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.
Osgood, Indiana
September 15, 1922
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.
There’s no sign naming the shop, just a number painted in black on the brick beside a tin mailbox. I ring the bell and the door opens inward. The old man has trouble getting out of its way. He’s dressed in sockfeet and frayed pajamas. Liver spots cover the backs of his hands, shade the peaks in his hairline.
Please enter, Mr. Swain.
I’m sorry to wake you.
Not at all.
Inside, the only light comes from a dim lamp clamped to a drafting table. A burlap scrim cuts the room in two.
Wait here while I fetch it, he says.
I watch him walk away, his heels rising off the ground, exposing the black bottoms of his white socks. He parts the curtain, lets it fall shut behind him. The front room is crowded with objects of his trade—a sewing machine with a cracked treadle, a mannequin torso dressed in lace jabot, teetering stacks of mismatched cloth. Near the center of the floor there’s a heap of dust that he’d swept into a mound but hadn’t bothered to discard. There are no family portraits, no upholstered chairs, no magazines or toys. The room smells like months of the old man’s breath and sweat.
I’ve found it, he calls through the curtain. Get yourself ready.
I unbutton my shirt, unbuckle my belt, remove my hook and strip to my underclothes.
This is it, Mr. Swain, he says, backing his way through the burlap. I trust you will be pleased.
He flicks on the overhead light, raises the suit to his chin. It’s studded with counterfeit gems, the fabric white, blue stripes sewn down the sleeves, glitter glued over every stitch. The collar is lined with rhinestones, the right sleeve wider than the left.
Please, he says. Try it on.
He wheels a mirror to the center of the room while I dress. I bend my knees, roll my shoulders, feel the fabric start to conform to my body. The tailor is grinning, applauding his own work. I slip my stump back in the socket. He takes my shoulders, turns me toward the mirror.
Every bit of me shines. Onstage, under the calcium spot, with sparkles stickered to the balls, I’ll look like fireworks exploding up a blind alley.
Jonson’s rolling his barrel offstage as I walk on. He claps his lips together, then whistles through the gaps in his teeth. The lights go down; a single beam spots me from top to bottom.
I start my routine, but something’s not right. The balls seem far away. I feel myself reaching for them. I move closer, deepen the bend in my arms. My eyes strain, maybe from the single light and the surrounding dark, maybe from the glint off the gems.
I make it through the first set, move to the edge of the stage, throw the balls up, hide my good hand behind my back. My hook spears loop after loop. I’m feeling steadier; faces in the front row seem to be smiling. One woman holds up her hands, fingers splayed, shielding herself.
I’m nearing the end but decide to keep going. I squat down, start the balls spinning faster. I hear people whispering. Everything is happening almost without me. But then one of the rhinestone cufflinks catches the light, deflects it in a sharp line that finds my eye. I jerk my head away, feel my hook scrape against the surface of a ball, watch the ball spin toward the audience, picking up speed in the air. It strikes the shin of an old woman in the front row, doubles her out of her seat. The audience stands as I back into the wings.
The manager fines me twice what I paid for the suit.
I’m feeling for the rag in my pocket when Jonson rattles my door.
Swainee, he says. I know you’re in there. You got nowhere else to be.
I swipe the vials under my pillow, pull the covers up the bed.
A minute, I say.
That’s right, he says. Make yourself decent.
I open the door; he doesn’t wait for me to invite him inside.
Want to talk some business, he says.
Yeah?
Come to make you an offer—discreet like. I got some you can buy.
How’s that?
Had a cancellation. They told me to find my own buyer.
I don’t say anything.
Listen, Jonson says, I’ll cut you a deal. That suit-a-stones for three vials.
What would you do with it?
I like my pajamas with rocks on them. What do you care? You ain’t going to wear it no more. Unless crippling the audience is part of your act now.
Not interested, I say.
You ain’t been doing so well lately, he says. I’m trying to help you out.
I’ll be all right.
To hell you will. Take my offer.
No, thank you.
You got something going I don’t know about?
No.
