Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days

We’re going with dimwit one word. One word dimwit. Call if there’s a problem.

Under the word heroic draw a line and list all the meanings. He doesn’t have a single one in him.

It is odd because it is just him and L’il Bob working the tunnel. John Henry and his partner always work with a second team. It keeps the productivity up. Two pairs of men boring twin holes into the mountain and singing to their work. The sound of the hammer is percussion, each blow a footfall into the mountain to the other side. But today he does not know why they are alone in the darkness and why they do not sing. He cannot see L’il Bob’s face and cannot move his mouth to talk to him. To find out what is happening. It is as if neither can stop. Their labor pulls them like a stream and it is all they can do to stay afloat. It seems they have been at this hole forever. He cannot seem to get the bit deeper. The mountain has grown harder. They have hit the mountain’s heart and the mountain is using all of its ancient will to prevent their violence against its self. It works against them. Then with one blow John Henry feels something give and with the next blow the bit sinks in deep, deeper than he has ever driven before. John Henry thinks, we’ve hit the western cut. The two ends of the tunnel have met. He is about to cheer. They have won Captain Johnson’s bonus. Then the blood comes.

The blood is black until the candlelight hits it and it turns deep red. He can see then that it is blood. It should have been light from the western cut that came through the hole but it is blood. The black then red spray erupts from around the drill. He steps back. He still cannot speak. He looks at L’il Bob and sees his partner’s head turn. L’il Bob blinks through the blood on his face and then he grins. John Henry cannot stop him from what he is about to do. L’il Bob’s fingers open and the bit flies from the hole and the spray of blood becomes a geyser. The force of the blood pushes John Henry backward. He falls on the timber planks and when he wipes his eyes free L’il Bob is gone. The blood of the mountain pours into the cut. Out east. He thinks the planks are bobbing in it beneath him, and then he looks and sees that the rock around him is now flesh. The red shale glistens like animal meat. Ridges formed by the blasting are now tracings of sinew. Veins and arteries. It is a living breathing mountain and he is in its angry guts. The heart of the mountain pours itself over him. The blood is up to his neck. Then the blood spray blinds him again and he is awake.

When he wakened he was grateful for a moment and then he realized it was still dark. He had traveled through a series of fever dreams all night. They were coupled together like train cars. He knew that the caboose contained morning and each time he fell asleep he hoped that this time he would step into it. But he opened the door to the next car and stepped again into nightmare. He did not know what time it was. The camp was quiet. Every one else slept off their labor. He had lost two days’ wages laid up in bed. It was all he could do to crawl to the outhouse and the outhouse stank with his stink. He shivered and his blanket was damp with fever sweat. John Henry could not get warm no matter what he did and the blanket chilled him even more. He was laid up with fever. It was the longest night he could remember. He prayed for morning.

He wakened to the bustle of the other men getting ready to go back into the mountain. L’il Bob came into his shanty looking worried. He carried a bucket of water and his blanket for John Henry to use while he was working. L’il Bob asked his friend was he coming back to work that day and John Henry tried to sit up. His head exploded with worms and he was too dizzy, he fell back to the bed like a felled tree. L’il Bob put the blanket on his friend and told him that he’d tell the boss John Henry is sick again. The shaker complained about Jesse, John Henry’s replacement. He’s slow and stupid, L’il Bob told his friend. You’re twice as fast as him, he said. John Henry closed his eyes and his eyes rolled beneath their lids and when he woke up again he could tell from the sunlight it was about noon. He was grateful he did not dream again.

He got sick the day after Tommy died. The sun had just slipped behind the mountain. The smoke from the latest blasting had stopped sneaking out the tunnel and it was time to go back in to see how much the blast had advanced the heading. John Henry sat on a crate and rubbed tallow into the handle of his sledge. He waited for the sheen that said he had put enough oil in. That morning he had felt the blows travel up his arms and rock his shoulders and knew that the handle was getting stiff. He had to limber it up or else he’d be sore when he sat down that night, the pain would creep on him like floodwater over a bank. When Tommy said he was heading back in to start mucking out the rock from the blast, John Henry looked down at the handle of his hammer. He had not finished and Tommy went ahead. John Henry saw his friend walk into the heading and felt the first chill of his fever. The old man led a mule cart into the tunnel and that was the last John Henry saw of him alive. He rubbed the sheep fat into the wood while both the mule and the man were killed by the loose, falling rock. When John Henry went inside to see where it happened, he was not surprised to see that it was near the crag that haunted him. The beak of shale was still there, snickering, telling him something. They buried Tommy and the mule together in the fill of the eastern cut. That night after midnight John Henry’s chill had become a fever.

He was sick and afraid. The fever will pass but the mountain will not. He pulled the blankets over his head. John Henry heard the clink of hammers on drills, he was too far away from them to hear them for real but he heard them anyway. Sometimes the clinking matched the beat of his heart for a whole minute and then they fell away from each other. The rhythms met again when he least expected it and it was like he was one with the labor. The doctor came in and said Captain Johnson wanted him to check on John Henry. The doctor opened a packet and dropped the white dust into water and gave it to the fevered man. The doctor said, you should be able to work tomorrow. The company can’t afford to keep on men who won’t work, he said. Then he disappeared into the afternoon light. John Henry’s big body shivered.

He knew the mountain was going to kill him the first time he saw it. The railroad put out word it needed men to dig a tunnel and hitched a flatcar for Negro workers to a westbound train. The men filed into the old car and sat on seats fashioned from nail kegs. In the Negro workers’ car the men sized each other up and talked about the ride. It was the first time any of them had been on a train. They spat tobacco to the floor. The train took them as far as the tracks went and a wagon took them the rest of the way to the mountain. The wagon arrived at the grading camp and John Henry saw the mountain heaped up to Heaven and knew right then that he had lied. He had told Abby that when he returned they would get married. John Henry would save his wages and come back a rich man. Or rich enough to start a life with her. He had carried water in the mines when he was a slave. The mining company leased him from Reynolds when he reached the age of six. By that time a slaveowner could not get insurance on his slaves any more because too many died in the mines and the insurance companies were no longer going to insure slaves. Reynolds didn’t want to lose his investment so he only leased children to the mining company, with the order that his slaves were not allowed to do anything dangerous. They could carry water or learn a blacksmith’s trade but no more. John Henry carried water to miners before the Proclamation and when he heard about the work on the tunnel he knew he was going.