Free Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead

Mummies that they were, they didn’t need Dr. Chickie’s Adhesive Strips anyway. What was there to sop? What they needed were brooms, to sweep up the dust that fell out of the nicks in their bodies. These people were not the kind you tried to seduce through advertisements in tony magazines. Only the rise of managed health care kept the company in the black. The military, HMOs: O and M had a facility for finding those in need of bargains bought in bulk. Nonetheless, they wanted a leg up in the domestic field.
    It was quite a situation.
    Really, what else were they going to do?
    They came to him and he saved them.
    .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
    No, Albie’s wife hadn’t taken everything in the divorce. She had left him his inappropriate emotional reactions to small things. Before they got back into the Bentley, Albie noticed the crushed toy in the driveway and murmured, “It’s a damn shame,” shaking his head as if rendering verdict on the entirety of cruel nature. A frankfurter made him smile, a broken toy sullen. He hoped that Albie’s melancholy might put an end to conversation for a time, but Winthrop Lane had other plans. It must be unfortunate to be so unsettled at the sight of your name. Particularly when your name was everywhere.
    “This is the first road they put in,” Albie told him, “so that they could get supplies back and forth. Keep following it and you’ll hit the factory. Before that it was just woods. Maybe there were some Indians or something, but they didn’t have a road.” Albie winced. “Probably want to change the name of the road, too. It’s like they want to erase it all.”
    “I don’t do roads.”
    “It’s simple tradition. You know what it means to be a Quincy man—we’re all brothers. It doesn’t matter where you come from, once you walk into those ivy halls, you’re in the brotherhood. Women, too, now that they let women in. They got a right. I tell you, I go back to visit and I can’t help but say, Golly, look at how it’s changed! You got all kinds of people, from all over the world. Handicap access, so they can wheel up there, it’s great. But even in my day, there was that spirit. A community of like-minded people. Had a black fella lived in my dorm. There were only five or six, but you have to understand the times. Good fella, quiet. Milton, I think that was his name. Lived downstairs. Liked to swim, if I remember correctly.”
    “Wow.” He had found, in his life, that it was always a good policy to flee when white people felt compelled to inform you about their black friend, or black acquaintance, or black person they saw on the street that morning. There were many reasons to flee, but in this case the pertinent one was that the reference was intended to signal growing camaraderie. He recognized landmarks on the road, and realized that they were almost at the hotel.
    “Quincy days—they were good times, right? They mean something.” His eyes sparkled. “There is a bond. It’s the same thing here, that’s what I’m telling you—look! There’s old Gil and his little rug rats. Hey Gil! What was I—okay, okay, Winthrop
means
something. Goode’s people, sure, they’re the ones first settled here, sure. Can’t dispute that even if I wanted to, it’s a historical fact. But it was nothing ’til my great-great-granddad opened up the factory here. Just a bunch of trees until there was a Winthrop name to say: This is here. It’s tradition. Guys like you and me, we understand that.”
    At the curb outside the hotel, a white shuttle bus disgorged passengers. Recruits fresh from the airport, dressed in the uniform of their kind, primary-color polo shirts and khakis. Albie pulled up and grimaced. “Will you get a load of that,” he muttered. “Marching in like a bunch of ducks. Ain’t that a kick in the pants—only time this place makes any money is when Lucky has one of his things going on.”
    He slid out of the passenger seat and said to Albie,