Jonah Man

by Christopher Narozny

It’s poetry, I said.

  You do know something. Still, it’s not poetry the way you think of poetry.

  He sat again with his back to the tree.

  Read it, he said.

  Out loud?

  Why not?

  I’m tired.

  Nonsense, it’s early yet.

  From the beginning?

  Where else?

  I closed the book, opened it again, turned past the title page. He stopped me before I reached the end of the first line.

  I thought you said you could read?

  I can.

  Then you should know not to pause after each word. Do you understand the meanings?

  Yes.

  Then let’s have a little rhythm. Begin again.

  He let me go for half a page.

  No, he said. That simply won’t do. I understand your stumbling over foreign names, but you’re butchering even the most common nouns. Have you heard of meter? Listen.

  He stood, stuck out his chest like a crooner, recited the line I’d read without looking at the book.

  You see, he said. Poetry is meant to be spoken, not muttered. Now get up.

  I held the book in one hand and my lantern in the other. I tried to start the words deep in my chest, but I couldn’t focus on the page and my voice at the same time.

  Worse still, he said. You have no feel for this whatsoever. Again, from the beginning.

  We kept going, back and forth, Connor swilling from his jug, calling me a dunce, a lubber, a mutt, a sot, raising his voice when I didn’t flinch. My neck was slick with sweat but I wouldn’t give in. Not even when day broke and Connor was still standing.

  Dalkey, California

  October 2, 1922

  I’m lying flat on the bed, the last single-notched vial balanced on my chest. The clerk put me in the room next to Jonson’s. I can hear Jonson snoring, the boy singing—something slow and sad, as though he’s singing to keep his father asleep. There’s a blunt throbbing at the center of my head. I close my eyes, arch my back, feel the vial roll onto my stomach. I notice the boy’s gone quiet before I hear the knocking at Jonson’s door.

  Go on, Jonson says, get yourself some air.

  I hear a woman’s voice in the room, the boy’s footsteps heading down the corridor. I stand, press my ear to the wall. Jonson is talking, the woman laughing. There’s a pouncing on the bedsprings, a sound like a lamp faltering on the nightstand.

  I catch up with the boy on the town’s only commercial street, keep a full block behind. The shops are closed for the season. A month ago people were lining up to buy painted seascapes, bracelets made of oyster shells, playing cards with mermaid queens and Neptune kings. Every stool in every bar was taken, every hotel booked. Tonight, the streetlights seem lit for the boy alone.

  The stores drop off, the wooden sidewalk gives way to sand. The boy slips off his shoes and socks, keeps walking towards the water. I sit on a bench and watch. The boy looks stenciled into the foreground. He rolls up his pant legs, steps to the edge of the water, holds his arms out at the sides as the current carries him backwards. The breeze off the water cuts through my coat.

  The boy retreats onto the shore, takes up a clump of sea wrack and tosses it to the waves. Facing the water, he bends at the waist, lifts himself into a handstand, raises his right palm inches off the sand. He totters, then falls, tucking his chin to his chest, rounding his back and rolling through a somersault. He tries again and his legs stay raised a little longer. He’s routining his act, bolstering the finish by standing on just one hand. Soon, he stops falling.

  After a while, he wipes his feet clean, slips on his socks and shoes. For a moment I think I might stand, block his path, tell him what I know Jonson won’t—that if he wants to see his name in lights he’ll chase down that browser and not look back. But instead I lie on my side with my hook between my knees and watch through the slats until he’s gone.

  I take off my own shoes and socks, fold my pant cuffs. The sand cools my feet, catches in the cracked skin around my heels. I reach the area where the boy had been rehearsing. There are handprints layered one atop the other, a patch of sand rolled flat by his spine. I kneel, begin tamping down his tracks with my palm, filling in the depressions, smoothing over every disturbed surface. When I’m done, there’s just a compact and trodden space.

