Jonah Man

by Christopher Narozny

  Arthritis, the man said. Got so my hand’s no better than a paper weight.

  An awful predicament, Connor said. I suffered from a similar affliction, only in my toes. It was this very recipe that cured me. Tell me, sir, have you any hobbies?

  I write poems.

  Professionally?

  Wouldn’t be a hobby if I did it professionally.

  I mean have you published.

  No sir. I handpick the people I share them with.

  A wise practice. Tell me, can you make a fist?

  What you see is what you get.

  And is that the hand you write with?

  It was. I do my writing in my head now.

  Like Homer.

  OK.

  Well, let’s see if we can’t get your verse from head to paper.

  Connor crouched down, took up a bottle, wrote directions on the label while he spoke.

  A teaspoon at breakfast, another at dinner, he instructed. If you want to accelerate the healing process, I’d recommend you rub a cotton swab’s worth on each knuckle before bed. Allow the medicine to soak directly into the bone and you’ll see a difference when you wake.

  The odor won’t keep me up nights?

  Quite the contrary. It’s dulcet scent will work on you much like a lullaby.

  And that’s ninety cents?

  Ninety cents for the first five purchasers. Now, for a man whose condition is in such advanced stages, I’d recommend two, possibly three bottles.

  Like you said, I got nothing to lose.

  People began to queue up. There was a pregnant woman who’d miscarried twice before, a man who’d had the same case of hives for more than a year, another man who’d just turned thirty though his skin was wrinkled and his hair gray. When the people on line outnumbered the people in the crowd Connor gestured toward me, said:

  Ladies and gentlemen, now for a bit of native entertainment.

  I broke my pose, lunged forward, hollering war cries and hurling tomahawks. Children darted behind their parents, began inching back out.

  Don’t be afraid, Connor said. He’s quite tame. I liberated him from his depraved existence on an Apache reservation outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father rode with Geronimo. A proud people living in squalor. This one calls himself Wet River. His name is all the language he knows.

  Connor stood watching as I edged off to the side, bringing the children and some parents with me, then returned to his patients, diagnosing their conditions, prescribing doses, scribbling on labels.

  I balanced a tomahawk on my nose, juggled others behind my back, then passed them between my legs. Counterfeit weapons, the stone a clay-painted foam. Connor bought them at a penny a piece from a theater that was shutting its doors. I finished my first set, took a slight bow with my shoulders. A small, tow-headed child asked if he could try. His mother tugged him away.

  Connor’s plan was working. The sideshow held the crowd. The crowd itself drew more people. We’d been playing for hours before the square cleared.

  I’ve never had a better day, Connor said once we’d quit the town. Never in all my years. You did a fine job, son. A fine, fine job.

  He drew back on the reins, looked up and down the roadway as though people might be watching from behind the pepper trees.

  By God, I’d believe you were pure native, he said. Even at this distance. Damned authentic.

  He slapped at the horse to quicken its pace, drove on.

  You think you’ve failed, but you haven’t. No one is a failure because of a single fall.

  I know.

  No, you don’t. People have it wrong: yours is the oldest profession. There were jugglers on the streets of Jericho and in the Forum at Rome, in the stalls of Aztec and Assyrian marketplaces, in the courts of European monarchs and Arabian caliphs. The costumes and objects may change with time, but the juggler has always been with us, and always will be. Do you understand me?

  I think so.

  Let me put it this way: You were right in refusing to speak. I didn’t understand, but now I do. You tap into an essential mystery. You stand out of time, a figure from the past and present and future, a fixed point in the full sweep of history. Nobody knows why you do what you do, no more than they know why they watch. You move people from a mundane plane of existence to a sphere beyond the everyday. As they stand there watching you, they cease to be clerks, dentists, lawyers, politicians, vagabonds, thieves. They are not thinking about how to pay the rent or when they are going to die. There is only the mesmeric whirl. You meet a fundamental need, a need as fundamental as food or sex. You put a stop to the mind’s ceaseless chatter, if only for a moment. I want you to consider that.

  OK.

  Promise me.

  I promise.

  All right, he said. Now, let’s celebrate the day’s fortune.

  He pulled a bottle of medicine from his blazer pocket, uncorked it with his teeth, spit the cork onto the road. We passed the bottle back and forth, taking short drags, then long swallows. We’d emptied a third bottle before we made camp. When I woke the next morning, my face was still painted, the head-dress still strapped beneath my chin.

  Sioux City, Iowa

  September 9, 1922

  Everything in and surrounding the town is flat, sheered fields on one side of the tracks, squat buildings on the other. A few yards up the platform Jonson and his boy are fussing with their luggage. I watch them fasten their barrels to a dolly, strap their bindles to their backs. Jonson sees me watching, smiles. He waves me over, but I stay back, wait for them to trundle their barrels away. I feel the whiskey thinning in my blood.

  I find a coffee shop on my way to the theater. The inside is meant to look rustic, the floor and ceiling made of the same light-grained wood, the walls decorated with paint-by-numbers of waterfalls, forests, native-Indian faces. The place is empty except for a wall-eyed kid at the counter who keeps staring at my trunk. He’s a shine, the type who wants to talk his way onstage. I take the booth nearest the door, sit with my back to him, my trunk propped on the opposite bench.

