Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days

Learned people keep track of the numbers, draw up studies, make arguments. In this landmass of numbers, riven by valleys of rarity and tormented by summits of likelihood, there are landmarks. An out-of-state gun used at a public event in a lethal fashion, unclassifiable as a crime of passion or monetary gain, by an individual who does not fit the standard profile of a perpetrator of a violent crime. Such events skew. They draw more media attention than the routine gas station robbery or umpteenth depredation against the dignity of the humble convenience store. The public is inured against such mundane crimes. They yawn. But in the case of the spectacular crime, soul-searching may be initiated, becalmed dinner conversations snap sail at the mention, suspicious appraisal of one’s neighbors occurs up and down the rows of the planned community. Such a case will be a landmark in a stream of statistics and stand apart for a time. A blip on the graph. But once the names have been removed, the particularities expunged in the name of scientific method, such a case may indeed skew, but be consumed into the mean nonetheless. Statistics will swallow the aberration, if the aberration can endure the seven-day waiting period.

The place mats of Herb’s Country Style aspire to the perspectives of mountain divinities, bought in bulk and fixing a century of scrabbling human achievement in its just form on the diaphanous paper. The map is rough drawn, poorly reproduced, wholly sketch. Squiggly indecisive lines worm among straight, rivers contend against manmade roads and routes. Pamela can easily pick out the friends of this establishment. Their names are bold on the map, two buildings down from Herb’s the Coast to Coast Offers Free Continental Breakfast In-Room Coffee 25” Remote TV Pool; Magnificent Bluestone Dam Tours Available a little south of here, past where two rivers diverge. The edificial advertisements of local big-guns row along the bottom of the paper, landmarks on the avenue, granite enticements distinctly detailed. Appealing to the practical and fit and promising all sorts of adventures in the New River Gorge National Park, Lowell Hardware in the Historic District Carries All Your Camping Needs (And Some You Don’t Know About), while the McKeever Lodge in Pipestem whispers luxury into the ears of the less rugged, announcing All Sorts of Special Themes and Menus, such as Seafood, Italian and Western, to be digested in the 25 Fully Equipped, Deluxe Cottages. The final advertisement perches on the right corner, oldestyle letters urging her to visit John Henry Monument and Big Bend Tunnels. A Summers County Favorite.

In the upper left adjacent to a brown coffee cup eclipse a harpoon called N jabs away from her. She doesn’t see her motel. Route 3 trudges east and off the map into mottled formica terrain. She moved her plate because she didn’t want to look at it. She cleaned her plate except for two hashbrown kernels at the edge of a pool of ketchup. Pamela can’t eat them because they remind her of the fight outside her apartment building the week before and look like knocked-out teeth. No point trying to figure out the cause of it: two crack-heads fighting over God knows what, and once the puncher saw the damage he’d inflicted on the punchee, he helped his friend to his feet to hoof it out of there before the cops arrived. When she left her apartment to come to Tal-cott, the dried blood was still visible on the pavement.

Herb’s Country Style is situated in a locale more peaceful than her neighborhood — no ambulance wails, no crack vials or needles glinting, no homeless living or dead to step over — but despite those leagues the universal coffeeshop protocols are still enforced, even out here in international waters. The waitress keeps her java refills coming as they settle into tacit exchanges of cupfuls and murmured gratitude, and when J. sits down in Pamela’s booth the waitress follows standard operating procedure. She asks, “Separate checks?”

Pamela becomes one of the locals when J. opens the door; the chime dispatches all heads to the entrance to check the identity of the latest arrival, and Pamela joins in enthusiastically, avoiding herself in this game. J. looks more energetic than he did last night outside the motel, his step no longer uneasy. He’s regained the swagger he and his comrades had the previous evening. The locals take gauge of him to see where they can place him, if they know him, then they return back to their food, nodding or squinting to their companions in shared appraisal. Pamela feels a tinge of envy: it must be nice to know where everything lays. He isn’t from around here, not in that shirt and not with those sunglasses. In that skin. She considers inviting him to sit with her, deciding before the thought is finished she doesn’t feel like talking. She needs to prepare herself for her discussion with Mayor Cliff. She fishes another cigarette out of her pack for cover activity but then J. is at her table asking if he can join her. “Help yourself,” her mouth moves.

He slides into the red vinyl across from her and she glances out of the glass. Pamela has not been into the town proper yet; so far she’s seen the same view since she’s arrived. It seems that every place she’s seen so is precarious. The back of Herb’s looks out on the river, but here in the front her view is the familiar sight of mountain creeping on the road, a slope of green and gray that pushes up out of vision. Kind of like skyscrapers, she thinks; the sky is up there somewhere.

“I missed the taxi,” J. says, his hand darting for the plastic menu behind the napkin dispenser.

“Your friends just left,” she answers. She shared the van with them over here and they entered the place together. All the faces turned to them and looked away again. Ritual of the chime. Pamela diverged from the journalists and sat alone in a booth by the window. She asked the waitress if they sold cigarettes and was referred to the gas station next door. When she returned with packs to spare, her food was already on the table, like that. Her bill, too, upside down and waiting. “Feeling better today?” Pamela asks. He looks better.

“Oh I’m up and at ’em.”

Perhaps his sunglasses hide dark circles, but his voice isn’t as low and raspy as his friends’ were this morning in the van. He’s the only one of them who doesn’t look hungover. “This kid,” Pamela starts, “when I was in third grade, this kid in my class choked on a hot dog. The teacher came over and gave him the Heimlich and a little piece of hot dog shot out of his mouth. It looked like a cigar.”

“Was his name Frank?”

She tries to remember. Is this another one of those it’s a small world moments? “I forget his name.” She doesn’t get it until an hour later.

The waitress fills her cup and takes J.’s order. Pamela lights a cigarette, sees she has one going and tamps out the surplus. She catches J. watching this and thinks, he should be the last one to judge, after his and his friends’ antics. Compulsive drinkers, compulsive smokers. Everyone on hair-trigger behavior. He asks her if it is her first time in West Virginia.

“My father used to come here a lot to find stuff for his collection, but he never brought us down.” Now she may be bringing it all back to where it came from. Two hours to kill before her meeting with the mayor. The mayor seemed pretty mellow, judging from his speech last night. “What about you?” she asks.

“First time,” he answers. “This isn’t my usual beat. I’m down here doing a travel piece for a new website.”

“On the internet.”

“We prefer the term Information Superhighway. What do you do?” he says, and they could be back in New York.

“I’m a temp.”

“How do you like it?”

“Have you ever temped?”