Henry Steele

The station guard's gate

Henry Steele's first permanent work at the cable station came after he found a handrail solid enough to carry a man through winter and a doorway too cracked to stand behind it. When he earned a regular maintenance round, he kept the wooden blocks he'd used to show the guard how much the door had sunk. All the measuring tools go low in the van, where he usually sees them first. One pair of blocks has survived two reorganizations of the shop because Henry always finds another door somebody could use them on. He took the Subaru SVX off the hands of a cousin who said he was too old to keep getting into it. The cousin was nine months younger and got a chance to come along the first time Henry took the car to the workshop.

June, Henry's partner, says what he means by a setup may include everything down to a clean space beside the lock to put a glove. She leaves her keys on the top step in the morning to make sure he has one small thing he didn't anticipate.

One or two washers

The first time he helped brace a wobbly test structure at DGM, he carried a tin of washers and stayed to see how the base took its ordinary weight. The first adjustment held. He checked it again before somebody could drive. When the people with the practice register started confirming names, he went to check it a third time, thinking he'd be able to hear them from the far end. Ash Cambell asked him to hand over the tin because the sound Henry had been listening for had very little chance of turning up for a fourth opinion. It took Henry longer to answer than it had taken to make the repair. When he turned back toward the track, he had time to thank Ash and very little time to doubt himself.

On later setup days he's learned to do one extra practical thing instead of looking at the same corner. When Jan Haze came with boards in the Datsun, he moved the load and let her find out why they'd asked her to bring the pickup.

Two people at the turn

In practice Henry likes to set a line before the car is carrying its weight through the turn. Ash can point out when the front of a car needs a second to do what the driver has asked. Henry likes to stand outside the apex and explain what the wheels actually did after the driver stopped looking there. They've each taken the other man's advice. Last time, Ash took a younger driver's suggestion for a track walk and gave Henry another way to look at an approach he'd memorized from lower down. Henry wants to do a session in which the crew puts the markers in a slightly different place. He would like to take the second half using the same sure hands he had before the course had anything new to say.

June has put the kettle on

Henry returned the tin to the bench after emptying out an unfamiliar washer. It had been at the bottom for a long time and he'd considered the whole collection too useful to sort. June asks what time a person could have tea after one of his tests. Henry tells her to leave hers for a few minutes and he'll find out.