Doug cut to a caller, Roger in Boise. Victor recognized the voice, a high-pitched drawl with a western twang. Roger in Boise had called the show before.
The mistake was indisputable, a matter of historical record. The Founding Fathers hadn’t invented slavery, but they had embraced it. Exhibiting a striking lack of foresight, they’d seen no downside to importing boatloads of captured people from the other side of the world, with no possible way of sending them back.
If the Founding Fathers really were visionaries, they might have asked themselves certain questions.
What happens when the boatloads of people get sick of being whipped and beaten and worked like pack mules, when they decide they’d just as soon not plow your fields and pick your cotton and build your new country for you, for free, for as many centuries and generations as it’s going to take in the absence of irrigation and gas motors and simple shit like insecticides and power tools? Hey, Founding Fathers: What happens then?
Victor didn’t blame the Blacks, who hadn’t chosen to come here. They’d been brought by force and now, like it or not, America was stuck with them.
He didn’t blame the Blacks, necessarily. Which wasn’t to say the country needed so goddamn many of them.
The radio station came in and out, bright bursts of static. Roger in Boise was creaming himself over the Second Amendment. Roger in Boise, honestly, sounded a little nuts.
The truck climbed Saxon Mountain, its old engine chugging. At the top of the ridge was the landmark sign. SAXON COUNTY WELCOMES YOU. In recent years the letters had faded. At highway speed they were impossible to read. The sign was like everything else in Saxon County, a place that no longer looked like anything. You couldn’t see it clearly unless you knew what it used to be.
The letters had faded, or maybe they hadn’t. Victor couldn’t say for sure. A doctor at the VA had told him his eyes were going. “Horseshit,” he told the doctor, but in his heart he wasn’t surprised. Life, at his age, was an escalating series of physical humiliations.
At least he’d hung on to his teeth.
THE WORLD IS FULL OF SIGNS.
The town, Bakerton, was quiet at that hour. Even at rush hour, there was nowhere to go. When Victor was a boy, the place had come alive at the shift change, traffic backed up in both directions along Number Twelve Road. Now the shift change was a distant memory. The mines had closed a generation ago. The old train station was now the volunteer fire department. Unlike most buildings in town, it was at least being used for something. On the hill behind it was another faded sign: BAKERTON COAL LIGHTS THE WORLD. In the old days it had been repainted annually. Riding the train into town, it was the first thing you’d see.
He passed the bank, Saxon Savings—flanked, now, by empty storefronts. Across the street was the old Fridman’s Furniture, a cursed location that had housed a long series of failed businesses: a fruit market, a storefront church, a bridal shop. Recently a new tenant had moved in—COAL COUNTRY TAXIDERMY, according to its homemade sign.
At the center of town, two stores, Dollar General and Dollar Bargain, squared off at an intersection. The sidewalks were empty. A flashing yellow light directed traffic that wasn’t there.
He drove past the Pennzoil station, closed now. The pumps had been removed long ago, leaving craters in the ground. On the side of the building was a hand-painted mural, silhouettes of men in hard hats. TOUGH TIMES NEVER LAST, a caption insisted, in defiance of all evidence. TOUGH PEOPLE DO.
He gunned the engine up a steep hill. Number Twelve Road was high and winding, the pavement crumbling. He turned down the new access road, built by the gas company so the drill rigs could come through. At the end of the road were six wells—drilled at the peak of the gas boom, and still producing. Every month the company sent his stepbrother a royalty check.
He peeled off down a narrow lane. The truck bounced along, scattering gravel. Deep in the forest, dogs were barking. The road ended at a checkpoint, a sturdy gate with cement pillars on either end, each mounted with a camera. The gate was hung with signs he’d painted himself: