John Henry Days (45 page)

Tony is not giving up so easily tonight. He’s hurting for a little something. Tony says, stepping closer than J. would like, “You want some LPs? ’Cause I know a Guy that got some. You like that old funk? I could hook you up.” Switching tactics tonight. He knows a Guy, a Guy who J. has learned is a truly enterprising individual. Over the years this Guy, with Tony as the middle man, has been able to furnish stereos (“Real cheap!”), VCRs of the finest Japanese craftsmanship (“Videos too! You like porno?”), sticky weed (“I saw you walking with that dread last week. Maybe he wants some smoke.”), and women (“The night guy at the old people home pays me five bucks to get a woman for him—I could hook you up!”). The Guy Tony knew was a true entrepreneur. Perhaps one day J. will ask if the Guy has a line on devices that make receipts, but not tonight. Nor is he interested in a bunch of old records that the Guy robbed from someone’s house.

“No thanks,” J. says.

“I haven’t eaten all day, man, please.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no? I see you every day, motherfucker, and now you can’t even help a nigger out with some money to eat. That’s terrible.” A boil splits on Tony’s face and drips. “Can’t even help a nigger out with a sandwich. I saw you got plenty of money on you.”

“No.” They’re on the block of broken streetlights. Tony’s mother lives on this block. Tony’s pointed it out to J. before; it’s a nice old brownstone in the middle of the block. Family discord: Tony lives a few streets away in a vacant lot shack. Or he used to. The habitation burned down a few weeks ago and Tony pointed to a glistening pink burn on his arm for proof. A problem with the wiring no doubt.

“You got money for alcohol but I can’t eat,” Tony says. As if this suppurating shade wanted the money for food, strung out like he was. No one on the street but them and all the windows dark. Tony takes the advantage of his opponent and leans up and whispers, “I’m so hungry I might have to take it then, I’m so hungry,” and the threat sits there in J.’s ear. There was that night when J. was heading for the subway to make it to a book party in Manhattan and he saw Tony prowling around, cussing. His clothes were inside out and blood seeped from a gash above his eye. When he saw J. he asked him if he’d seen these three knuckleheads walking around anywhere. J. replied he hadn’t and Tony said that he got into a beef with them and they beat him up and made him take off his clothes and put them on inside out. Or maybe they made him put his clothes on inside out and then beat him up. At any rate, he was looking for them and he had something: he pulled up his shirt and pointed to the long carving knife tucked into his belt. He was going to cut them when he found them. J. told him to calm down and get himself cleaned up. He wasn’t going to cut anybody. Tony considered this possibility, nodded and agreed. He pulled his shirt down over the knife. Then he asked J. for some change.

J. doesn’t respond to the threat. They walk in silence for a few feet, and they leave the threat on the pavement behind them. They move into the next streetlight’s circle and Tony says, “Hey, you know I wouldn’t do that. I ain’t like those other crazy niggers they got up in here. But I gotta eat. What do you want me to do?”

“Can’t help you, man.” If he gave into the crackhead now, it would look as if he was giving in to the threat, even with Tony’s withdrawal of it. A principle involved: he doesn’t want to be punked out. There’s one more block before
he gets to his house and he doesn’t want Tony there when he gets to his front door.

“You want me to sing for my supper?” Tony asks. “You want me to sing for my supper? I’ll sing for my supper.” He spits a gremlin of phlegm to the pavement and scratches his foot across the sidewalk like a pitcher taming his mound for a pitch. Then he jumps up and down and sings from his singed throat, “This old hammer killed John Henry but it won’t kill me! This old hammer killed John Henry but it won’t kill me!” J. looks back at the crack-head. Tony’s eyes bulge out with the strain of producing that gross racket. “This old hammer killed John Henry but it won’t kill me!” And here, J. thinks, this is the essential difference between this neighborhood and those of Brody Mills’s orbit. No one here will call the police about the noise. They hear gunshots and arguments in the middle of the night and they might creep to the window to see what’s going on but they won’t call the police. They’ll pray they don’t hear a rape, something that will force them to get involved, or consider getting involved, but the people behind the black windows will not call the police at this. “This old hammer killed John Henry but it won’t kill me!” It’s up to J. He has no more resistance. He pulls out the change from the five dollars and gives it to the crackhead. Without touching the man’s palm. Who knows what the guy wipes his ass with.

