Apex Hides the Hurt

The narrative picks up again the story of Apex bandages. The company Ogilvy and Myrtle was competing with Johnson & Johnson for the adhesive bandage market. Their product was inferior, produced in bulk for use during World War I. It was renamed Dr. Chickie’s Adhesive Strips in the 1950s, but the name change did not help the product’s popularity.

In the present, Albie tells the protagonist that he had a Black friend in college, which makes the protagonist uncomfortable. When white people tell him about their Black friend or acquaintance, they are trying to force camaraderie.

When the protagonist returns to the hotel, he scoffs at the name Freedom as too obvious a choice for a town settled by freed slaves. At the bar, Lucky is telling the tourists that he is always looking for the next version of anything—the software he develops, or the town.

The protagonist heads to the library, which turns out to be the building into which Outfit Outlet is moving. The librarian is still there, and she tells the protagonist more about the town name. Regina’s ancestor Abraham Goode and Freedom’s other leader, Field, made a law to change the town’s name. This level of formality strikes the protagonist as odd, but he does not think much of it. While they are talking, he has a sexual thought about the librarian, which surprises him because he has not had a sexual thought in months.

The section ends with a description of his naming Apex bandages. Words ending in “ex” are the holy grail of marketing because they evoke timelessness and power. He recalls seeing the first ads for Apex, which included the tagline, “Apex Hides the Hurt.” Another marketing agent had the genius idea to make the bandages in a variety of skin tones to set them apart. The protagonist considers an accurately skin-toned bandage’s ability to erase minor cuts and historical wounds.

When the protagonist returns to the hotel, a reporter buttonholes him to ask about his plans for naming the town. Using the fact that the protagonist’s former company came up with New Prospera, the reporter tries to get the protagonist to agree that he will choose that name, but the protagonist deflects the questions. The reporter then repeatedly asks if the protagonist is “keeping it real.” This confuses the protagonist, but he answers yes.

The protagonist meets Regina at Riverboat Charlie’s for dinner. Other patrons treat her, the town’s first Black mayor, like a celebrity. The protagonist considers the idea that the town, in its current state of uncertainty, technically has no name, and he remembers a job he did for the building toy company Ekho (akin to Lego). Their toy sets had become increasingly complicated, and the protagonist suggested they bring back the original Ekho Village kit—a small, simple town that reminded people of their childhoods.

After dinner, Regina shows the protagonist the line between the white and Black parts of town. “Old Winthrop,” the white part of town, has stately Victorian homes. Regina and her friends used to play a pretend game of running down the street, imagining old white people were chasing them. The historically Black side of town, which is still mostly Black, has more modest modern homes. The protagonist notes SUVs and Volvos in some driveways, and imagines them as the wagons of the original settlers—new residents are moving to this side of town, implying gentrification. Reginald Street is named for one of Regina’s ancestors; other street names carry the names and values of the Black and white settlers. He wonders if the winning council member will want to change some of the street names as well and what they hope to achieve by changing the town’s name.

The protagonist does not remember stubbing his toe—only that it happened. In hindsight, he believes that the stubbing was inevitable. The toe was badly hurt, so he used an Apex bandage in a matching skin color, which completely masked the injury.

The morning after his drive with Regina, he wakes up hungover and remembers drinking with the Help Tourists upon returning to the hotel. He meets the librarian for coffee, and she gives him an older copy of the town history, which was redacted because it was not “ass-kissy” enough about the Winthrop family (133). The protagonist realizes that Goode and Field only established a three-person town council with Winthrop because they thought they would be able to control Winthrop and out-vote him two-to-one. For some reason, however, that did not happen.

In the past, after the protagonist stubbed his toe, he kept accidentally stubbing it again and again. He left the Apex bandages on for a long time, but besides compensating for the pain, he did not think about the consequences of the injury.

In the present, in the history book, the protagonist reads an anecdote called “The Lost White Boy,” which Abigail Goode recorded in her diary in the 1860s. One night, while the freedmen were still traveling to the spot on which they would found the town of Freedom, a lost white boy of about four years old wandered into their campsite. Afraid that his people would assume the Black travelers had captured him, the freedmen asked the boy where he came from, but he did not speak. After a light-skinned man named White Jimmy took the boy back to the nearby town, a white store clerk there asked the boy where he had been. The boy pointed at White Jimmy and replied, “The [n-word] found me” (144). Jimmy ran back to camp, and the group fled. Shortly after, the townspeople set fire to their campsite.

The novel flashes back to a team-building weekend the protagonist attended with his former company. The protagonist spent most of the weekend wandering in the woods or hiding in his room. He continued to stub his damaged toe, but the Apex bandages were working so well that he did not realize the extent of the injury. During the weekend, he stumbled into a swamp that contained pig feces from a nearby farm.

In the present, the protagonist boards a shuttle bus to a barbecue Lucky is throwing to conclude the weekend. Before boarding the bus, the protagonist sees a stack of newspapers with his picture on the front page. The headline reads “Making the Case for New Prospera: Consultant Vows to ‘Keep It Real’” (155). The protagonist is annoyed but not surprised at the twisting of his words.

On the bus, he sits next to Jack Cameron, who has decided to buy a home in Winthrop—a house on Regina Street is “a steal” (156). Other attendees have also decided to buy in, and the protagonist marvels at Lucky’s salesmanship. The barbecue is being held at Aberdeen headquarters, in the old barbed wire factory.

The novel flashes back to the protagonist’s experience after the retreat. He became ill, had a disastrous evening with his girlfriend Bridget, and the next morning called in sick to work. However, he promised Bridget to still go to an awards ceremony that night. When he took off the bandage, he saw that his toe was grossly swollen and foul-smelling. Deciding to see a doctor the next day, he applied another Apex bandage. At the awards ceremony, he developed a fever. Uncomfortable hobnobbing with the crowd and feeling progressively worse, he escaped before the ceremony began.

In the present, the narrator is enjoying himself at the barbecue. He feels like it is the last night of a vacation. Wrapped up in the moment, he climbs on top of one of the tables, grabs the microphone, and tells everyone that he has decided on a name, but then loses his footing and comes crashing to the ground.

In the past, outside the awards ceremony, the protagonist tried to get his bearings, but became dizzy and fainted.