Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead Read Free Book Online Page B

got a pool table and an aquarium. He bought exotic fish for the aquarium from a specialty store. Occasionally they ate each other. There were all these fins at the bottom of the tank. Conversation starters for sure. From the balcony he could look down upon the city and think he owned it. And perhaps that feeling was in the mix when he came up with Apex. He looked down on everything. It was all so small.
    .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
    Seems like old times, he said to himself, cozying up to the desk after avoiding it for two days. “A History of the Town of Winthrop” opened with a painful crinkle. He would be prepared for his meeting that afternoon. He was a professional.
    He skipped around, and after a few pages of stuff like “that famous quality of generosity that distinguishes the Winthrop family” and “Once again, the Winthrops came to the rescue in a time of need,” he checked the copyright page and confirmed his suspicion. The book had been commissioned by the Winthrop Foundation. He relaxed. He’d always rather enjoyed corporate pamphlets. They did not tax his attention overmuch. You always knew how they were going to end. Winning over the town librarian for sympathetic press wasn’t too much of a task, he figured. A set of leatherbound Shakespeare would do it. He wouldn’t get the inside scoop, but maybe he didn’t need it.
    The Winthrops made their fortune in barbed wire, not too bad a gig at the end of the nineteenth century. Land grants, land grabs, you needed something cheap to keep everything in, and keep everything out. “With the zeal of a true American entrepreneur, Sterling Winthrop found customers among the region’s farmers and homesteaders, who delighted in the inexpensive alternative to costly timber. Even the railroad enlisted the aid of Winthrop’s fine wire to keep its lines free and clear.” Innovative product, niche market, sure, sure. He jazzed his fingers on the desk excitedly. This was something he could understand. Not exactly what he was looking for, however.
    Gertrude Sanders, master of the librarian arts, channeled the pioneer zeitgeist with flair, aplomb aplenty. No equivocating for Gertrude. “Where others saw untamed wilderness,” she enthused, “Sterling saw endless bounty and prime opportunities.” Underdeveloped land, in the modern jive: a lowly parking lot where high-rises deserved to tower. The river provided a way to move the goods. And the place was empty. Mostly. “After winning over the area’s main inhabitants—a loose band of colored settlers—Winthrop opened up his factory and started producing his famous W-shaped barb, which can still be seen all over the county. Grateful for this fresh start, they passed a law and named the town Winthrop, after the man who had the courage to dream.” Attracting a labor force to the town, building a community, all the usual Town-in-a-Box starter-kit stuff. Had Gertrude ever tired of the Dewey decimal thing, she would have been a shoo-in for a marketing job back East.
    All that hokum. He continued to flip around. If they had created a law to change the name of the town, that meant there must have been a name to change it from. No point going to the trouble of rebranding unless there was something to rebrand. He needed to know what it was. He learned a few things, as his fingers journeyed where silverfish feared to tread. He learned about the strange mosquito plague of 1927, which ended as swiftly and mysteriously as it started, leaving none unwelted. A nearby pond was home to a very rare frog, celebrated and documented in scientific journals. A chilling woodcut confirmed the amphibian’s most celebrated characteristic—an almost human gaze that could only be described as “pleading.” He was about to return to the beginning when a familiar voice kicked in his adrenaline. After a single exposure, he had developed a Pavlovian response.
    “Housekeeping!” She loosed her little fury against the door.
    “I’m