Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days

The same night as the shooting in Hinton, West Virginia, a beloved star of stage and screen, whom most people believed had died years before, succumbed after a long illness and the story of the tragedy was bumped from the front pages. Nonetheless segments of the public engaged in lively discussions about the John Henry celebration and its tragic denouement. Stamp collectors, for example, speculated about possible besmirchment. War correspondents drew analogies from their own experience. And at a bar on M Street in Washington, D.C., an inquisitive patron could have overheard this conversation between two postal employees:

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

(cupping his hands)

I was on the ground in a compact, defensive position because I knew

what to do. I took that class, remember?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Maybe I should take that class.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

(nodding to himself)

It wasn’t cheap but it was worth it. The Don’t Be a Hero Urban Readiness and Preparedness Seminar — covers everything from road rage to hostage situations. Bank robbery and airplane. It’s a one-day thing, I’ll get you the info.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

So he pulls out the gun.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

The mayor was up on the podium and then blam blam like that and I look over and the guy’s standing up just shooting into the air.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

How far away was he?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

He was right there! In the second row. Me and the guys were up in the front row, and the guys who got shot, the newspaper guys, were sitting right in front of him. It could have been us right there.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Dag. Just started shooting?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

Didn’t even say a word. Hear this blam blam then I look over and see the gun but I see that and boom, I’m recumbent in a compact, defensive position. Drop, Tuck and Roll. So I didn’t see the cop shoot him or the two guys, I just heard it.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

(sipping) Dag.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

(demonstrating)

Everybody screaming. See that? Somebody stepped on my hand.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Little vitamin E will prevent a scar.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

(nodding)

I been rubbing it on.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Didn’t leave a note or anything.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

Had his wife on the news today. He didn’t leave a note or a clue. She said nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Some kind of stamp collector.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

Collected railroad stamps.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Christ.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

You said it, brother.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

(eyebrows raised)

What, was he trying to raise the value of the John Henry stamp

through notoriety?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

Could have picked a better way — how’s he going to profit from machinations if he’s a goner?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Doesn’t it smell fishy? Papers say the guy didn’t have a history of mental illness. Job’s okay, still poking the wife it sounds like. No dismembered heads in the basement. Nothing.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

Quiet fellow, kept to himself. That’s what the neighbors say.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

And regardless of what we think, stamp collecting to most of the world is a perfectly innocent pastime. Maybe this will increase awareness.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

So what makes him do it?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Did he say anything?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

(turning on the bar stool)

His famous last words? — “I wasn’t going to shoot you.”

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

What, he just wanted your attention? Pulling out a gun. Easier ways of getting people’s attention. No stamp collecting manifesto in his coat pocket?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

Who knows what he was trying to do?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

We must ask ourselves, who stands to profit? Any jump in the orders of the John Henry stamp since then?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

I’ll ask Jimmy Say you hear about Jimmy and that new secretary in Quality? The redhead?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Maybe it’s nothing complicated at all. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe he just snapped. It happens. “He just snapped.”

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

Leaving behind this message to the world.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Leaving behind a challenge.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

People just snap all the time these days.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

We peer into the inexplicable.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

And every day are confronted with the unknowable.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Least he wasn’t one of ours. The first reports said he was one of us. Randy looks like he could snap at any moment now that he’s trying to grow that mustache.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

I was sitting right next to Randy! Post Office executives — they’d have a field day with that. Now it’s not just the rank and file but the top brass going—

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Don’t say it!

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

I wasn’t going to say that, I was going to say, going to give us a bad name. Two dead and one wounded, did you hear that? The second guy died today.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Shame. They bringing the cop up on charges?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

Just doing his job, really. Taking out the homicidal madman. Sure he hits two bystanders but that’s his job. Sucks that they’re members of the media, for his sake, but he got the guy before he could hurt somebody. Preserving the peace.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

Gonna sue like crazy. The journalists’ families. Cop kills two bystanders while trying to get one guy? Gonna sue the town like crazy. (noticing empty glass) Damned shame. You want another beer?

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:

(signaling the barkeep) Sure.

POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:

So tell me about this seminar.

She wore blue. The song said never wear black, wear blue so she wore blue and they had a map. They walked down the road.

AFTER THEY HAD walked a bit, he offered to carry the box for a while. But she refused, shook her head. A mile on he repeated his offer and this time she let him take it from her hands. It was heavier than he thought it would be. The weight was the urn and not his ashes. Probably the ashes did not weigh that much; the main part of him was smoke. They took turns after that, passing the box between them, juggling across arrangements of purchase, cradling it like this and holding it like that against their chests. The cardboard heaved and sank.

THE ROAD WAS a lazy black line after all the busyness of the previous day, slouching and shirking between the mountains under a martinet sun. He wasn’t that surprised when she told him what was in the box and her plan. When she knocked on his door he was already awake. He’d had a strange dream and had been up awhile, already dressed and wishing the motel had one of those mini coffeemakers. They hadn’t clarified their plans after their interlude in the tunnel so he was surprised when she knocked on the door that early. He’d entertained scenarios, most of them ridiculous, about what her favor might be, but none of them held up to scrutiny for more than a few minutes. When he opened the door, he noticed she was dressed all in blue, in blue jeans, in a blue blouse, but he didn’t connect it to the song until she explained it to him.

THERE WAS A lot of time for explanations on the walk up there. East, reversing the trajectory of laid steel and time. It was two or three or four miles, she wasn’t entirely sure. Her father’s map didn’t have a legend or niceties like that. He’d sketched it out on his last trip down here, judging from the box she’d found it in. The box containing the map held, in crumbling strata, copies of the Hinton newspaper from a few years back, awkwardly folded roadmaps of the area, some receipts, and those helped to date the map. He came down here a couple of times over the years, always alone, on his inscrutable itineraries, but the neighboring items in the box clinched it. She told him that when she was in the storage facility a man walked in, opened his space, and in there he had a little living room, with a big armchair, a coffee table. Also a random assortment of stuff, three toasters, a big army bag of clothes, watercolors of canals hung on the cement walls. He sat in the chair, crossed his legs and read the daily paper. It didn’t look like the guy was going anywhere. When she left she asked the manager about it and he said the guy slept nights in a shelter but hung out in his storage room all day. It’s where he kept his clothes and things, and he was a nice guy, weird of course to live like that, but he wasn’t dangerous or anything. The guy basically lived in there, in the storage space. After she finished the story, he made a joke about the size of the average New York apartment. How we all live in boxes.