Colson Whitehead - Apex Hides the Hurt

It was a no go, however. “It’s like everybody’s come down with some kind of goddamned brain flu,” Tipple complained. Everyone was quite put out. Any chance, Tipple asked, that he might help out?

He listened to the story distractedly. He was unaccustomed to normal speech, having grown more acquainted with the dingy dramas of afternoon television, and their dispiriting cadences. The world of afternoon television astounded and delighted in the sheer breadth of its humiliations. The streets were filled with victims, and the television programs sought them out for the delectation of those at home, whose own deep and particular brands of abjectness could not compete. The signs and symbols were simple and direct. Nothing complicated or duplicitous about them. Nothing lying in wait for ambush. He observed the shape of his body on the couch. He was shriveled into a comfortable fetal pose that resembled a question mark. So he said, “Give them a Q.”

“What?”

“Give them a Q,” he repeated. He hung up.

He got a check in the mail a few weeks later, but he wasn’t sure if that was for merely picking up the phone, or if they had used his contribution. Such as it was. Only when he saw the ads for the Q-100 did he get his answer. A Q. It was a name reduced to abstraction. To meaninglessness. It depressed him, the ridiculousness of seeing his whim carved into the culture. How’d you come up with that? Just sitting around and it occurred to me. What curdled in his thoughts was how easy it was, even after his misfortune. Nothing had changed.

. . . . . . . .

He feared he’d have to buckle up for another ride down shadowy sentimental lanes, but they didn’t go very far at all. She picked him up in front of the hotel, and they drove down the block, across the street, then on to the pier. They could have walked. The car nosed up to the guardrail at the end of the pier, the headlights draping a white shape on the water for a few seconds before she cut the engine. Couples and kids walked slowly on the asphalt, sucking ice cream and commenting on the stars in a Sunday-night daze. Back to work tomorrow. For a second he’d had an image of her steering them into the drink. For discovering the terrible secret, but of course it was only a terrible secret if anyone cared. And no one cared. Except him.

Regina cleared her throat. And once more. She began: “The thing about him being sick started because he did fall ill soon after, and never got better. He died. So that got mixed in there over the years, but on the day of the actual vote, he was there. Yes.” She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and finally turned to face him, her eyes red-vined. “When can we expect your decision?” she asked, her voice crisp, almost bullying. More sheriff than mayor.

“Soon,” he said. “I think I’m almost there.”

“No surprise which way you’re leaning.”

“You know that article was a piece of crap. Just some PR.”

“I know,” she said eventually.

He was in no hurry. He let her take her time. A hollow clanking sound, rigging animated by the wind, made its way across the water. Ghosts rattling their chains, he thought. Hey, ’member me?

“It’s a wonder they were friends at all,” Regina started. “They had such different temperaments. What united them was their tragedy, if you think about it. And the idea that they could make something better.”

He had pictured the scene repeatedly over the last few hours. Field walks in thinking it was business as usual. Him and his friend against Winthrop. Maybe humming a spiritual or something, fuck, he didn’t know. The kind of song you sing when you are about to be ambushed. A Caught Unawares song.

Regina said, “Abraham had a family. And then the extended family of all the people who followed them here. He had responsibilities. Field didn’t have anyone. He’d lost his family back on the plantation. You have to understand where they both were coming from.”

He thought: They put the law down to protect themselves against Winthrop. As long as they stood together on the city council, the two black men were a majority, and there was nothing the white man could do. They got it in writing, on the books, the way white people did it. And that would be enough, right? So they thought. What name to put to the expression on Field’s face when they took the vote? A Jeep made a U-turn behind Regina’s car, blinding him for a second. He had to admit that Regina had a distinguished profile. The blood of kings in her veins, nose and brow and chin of the brand that said: We make the hard decisions.

Her hand went for the ignition, stalled on the key, then fell into her lap. “Man,” Regina said, “I don’t know what Winthrop promised him. Property? Money? They definitely didn’t talk about that on Easter or Christmas, when we used to sit around and the old folks would tell us the story about how we came here. How proud we all should be that we were related to such strong souls.”

At the very least Goode got a few street signs out of it. He looked over at Regina. What was she hoping to accomplish, really, by bringing the town back to Freedom? To undo the double cross? Right the injustice. Only it was not the injustice he had been thinking of. “What are you going to do?” he asked. He didn’t know what he meant.

She said, “Maybe he didn’t get anything concrete. Maybe it was enough that it was the most prudent thing for the community they were building. That,” she said, pointing at the end of the pier, the dark water, “that was going to make or break this place. Supply lines. He knew that. So why not change the name. Right?”

“I can’t tell you that,” he said. He’d been trying to get into the heads of those two men, but was having a hard time. They lived in a completely different context. What did a slave know that we didn’t? To give yourself a name is power. They will try to give you a name and tell you who you are and try to make you into something else, and that is slavery. And to say, I Am This — that was freedom. He imagined the vote again. Did they come to blows? Did they curse? What name to give to the smile on Sterling Winthrop’s face. Jagged syllables and sharp kickers all the way. And what name to give to the lack of surprise on Field’s face. Because he must have known from the beginning of their trip that some brand of doom was waiting for him up here. Or not waiting, but dogging his every step, like it always did. His shadow and true companion.

“I wish I could ask them,” Regina said wistfully. “I wish I had been there when they first arrived and looked around and said, ‘This is the place.’ It must have been beautiful. It was Abraham that came up with Freedom, did you know that? Field was of his own mind, of course, with some cockeyed idea, but the people decided to go with Freedom.”

He asked what Field’s suggestion had been.

It took her a minute before she was able to recall it. Seeing his expression, she shook her head in gentle dismay, her lips pressed together into a thin smile. “Can you imagine thinking that would be a good name for a place where people live?” she asked.

. . . . . . . .

Any handy road atlas describes the long tradition of noun names, adjectival names, that yoke abstraction to dirt, where we can get our grimy hands on it. Confluence, KY, Friendship, LA, Superior, CO, Commerce, OK, Plush, OR. Hope, AR, naturally. Oftentimes these names can also be found on the sides of packages of laundry detergent or abrasive cleaners, so generous and thorough is the sweep of their connotation. Freedom, needless to add. Can’t forget Freedom.

Truth or Consequences, NM. Hard to knock such brave and laudable candor. Such ballsy defiance to the notion of salesmanship. Pity the poor board of tourism for Truth or Consequences, NM! Death Valley, too, won points for its plainspoken delivery. Seeming to say: It’s not like we didn’t warn you.