Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days

Another one of these characters in a railroad engineer’s outfit has attracted a ring of boys and girls around him. Lucien inches closer and hears the man say, “From that first day he appeared at the C&O camp, John Henry proved himself to be the strongest, fastest steeldriver they had ever seen. He swung the hammer down and the whole world jumped.” Not all of these kids are local, Lucien figures. Maybe they’re hearing this story for the first time. Truth be told, Lucien had no idea who John Henry was when Parker contacted him; first thing when he got off the phone he dispatched Lawrence to do some research. When he returned with a children’s book, Lucien frowned, squinted and asked Lawrence to do a summary. Later that night, as he read his assistant’s notes, he began to remember the story. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place where he’d first heard it. It was one of those stories that seems like it has always been a part of you. Like the stork story about the pebbles in the water glass, or however that story went. The fox and the grapes. Maybe some of these children squatting on the grass are getting the story for the first time. How many of their parents remembered the story? How many have heard of Talcott before today? He is proud of himself.

“Lucien? It’s Apple Valley Brand Rocky Road. I got their contact number.” This is the dull announcement of Lawrence’s return. He had dispatched his assistant on a mission in order to have a few moments to himself, lose the bottom beneath his feet at each new swell of the fair and here comes Lawrence back too soon. As long as he doesn’t start talking about the animals again. Lawrence whined that when they returned from the airport, there were all these paw prints in his bathtub and since then he can’t stop talking about bears mauling him in his sleep. Just the prints in the tub, nothing else was touched. What did he think, a bunch of cubs let themselves in with a key? Lawrence probably thinks he’s roughing it down here.

In the end they don’t really have to be here, on this flattened grass, hundreds of miles from his new leather chair. (Certainly that is one ill-planned aspect of this expedition; never get a new leather chair delivered just minutes before you have to hop on a plane. There are breaking-in rituals to be performed, imprinting to be executed.) Apart from the novelty of doing a town, the quiet audacity of such an idea, in the end Lucien hasn’t done more than tailor his methods to the needs of the client, as always. His people gave these folks a few tips on how to write a decent press release. He alerted the appropriate travel guides to get the event included in 1997 editions, called upon old New York colleagues who had fled the metropolitan turmoil and put themselves out to pasture in small Southern dailies. Small advance items appeared here and there. He called upon the List.

The List still amazed him. Cell phone signals probably turned to mist in these mountains but the List penetrated. He had put this weekend down out of habit, but never expected this kind of turnout. Five junketeers. In Talcott! The food is terrible, the only celebrities around are high school football greats yakking about that one big game, and the atmosphere is what climate control switches are meant to eradicate. He doesn’t know what surprises him more: the efficiency of the List or the desperation of its subjects.

A convenience that started as an experiment. As Lucien’s private game, not so long ago, a chin tuck ago. He noticed that the same people dragged themselves out for his events, for his competitors’ events, for whatever trough was laid out that night. Glossy writers, daily writers, beat reporters, scrabbling freelancers of mixed pedigree. (Not counting the true hangers-on of course, the blue-haired Park Avenue freaks, bony spouse hunters, and other assorted night fiends they haven’t invented pesticides for.) The writers were like day workers who crowded the farmer’s truck every morning for penny-work. They ate and drank, migrant workers, wiping maw on sleeve, and sometimes they got out the word like they were supposed to. There had to be a better system than this mooching free-for-all, it seemed to him. He took note of the names and faces, linked them to later bylines. A good number of them, it appeared, did the work. Sure they leeched, but a certain kind of creature maintained a more-or-less stable ratio of coverage to freeloading. He decided to add another database to his shifting A-list and B-list invitees, one devoted to this overlooked species of freelancer. He monitored their progress through the nights. How many drinks they poured down their gullets, how long they lingered after the food disappeared into lonesome garnish, how many bylines sprouted in the aftermath.

Soon he had a hand-picked crew who could be depended upon in times of need to fulfill a quota of coverage. Gossip columnists, music writers with Coke-bottle glasses, airline magazine habitués scheming passage to the next cabana, home electronic experts who sold review products to pawnshops, the eager and ambitious and just furloughed from internships. They were dependable, and he watched them. Surveying slime trails from above, patterns emerged, and he discovered a ratio he liked. When he was ready he mailed them anonymously. He didn’t mind including his rivals in his communiqués

— the more experienced these select became with the rules of the contract, the more healthy the entire industry would become. He added names, scouted out rookies and journeymen, subtracted slackers. There were few complaints; there was no one to complain to. They were fed, through them the public fed, and they filed pieces that paid the rent and subsidized their habits. Everybody won and the List flourished.

“Lucien?” Lawrence intrudes.

“Yes, Lawrence.”

“I saw the boys, sir. Dave and Tiny and the rest. They’re over by the beer garden. Do you think it’s time we glad-handed?”

“Lawrence, I think it’s a perfect time for glad-handing.” Who came down? He remembers he hooked Dave Brown up with Milt Chamber from West Virginia Life —Milt, formerly a Condé Nast regular, had fled back home after rehab to start a new life. Tiny is probably here for the food, Frenchie, he can’t remember at the moment, but there might be a travel magazine involved, knowing his predilections. Is One Eye doing anything? One Eye has been giving Lucien evil looks lately, but he is used to One Eye’s periodic fits of pique. And J. is here, from all accounts continuing his attempt at the record, poor guy. That way lies madness. Might have to have a talk with the boy at some point if he keeps it up. At least J. followed up on that website lead and is doing some coverage. Two out of five of them down here working. That makes forty percent. Well within the acceptable range.

Lucien takes one last look at the children. The storyteller’s face is a stone engraving and the children lean forward, drawn by suspense. He’s not doing too bad a job, probably trying to remember how his father or grandfather told him the story decades ago. At the booth adjacent they’re taking donations for the museum. The parents of the kids dig out a few bills while they wait for John Henry to win his race. Yes, it is a nice day. They’re taking donations for the construction of John Henry Museum. Throw in the museum thing and this is almost an artsy-type gig. He always feels good after an artsy-type gig.

“Let’s go, Lawrence,” he says, “and review the troops.”

At the all-night bodega of souls the crackheads promenade, jigger and shimmy, trade palsies in fitful games of one-upmanship, count coins beneath the corrugated tin of the yellow canopy. The bodega never closes. At midnight the night man removes the brick from the front door and transactions proceed through bulletproof plastic. He takes requests. He strains to hear the crackheads. When he withdraws into the recesses of his mercantile domain to retrieve malt liquor and potato chips of anonymous manufacture, protein shakes if that’s all the customer can keep down, the crackheads etch nonsense slogans and their names into the plastic with keys or dimes, halfhearted dispatches from underground. They look over their shoulders for 5–0; if they pooled their resources they could come up with two dozen warrants and summonses among them, surely. They taunt the night man for no reason, reason enough. They deprecate his sensory apparatus. Yo, you deaf? I wanted one St. Ides and two O.E.s, motherfucker, not two St. Ides, shit. I wanted those Lays chips you got right there, not that plantain shit, shit, you blind? They talk through the bulletproof plastic about the state of the economy. What you want another ten cent? Day before yesterday it was a dollar ninety-five, now you trying to tell me it’s another ten cent? My boy was down here two hours ago, nigger, he got the same shit and it wasn’t no ten cent more. You Dominican niggers try to rip a nigger off. If the night man is too tired to grant this impromptu haggling session the attention it deserves, he’ll let the guy off the hook and hear his name cursed by the man to the other crackheads down the line. If he feels like standing his ground, he’ll turn the revolving bulletproof box around so that the man sees his insufficient coin there on the yellowed plastic, a museum exhibit on ghetto commerce. He can come up with that dime or he can leave. Cigarettes and condoms may be purchased singly. The new demand for Phillies cigars is accounted for. The night man runs back and forth. Even a request for simple orange juice from this crowd, at this time of night, gathers licentious aspect. These people take ordinary items from his uncle’s shelves and convert them into criminal accessories.