John Henry Days (10 page)

Some later arrivals had no choice but to sit with the man. Guests staked claims for their parties, planting flags of purses and jackets, saving seats, savoring or ruing their place in the pecking order, made the best of things. Two couples sat down at Alphonse’s table on the other side of the globe, as far from him as the rim would allow. One of the men nodded at Alphonse, and, not waiting for a response, looked into his lap as he slowly unfolded his napkin. Alphonse wondered if the table would fill up or if he’d remain out there on the ice cap. He made minute adjustments to the placement of his knife and fork. Contemplation of tines. Another local couple sat down between him and the other people, they greeted their friends, closing up the circle except for the seat to Alphonse’s right. Alphonse sat on his hands.

An excited breeze teased the napes of all in the room: the salad table was open for business. The vanguard left their seats, heads darted toward, seats emptied in twos and threes. Alphonse hustled up to beat the queue. He garnered a fine spot in the top third and they heaved forward, reading and deciphering the feet before them. A shoulder dipped and this was taken for a sign. So tight together they must smell him. Were those beets he saw, that burgundy jelly ahead? Alphonse glimpsed a man at the podium looking over his papers. The man whispered into the microphone, hello, hello. The line bristled. They were going to miss the introduction, trapped by mixed greens on the other side of the room. The man walked away from the podium, merely testing sound, but the line hurried anyway. Iceberg lettuce, shavings of carrot, chickpeas, and a nice portion of beets.

When he returned to his table, the final empty seat had been filled by a young black woman, alone. He realized he hadn’t seen a lot of black people so far, and since the others at the table did not acknowledge her, he assumed she was a visitor like him. She looked down at his bowl and walked to the salad bar. He had dolloped too much blue cheese dressing. Black people are African Americans now. Alphonse recalled again, he pondered the fact repeatedly, that the first commemorative stamp in the world had also been a railroad stamp, issued by Peru in 1871 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the South American railroad. (It is a sign.) And now John Henry, a railroad
hero up there with Casey Jones, was getting his due in a commemorative stamp. Alphonse thought about the bustle of the room and the itinerary of the next few days. What he had come there to do. The woman on his left introduced herself as the owner of a flower shop. He listens and sits on his hands.

The table behind Alphonse is rambunctious and distracting. He turns around and sees five men, obviously not from Talcott: their revels are hermetic, and have nothing to do with what is going on in the room, the occasion. They drink heavily; one of their number, a gaudily dressed man with an eyepatch, returns from the bar pinching glasses together with professional poise, bearing refills for him and his friends before they have drained the drinks already in front of them. Angel tilts her head and clucks. The black woman on his right catches Alphonse’s eyes and says they are a bunch of loud journalists from New York City. She says her name is Pamela.

Before they can speak further, the woman with the clipboard taps on the microphone for attention, her lacquered fingernails clawing at the air. Salad forks are set aside. She introduces herself as Arlene from the Visitors Center, and thanks everyone in the room for attending. Alphonse feels like an impostor, of course. He has been invited to this function, but most of the people in the room are locals, have worked directly on planning the weekend. His purpose swiftly comforts him. He is undercover. The mayor of Talcott replaces Arlene at the microphone and makes a few remarks. The other people at Alphonse’s table laugh at an inside joke, a nugget of Talcott lore. Mayor Cliff is tall and gaunt. Thick gray curly hair writhes on his head, soft against the sharp ridges of his cheekbones. Alphonse isn’t listening. Tonight is the warm-up, he thinks. Tomorrow the tourists and the rest of the town, the others beside the town luminaries getting fed in the Social Room. Tomorrow the celebration is open to the public, John Henry activities and John Henry barbecues, Sunday’s trumpets-and-drums unveiling and the official release of the panes to the public on Monday. Bigger and bigger stages for the stamp. He will take his place and respond to his cue. Alphonse’s local post office had recently outfitted the teller windows with bulletproof glass.