“You like that song?” Tony asks.

“You won,” J. responds. Yards between them now, the distance between the mark and the expert con.

J. hears Tony yell, “Hey, brotherman, brotherman, wait a minute!”

J. turns, knowing from the volume of the man’s voice that there are distances, old distances, between them. Tony jabs his finger at him and says, “You’re a solid brother, Mickey Mouse, you’re a solid citizen.” He bows and scampers away in the direction of a building without a door, a building with secret steps and codes.

At his desk J. sips his first Corona and looks down at his notes. He calculates what he’ll get done before he’s dampened enough to fall asleep. He considers how much sleep he’ll get and through the calculus of doggerel arrives at how many words per hour he has to produce by noon. He presses a button and listens to the lying junkie. Only variety of junkie awake at this hour.

T
he biggest spud in Summers County is a mean-looking son of a bitch, whole cubic feet of lumpy resentment, a bad-ass tuber from the bowels of Hell. Last year’s winner, enthroned on a table across the aisle and encased in a top of the line plastic sheath to preserve its nefarious glory for generations to come. The proud father, a grizzled farmer garroted by a bolo tie, stands behind junior pointing to the sign at its swollen base that invites the passersby to touch it. Just an exhibit, not for sale. J.’s almost bored enough to walk over and see what kind of tater miracle will be performed on him, but he’s not there yet. It’s comfortable on the beer garden bench, even if he’s not drinking, and the boys are doing well enough by themselves, rapidly exhausting the roll of drink tickets the city fathers, via the taxi driver, gave them when they arrived at the fair. J. can’t keep his eyes off that spud, though. It’s a Paul Bunyan potato, a John Henry snack.

The boys sprawl across the benches, bending elbows and killing time. Flies alight on their faces for brief disappointed moments.

“I think they should give us free T-shirts. I want a free T-shirt.”

“Don’t think they carry your size, my man.”

“For my mother.”

“How old do you think she is?”

“She’s seventy-four. That why I want to get it, for her birthday.”

“Not your toothless ma, that woman there in the red tanktop.”

“Those guys over there keep drinking out these jars, man, been watching them. It’s moonshine.”

“Ever tell you about the time I was interviewing Lynrd Sknyrd and we drank from their still? Drinking a bucket of nails.”

“What time is this steeldriving thing? It’s like some kind of monster truck thing, right?”

“I say we go over there and buy some of that shine.”

“I gotta dig that steeldriving event. Maybe I can squeeze a
GQ
thing out it. Mano-a-mano is really big right now.”

From time to time, J. sneaks a peak at the next bench over, where some locals have bivouacked for similar purposes. So far J. has cataloged one “get a load of these guys” thumb gesture, three different rounds of chortles at his friends’ expense, and assorted steel-eyed squints of challenge. Only he has noticed. There’s not a fight brewing, but one or two lessons to be taught to the rude outsiders are being debated under their baseball caps, drawn from fisticuff curricula.

“Still pissed?” One Eye taps on his shoulder.

Ever since their embarrassing internment in Lawrence’s bathroom, One Eye has avoided him. J. figured his friend was probably busy with caper preparation: diagrams of heating vents, timing with a stopwatch the length of time it took to get to Lucien’s room from his, counting and recounting paces, calculating lines of sight.
At 12:05 on the dot every night the security guard leaves his post for a bathroom break.
Now here he is with a white cotton candy cone picked bare except for a few tufts of pink fur, as if he’s been picking meat off a dead cartoon animal.

J. says, “Forget it. Just don’t mention it again.”

“It’s up to you, my friend,” One Eye says, ripping remnants of pink, “But I’m hitting Stage Two tonight, with or without you. Lucien’s having dinner with some of the local muckety-mucks and I’m going to hit him them.”

“Enjoy.”

“I’ll take you off too if you want… Oh, look, here comes Captain Johnson now.”

Lucien and his herald try to make an elegant stride over to the beer garden as gawking tourists and hyperactive children divert them into constant course corrections, pausing here, dodging left or right. Dressed in the only Angelo Marini suits for a hundred miles probably. Lawrence follows behind his master conjugating
to irritate
with every step (he irritates, has irritated, will irritate). “Hello, friends,” Lucien says as the final obstacle jets across to the giant spud and clears the way. “There is a truly exemplary ice cream stand on the other side a little farther up.”