  I crouch facing the water, breathing hard, squinting into the distance, trying to separate black water from black sky. Goose pimples riffle up my spine. I pull my knees to my chest but can’t stop shivering. It isn’t the breeze or the ocean air. It’s my body asking for what’s locked in my valise.

  At a little after midnight I sit with my back to the bed, hold the vial up to the light. I’m looking for what I know isn’t there, a means of extracting without subtracting, a way to take what I need without weakening the vial. I roll it over on my palm, watch the silver disperse through the blue, gravitate back to the center. I pinch the vial between my thumb and forefinger, hold it straight, then on its side. I shake it gently, observe that the shards will only stray so far, that they always reverse course before touching the glass. I shake the silver with the full force of my wrist, feel the bottom stopper slip free of my thumb, watch the vial strike my knee, rebound into the air. I swipe at it with what I think is my right hand. The glass cracks, shatters against the wall. I watch the blue streaks eat into the paint, disappear into the floorboards. I crawl forward, knock away the glass with my hook, lick at the blue until my tongue turns numb.

  Jonson is waiting for me in my dressing room—a room so small we both have to stand.

  You want something? I say.

  Easy, he says. You ain’t rich in friends.

  What I salvaged of the vial is only starting to fade.

  I’m guessing you want something, I say.

  Listen, he says, you got two jobs, and you got to keep the one to keep the other. Truth is, you’re breaking apart at both ends. There’s some won’t take kindly to it.

  They know I’ve been skimming?

  I know.

  And you’re their spy.

  You figured that much. What you don’t know is it ain’t them you got to worry about.

  What does that mean?

  I told you what I can, Swain. I ain’t being coy.

  What about your son?

  What about him?

  Do they know he’s working for them, too?

  You can’t hurt my boy, he says. I’d slit your throat if I thought you could.

  It’s not me who’s hurting him, I say.

  I’ll do right by my son. You worry about yourself. I’m going to talk straight with you, Swain. No bullshit. What you’re trying to hold onto is out of reach. You’re done. You don’t have a goddamned thing left. You know it. I’m just the one saying it. Take a trip, Swain. You’ve got brains. This ain’t the only life for you. I’m being honest now. It would be good for you if you listened.

  Tell me this, I say. Why do you care?

  I done my part, Swain, he says. The next part is yours.

  Oceanside, California

  October 1902

  I need a civilized sleep, Connor said. A civilized sleep and a little time to think.

  Up and down the coast, autumn was chasing the tourists, leaving locals who’d seen us before. Nobody was buying. Nights, Connor drank and paced our camp with a pistol tucked in his pants. By morning his eyes looked as if they were leaking lampblack.

  A hotel? I said.

  I’ll need you to stay with the wagon.

  We pulled up under the porte-cochere of a pastel-blue building with matching wood shutters on every window. A man in uniform opened the door for Connor. From where I was sitting I could see into the lobby—hand-blown chandeliers, imported plants with polished fronds, a clerk in a suit and boutonniere.

  Connor returned with a key, drove the wagon onto a grass lot behind the hotel, maneuvered it between two motorized cabriolets. A stable boy came for the horse. Connor left me the rifle, carried the pistol
and cash box with him.

  Don’t hesitate, he said. Our belongings, our future profits, are worth the life of any man who would take them. Don’t hesitate.

  The only light came from the moon and the hotel’s windows. I watched until Connor was gone, then fired my lamp and sat for a while with my legs dangling off the back flap of the wagon, drinking from a pint of medicine. Horses whickered and pawed in the barn across the lot. I heard voices coming from the kitchen but couldn’t make out their words. The air smelled of garlic and fish and something I couldn’t name. When I played the Majestic, I stayed in a hotel with tessellated floors, a bath in each room, a pianist in the lobby, a fresh breakfast for every day of the week.