Alphonse sits up at the mention of the man from the Post Office, Parker Smith. He watches the man leave his comrades at the Post Office table (Alphonse’s assessment had been correct) and shake hands with the mayor. Two perfect squares of gray perch in his black hair above his ears, almost the size of stamps, which amuses Alphonse slightly. Smith smiles and the emissary from the government addresses the people. “On behalf of Marvin Runyon,
Postmaster General, and all of us at the United States Postal Service,” he says, teeth twinkling, “I’d like to thank the good people of Talcott and Hinton for inviting us down for this wonderful occasion. I know you must be hungry and eager for the great food and musical entertainment the good people at the Chamber of Commerce have lined up for y’all, so I’ll be brief. Did I say
y’all?
I’m sorry, I meant to say you all. Must be my Southern roots acting up. Haven’t had so much Southern hospitality since I was a youngster visiting my grandparents in North Carolina.”

Like a pro he waits for the chuckles to subside. People are so vain, Alphonse thinks. He watches Smith’s face twitch into earnestness. “I was talking about this with some of my colleagues just a bit earlier—how you can’t help but get caught up in the great history of this region. Talcott was instrumental in a great moment of our nation’s growth—the forging of a national railroad, an effort unrivaled in human history. It was not without cost, as I’m sure you good people know only too well. How many of the folks who take Amtrak, or receive products shipped by CXS Transportation on the very railroad tracks just a few miles away, take the time to think about the good people of Talcott and Hinton whose grandparents and great-grandparents toiled under adverse conditions to bring this country together?” He takes faces in the crowd one by one with his eyes. “How often does one of those passengers on the train think about all the blood and sweat that made their journey possible? Part of what we at the Post Office hope to achieve by our issue of the Folk Heroes commemorative is to create awareness of the trials of men like John Henry, to invite Americans to walk in his shoes. That each time they use one of our Folk Heroes stamps, they think about the men who died to get us where we are today.”

Is this man talking about a stamp or taking the beach at Normandy? Smith rallies for his final push: “But you all here today know much more about the sacrifices of railroad workers than I do,” humble now, “it’s your history. You don’t need to hear me go on about it—your families have lived it. I just hope that this stamp, and the celebrations this weekend, can help tell the story of the sacrifices of men. John Henry was an Afro-American, born into slavery and freed by Mr. Lincoln’s famous proclamation. But more importantly, he was an American. He helped build this nation into what it is today, and his great competition with the steam drill is a testament to the strength of the human spirit. The USPS is proud to honor such an American. Thank you.”

A few minutes later, Alphonse finds himself in the food line next to
Pamela. They stand next to each other and do not speak and both know a little bit of token conversation is appropriate. They are seated at the same table and the night is already half over. But perhaps he is past the minuet of social graces. Alphonse decides to play his part, however—they can sift in vain through the clues later—and asks the woman what brought her to Talcott. Her face stiffens a bit and she says that her father collected John Henry memorabilia. That’s interesting, Alphonse offers, because he is a collector as well, a collector of railroad stamps. Then her expression. He has seen the expression on her face before. It is the uncomprehending, loose shape faces adopt when he tells people he collects stamps. He informs her of the coincidence of the first commemorative being a railroad stamp, and here they are today. She looks puzzled and grabs a plate. The fumes of naphthalene swirl around him.

The old joke: what did the young lady say to her stamp-collecting suitor?

Philately will get you nowhere.

Pamela and Alphonse forage from the heated trays and do not speak again until the end of the night, after the commotion at the journalists’ table has come to an end.

A
pplause, hands sliding toward slanted forks, as the Post Office man leaves the podium and Arlene announces that dinner will be ready presently. Not presently enough for J. He looks up at the thin, meek man with the polka-dot bow tie standing over their table. A press laminate hangs around his neck, abject and ridiculous. J. feels embarrassed for him; wearing a press laminate is so gauche. After waiting in vain for Frenchie to finish his story or for one of them to acknowledge his presence, the man finally clears his throat and says, “Arlene said you were some writers from New York City.”

“That’s right,” Tiny says, “We thought we’d git ourselves down yonder for this shindig.”

“My name is Broderick Honnicut,” he declares, tapping the press laminate. “I’m a staff writer for the
Hinton Owl.
Thought I’d come over and say hello.”

“Staff writer for the
Hinton Owl,”
Frenchie considers, raising his eyebrows at his colleagues. “Well, well. I think I’ve seen your byline.”