  A man in an apron jots down my order. I roll my neck, shut my eyes. My tongue’s furring over and my gut’s churning. I think in pictures, everything right on top of me, blotting out whatever’s behind. The Porcine Child nodding off a snarl of flies. Jonson spraying saliva through the gaps in his teeth. I pinch the flap of my ear, dig my nails in.

  The kid waits for my food to arrive. A shine trick—now I’m stuck for as long as it takes me to eat. I watch his shadow spread over the table.

  Excuse me, mister? he says.

  It’s sir.

  What?

  When you’re talking to someone you never met before it’s sir. Mister is an insult.

  I didn’t mean it to be, he says. Then adds, You here for the shows?

  He’s got a canvas glove hanging from each back pocket and his frame barely fills his clothes. He looks like a kid who’s used to being barked at.

  Can I sit? he asks.

  I’m in a hurry.

  I won’t take a minute.

  Not today, son.

  I start cutting up my flapjacks. The kid clears his throat.

  Did you hear the one about the widower who married his wife’s sister?

  What?

  He didn’t want to break in a new mother-in-law.

  I don’t say anything.

  I write jokes, he says. For sale.

  I have a dumb act.

  What?

  I don’t talk onstage. I juggle.

  But you could, he says. People sing while they play the piano. You could tell jokes while you juggle.

  I’m not interested.

  But you know people.

  They aren’t interested either.

  He straightens his spine.

  Did you hear the one about the southern planter? he says. He was an undertaker from New Orleans.

  That’s enough, kid, I say.

  I stand, step from the booth. He digs his fingers into his thighs.
His smile gives out.

  Fine, he says. That’s fine.

  He starts to leave, then turns back.

  You know, he says, a year ago our theater was a butcher’s shop. You’re shit if they sent you here, mister.

  He makes a show of slamming the door. The counter-man laughs. I look over my shoulder. He’s sitting on a stool, stropping a ladle against the skirt of his apron.

  Kid’s half scrambled, he says. But he speaks his mind. Gotta give him that.

  I do, I say.

  The flapjacks are swelling in my stomach, soaking in the whiskey. Bits of undone batter clog my throat. I look back at the man in the apron. He sees it in me.

  That way, he says, pointing with his ladle.

  I sprint the distance from the back stoop to the outhouse, a clapboard box with a hole in the door where the knob should be. I loop in two fingers, pull, feel a thick splinter break my skin. My head spikes back at the stench. After a while, my stomach settles, my skin cools. I stand, pull the splinter free with my teeth.

  I order a second pot of coffee, empty cup after cup until my mind clears. On my walk to the theater I see the shine loading sacks of feed onto a flatbed truck, his back sloping under the weight.

  The performer’s entrance is off a gravel side alley. A houseboy with a gumboil on his chin greets me at the door, tells me I’ll be dressing in the cellar.

  I stop at the notice board. Beneath the hell-and-damn edict there’s a telegram with my name on it:

  Two weeks since I heard from you. Following address good for ten days: 20 S. Maple, #4, Ogden, N.Y.

  I’m to deliver ten vials to 5 N. Ogden Street between two and four in the afternoon. If there was a message for Jonson he’d already found it. He’d likely found mine, too. I tear the scrap of paper free of its tack, fold it into my coat pocket.

  The basement hallway cuts through six dressing stalls, four on one side, two on the other. I hear the contortionist playing his ocarina, two sisters from the sister act bickering in their stage voices. There are remnants of a butcher’s shop cluttered against the back of my stall—reams of meat paper, jars of brine and marinade, a rusted sausage stuffer, pairs of mesh gloves, the hook from a hanging scale. There’s a mirror with no frame nailed to the wall beside the door, a folding table and chair set up underneath. No wash basin, no towel.

  I uncordon my valises, hang a linen cloth from the nail on the opposite wall, hang my stage suit up against the cloth. I dig out a small bag of make-up, sit at the mirror. The folds of skin beneath my eyes look like burst water blisters. I cover them over with burnt cork, change into my costume, count the rounds of applause until it’s my turn to take the stage.

  I’m debuting something new in my act, something I’ve saved to try out on a smaller market. I’ve bolted metal loops into the striped balls, taught myself to catch and throw by spearing the loops with my hook. I’ve got six balls going, my good hand buried in my pants pocket. It’s working. I get applause, a few whistles. I move to the edge of the stage, toss the balls like they’re headed for the third row, reel them back. The trick is to get enough spin. People in the front throw up their hands, then laugh. I step back, the balls still turning, take a blindfold from my pocket, slip it over my eyes. My hook finds the loop every time.

  There’s a shout, and I hear seats emptying, boots clumping up the aisles. The balls bounce around my ankles. By the time I get my blindfold off the audience is down to three crag-faced women near the back. The one in the middle is smiling, looking sad or maybe simple. I gather up the striped balls, get a wide circle going. I take it slow until my arms quit shaking.

  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.