Free John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead Page A

here.”
    “He’s going for the record,” Dave offers.
    “Tsk, tsk,” One Eye shaking his head. “You can’t see, but I’m making the station of the cross and praying for the soul of Bobby Figgis. Say it isn’t so, J.”
    J., his name truncated to a single initial during childhood, does not need a nickname. “I’m on a jag,” he says. He is a little embarrassed about how all their bullshitting appears to the woman next to him.
    “Nonstop since April,” Dave says, happy to be finally getting in his little digs before a proper audience. “Three-month bid.”
    “Three months in,” One Eye says, taking stock, “Figgis was a wreck. You seem to be holding up.”
    “Jag.”
    “Hit an event every day,” Frenchie counters. “He’s going for the record.”
    “How’s the book coming, Frenchie?” One Eye suddenly on J.’s side. If you wanted to shut Frenchie up, a quick rapier thrust to his ambition did the trick. Frenchie had spent his advance on clothes and lifestyle years before, without delivering word one of his manuscript, thus urging his comrades’ initial envy to curdle into warming superiority, and then well-timed derision. If he wanted sympathy he should have never written those Talk of the Towns for the
New Yorker,
a sure friendship-killer in the freelance world. Frenchie does not say anything; One Eye’s shiv dispatched him to the site of his more recent failure, to the bed he shared with his lost Italian model, her lost thighs.
    One Eye had been blinded in a tragic ironic quotes accident a few years before. As he sat on a couch chatting with a publicist, a young freelancer stood above him, relating a droll tale of Manhattan mores as expressed in a new collection of short stories by that month’s photogenic young writer. The bartender yelled out last call for the open bar, and One Eye jumped up on instinct, just as the freelancer punctuated his clever description by forming air quotations with the index and forefingers of his hands. The point in question was apparently very ironic, requiring a vigorous expression of the ironic quotes. The force of the irony, coupled with One Eye’s eager and frantic upward movement, drove the freelancer’s pincer fingers deep into the junketeer’s eye socket.
    J. reaches over and snaps One Eye’s suspenders. “Where did you dig this up?”
    “This is my Huck Finn outfit. I’m trying to gain trust, blend in.”
    “You look like an idiot.”
    “I know.”
    “Couldn’t miss this one, eh? Where are you coming from?”
    “Florida. I was visiting my parents.”
    “Okay time?”
    “It’s Florida.”
    “Figured you’d stop on down here for some more Southern hospitality.”
    “I’m on a secret mission,” One Eye says. His good eye winks mysteriously. “A mission that could very well change the course of human events.”
    “It’s hush-hush.”
    “I’ll tell you about it later,” One Eye murmurs. He turns back to face the road. He isn’t kidding, J. thinks.
    “I can’t wait to see Ben Vereen,” Tiny says.
    “He canceled,” J. informs him.
    “What, creative differences?”
    “No, he’s sick,” J. says, and the van continues its approach to the Mill-house Inn.
    T he List possessed a will and function. It sensed a need for itself, for an assemblage of likely suspects to get the word out. A group of men and women who could be called upon in times of need, individuals of good character and savvy, individuals who understood the pitch of the times. And the pitch of the
Times.
The public needed to know about the things that were being created by capable interests, a hunger existed among the public for the word, all that was needed was a reliable system to get the information to them. The List recognized the faces of itself: they turned out in bad weather, tired and hungry, night after night. Sometimes the ones who came got the word out; other times they took a few hours’ reprieve from the chaos, a free meal and trinkets. The ultimate percentage