Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days

Here comes the news butcher. What do you have? Harper’s, Munsey’s, the latest issue of Punch. Nothing for me, thank you, although this gentleman might require something. Not hiding any erotic literature under those magazines, I hope? I’m just joking, carry on. You’re a good boy. The Union News Company hires only the best and brightest young men for their services. Many of them stay with the railroad, sir, I’ve seen it happen. They get the railroad fever and become ticket masters and engineers and even conductors. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. (His wife has never seen him like this, his emotional rigidity playing no small role in her late neurasthenia. Examples of their eccentric and fragmenting relationship are — but not limited to— wordless dinners where the only sounds are the shuffling of servants and his dried lips sucking soup; violent conjugal relations that correlate to Sunday morning sermons about the weaknesses of the flesh; and his strict orders that he is not to be disturbed in his parlor car and her fear, so strong, that prevents her from even glancing at it. In his car he can be one of the people, garrulous and solicitous to his opium-bred specter guests. Quite a potent draft, Quint’s Elixir, available at the pharmacy until recently.) Your wife remains unconvinced? Traveling by coach and will meet you in Cincinnati, I see. Well, you’ll beat her there by days. I understand perfectly. My very own mother refuses to step foot on one of my trains, despite my protests. She thinks it’s the work of the devil. Of course you have to consider when she was born. I might have been frightened, too, by those early locomotives, with their flying soot and noisome engines. But we’re modern men, you and I, we understand the future, don’t we?

I’ve been to Atlanta many times. The lines to Atlanta are much improved and I can assure you of a comfortable ride. Do you have business there? (And he fights the temptation to mention the war. He can’t remember this ghost’s particulars, how he made him, so it is best not to raise the topic. He could tell him that he knows why the Confederates lost the war. Simple mathematics. Between Philadelphia’s Baldwin and Paterson’s triad of Rogers, Danforth and New Jersey Iron Works, the Union could count on a new locomotive every day and miles of rail, while the Confederates had to convert the Tredegar Iron Works to produce ordnance. He visited Baldwin just last week; they know their duty. The Rebels ripped up their precious track to make armor plating for their ships and shell casings, while the Northern lines extended their mileage and kept the supply lines open and Lincoln’s war chest paid them to ferry troops and freight. Handsomely reimbursed for patriotic duty. It was simple mathematics, to him it is obvious, but he does not know his guest well enough to share his knowledge, he does not want to open a wound.) Textiles. Well, I hope that one day you will have occasion to use the C&O in your business. Our express service is nonpareil, I can assure you. Our deliveries are always on time. (He uses his line’s express service himself, to receive parcels from Quint’s Medicinal Supply. It’s his connection, one might say.) And isn’t that the most marvelous thing? We are bringing all of our isolated towns into the fabric of the nation. Much has been said about the importance of the transcontinental — yes it is quite an achievement — but I think the greater boon is to the points in-between, the smaller towns and depots we are passing as we speak. I have an English friend who used to derive much amusement from what he called our nation’s predilection for laying track through lands that had not been settled yet. He called it making a railroad line from the town of Nowhere-Special to Nowhere-in-Particular. He made sport of it. But look at us now. The people come. Like this town here, Tal-cott, the one outside the window there. Ten years ago this was wilderness. Now look at it. It is a depot, and the next day it is a community. And they need things. The grain states can send their goods to Philadelphia, and a woman in Kansas can order a new dress from New England. Did you know they refer to our line as the Great Connection? We’ve opened the Atlantic to the Midwest. Think of that. The rails are still, and always will be, the car of the people, as they say, but think of these new opportunities. The future of the railroad is to tend to the needs of the people, and not just their travel needs, mark my words. This is the spur of capital at work, my friend. But you are a man of business and I’m sure you understand. The cow towns of Sante Fe will want your fine goods, sir. And we will help bring them to them.

It’s best to close the window now. We are approaching the Big Bend Tunnel and the air is not the best. The fumes accumulate, you understand. It took us almost three years to blast through it. We could have gone around, but that would have added precious time to the journey, and time is everything. Arduous work, of course, but with the new steam drills, the work of excavation is much more rapid and efficient. God made the mountains and man made the steam drill. True mechanical marvels, sir. If you ever have the occasion to see one of these machines, you will not be disappointed. But we should close the windows now, I can see it up ahead.

J unketeer lore holds that when One Eye lost his eye, he gained sight into other spectra. Blinded by the irony of the times, he could peer into realms denied the average man, where cause and effect have no sway, logic no authority, where the only laws are the dim edicts of the supernatural. Alas, One Eye demonstrates no useful feats of prognostication. He declines to say sooth. He cannot foresee the weekend box office tally or channel the Publishers Weekly best-seller list. When chance places him before a sitcom, it is not within his power to perceive which actor will tumble into boozy tailspin and tell all, or determine who is fated to hawk baubles in a brightly colored in-fomercial, who will follow James Dean around Dead Man’s Curve. He does none of these things and does not pretend to. But when it comes to one-eyed men with eye patches, you project, J. thinks. You want magic these days. Conjure women and oracular witches stirring lizards in cauldrons don’t just fall off trees, so you take them where you can get them.

“I didn’t mean to break up your interlude,” One Eye says, tilting his head toward Pamela.

“Just talking,” J. answers. “I had to get a soda for my throat.”

“How is it?”

“Raw.” His throat shivers with a tremulous pain. After — after the commotion, after the application of Mr. Heimlich’s Maneuver, the subsequent launch of the pernicious plug of beef from esophageal berth and the tracking of its salival contrail across the Social Room — a man introduced himself as a doctor. The local general practitioner, another railroad son, this one equipped with wire-rim spectacles and pockmarked crimson cheeks. J. forgets his name, but why not Dr. Willoughby? Dr. Willoughby was kind and knew the town’s secret scars, thumbs hooked codgerly into his green suspenders. Suitable enough. Doc Willoughby told him he might want to check in with the hospital. After serious choking incidents, he said, the trauma to the throat tissues can sometimes induce them to swell up hours later, impeding the breathing passage. A post-choking choking. Better to be safe than sorry, he said. J. declined of course.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner to let us know what was happening?” One Eye asks, at once angry and apologetic.

“I was trying. You didn’t see.”

“I didn’t know you were choking. You looked so peaceful at first, I thought you were sneaking a fart, to tell you the truth.”

“Someone saw, thank God.”

“He’s a stamp collector?”