The Tracks

The Tracks is a downtown Railton bar where the local media gather, and it becomes the setting for a night when William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s private life and public notoriety meet. Its clattering model trains, crowded tables, and televisions frame a celebration that turns, on the big screen, into a spectacle of its own.

Setting and Atmosphere

A favorite watering hole of the television station and the Railton Mirror, The Tracks is loud even before its patrons raise their voices: several televisions compete with music while half a dozen model trains circle the bar on a specially built shelf about eight feet above the floor. The trains’ clacking and whistles make the room’s movement almost continuous, giving the downtown bar a distinctive mixture of newsroom hangout and mechanical theater.

As the eleven o’clock news approaches, William Henry Devereaux, Jr. is surrounded by a sizable party. The group has joined half a dozen tables, and pitchers arrive two at a time—one of beer and one of margaritas. He and Tony Coniglia drink the margaritas; no one appears to be paying for the rounds. Missy Blaylock, a newswoman who has just delivered a tape at the station, has persuaded them to wait for her so they can watch the broadcast together.

A Night of Drinking and Calls

The gathering lasts four hours. During that time, William Henry Devereaux, Jr. makes half a dozen phone calls and makes as many trips to the bar’s sour-smelling men’s room. Tequila has convinced him, temporarily, that he is in love with three women, so he calls all three. He tells himself that Lily is the only one he truly loves, and tries to reach her at her father Angelo’s house, having already called once from home and once from the bar.

Angelo has acquired an answering machine, though William Henry Devereaux, Jr. finds the device incongruous for a man who never leaves the house and has no known friends or associates. Its message is characteristic of Angelo: it refuses to confirm whether he is home while inviting the caller to speak. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. tries again from The Tracks, identifies himself, and wonders whether his tequila-roughened voice will be recognized. The episode places his drunken attempts at connection amid a noisy public party, while his forgotten code for retrieving messages from his own answering machine leaves Lily’s response uncertain.

The Bar as a Broadcast Audience

Missy Blaylock’s segment on The People Beat usually comes near the end of the eleven o’clock news, after weather and sports; for William Henry Devereaux, Jr. and Lily, it has served as a familiar cue to turn off the bedroom television and go to sleep. At The Tracks, that routine is transformed into a communal viewing. Missy has told him that he made her day, week, and year by giving her a colorful subject for a feature she feared would be dull. She calls the segment’s world of unusual rural characters Six-Finger-Land and hopes he has tenure.

When the big-screen television briefly shows William Henry Devereaux, Jr. holding Finny the Goose aloft by the neck, the bar erupts in recognition. The image proves to be a promo; Missy calls for the sound to be turned up, and the group waits through a commercial for the story. The close-up then reveals the fake nose and glasses he wore during the interview. He had expected the disguise to exaggerate his features more plainly, but on television the glasses do not look obviously toy-like and the large plastic nose reads mostly as simply large. The bar’s screens, already part of its noisy atmosphere, turn The Tracks into the audience for his sudden and uneasy transition from local conversation to televised image.