Well you best find something. I’m done being cute with you. Them rocks didn’t work. Cutting off your hand didn’t work. Truth is, you only got one way to keep alive. Think on it, Swain. Think real quick.
When he’s gone, I replace the vials in the hollows of my prosthetics, link the chain through the handles, lock the padlock and pocket the key. I work the bed against the wall with my knees, stretch the suit out on the floor, smooth down the wrinkles with my palm. I fold the legs over the torso, the sleeves over the legs, careful to leave slack at the bends so the fabric won’t crease. I tape the suit back up in the tailor’s brown wrapping, hurry outside.
The wide residential streets have gone quiet. A sign says the park closes at dusk, but there’s nothing to keep me from walking through. The main path is lined with trees whose leaves are just starting to fall. I stray from the pavement in the dark, stumble over cracks in the asphalt. I walk fast, sucking in all the breath my chest will hold.
There’s a light flickering beneath the drape in the tailor’s window. Across the street, a cluster of hobos shamble around a tin ash can, burning what smells like rubber and driftwood. Their frayed dusters and porous bowlers glow white.
The tailor opens his door as far as the chain will allow.
This is no time to come calling, he says, peering at me through the narrow space between door and frame.
I can’t use it, I say.
What?
The suit. Can I come in?
No, he says. I’m sorry, but this is not a proper hour.
I’ll be gone in the morning.
What is it you want? he asks. I hear phlegm shifting at the back of his throat.
I want to return it.
Return it?
Sell it back.
I’m sorry, he says, but that’s not possible. I have no need for it. I put a good number of hours into that suit. I did exactly what you asked, and it was not easy—was not easy to keep the cost within your budget, which frankly was quite meager. So tell me, what is the problem?
I describe the glint off the gems, the arch of the ball just before it struck the woman’s shin. He nods, clears his throat into a handkerchief, shuts the door. I hear the chain sliding free of its plate.
OK, he says. Come in.
The burlap curtain is drawn to one side. A fire in the small iron stove at the back of the room makes a black silhouette of the half-mannequin, casts the piles of fabric in shadow. There’s a book lying open on a cot near the stove, a glass of wine within arm’s reach on the floor. The only sound comes from kindling sparking in the fire.
He gestures to a child-sized chair beside the drafting table, switches on a lamp, clears away a stack of patterns.
Let me see it, he says.
I hand him the package. He unwraps it, examines the hopsacking cloth, the tiger’s eye and rhinestone. The tips of his fingers are blunted, calloused—the knuckles have lost their bend. I look over the living space. The cot is padded with cushions from a discarded sofa. There’s a bursting armchair, a small stack of branches by the fire, a column of books piled in a corner, a wicker hamper for his clothes.
I can discount the labor by a percentage, he says. The stitching limits the portion of material I can reuse, though there is some. As for the gems, since they are counterfeit, they are not worth much.
He lifts a store receipt off a milk crate, scribbles a column of figures on the back, circles the bottom number.
I nod.
All right, he says.
He walks into the living space, pulls the curtain shut behind him. He’s left the suit on the table, folded at the waist, the torso resting on the pant legs, the arms hanging off the edges of the table. I take a last look, admiring the small bluebird he embroidered on the right shoulder, the tight black stitching that went into drawing distinct feathers on the wing and tail, the actual red and white feathers he’d pasted down to make a tuft crowning the bird’s head. Maybe he’ll put the suit on display—nail it to a wall or fit it for a mannequin. Most likely it will end up buried in one of his piles.
He comes back, sets the bills in my palm.
I am sorry it did not work out, he says.
I start to answer, but my voice catches, and he’s already leading me to the door.
I stop in a bar that’s crowded though the street outside is empty. There are tables of men playing cards, women in flounced dresses working the floor. I take a stool with my back to the room. The barman is busy clearing glasses and soaking up spilled liquor with a rag. I wave him over, order a shot and ask him to leave the bottle. The surface of the bar is pocked and peeling. The whiskey keeps me stuttering over the same calculations—number of vials divided by number of jumps, cost of the suit minus what the tailor paid plus the fine. I puncture a varnish blister with the tip of my hook, pull the coating back.
Halfway into the bottle I feel a hand on my shoulder. It’s one of the women who work the floor. She’s wearing a lace dress cut low. The tops of her breasts are dotted with moles, her bare arms flushed—the kind of ruddy flesh that turns white wherever you touch it. Her face is painted like a stage girl’s. I pretend not to notice when she starts at my hook.
She leads me up a staircase behind the bar, into an open wooden booth, draws the curtain behind us. I lean back, shut my eyes. The booth smells of chlorine. The smell turns my head. I’m not sure if I’m standing or lying down. I feel her hands on my bare chest, her nails raking my skin.
By the time I leave, the tailor’s bills are gone.
Twenty-Nine Palms, California
July 1902
You’re a charlatan. You’re a thief, and you won’t rob the citizens of my town.
Connor wiped rain from his glasses with a handkerchief, set the handkerchief back in his blazer pocket and raised his head to the small gathering.
This man wants you to continue in your suffering, he said, so that your physical state might mirror his own sour disposition.
I’m telling you to pack up and leave.
Sir, tipsification is a vice, particularly before noon.
And yet here you are, before noon, peddling your dressed-up liquor. I know you and I know your business. You prey on people who have exhausted every legitimate avenue and have nothing more to lose.
You see, ladies and gentlemen, what this man thinks of you.
I’m the elected mayor of this town, and these are the people who elected me. You’re damn right they know what I think of them. My sheriff and his men are out picking up your signs. You can fetch them at the jailhouse, which by god is where you will be if you and your fake Indian don’t move on. You need a permit to hawk your wares in this town.
Sir, Connor said, I was not acquainted with the laws of your city. I would be most happy to apply—
Denied. I’ll have a deputy come by to make sure you’re gone. If you aren’t, I doubt you’ll like your accommodations.
He turned, clucked his tongue at the crowd. People padded off, glancing back now and again to see if anything more would happen. Connor started crating his medicine. I tried to help him pick the crates up into the wagon, but he waved me away.
We’d traveled an hour down the coast before he spoke again.
You agree with that highbinder, don’t you? he said. You’d like to see me in jail?
I wouldn’t.
You would. I see it in your posture. I hear it in your tone. You’re slumming with a fraud until you can gather your nerve. Just remember, you were living like livestock when I found you.
I never—
You haven’t said it because you need me. But a day is coming when you will say it. And I want you to know in advance that you’re wrong. I offer a product whose efficacy
has been scientifically proven—if not by chemical science, then by empirical science. For decades now, I have watched it alleviate and often relieve altogether the suffering of countless people for whom orthodox medicine had done nothing. I am not lecturing to you, I am simply telling you the truth. If I adopt the air of a charlatan, if I trick my act, as you call it, with frippery of various kinds, it’s because that is what common people respond to. I debase myself for their benefit. Believe me, if my unique goal were to make money, there are better ways. I want you to take that into consideration the next time you see fit to judge me.
That night we camped in a wooded lot not far from the beach. Connor sat with his back against the bole of a pine tree, sipping from a jug of moonshine and stropping the blade of a twine-handled knife against the underside of a rawhide belt. I lay on my bedroll a few yards off, lamp raised on a rock beside me, reading the crime column from a Gazette I’d picked up in one of the towns we’d passed through.
So, Connor said, you are literate?
You thought I wasn’t?
There are days I forget you can speak, he said. Perhaps I mistook you. Perhaps you’re the brooding, intellectual type? Tell me, apart from local trivium, what is it you like to read?
I don’t know, I said. Adventure stories.
Adventure stories? Heroines in the hands of heathens? Spaniards rescued from Turkish slave ships? That sort of thing.
I guess.
Falderal, he said. It’s time you had a proper education. I’ll fetch you a real adventure story.
He sheathed his knife, buckled his belt around his pants without using the loops, took up his lamp and rummaged through the wagon. He came back with a leather-bound edition, the silhouette of an ancient armada branded into the front cover.
The original, he said. And still the greatest. A book to which all other books make reference.
He handed it to me. I opened to a random page.
Jonah Man Page 4
