The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Page A

this engine was headed. The bulb of the smokestack wasnext, a soot-covered stalk. The main body consisted of a large black box topped by the engineer’s cabin. Below that, pistons and large cylinders engaged in a relentless dance with the ten wheels, two sets of small ones in front and three behind. The locomotive pulled one single car, a dilapidated boxcar missing numerous planks in its walls.
    The colored engineer waved back at them from his cabin,grinning toothlessly. “All aboard,” he said.
    To curtail Caesar’s annoying interrogations, Lumbly quickly unhooked the boxcar door and slid it wide. “Shall we proceed?”
    Cora and Caesar climbed into the car and Lumbly abruptly shut them in. He peered between the gaps in the wood. “If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speedthrough, and you’ll find the true face of America.” He slapped the wall of the boxcar as a signal. The train lurched forward.
    The runaways lost their balance and stumbled to the nest of hay bales that was to serve as seating. The boxcar creaked and shuddered. It was no new model, and on numerous occasions during their trip Cora feared it was on the verge of collapse. The car was empty apart fromhay bales, dead mice, and bent nails. She later discovered a charred patch where someone had started a fire. Caesar was numb from the series of curious events and he curled up on the floor. Following Lumbly’s final instructions, Cora looked through the slats. There was only darkness, mile after mile.
    When they next stepped into the sunlight, they were in South Carolina. She looked up at the skyscraperand reeled, wondering how far she had traveled.

Ridgeway

ARNOLD Ridgeway’s father was a blacksmith. The sunset glow of molten iron bewitched him, the way the color emerged in the stock slow and then fast, overtaking it like an emotion, the sudden pliability and restless writhing of the thing as it waited for purpose. His forge was a window into the primitive energies of the world.
    He had a saloon partner named Tom Bird, a half-breed who took a sentimentalturn when lubricated by whiskey. On nights when Tom Bird felt separate from his life’s design, he shared stories of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit lived in all things—the earth, the sky, the animals and forests—flowing through and connecting them in a divine thread. Although Ridgeway’s father scorned religious talk, Tom Bird’s testimony on the Great Spirit reminded him of how he felt aboutiron. He bent to no god save the glowing iron he tended in his forge. He’d read about the great volcanoes, the lost city of Pompeii destroyed by fire that poured out of mountains from deep below. Liquid fire was the very blood of the earth. It was his mission to upset, mash, and draw out the metal into the useful things that made society operate: nails, horseshoes, plows, knives, guns. Chains.Working the spirit, he called it.
    When permitted, young Ridgeway stood in the corner while his father worked Pennsylvania iron. Melting, hammering, dancing around his anvil. Sweat dripping down his face, covered in soot foot to crown, blacker than an African devil. “You got to work that spirit, boy.” One day he would find his spirit, his father told him.
    It was encouragement. Ridgeway hoistedit as a lonesome burden. There was no model for the type of man he wanted to become. He couldn’t turn to the anvil because there was no way to surpass his father’s talent. In town he scrutinized the faces of men in the same way that his father searched for impurities in metal. Everywhere men busied themselves in frivolous and worthless occupations. The farmer waited on rain like an imbecile, theshopkeeper arranged row after row of necessary but dull merchandise. Craftsmen and artisans created items that were brittle rumors compared with his father’s iron facts. Even the wealthiest men, influencing the far-off London exchanges and local