Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days

Lucien’s laptop is open in a sleek black L on the desk. References cycle through his brain: L for List; Venus stepping from her big clam. One Eye glances at the bathroom, maybe he’s in there, but no, One Eye saw Lucien and his party leave the parking lot with his own eye, half an hour before, and the p.r. man’s dinner with the local burghers will leave him with more than enough time for the caper. Time enough for a few simple keystrokes. Tap tap. Sliding into the chair, fingers fluttering like a pianist minutes from performance, he notices the screen saver’s joke. A dollar bill roves and glides across the passive matrix screen, arrogantly ricocheting off edges with impunity. Hmm. It’s kind of a bald joke for Lucien, distant from his usual wit; surely the novelty would have worn off after a few days. But maybe it’s not meant for Lucien’s amusement.

There’s no sound outside the door, no detectives to nab the prey of the intricate sting operation. He taps a key, the dollar bill disappears into the machine’s billfold, and he finds himself looking at the List. The file open on the computer is the List.

If Lawrence knew One Eye and J. were in the bathroom when he returned from picking up his boss, why didn’t he say anything? The flunky’s not cool enough a customer to have kept his mouth shut, not by any stretch. If he knew there was someone in his room he’d have shrieked like a tot with a rat in its crib. It’s possible One Eye left the file open when they made their hasty retreat to the bathroom, but he clearly remembers the window closing. Maybe they missed something when they put the room back together. At any rate, Lucien knows someone is on to him, and perhaps he even knew it at the fair, when he and Lawrence strolled up to them. He knows.

What’s a one-eyed man to do in such a predicament. He’s being dared to tamper with it. Delete it, take his name off, take any one’s name off. He scrolls. The names are all of them reduced to vitals, names and addresses and affiliations, tics and predilections. He clicks and clicks and the names march across the information plain, toward ordained engagement, implacable and resolute.

A trap and a test. Lucien doesn’t care one way or the other. And why should he? It’s just a little bit of data. After all One Eye’s scheming and sneaking and extravagant declarations, it’s just a little bit of data.

He spends twenty minutes prowling across the dingy carpet; it only takes him a minute to accept his weakness and defeat in this contest but the expenditure of a few extra minutes of ersatz deliberation makes him feel better.

He can’t do it. Finally he writes a little note for Lucien and deposits it on the keyboard. A two-word message, a verb-noun combo understood across the globe. He shuts the door gently behind him.

It has cooled off considerably from the afternoon. As he hits the stairs his hand absently latches onto the guardrail and slides. Down in the foxhole the junketeers drink and bullshit one another. His chair is probably still warm, it is all the same, nothing has changed. He rubs his eye patch, scraping the stitching across his palm. Frenchie mutters something ribald and they all laugh and their chairs creak. This is all the same. Sitting among his comrades again, he adjusts his eyepatch. It’s itchy under there. No one remarks on his absence. Dave Brown asks if they remember the time at that party. He had the eye patch made special for him in Spain. The slim leather band attaches to the black heart of the patch. It’s a smart little number. Tiny says he knows a trick that allows you to get as much stuff as you want out of a vending machine. He often gets comments on the pattern across the front, an elegant arabesque that approaches a shape, but declines disclosure at the last second. It draws the gaze, draws attention to his accident. J. says he’s going to get a ginger ale. Of course the average person must wonder exactly what is under there. The answer is, the eye patch secrets his fear. He settles in. It will always be the same.

The day in the mountain was almost done. The blood in his arms kept time better than any clock. The stacks of lead in his arms kept track of his labor better than the wheels inside a watch or the foreman’s whistle. It was almost time to lay down his hammer when one of the runners came in telling all of them to come outside and see. The runner clasped his palms to his knees and panted, pushing each word up out of his body. John Henry and L’il Bob and the other team assumed there had been another accident and another death. The work had gone too peacefully for too long and they were due for grief. His partner tossed his bit to the dirt and John Henry slung his sledge over his shoulder and they walked across the planks toward the sun. John Henry was near the mouth of the tunnel when he heard laughter behind him. He twisted his body and saw only the crag of rock behind him, craning down from roof. He had never before seen that the blasting had opened two shiny stones in the crag’s rock face. The stones glinted like cruel eyes. As he stepped out into the thick dusk he knew it would never again taunt him. It had delivered its message.

The bosses and the crews and Captain Johnson stood around a long cart. The planks of the cart were fresh-cut wood and the tarp had seen little rain. Everything the railroad brought to the site aged fast. Years of calluses formed in days, newborn aches immediately felt ancient and lifelong. This thing that had gathered the men was new. The horses were well-fed and handsomely groomed. Not mules. They had never hauled exploded and blasted rock, the insides of mountains. The white tarp draped over a shape that was unfamiliar. It propped up fabric and bulged beneath the tarp but its true shape was impossible to tell. A man talked while his fingers snapped in the air like sparks. He wore the clothes of a city man, a carpetbagger, and was so clean shaven his face glowed like bleached bones. One of the men next to John Henry said it was a man from Burleigh company come to sell the Captain on a steam drill. The steeldriver and his partner shouldered up to the front to hear what he had to say. L’il Bob said, I told you it was coming. I told you it was coming.

The steam drill had been the talk of the work camp for the last few days. After dinner one night, before the men dispersed into gambling or sleep, one of the graders, a red-skinned man named Jefferson, said he knew of one of those things. He had seen it with his own eyes. He had been a blacksmith on the Hoosac Tunnel job in Massachusetts before coming down here to this mountain. Before the steam drill, he said, they could not find purchase in the rock. The work was slow. But then the bosses brought in one of them Burlee machines and the rock was more like sand once that machine got on it. It was powered by steam and it drank more water than a man but it didn’t need food and worked twice as fast as a man. L’il Bob said Jefferson was one ignorant nigger, talking about that rickety thing like he looked up to it. But over the days and nights the talk returned again and again to the steam drill and many of the men were curious. Their speculations swarmed in the air like gnats at twilight. John Henry kept silent with his back to the mountain that was always there.

The salesman talked of tunnels up and down this line. He spread his arms as if he held all between the oceans between his palms. He talked of tunnels up and down railroad lines all across the country. Then he tucked his thumbs into his vest pockets and strummed his chest with thin fingers like spider legs. Captain Johnson reached for his pocket watch when the salesman from Burleigh started talking about feet per day, pennies per inch and advancing the heading. Most of this talk went in one ear and out the other ear of the men but they understood the meaning. They had all dealt with the doubletalk of merchants before. L’il Bob said I told you it was coming. All around them the work had stopped before this talk and even some of the men from the western cut had made their way around to see. Boss and water boy, black man and white man came to see the invention.