Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days

Boy, it’s cold outside. Pitiless New York winters get inside the bones. Inside the dressing room the steam heat clangs.

A few months later they rioted in Peekskill. New Jersey, that is. An anti-Paul Robeson riot. This lefty arts group asks him to do a benefit and all heck breaks loose. Not in our town. Goon squads roved, red-blooded Americans of multiple epithets and a single hue. Dirty Commie, Dirty Nigger, Dirty Jew. The mob smashed the stage to kindling, which came in handy when an individual or individuals later burned a cross. They sent Robeson fans, assorted fellow travelers to the hospital. The cops stood by with their arms crossed: Do you hear anything? Nope. You? Nope.

After that, it just ain’t the same. Concert tours cancelled. Theater owners hated pinkos or feared repercussions. Sympathetic venues couldn’t book him because of threats. You get a phone call in the middle of the night, you have a family, what choice do you have. He couldn’t make a living. He became the first American banned from television when an appearance on Eleanor Roosevelt’s NBC show was called off. If his country had gone mad, maybe overseas would be better. They loved him overseas. But get this — the State Department pulled his passport. It would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States Government” for him to go abroad and speak on black rights. He’s “one of the most dangerous men in the world.” If he signed a paper saying he wouldn’t make any speeches, everything would be copacetic. But he wouldn’t do it.

Stuck here. Exiled to his own country, he started to fall apart. Got more and more broke. A man with a voice like that, and he can’t even open his mouth. He began to talk about the pentatonic scale. He had a theory about the pentatonic scale. The ubiquity and universality of the pentatonic scale in folk music around the globe proved the brotherhood of man. By studying the pentatonic scale we can peer into human truths. The commonality of the folk. Pentatonic scale this, pentatonic scale that. Trip on the rug and it was the pentatonic scale. Beset by mental as well as physical problems, he slid. After a couple of years, things loosened up but the years of confinement had taken their toll. When the withdrawal of his passport was finally declared illegal in ’58, he settled in England, where successive breakdowns finished his career. Suicide attempts, electroshock treatments, overmedication. He was a plate of scrambled eggs. As the civil rights movement reached fruition, as he sat across the ocean, far from the front lines, and few remembered his name. When he returned to New York in ’64, the newspapers gloried over his reduced capabilities. Look at Goliath, hobbled now. DISILLUSIONED NATIVE SON, went one headline. A reader wrote a letter back. It said, “That’s John Henry himself you’re insulting.”

Maybe he should have been a baker. His great-great-grandfather was born into slavery, purchased his freedom and became a baker. He baked bread for the Revolutionary Army, and the story goes that George Washington himself thanked him personally for his patriotic contribution. So maybe he should have been a baker.

Hey, Mr. Robeson. Hey, Mr. Robeson, goes a voice outside the dressing room door. It’s time. The people are waiting.

He is John Henry tonight.

I t’s me. Calling to see if you’re back in town. Give me a call. I’m at work. This is Gene in factchecking calling about your piece. Just have one or two queries, if you could call me back today that would be great.

Hey, J., this is Marshall, calling on Friday around three-thirty. Hey, man, hate to bug you again about that contract, you have to send that in before you can get paid, so … send it in! Have a nice weekend.

This is your Aunt Jennifer calling about your father’s birthday. I’ll be home all night.

Gene in fact-checking again. Guess you didn’t have time to get back to me yesterday. Legal has a few queries about your piece, that last section where you say “it’s so easy even a dimwit can do it.” Do you have a source on that, that dimwit thing? Is that in their press material or did you just, where did you get that from is what I’m asking. Thanks.

HE ERASES EVERYTHING.The answering machine company had prominently advertised the salient feature of its new product — Keep Track of Your Messages from a Remote Location — and he can’t, by his sights, get more remote than he is now. He presses a button and is free. This is modern technology. One time he forgot his ATM number and he became less than human, see-through, he waved his hands in the faces of other people but they could not see or hear him. This was how he felt. He wandered the streets for a few hours without currency or an identity until his ATM number returned to his recall as suddenly as it had disappeared. It had been something of an existential dilemma and troubling but it hadn’t happened since.

This is Herb in Accounts Payable at Saturn Publishing. I’m still waiting on that Social Security number, sir, we can’t pay you unless we get a Social Security number for you. I assume you have one.

Checking his messages reminds him of the record so he starts thinking about how he’ll fill the requirements next week. There’s that paperweight thing on Tuesday so that’s taken care of. He can probably skip lunch that day, probably breakfast too because Sharp always puts out a nice spread for their products, and if this new paperweight is half as good as the buzz maintains, they’ll really go all out… He catches himself salivating at the idea and blames One Eye. One Eye’s crackpot mission to get himself off the List had undone all the good work J. had put in this morning. He had shaken off his conditioning for a few hours and it had required much effort, renunciation, reserve-tapping struggle. Real hair-shirt stuff, this morning. Then, like that, corralled into that dumbass business and he stood in the bathtub waiting for Lawrence to leave. They were lucky they didn’t get caught. He slid back into custom too easily.

Hello, J., it’s Elaine. The piece looks great. There were just one or two things I changed so I’m going to fax you the new version and tell me what you think. We’re closing the issue in half an hour, so if you can get back to me before then, great.

He walks over to the bathroom and urinates. Feels so at home in this place he forgets to tend to his fly. He has half an hour until the taxi comes back for another run to the festival site. Pamela will be there. He opens up the press packet so that he’ll be able carry on a conversation.

This is Margaret at Legend returning your call. About that check, I’m going to have to check with someone in processing to check out what happened to your check. My assistant says she remembers seeing the check request form so it should have gone in and the check should have gone out, so I don’t know what happened.

He reads, “The C&O railroad provided a great opportunity for the slaves freed by Mr. Lincoln’s Proclamation. The C&O paid the passage to West Virginia for any freed black willing to work and provided the first salary some of those men had ever seen. The laborers came from all over, from as far north as New Jersey and as far south as the Florida panhandle. When work on the Big Bend Tunnel finished many stayed with the railroad for the rest of their lives. They were proud to join the C&O family.”

It’s me again. I don’t know if you’re mad or what or I don’t even know. When you get this message call me.

He stops. But what if he doesn’t go to the paperweight event on Tuesday or skips whatever event (he’ll have to look it up) is going on Monday? It isn’t as if he bet anyone any money that he could do it. Go for the record. It is a competition between him and himself. Or him and the List. Depended on how you looked at it. He had bet himself he could do it. Hadn’t he? Looking back it seems to him that he just started doing it and it made a certain kind of sense so he kept going. It wasn’t even particularly hard, going for it. If he deposits that check that should have arrived by now it will take five days for it to clear. The company is based in New York, is in fact one of the biggest magazine concerns in New York, but their bank is in Idaho and it takes five days for their checks to clear. (How quickly his cars jump the tracks, are derailed.)