  I spread my bedroll between crates of medicine and boxes of canned food, slid the rifle under a blanket and lay reading from a dime novel. A string band started playing somewhere inside the hotel. Vehicles kept leaving and arriving. I shut my eyes, but I wasn’t tired. The medicine hadn’t done anything more than coat my mouth and throat. This was the first time Connor had left me alone. Besides the cash, there was nothing anyone would know to look for. I pulled on my slicker, pocketed the bottle and blew out the lamp. I kept a row of trees between me and the hotel until I reached the street.

  The theater was a converted storefront on a side road across from a small square. By the time I found it a stand-alone comic in a checkered bowler was bowing off the olio. A sketch with a plot about a cop and a woman he’d caught shoplifting took the deuce spot. For the store’s façade they wheeled on a plywood cut-out that looked as if it had been painted with no drawing to work from. The applause-man laughed a beat ahead of every joke.

  A local school girl danced a short routine to an off-tone piano and then a fat woman in a ragged pinafore played Mozart on a long-tooth saw. A minute into her act a small mutt ran onstage, squatted at her ankles and howled until she stopped. The woman stomped her foot but the dog kept howling. The comic came back, shooed it away, stayed to sing three verses of an Irish ballad. A man in front yelled, The dog had it right.

  The headliners followed, a pair of knock-about acrobats, bandy-legged twins who drove trick hatchets into each others skulls before somersaulting the length of the boards. They were skilled enough to improvise in mid-air, but I didn’t clap. I hadn’t laughed at the comic or snickered when the cop flubbed his patter. The theater’s ceiling was low and its stage shallow. It had no gallery. By daylight it turned back into a store. It was a hinterland house for hinterland talent, but it was a theater with lights and wings and people who were paid to be there. Connor was wrong. I had failed. Watching wouldn’t stop the chatter.

  In the morning, Connor found me sitting with my back against a stack of crates, chewing a piece of pilot bread.

  Put that away, he said. I’ve brought you a real breakfast.

  He took a napkin from his jacket pocket, folded back the edges, revealed a well-cooked steak.

  I thought I might carry some civilization to you, he said. Mind, we can’t afford this every day of the week, but once in a great while…

  Thank you, I said.

  Don’t mention it.

  He was standing just outside the wagon, staring up at me, smiling, his skin damp with mist.

  Did you sleep? I asked.

  I did, he said. I did indeed. The kind of sleep that allows you to think as you rest. I have it figured out, my son. We’ll be flush in no time.

  We were going to leave the coast. We’d return. We weren’t giving up. But sometimes people have to be thrown upon their own resources before they will acknowledge how desperately they need saving. In the meantime, we would head inland, following a course that would have us back in California before the first snow. I wasn’t going to be an Indian anymore. He had a new idea, one that would take full advantage of my enormous talent. I would be resistant at first. He wouldn’t blame me if I were. But in the end I’d see it was for the best—not only for our present act, but also for my future on the stage.

  Yes, he said. I know you won’t be with me forever.

  Salida, Colorado

  October 7, 1922

  I take a bus to a smaller town, then hitch a ride on a milk wagon miles out into country thick with pine. The driver lets me off at the start of a private road. I know from the mailbox that I have the right place. The road is unpaved, the ground quiet beneath a layer of brown needles. There’s a fat line of smoke rising up from somewhere not too far ahead. I hear a small river or a large creek echoing out of a nearby ravine.

  The road ends in a clearing that houses a cabin, a flat-bed truck, and the covered wagon that Connor and I used to travel in. The wagon’s canvas top is written over in red letters, most of them faded or washed away. The cabin is slanted, square. I move behind the tree line, circle the clearing until the schooner stands between me and the cabin, then start forward. The wagon’s sideboards are cracked, the bonnet torn. I take hold of the brake lever, step up on the yoke, peer inside. The clapboard shelving has been dismantled. The bed is all spider webs.

  I step back onto the path, walk straight for the door. Through the mesh screen I see Connor sitting at a log table with a cup of coffee and a small cut of meat. His hair is gone on top, his flesh sags at the jowls. He’s wearing a striped night shirt with an embroidered placket coming unstitched down the front.

