Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days

“No.”

“You wouldn’t ask that if you had. Typing and filing, usually. They call you up and you head out.”

“Just like me.”

“The agency doesn’t send me to places like this. They have a strict policy.”

“You should have them look into it. This place could use a good proofreader,” tapping the menu, “unless ‘Pried Fish’ is some Southern delicacy I’m unaware of.”

She asks him how long he’s been a journalist and thinks, gay? The way he talks reminds her of Royce. Whenever she and Royce went out he’d look around the room and pick out the waffling straight boys. The curious or closeted. Or so he claimed with some authority. Not that there wasn’t proof of his abilities; she’d forgiven him for what happened when she introduced him to the new fellow she’d started seeing. Forgiven him and him: it was her luck. J.’s not that bad-looking. That Hawaiian shirt is pretty loud, makes him stick out more than he does already. Black people around here are pretty country from what she’s seen so far. What room is he staying in? Not on her floor: upstairs somewhere. Leaving tomorrow. Haven’t been laid in— He does live in New York though. She shakes her head. That kind of thinking leads nowhere. Also a drinking problem, probably. Blond girls or he’s gay. Maybe introduce him to Royce when they get back to New York so he can do his trick.

(It takes her about four seconds to concoct this narrative.)

THE WAITRESS DROPSJ.’s plate on his place mat with one hand and refills Pamela’s coffee with the other. Her greasy spoon movements are honed, delicate, and were it not for the refutations of every single object in his field of vision he could be at the ballet, observing a master. The place mat features a crudely drawn map of Hinton. He studied it when he sat down, glad to be out of the heat and glad to be done with his exercise. A giant star marked Herb’s location; the restaurant tottered on the bank of the New River. North a bit (this thing drawn to scale?) a bridge crossed the river and ended up at the foot of the town. Six, seven, eight blocks long and five “avenues” wide. He is far from home. Then south of the main part of town is a little strip of streets on the bank of the river. Not as many historic locations marked there, must be the newer part of town; when he got close to Herb’s and could see across the river he spotted a large supermarket over there. Then there are all these corny ads at the bottom, tourist traps. He can’t see his motel on the map. He isn’t tired exactly but wouldn’t mind a ride back. Sees the ad for the John Henry Monument and asks, “You going to the steeldriving thing this afternoon?”

“Think so.”

“It’s going to be a re-creation of the John Henry race, right?” Gloomy Gus only opens her mouth to stick a cigarette in it. “Two guys banging nails into the ground to see who can go faster?”

Pamela executes with practiced ease an expression of sublime boredom. She exhales smoke through her nose and says, “Actually John Henry didn’t lay track. That’s what everybody pictures, but that wasn’t his actual job. He worked in the tunnel. One guy would hold a drill bit horizontal like this and the steeldriver would hammer it into the rock to make a hole. Then they’d put dynamite in the hole when it was deep enough and blow it up to advance the tunnel. Then they’d start over again.”

“I thought John Henry was made up but these people really take him seriously.” Sticking a piece of bacon into his mouth.

“That is the question. Big Bend Tunnel is the place named in most of the ballads, and that’s over in Talcott. The songs identify the C&O Railroad and they’re the ones who put the line in. So it fits that it comes from a true story.”

“But that doesn’t mean it actually happened — the race itself. He has, what, a heart attack once he beats the drill? Or he’s struck down from above.”

“Want to rain on the parade, don’t you?” she says, starting to grin. “There are two books about it. My father had the first editions, he would … Two folklorists — Louis Chappell and Guy Johnson — came down in the twenties or thirties to interview people around here and find out if he really lived or not. They found some people who said he did and some who said he didn’t,” nodding to the locals in other booths of the restaurant, the representative natives. “Some of the people who worked on the tunnel said they’d witnessed the contest and some said no way it ever happened. Their granddad had told them John Henry worked in Big Bend, or he didn’t. Most of the people were dead by the time they got down here, so a lot of it was secondhand anyway.”

“So what was the upshot?”

“One of the writers, the white man, Chappell, believed that the contest happened, and the other guy, Guy Johnson — who was black — thought there wasn’t enough proof. They interviewed the same people, a year or two apart and got different stories from them. Talcott and Hinton obviously think he existed. My father did.”

The white guy believes but the black guy doesn’t. He knocks some morsels around on his plate. The eggs aren’t that bad but you’d think she’d put out her cigarette while he’s eating. Just courtesy. Or maybe she’s telling him she didn’t want him to sit there. “He was an academic?” J. asks. Was that tense right? She’s using the past tense for her father.

“John Henry was just his hobby,” she says. “He owned a hardware store. But he started this hobby of collecting whatever he could find about it. Just whatever he could dig up. Memorabilia.”

“And what’s your take on it? Think he existed?”

“Are you working now? Are you interviewing me?”

“If you want to look at it that way.”

“You’re not writing any of this down.”

“I have a good memory. If you want I can pretend to write it down. Do you have a pen?”

The door chimes. They turn to look at a ponytailed man roll his wheelchair through the front with practiced fluidity. Pamela says, “I’m not a good person to interview. I just came here to get rid of my father’s stuff.”

“How much did he have — how big is his collection?”

“Boxes and boxes.”

“You’re not the sentimental sort.”

“It’s not doing me any good. It’s taking up space and I’m paying for it.”

Masterstroke here is to change the subject. He’s been watching her tear off the scalloped edges of the place mat and fold them into little balls. Doing that when she’s not puffing away. Pretty good-looking though, regardless. He’ll change the subject here. “Can a man actually beat a steam drill?”

“Am I your main source for this piece?”

“This is all terribly helpful background. You’re an expert.”

She squints. “The first mechanical drills weren’t that well put together. The bits wore out quickly, they kept breaking down. And in rock like this— all these mountains are soft shale — they’d get stuck in all the dust.”

“A geologist and a historian.”

“You have no idea,” she says. The left corner of her mouth tilts ambiguously but declines to commit to an interpretable expression. Certainly seems to have some issues, J. thinks. “The drills were so unreliable,” Pamela continues, “that a really strong steeldriver probably could beat one of them under the right conditions — comparing the speeds of great steeldrivers and the speed of the first drills. If the contest wasn’t too long. It was a timed contest. It’s within the realm of physical possibility.”

“The power of positive thinking.”

“It’s all speculation. But no proof he didn’t do it.”

“Or that he did.”

“Not sure if you want to say that too loud around here, if you know what I mean.”