“Just between you and me,” Lawrence says in a Dow Jones whisper, “the Rocky Road is your best bet.”

As they greet the group, J. looks over their shoulders to see if he can spy Pamela. She ditched him once they made their way down the hill. He had a bit of trouble maneuvering around this lady’s double stroller, asked, “Do you want to go this way or down there?” and she was gone. He stood there with John Henry under his arm and correctly reckoned he’d find Dave Brown,
Tiny, Frenchie and One Eye near the most convenient beer station. He doesn’t see her.

“Glad to see you’re all enjoying yourselves,” Lucien smiles. “Not the usual, eh?” J. has to agree. The sun is a pleasant kind of irritation on his back. Out here in the open, under unpillaged blue, it’s a nice rest stop, it breaks things up as he goes for the record. Monday he’s back in cities again, taking his usual train routes to the standard event locales, taking his usual cab routes home after the standard event closings. “Off the beaten track to be sure,” the p.r. man continues, “so you know I appreciate the effort you men have put in.”

“Ours is not to wonder why, Lucien,” One Eye growls.

“Dave,” Lucien turns, “how is old Milt Chamber? You’re covering this for
West Virginia Life,
correct?”

“Nice guy,” Dave hiccups, “we’ve only talked on the phone, but didn’t he used to be at the
Times'?
I think I met him a few years ago. Had some kind of breakdown, right?”

“Dehydration, I think, was the explanation I heard. One of those new fad diets. J.—heard you talked to InterTravel. It sounds like it’s going to be one hell of a site when they launch. Apparently you can just click on any city and you’ll be able to get restaurants and hotels. The local attractions. Isn’t this world wide web marvelous? The head of content there is a dear friend.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s really smart. You guys should get together once you get your piece in. I think they’re looking for good writers, and with Time Warner behind them, they should pay quite well.”

“Sounds great.” Lunch, let’s do lunch, let’s meet for drinks, here’s my card, that’s the office number and I’ll put my cell number on the back.

Lawrence points. “What is that?”

“That’s J.’s,” Dave Brown says, tapping the John Henry statue. “His little buddy.”

“He’s really got the spirit.”

“The merchandise isn’t too garish,” Lucien says. “I’m quite surprised. They’ve shown remarkable restraint.”

“I would have gone for an action figure at least,” Lawrence twitters. “Margins on action figures these days are not to be believed. Board games, any number of directions they could have gone in. There’s not even any sweatshirts. Everybody makes sweatshirts these days.”

“Why don’t you write them a memo, Larry?” Frenchie asks, winking to comrades.

“Oh, J.” Lucien interrupts, “I have something that might interest you. Lawrence?”

Lawrence fumbles with his leather briefcase and hands J. a newspaper. “We thought you might get a kick out it,” he says.

“The
Hinton Owl,”
Tiny says, “All the News That’s Fit to Hoot.”

It is the special John Henry Days edition, a slim four-sheeter. J.’s seen stacks of it lying on tables. But what’s it got to do with him? JOHN HENRY DAYS ARRIVES! with a picture of Mayor Cliff standing beneath the monument on the hill. This is real breaking news.

“Below the fold,” Lawrence offers, smiling thinly.

J. flips the paper. TRAGEDY AVERTED AT OPENING NIGHT GALA—VISITING JOURNALIST SAVED BY HEROIC LOCAL DOCTOR. There's a crime scene photo of J. on the ground, his arms spread out, while onlookers—he recognizes Frenchie’s coif—bend over him. Jesus Christ.

Tiny snatches the paper from his hand, roaring, “ ‘A near fatal accident was averted last night when J. Sutter of New York City almost choked to death during the opening ceremonies of the John Henry Days …’—catchy lede, I’ll say that. Blah blah—‘local talent Bobby Martin sang the famous “Ballad of John Henry” ’—blah blah—‘only inches from death’—yeah yeah— ‘if not for the expertise of respected physician Dr. William Stephenson, Mr. Sutter surely would have expired. A piece of roast beef is the suspected culprit.’ Wow, J., you got your name on the front page!”

“Better put out an APB on that roast beef before he strikes again!”

“It’s written by that guy who was hanging around, Honnicut or whatever. Gotta give that guy credit for having a nose for a story.”

“Guess you never know when you’ll make the news.”

Lucien smiles. “Thought you might want to have that for your clip file. Keep it.”