said yes.

It was supposed to be only the three of them, but a secret in Northampton County had the approximate life span of a lightning flash, and traveled about as fast.  Soon enough, John and June Parker were in on the plan, and Doug Miller, and Donny Lassiter and Neil Ray and Erick Vann too, and Mary Keeter said she’d be there.  Give it another day and no doubt the entire team would have gotten wind of it, and probably Channel 20 in Roanoke Rapids and the Daily Herald too.

As it was, the conspirators convened at East early on Saturday morning. 

“If I have to push it, this car is going today,” said Harold to no one in particular, unlocking the door to his classroom.

Inside the shop, the fluorescent lights flickered to life over one not altogether promising specimen of automotive industry.  Objectively appraised, the Escort looked worse than it ever had, which took some doing. A wreck, a clunker it had been when it came to them, but at least it had given the loose impression of a passably roadworthy vehicle. Between the work to take it apart, though, and the work to put it back together, it had acquired since then a definitely haphazard appearance.  It was still missing both doors, the hood, the seats, the carpeting and the paneling.  It was spotted with welding scars and random blotches of tan filler.  There were those improbable roll bars sprouting from the dash, and a labyrinth of wiring snaked from end to end, dividing and converging like the branching rivers and tributaries of a circulatory system.  There were various fail-safes and system interrupters, too, some automatic and some manually operated, including the main kill-switch mounted on the dash, a big red knob labeled “ON/OFF.”   

     ***

A broad, graveled alley filled the area between the two halves of Northampton-East, bisected by the walkway that joined them.  Miller’s shop opened onto the alley, and over the years Mr. Miller and his students had assumed something of a proprietary air regarding this space—call it Design and Testing.  They pushed the car out of the shop and turned it to face down the alley.

Harold went back inside and came trotting out lugging a battered wooden teacher’s chair.  He  shoved it in the Escort where the driver’s seat ought to have been, and then, anxious as parents at a first piano recital, he and George Hawkins bent over the front of the car, checking to make sure everything was screwed in, bolted on, tightened down, hooked up.  One thing about Hawkins, he was thorough, and right now Harold was more than happy to have him there.  The tricky part about making it up as you went was that it wasn’t always easy to think of what you might have forgotten.   Was the transmission going to fall out?  Was the whole thing going to blow up or short out?  Just in case, they told everyone to stand clear.   No use electrocuting the lot of them in one swoop.  Who would be left to make sure the car got to Richmond?

Everything seemed to be connected, everything seemed to be in order.  They’d flip the master power switch to ON, and then all it should take was a turn of the key and a touch to the accelerator.  But what a trembling void hung between “should” and “would.”  Miller felt like a brain surgeon holding the scalpel for the last stroke of a rare and delicate operation. 

“Hit the switch,” he called out.

“Good God almighty!” cried Harold as a fine bolt of blue light shot up from motor compartment and the air snapped with a sudden, spitting pop.

Date posted: 11.18.04

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