Jonah Man (3 page)

In the hotel, I open my valise, press on a bump in the fabric that releases the false backing. The bottom row of hooks rises, exposing two envelopes, a pencil, an eraser, a small pad of paper. I put the money that isn’t mine in one envelope, the money that is in the other. Sitting with my back to the bed, I empty the second envelope across my lap, count the bills, subtract their total from the tailor’s price. The numbers are close—a few more towns, a few more cities, and they will be the same.

I take up the pad, flip through the pages. Each page is drawn over with the outline of a man’s suit. I’ve filled the torsos with circles, stars, squares—the circles standing in for sapphires, the stars for rhinestones, the squares for rubies. On one suit I’ve drawn circle-studded stripes down each sleeve, on another I’ve dotted the arms with squares and stars. I’ve penciled in rhinestone collars, ruby collars, mixed collars. Some of the torsos I’ve covered with distinct shapes—the bulb and stem of a rose over
each breast pocket; stick-figure fish swimming vertically, horizontally ; small birds in various stages of flight. Others I’ve filled with patterns—checkered rhinestones, wavy lines of sapphires, ruby pinstripes.

I turn through the pages, pencil in hand, erase a half-circle of squares from one torso, add a line of stars to another. With each addition or deletion I imagine the changing pattern of light. I close my eyes, place myself in the audience, squint at the reflection from the front row, the back row.

I snap the false backing shut, empty the insides of my prosthetics onto the bed. I divide the contents into two rows, one for vials with a single notch carved into the stopper, the other for vials with two notches. Each notch stands for a time I’ve skimmed. It’s early in the run, but already the double-notched vials outnumber the single-notched vials. I’ve never sold a triple-notched vial.

I tell myself I’ll conserve. I’ll take smaller and smaller tastes, until I’m cutting half-notches in the stoppers, until I’m able to go several days without carving any notches at all.

I pack away the prosthetics, leave one single-notched vial on the bed.

 

The night train is quiet. I have a compartment to myself. It’s rare to get a full bench, but now I have two, facing each other, and a door to block the sounds of people moving past. I stack my luggage overhead, cover a bench with a pillow and blanket. Before I’ve closed my eyes, the door jolts open, and Jonson’s standing there silhouetted by the hall light.

Thought you might like some company, he says, holding out a bottle.

I was asleep, I say.

To hell you were. Can’t nobody but my boy sleep on these things, and that’s only ’cause he was raised on them.

Neither of us mentions the museum.

Listen, he says, I come in friendship. We started on the wrong foot.

I didn’t think we were on any foot at all.

You can play it that way, he says. I’m trying to make things right.

He sits on the blanket at my feet. I pivot, press my back straight against the bench. Jonson’s ogling my hacked arm.

Ain’t seen the stump before, he says.

No need to cover it when I’m sleeping.

Might lose an eye, he observes.

I lean forward, pull my prosthetic from where I’d wedged it between two suitcases. Jonson watches me work in my stump, smiling. A number of his top teeth are gone.

He screws off the cap, hands me the bottle. Even as I put the mouth to my lips, I know he wants something in return.

I heard you done that yourself, he says.

Done what? I say, passing him the bottle. He taps his wrist, gestures like he’s sawing.

Why would I’ve done that?

There’s a juggler on every bill, he says. Ain’t but one with his hand cut off.

I don’t say anything. The compartment’s lit by a weak bulb, the window black save the occasional flicker from a gantry crane or farmhouse porch. I shut my eyes, feel myself warm to the whiskey.

Ain’t you had enough? Jonson asks.

Of what?

Split weeks and sleeper jumps. Dickering over your slot on the bill. How old are you, Swain?

Old enough.

I’d say older than that. What’s going to happen for you that ain’t already happened? Maybe it’s time to say die.

And do what?

He pulls his grouch bag from under his shirt, takes out a vial and lifts it into the light coming through the compartment door. The vial is filled with silver-blue liquid. Jonson watches me close.

Thought you was careful? he says.

I look him up and down. I hadn’t seen the signs, but Jonson, all gums and jaundice, had seen it in me. It’s clear now what his boy was doing in that store.

He balances the bottle between his knees, pulls the stopper from the vial. Using one hand to steady the other, he lets two
drops fall into the whiskey.

I’ll fill this up later, he says, replacing the stopper, tucking the vial into his shirt pocket.

Business must be good, I say. Two of us working the same bill.

Must be.

He swells his cheeks with whiskey, holds the liquor in his mouth until his eyes start to glow.

Let it seep in, he says, passing me the bottle. I don’t hesitate.

Truth is, he says, we do them good by skimming. The more we skim, the more people got to buy.

It burns my throat, cuts into my chest from the inside. Jonson takes away the bottle.

You’ll be fine in a minute, he says. Whiskey makes it all go faster.

He’s right about that much. The pain is gone as quick as it came. Specks of blue break through my vision.

How long they got you for? he asks.

A while.

And then? You think the circuit will keep you on?

I’m not worried.

Cream don’t always rise.

What does that mean?

Means you’ll want to keep the right people happy.

Is that a warning?

Advice.

Yours, or someone else’s?

It’s worth heeding either way. Your second profession might end up your first.

He pulls a rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket, holds it between his lips and strikes a match against the heel of his shoe. He keeps striking until the match lights. He does all of this one-handed.

How was that? he asks.

I breathe in the smoke, slump my head against the bench. There’s no pain anywhere in me.

Tell me something, he says. Why’d you take that first taste?

He’s timed it right. The part of me that knows to stay quiet is undone.

All right, I say. I did a turn at the Majestic once.

Like hell.

I wasn’t much older than your boy is now. Back then I had a slack wire act. Juggling was the smallest part of what I did.

It ain’t easy to picture, Jonson says. Not now.

Have you ever walked a wire?

You ever danced on a barrel?

Most people bow out before they take the first step. They get to the top of the platform and that’s it. It’s like being on a horse that bucks. Once it knows you’re afraid, you’ll never ride that horse again.

I’ll bet you didn’t scare.

No, I didn’t. I had a turn with a unicycle. I’d ride back and forth from one platform to the other. The first time it was simple coasting. The second time I’d be blindfolded. The third, blindfolded and juggling. The fourth blindfolded, juggling, and pedaling backwards. I’d get house boys to shake the platforms. The trombone would play notes that sounded like falling, but I never fell.

Sounds better than what you got now.

It was no shut act.

So why are you here with me?

I don’t know.

You know.

All right, I say. I know.

Any chance you’ll share?

You first, I say.

I reach out my hand and he gives up the bottle. It’s a good while before I pass it back.

Some performers can see their act play out in their mind, I say. For them it’s as good as done on the boards. Others can see up to a point before their minds stick. Maybe they freeze at the final flip. Maybe they hear the punch line but not the laughter. Your boy is the first type. I used to be.

You took a spill?

Yeah.

Bad?

Bad enough.

Might have been a one-time thing.

It wasn’t.

Let me guess, he says. A taste from the vials and you can see any damn thing you like?

Uh-huh.

Just not when it counts.

No. But it feels right at the time.

He smiles. Maybe we need a little more, he says, taking the vial back out of his pocket. When he’s done he hands the bottle over. For a while he lets us sit in quiet. I hunch forward, listening to the train’s gears. Soon I’m at the Majestic, my scalp slick under the calcium spot. I rise up on the pedals, spread my palm over the seat, lift myself into a handstand, a good ten feet off the stage. I stay balanced like that, buttressed by the applause. I’m about to dismount with a flip when Jonson whistles in my ear. He slides his hand up my shoulder, closes it around my throat. Before I have my balance, he’s straddling my body, pinning my prosthetic down. The applause stop short.

Listen you dumb son of a bitch, he says. I want you
thinking on this while that shit settles in—stay clear of my boy. You hear me? Stay away.

He tightens his grip. I do what I can to nod.

That works for us both, he says.

In the morning, the conductor finds me lying on the floor between the benches, my face hidden in the crook of my good arm.

 

We arrived in town early on a weekend morning. I sat on the back flap of Connor’s covered wagon, the balls of my feet brushing the ground while he drove the main street. At each corner I hopped off, pitched a double-sided placard with the same message painted on either side: FOLLOW THE CLARION CALL AND BE CURED.

We parked in a stone-walled square, set a card table before the fountain, weighted the table legs with medicine bags, covered the top with a paisley cloth and lined rows of bottles on either side of a signboard listing the ailments Connor’s brew could cure. The last entry read, MANY, MANY MORE.

I changed in the back of the wagon while Connor readied his voice, repeating the same nonce word up and down the scale, stretching his jaws wide and pushing out his tongue. My costume was thick for summer, the deerskin sleeves taut at the elbows, the moccasins too small. I coated my hands, face, and neck with a deep-red base, added black and white war-stripes beneath my eyes, applied a light powder to keep the base from melting. I fitted tomahawks into loops along the belt, pulled on a feathered headdress and tied the strap beneath my chin.

By mid-morning the sky was starting to brighten, the air to warm. Connor fetched his bugle from the jockey box, gestured
for me to take my place beside the table. I stood with my arms stiff at my sides, a tomahawk locked in each fist, feathers dangling from the handles.

Remember, Connor said. Just keep your eyes fixed on a spot in the distance. Nothing to it.

The hawkers, carters and vagrants who frequented the square were the first to gather round. Then came clerks, construction workers, boys who’d been playing stickball in a nearby alley, tourists and retirees, the sick and lame. The square filled. People raised up on tiptoes, stood on the stone coping surrounding the fountain. Connor set aside his trumpet, addressed the crowd.

Ladies and gentlemen, he started, what I offer you today is a cure-all discovered by my grandfather, refined by my father, and further refined by me. An ancestral brew known to cure the sick and bolster the strong. I would be betraying my ancestors’ memory were I to name the ingredients, but I can say this: the components are pure and the formula patented. I carry the patent with me should you need convincing. This is no potion, and I am no alchemist. What’s more, should it fail to treat your ills, simply keep the empty bottle and when I return this way in a month’s time, I will refund your money, every cent.

How about you come back in a month and if it worked we pay you then?

I’m a patient man, Connor said. But not that patient.

What does it do, exactly?

A fine question, Connor said. A very good question indeed. When I said it was a cure-all, I meant just that. Allow me to provide an example. A woman, a school teacher, told me she’d never gone a day in her life without an ache or a pain of some kind—a stiff back, a bum knee, a sore tooth, a strained neck, and any other discomfort you might name. A migraine every evening and nausea the next morning. She bought a bottle, figuring she had nothing to lose. Well,
when I came back around just one month later, she was waiting for me, eager to purchase the next month’s supply. Another woman, a widow, told me she could not sleep, could not so much as shut her eyes without seeing her husband as he appeared in the final, agonizing moments of his life. Well, one tablespoon and not only was she able to sleep, but she could see her beloved again as he was on the day they met: young and strong, with color in his cheeks, the hero of her youth. If you doubt me, I have their written testimonies, along with many others, in my possession. Long term, this fortifying brew has been known to cure microcephalis, quinsy, rachitis, cleptomania, and diptheria, to name a few. It’s been known to shrink benign and malignant tumors alike. It purges the system of parasites, thickens thinning blood, and clears skin of boils and other blemishes. It has repeatedly healed where all other remedies have failed. I have seen it cure husbands of their lust and wives of their frigidity. It provides the weary with stamina, the fearful with courage. A mere teaspoon has produced a sustained bout of studying in the most undisciplined of children. At a dollar a bottle you have everything to gain, and what’s more, I will discount the price by a percentage of ten for the first five patrons. A ninety-cent investment in your health and well-being.