  Swain? he says, reaching for the rifle he keeps at hand.

  Easy, I say. I’m not here for that.

  He stands. I step inside. The walls are covered with what used to be in the wagon—a feathered tomahawk, a silver stethoscope, a shelf of antique bottles, a cardboard poster with Connor’s face painted on it.

  It’s not like you to let someone get close, I say.

  My dog died, he says. How’d you find me?

  I wouldn’t mind some coffee.

  I want to know how?

  Coffee? I ask, sitting.

  I just have the one cup.

  This must be a damn sight out of your way, he says, still standing. What is it you want?

  Nothing you can give back.

  And nothing I took away, either. He slams his open palm on the table. Remember, he says. It was you who walked out on me.

  I’m not the kid I was then, I say. That won’t work.

  He sits, smiling. I look the cabin over. Besides the table and chairs, there’s a pipe stove in the corner, a pile of worn horse blankets laid out on the floor. I spot the drawknife hanging above the back door, the teeth polished, gleaming. Connor looks with me. We’re both seeing it. Water breaking over the rocks. A slice of river framed by aspen and alder. Clusters of iris on the opposite bank. But I can’t see Connor, can’t see myself, can’t see anything beyond what I saw that night, my head turned away, my wrist tethered to a boulder with the horses’ reigns, my good hand trussed to my belt. I feel insects touching down on my neck, feel the teeth tickling my wrist as Connor aligns the blade. Then nothing. In all the years of pushing my mind back the blade never breaks my skin, the oil never blisters my flesh.

  So what do you want? he asks.

  A gun, I say. A handgun, of course. And bullets.

  You could have had a gun anywhere.

  I came to you.

  Why?

  Curiosity.

  All right, he says. Ask.

  That evening in Oceanside, you knew I’d head for the theater ?

  I thought you might. I was watching from a window on the stairs.

  I spent the rest of that night staring down a rifle.

  But you’re still here. If you wouldn’t climb back on a wire, you weren’t going to put the barrel of a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. I said it would be good for you in the long run. Was I wrong? Your life is better because of me, not worse.

  That’s not for you to decide, I say.

  But it’s done, isn’t it? We helped a lot of people, Swain. If you accepted that, your life might go a little easier.

  He picks up his rifle, steps to the antique chest beside the fireplace, returns with a sm
all nickel-plated revolver and a cardboard box. He sets the box on the table, removes the lid, flicks out the cylinder and empties the chambers one at a time into the box.

  Will that do?

  Does it fire?

  It will once you’ve loaded it.

  Then it’ll do.

  We sit for a while without talking.

  Not that you’re asking, he says, but I’m an inch shorter than I used to be and I can’t eat more than twice a day. I’ve stopped dreaming at night. Lately, I’ve been pissing blood. I don’t know a single person I knew ten years ago. Not that you’re asking.

  I didn’t come for that either, I say.

  I’m at the door when he calls me back.

  If I see you again, he says, I’ll know you have that.

  You might want a new dog, I say.

  I take up one of the last remaining vials, carve a third notch in the stopper.

  I lie on the bed, eyes closed, arms at my sides, good hand wrapped around the handle of the gun. The gun feels permanent, like the prosthetic, as if my hands are now hook and barrel. I scan my body. Nothing hurts. No part of me is knotted, bruised, broken, fractured, pulled, scratched. I can’t feel the mattress under my back, the pillow under my head. I raise my gun-hand toward the ceiling, cock the hammer, ease it back down.

  My valises are chained in the luggage hole. We’re headed for the last stop on this run. I board the bus, eye the seats, walk past Jonson and his boy and on to the back. Jonson’s beside me before I’ve had a chance to close my eyes.

  Comfy, Swain? he asks.

  Too soon to tell, I say.

  Why’d you do it? he asks.

  Do what?

  Get on this bus.

  You know why.

  There’s time, he says. The driver ain’t pulled out yet.

  I’m not done.

  Goddamn it, Swain, I’m trying to help you.