Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days

Dave Brown’s byline is a roach whose gradual infestation of the world’s print media can only be sketchily documented. First sightings of the scourge can be traced to the late 1960s; numerous samples of the creature’s spoor have been collected from the concert reviews section of Crawdaddy. The counterculture, it is hypothesized, proved an abundant food source for the emergent insect, which seemed to thrive on the scraps of the new pop culture, insinuating itself behind the baseboards of Rolling Stone and beneath the refrigerators of alternative weeklies. The organism traveled to new publishing empires by stowing away in the cargo holds of spectacle, a survival instinct that served it well in the following decade when a threefold increase in the number of print venues provided ample nesting opportunities. This moist, expanding media proved an exceptionally favorable environment for the byline and its appearances grew at an exponential rate. It has been observed crawling above a prison interview with Sirhan Sirhan in Playboy and lazily breeding in the New York Times during the heyday of singer-songwriters. Stubborn and tenacious, the byline was able to sustain itself through climatic changes in editorial style, its reproductive cycle seemingly unaffected by the insufferable aridity of the Reagan years. Today, no newsstand remains uninfested by Dave Brown’s byline and its readily identifiable, unadorned, service-oriented prose.

On the afternoon of July 12, 1996, Dave Brown sits in the parking lot of the Talcott Motor Lodge in a beach chair, legs ajar, sunning his face with the optimistic silver of a tanning shield. He wears faded army cutoffs and bright red designer sneakers. His gray, untied shoelaces look as if they have been chewed. Dave nods at J. and gestures toward his thermos. “You want a drink?”

“What is it?”

“Gin and tonic.”

J. shakes his head and drops his bags. He looks down at his key and searches for his room number on the rows of the motel behind him. The green motel building lounges low and fat; its two floors are stacked atop each other like two worms engaged in sexual congress. J. feels a few beads of sweat pop out from his underarms. “How long have you been here?” he asks, eyes tracing green ridges.

“I got in about an hour ago,” Dave says, his head still tilted up to the sun. “Only flight I could get. I think we’re the first ones here.”

J. looks back at the hotel rooms. He asks Dave if he knows which of their fellow mercenaries will be attending the weekend’s events.

“Beats me,” Dave replies. “It’s kind of a bum gig, and those are the ones where you never know who’s going to show up. Frenchie I know, because I saw him at the Esquire thing last week and he said he was coming. Probably Tiny because he likes Southern food.” He takes off his sunglasses and shakes his head. “I’m just here because I figured I’d kill some time before I head to L.A. for the TV press tour. Charleston seemed like a nice way station in between there and New York. Get some country air and that shit. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

J. shifts on his feet. His stomach complains again. “What’s the buzz on the buffet?”

“I haven’t heard anything yet. Local culture, hard to say. But then you gotta factor in the U.S. Post Office and you never know with government food. Sure you don’t want a drink?”

“What time is it?”

“It’s about four-thirty.”

J. walks to the dry swimming pool, which looks like something he left soaking in his sink, a dirty pot caked with burnt leaves and grit. No lifeguard on duty. He drags over a beach chair, scraping flint, while Dave tips the thermos into a styrofoam cup and drops in some motel ice. J. takes a long sip and the buzzing in his head argues once more for his hunger. Dave Brown makes formidable gin and tonics. They sit and gossip for a few minutes about who they’ve seen at the last few events, discuss how the List always gets weird in the summer, thin and gawky, as the entertainment combine gears up for the fall. Everyone is in the Hamptons. L.A. keeps plugging along of course, in fact the last time J. saw Dave was at a summer blockbuster dog-and-pony show just before Memorial Day. Guns and car crashes keep everyone fed. The studio marketing people watched happily as hors d’oeuvre toothpicks were licked clean and abandoned on linen tablecloths. Travel pieces for fall publication sent the junketeers scrambling for malaria pills and sunblock. But then there are weird events like this one, odd meteors. J. feels a pain in his arm and slaps a mosquito into a bloody skid. Out in the country. This is a real die-hard gig if Dave, Tiny, and Frenchie are showing up. Which, J. observes, makes him a die-hard junketeer. Dave slathers some suntan lotion into his chest hair. Dave, the oldest one of them all, probably the first name on the List. No one knows for sure who conceived of the List, one or two prime suspects remain unconfirmed, but at a certain point the List required an inspiration, some muse of mooching, and no doubt it had to be Dave. The mastermind of the List sees Dave at a Battle of the Network Stars gala in the late seventies and is granted a vision. Dave with his oversized head screwed into a gnome’s body, in his trademark president-for-life khaki jacket, with bulging pockets overflowing but never touched in public. He has pockets for his pockets. Survival gear: a compass with the open bar at due north, waterproof pens, jungle rot remedies and prescription-strength antacid. The mastermind of the List sees Dave, notes the inclination of the free drink in his hand and the next day his secretary is fathoms deep in his rolodex and recovering the names.

Dave digs into the motel ice bucket and freshens his drink. “So, J.,” he begins, “word is you’re going for the record.” Mixing the ice cubes with his finger.

“Nah, I’m just on a jag.”

“Really? How long have you been on this so-called jag, J.? Been pretty active.”

“It’s been about three months. Mid-April. I started with the Barbie thing.” Mattel introduced its latest Barbie at an all-night party in FAO Schwarz. The new Barbie came with a Range Rover and vaginal cleft; J. and Monica the Publicist groped each other while miniature robot tanks circled their feet.

“I was there,” Dave says, nodding. “A very elegant sushi spread.”

“That’s the one. Since then.”

“Not bad. Nonstop? Moving around or just sticking around New York?” The implication being that it is fairly easy for one of their number to hit a press conference every day, score a doughnut or two, and split. If J.’s streak consists primarily of easy scores, his feat is unspectacular and quite possibly indicative of poor breeding.

“I’ve been pretty mobile,” J. says. “I was in L.A. for two weeks for the blockbuster tour, but that’s the most I was in one place and I’ve hit an event every day. I’m on a jag.”

“Two weeks is a jag, three months is a binge.” He winks, a sprightly flutter he had toiled on for days one dead summer in 1979. “Sure you’re not going for the record?” he asks again. “Because if you’ve been junketeering that long nonstop, you’ve got a good start on the record.”

“I don’t want to be another Bobby Figgis,” J. says. He is pretty dizzy from the gin and tonic; formerly a vile slick in his stomach, the drink has organized itself into an octopus-like creature that tugs and twists his insides.

“Nobody wants to be another Bobby Figgis. Just putting it out there. Let me tell you a story,” Dave says. J. offers no resistance. “One time I was at this book party for Norman Mailer. I don’t know which one, one of those goddamn things of his. I think I was going to review it for Rolling Stone. Or maybe I was just there, I can’t remember — I reviewed one of his books for Rolling Stone, anyway. Or was it People”? It’s getting late and they’ve stopped bringing out the food so I’m stocking up on vittles. It was a nice spread. I had to reach over Capote, who was flailing his little rat paws in my way trying to block me. Are you with me?”