Things have picked up in the last few years on account of the growing popularity of the dam and the lake. The Sandman and Coast to Coast gather most of the river traffic because they are closer to Hinton, but Benny and Josie catch their overflow. Strategically placed signs every quarter of a mile lure and tease. Local teens like to shoot buckshot at them. The Talcott Motor Lodge is a cozy budget motel off Route 3, but still proximate enough to the sights that tourists think that by staying there they are making some ingenious decision, distinguishing themselves from the other loudmouths of the tourist fray. The summer people swagger into the office damp and tired, sunburned and drained, tracking sand through the carpet. Always that detaiclass="underline" Benny imagines the grains jumping like fleas from the battlements of sneaker treads. The sand collects stubbornly between the bathroom tile, its sects flourish unpersecuted under carpet cover. The families are noise and the kids chase each other around the pool and slip and he can smell the litigation like coming rain. (He remembers then that he has forgotten to fill the pool, but it is too late to do anything about it, some of the guests have already arrived.) They demand amenities he and Josie cannot possibly provide. They are numerous and crack up the gravel in steady numbers, but he has never filled the place. Today, their place has advance reservations for every single room.
In room 29, Lawrence Flittings sits nude on the bed rubbing scented oils into his skin. It is a ritual he performs near the full moon that makes him feel more comfortable in his body.
In room 12, Alphonse Miggs brushes his finger along the bottom of the bathtub and contemplates the residue of abrasive cleanser powdering his fingertip.
Benny doesn’t like the new posters. The Chamber of Commerce delivered the John Henry posters last week and he removed some of the pictures of the New River Gorge — a laughing family on a raft, the great Gorge Bridge striding across angry water — from the reception area as instructed. After staring at them over the last few days, his initial reaction has not changed. Benny finds the festival posters a little too garish. He is in the spirit of things; it is difficult to remain unmoved by the optimism of the town, and there’s a good chance the events of the next few days will yield regular guests for his rooms in the long run. When Jack Cliff ran into him on the street and asked him if he was on board, Benny said, looking forward to it, Jack. But the posters seem so violent to him. The flashing sparks and sweat, John Henry’s heaving black body. Josie loves them of course; they are typical of the town’s railroad romance. Can’t sit in a bar for ten minutes without some Joe going on about how their engineer grandfather did this or that. The wreck of old something or other. It isn’t so glorious to Benny. The towns around here wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for the C&O, but a lot of people died laying track through the mountain. The cave-ins and dynamite. His neighbors, his wife, love all those violent stories. And for what. Look at it now. It’s Amtrak, its CXS Transportation hauling crap from coast to coast. That’s what he has to fight back saying ten times a day. It’s just Amtrak.
In room 17, Dave Brown cleans out his thermos.
In room 27, J. Sutter sleeps and dreams of a blizzard of receipts, a million fluttering tallies that he captures on his tongue.
Benny looks at his rack of room keys, remembers screwing the hooks into the plasterboard. Each hook is a room and all the people who will stay there for a time. Lives converge on those hooks.
This weekend is going to be good for the town: that phrase is the going rate. Before his retirement, Josie’s father had been a station man in Hinton for thirty years. They are railroad towns, Hinton and Talcott, and everybody who lives here has railroad in their bloodline. Not so Benny, whose family moved to Talcott when he was a teenager for reasons he still does not understand. He feels out of place when confronted with the railroad nostalgia of the two towns, that is to say nearly every waking moment. But as he waits for the next guest to arrive, he thinks perhaps he is learning to understand the mythology of his adopted home. He is learning what it is to wait for a train.
No one, it seems, wants to go to West Virginia. West Virginia contains many natural wonders. The New River Gorge is spectacular. A number of the bituminous coal concerns have informative tours and dioramas for the curious visitor. The historic stand at Harpers Ferry, to name another thing. And yet. Just last week 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:
Pittsburgh I wouldn’t mind. It’s a big city. I have a college roommate in Pittsburgh.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:
I don’t know why they picked John Henry in the first place.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:
You know. They got three white ones, you gotta mix it up these days. Nothing against John Henry. I just wish he was from somewhere else.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:
Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan — who’s the other guy?
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:
Mighty Casey.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:
(sipping lager)
“Casey at the Bat.” I don’t even know who Pecos Bill is.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:
(gritting his teeth)
Nobody knows who the fuck Pecos Bill is. He wrestled a rattlesnake.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:
You got Babe the Blue Ox in the Paul Bunyan one?
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:
That’s exactly what I said. What’s Paul Bunyan withouAt Babe the Blue Ox? But we just did an animal series a few months ago.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:
(nodding ruefully)
To take care of the animal lovers. We don’t want to alienate that segment of stamp consumers. Not in Marvin Runyon’s Post Office. Whose idea was this anyway for a Folk Hero series?
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:
Who do you think?
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:
Yeah.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:
(shaking his head)
And he wants some target marketing people to go along. You know his big thing now. I don’t know why it has to be me, but there you have it. I know the beds are going to kill me. I can feel that already. My back is fucking killing me already. It’s enough to make me go—
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:
(looking over his shoulder)
Don’t say it!
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:
I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say, go nuts. I actually talked to the son of a bitch mayor of the town. We got a registered letter from the Chamber of Commerce. They sent a registered letter to the Post Office like it’s some kind of threat. The Post Office! They go, “Pittsburgh may be Steeltown U.S.A., but John Henry is Talcott’s native son.” So he gave in, canceled all the Pittsburgh plans that had already been planned out. Christ, this city is a fucking sewer in the summertime.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:
It’ll be good for you to get out of the city. Get some good country air.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:
Why does everyone keep saying that? Country air, country air, everywhere I go. Watch me get a call from some guy in Minnesota saying we got to do the same thing there for Paul Bunyan. “An office of the United States Government can’t show unfair treatment blah blah.”
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:
I have some “relations” as they say, in West Virginia.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1:
(rubbing a cigarette burn on the bar’s surface)
They’re trying to use the John Henry thing to make the town into a tourist trap. The stamp gave them the idea apparently. All sorts of big fun.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #2:
Tractor pull. Hayride.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE #1: