Jonah Man (5 page)

I’m ready to bow off when the doors open and people start filing back in. They’re talking amongst themselves, excited, but by the time they’re sitting again they’ve gone quiet. I pick the blindfold up from where I’d dropped it.

When it’s over, Jonson’s waiting for me in the wings.

You got one-upped by a mule, he says.

What?

A runaway mule. Rabid. Bucking and screaming. It kicked out the bank window. Took half the town to get it calm.

I raise my shoulders.

They came back, I say.

Downstairs, I open my valise, take up the prosthetics one by one, slide the vials from the hollows and line them in rows on the table. I select five single-notched vials, five double-notched vials, return the rest to their sockets. I change out of my costume, wipe the cork from under my eyes.

The map leads me to a store-lined boulevard in an otherwise residential neighborhood—a red-brick facade set between
a bookshop and a grocer’s, a street lifted from a larger city. A copper plaque beside the door gives a company name, but there’s nothing to say what the company does. I ring the buzzer, survey the block while I wait. There’s an open fire plug flooding the gutter, crows drinking from the run off. The sidewalks and cars are empty. The door opens behind me. I turn, find myself looking over the shoulder of a man half my weight and into a long, narrow loft.

The buyer extends his right, then his left hand.

Please, come in, he says.

I glance back, step inside. The sun is bright and at first the objects on the walls are blacked out behind a spread of purple. I follow him to a small, square table at the center of the store. My vision clears, and I see weapons mounted like works of art with plates underneath telling where they’re from and how much they cost. There’s one that looks like the top of a child-sized pitchfork, the prongs close together, the silver pure and polished ; there’s a sword sheathed in a hard-leather case, pennons dangling from the handle, jewels covering the stitching; there’s a musket from the Civil War or earlier, its mouth spread open like a trumpet, its trigger curled and long like a half-bent finger.

You know, he says, sitting, I’ve never thought of the prosthetic as a weapon, but it would serve.

He leans across, runs a finger along the slight curve of my hook, makes a sound like purring. He’s dressed in a black sack suit, his tie tugged loose at the collar, the underflap tucked into his breast pocket. His face is jowly, his skin mottled. He’s slapped himself up and down with cologne, but his clothes stink of dope.

May I see it? he asks.

I start lifting the vials from my pockets.

No, no, he says, pointing at my hook.

The stump?

Stump is a vulgar word.

Why do you want to see it?

For the same reason I collect rare weapons, he says. They are objects of beauty and elegance, yet their purpose is to inflict trauma on the body. Shouldn’t that trauma also be beautiful, elegant?

I don’t have much time, I say.

A quick look.

I tug my stump from the hollow, set the hook on the table. I start to peel the stub sock free, but he holds up a hand.

Please, he says, reaching across. He works his index fingers under the soft-cotton gauze on either side of my forearm, inches the sock forward, inspects each bit of unveiled skin.

Shoddy, he says, clucking his tongue. A saw, was it?

A drawknife.

Serrated?

Yes.

He runs his thumb over the rucked skin, taps the cauliflower nub.

Neuroma, he says. A nerve ending that was not properly severed. Does it press against the prosthetic?

Yes.

It must cause you some discomfort. Who did this to you?

It doesn’t matter.

Not a surgeon?

No.

I wouldn’t think so.

He smiles. Well, he says, now for business.

I pull on the sock, the prosthetic, set the vials on the table and name the price.

I need a taste first, he says. I need to know that what I’m buying and what I ordered are the same.

They’re the same, I say.

I must be sure.

He takes a handkerchief from his breast pocket, drapes it over his index finger, picks up a vial with two notches carved into the stopper. He touches the liquid to the fabric, holds his finger to the gum just above his front tooth. It won’t take long for him to know—the spot he’s touched will turn warm, start to burn. The farther the burning spreads, the stronger the product. I wait. His jaws knot up, then fall open.

It’s been better, he says. But, yes, this will do. He gathers up the vials with one hand, reaches into his pocket with the other.

I trust you’ll find your own way out, he says.

I leave him with his head hanging limp, saliva purling out the corners of his mouth.

A pain in my gut stops me from going on. I buckle in the wings, lie on my side. People are murmuring around me. I hear soft applause coming from the crowd. I’m lifted to my feet, guided to a couch in a back room. The manager sets a bucket on the floor in front of me. I wait, but no doctor shows. The cushions under me turn damp with sweat.

I focus my eyes on the cracks in the ceiling, stare them down until they stop squirming. After a while, my stomach settles, my skin cools. I decide I’ll stay where I am until someone comes for me.

The someone who comes is Jonson, still spotted with the powder he wears onstage. He looks around the room. I look with him. The walls curve up into the ceiling like the back side of a cave. The wood floors are unsanded, unvarnished. Besides the couch I’m sitting on there’s a pile of kindling, a lidless garbage can filled with towels, an assortment of tools lying loose on a
wood bench. Pictures of dime-store performers stand upside down and sideways against two of the four walls.

This would work nice, Jonson says, sitting next to me. Ever wonder why you can’t just find yourself a little room like this?

No, I say.

Sure you do, he says. A man wants to be left alone or he don’t want nothing.

Then why are you here?

He smiles. Came to see how you’re doing.

I’ll live.

But for how long?

I stop myself from asking what he means. He pats my knee, stands.

I bet you was scared with all those weapons on the walls, he says.

I keep my face calm.

Why not tell me what you want? I ask.

That’s a good question, he says. Someone’s paying me. It’s up to you to figure out who. I will tell you this—warning you ain’t in my job description. I’m looking out for you, Swain.

He pauses in the doorway, switches off the light.

Might be you think better in the dark, he says.

It’s late when I get to the hotel. The bed posts are covered with thick clots of dust, the wall opposite my bed is paneled with mirrors. I cross the room, open the window, pull the curtain shut. The remaining vials are spread over my blanket. All but a few are double-notched, with more than a week before I reach the new supply. I kneel in front of the mattress, pick up a single-notched vial, roll it back and forth in my palm. Small shards of silver disperse into the blue, then regroup.

I slide my travel bag out from under the bed, untie the drawstring, push aside my socks, my underclothes, a tennis ball, a small book of newspaper clippings dating to my first days onstage. There are Canadian coins and bits of pocket lint resting on the bottom. I find a double-sided cotton swab—one side dirty, one side clean—rest it on my thigh, thumb the stopper from the vial. I stand the vial in front of me, work the clean tip through its open mouth. I hold the colored cotton under my tongue. The burn gives way to a rush of saliva.

Lying on my back, I feel a humming so slight I doubt it’s real. I squeeze my eyes shut, trace the liquid’s path to my brain, trying to push it deeper. My elbows and knees spasm, go rigid. Then nothing.

Next morning, Jonson and his boy are standing a few feet away on the platform, Jonson smoking a cigarette that won’t stay lit, the boy leaning against his barrel, singing softly to himself. The train is delayed; no one will say for how long. The rain comes and goes. Jonson flicks his cigarette onto the tracks, starts toward me.

You look like shit, he says. Even for a cripple.

His eyes are yellow beneath the pupils, his jaw line spotted with swollen pimples.

I got something to tell you, he says.

Yeah?

He starts rolling a second cigarette. He hunches over the paper, holds the tobacco close to his chest. His back looks near breaking; his arms are all bone, his stomach bloated. He’s been reduced to shuffling in his act—nothing but a steady beat for the boy.

A man came to see me, he says. About my son.

A man?

A browser. All the way from New York City.

About the boy?

None other.

What did he want?

Said he had a part only my boy could play.

In New York?

On a street I figure you heard of.

No surprise, I say. Like you said, the boy’s got talent.

True, but talent will keep. He ain’t ready. Not yet.

He might be.

You mean the way you was ready?

He walks back to where he’d been standing. The boy doesn’t seem to notice that he’s returned or that he’d ever gone. Jonson flicks his cigarette onto the tracks.

Cut that singing, he says. I hear the train.

I understand now why he keeps his son tied to a hinterland circuit. Watching them gather their gear as the train arrives, I start to imagine two lives for the boy: one with his father, and one without.

 

I walk down wide residential streets, cut through a park, come out in a neighborhood that’s been stripped bare and abandoned, all squat brick shells and broken glass. The cash in my pocket rubs against my thigh. I’m beginning to feel as if I’ll never get there, as if I’m walking in place, passing the same damaged facade, the same busted bicycle again and again. I quicken my stride, start to run.