“You broke the story on the chicken rustling ring, I do believe,” Tiny says.

“Chicken rustling … ?” Honnicut utters.

“The chicken-choking scandal,” Tiny corrects himself.

“Turned out the cover-up went to the highest levels of government,” Frenchie breaks in, taking the baton. “The town barber was implicated, according to a high-level source.”

“The alderman got caught with his hand in the cookie jar,” Tiny says.

No need to mess with this guy, J. thinks. He just came over to be friendly and he gets this. It is going to be a long night if the boys are this cantankerous early on. He twists in his seat to ponder the red light.

“Allegedly, Tiny,” Dave admonishes, “always remember allegedly.” He turns to Honnicut, smiling. J. knows he is about to set the guy up. “They’re just joking with you. Say, tell me: What’s the
Hinton Owl’s
motto?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Honnicut says, growing flustered.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Dave explains. “Every paper has a motto. The
New York Times
has ‘All the News That’s Fit to Print,’ every great newspaper has to have a motto. Beneath your logo, there’s a motto, right? What does it say?”

“It says,” Honnicut stumbles, “it says, ‘A Hoot and a Holler: The
Hinton Owl
Sees All.’ ”

Dave smiles. “That’s catchy.”

“ ‘A hoot and a snoot will keep you up all night,’ ” Frenchie says, and J. lights out for the food table. Because the red light is calling him. At the terminus of the buffet lies the sacred preserve of the Happy Hunting Grounds. Set above the cutting plate like a divine illumination, the red heating lamps warm the sweet meat. The red light is a beacon to the lost wayfarer, it is a tavern lamp after hours of wilderness black. J. experiences an involuntary physical response to the red light and begins to salivate. Sometimes he feels this in movie theaters, salivating at the glimpse of the red Exit sign. What a warm world it would be, he ponders, if we all slept under a red light at night.

When he returns, plate tottering, a sodden Babel of flavor, J. notes that Honnicut has departed. J. is grateful—he couldn’t take much more of that. He looks around for One Eye, but can’t see him anywhere, not even in the food line. No matter. J. has important business. The potatoes have declined his invitation, but J. still savors the pliable tang of overcooked heads of broccoli, carrots in star shapes, decobbed corn in pearly water. And the prime rib, the prime rib, aloft in its own juice, mottled with tiny globules of luscious melted fat. He showers the meat with salt, as if there could be anything greater in the universe than beef drenched heartily with salt. He possesses teeth sharpened by evolution for the gnashing of meat, a digestive system engineered for the disintegration of meat, and he means to utilize the gifts of nature to their fullest expression.

“This may be the New South, but they haven’t caught up to everything, thank God,” Tiny says. “This ain’t no vegetarian menu.”

“Amen to that,” J. says.

“Ben Vereen was coming here?” Frenchie asks, incredulous. His plate is immured by empty glasses, mutilated limes groaning at their bottoms.

“It’s a living,” J. says. He gobbles prime rib and winces with pleasure, fighting telltale paroxysm. He needs the meat to pile on the liquor.

“How are they going to pay for all this?”

“Emptying the town coffers.”

“No new basketball uniforms for the high school varsity team.”

“Not the basketball uniforms!”

“Any of you actually writing this thing up?” Tiny asks, a yellow liquid glistening in his beard. He has filled twin plates with buffet mounds of horrific symmetry.

“I’m doing it for this travel site Time Warner is putting up on the web,” J. informs him.

“Those guys are just throwing money away,” Frenchie opined. “Fine with me.”

“I got some outfit called
West Virginia Life
on the hook,” Dave begins, “a monthly job they put out down here. But before I placed it I had been thinking about making it a New South piece. No one thinks about West Virginia. Throw in a few lines about the national parks and the white rafting stuff they got around here. It would have been a nice change of pace to do a trend thing after all these movie things I’ve been doing.”

“Seems like a good peg,” Frenchie says. “Though if I were writing it up, I could see focusing on the industrial age-information age angle. John Henry’s man-against-machineness. That’s still current, people can empathize with his struggle and get into it and all that shit.”