No bar tonight, she said. We’re taking a trip.
It was near dark when they started. The Madame wore T-bar shoes with diamante trim, a cloche hat. She sat rigid on the buggy’s box, her head angled away from Jonson.
Where are we going? he asked.
Straight until I tell you to turn.
Jonson slackened the reins, urged the surviving horse on.
A car would be faster.
You know I don’t ride in cars.
They passed through sparse suburbs, long wooded stretches. Now and again she took a silverplated flask from her purse and drank. The working of the reins became automatic. Jonson let his mind drift, found himself returning to Ray’s question: Is this what she would want?
The Madame guided him onto the lawn of a near-abandoned farmhouse, the porch rotting, the paint curling free. She reached into her purse, pulled out a palm-sized mauser.
Stay here, she said.
You sure?
Don’t play brave.
She mounted the porch, entered without knocking. No window came lit. Jonson thought of leaving, of returning for his son and continuing on, but he couldn’t get past the question of where they would go, and he wasn’t sure he could find his way back.
The shots came in quick succession. The horse rose up, straining to locate the sound.
Hold still, Jonson said.
He jumped down, crouched behind the buggy, grabbed at the reigns as the horse bucked forward.
Easy now, he said.
The Madame crossed the lawn, settled in the passenger’s seat.
I’m done here, she said.
VIII
His son was walking now, keeping to his feet for the length of the basement corridor, the garden pathway. The Madame tended bar herself for a long while, then hired a man whose name Jonson never learned. Soon, the shows would be starting back up. Jonson felt restless, not for the shows themselves, but for the movement, the slow change in scenery as a circuit headed west. The Madame saw it in him.
You’ve been good to me, she said, sitting beside him at the piano. You’re loyal.
I do my job.
You do it with your mouth shut. I want to repay you.
Repay me?
There’s someone I want you to meet.
Who’s that?
An old friend. I think you can help each other.
OK.
Now, she said.
She led him to a room with bare walls and no windows, a stained-glass chandelier hanging above a round oak table. The silver-haired man with padded shoulders sat opposite the door, rubbing the face of his pocket watch with a silk handkerchief.
How would you like back onstage? he asked.
Jonson turned to the Madame.
I’ve got reasons, she said.
Doing what? Jonson asked.
Filling out an existing act, the friend said. You can sing? Dance?
I can.
There’s more, the Madame said.
More?
More money. More responsibility, the friend said.
How’s that?
I’ve been told you’re quiet.
And?
You’d be making deliveries.
Of?
That’s what you’d need to keep quiet about.
And my son?
He can stay here, the Madame said. Until he’s old enough to be no trouble.
In the basement?
We’ll fix up the carriage house for him and Cynthia.
That’s one way to make sure I don’t talk, he said.
What could you possibly have to talk about? the Madame
said. What the hell’s wrong with you? We’re trying to help.
He thought of Max, wondered if he was now taking the test her nephew had failed.
Nothing, Jonson said. It’s good. All of it.
Of course it is, she said.
IX
His bag was packed, the cot folded against a column of boxes.
We’ll move the crib into the carriage house, Cynthia said.
He won’t need it much longer, Jonson said.
He picked his son up from off her lap, lifted him toward the ceiling.
You won’t know who I am next time you see me, he said, then thought: I’m not sure you know now.
To Cynthia he said, I guess he’s yours.
She took the boy in her arms, raised up on tiptoes, leaned across, kissed Jonson on the cheek.You’ll be just fine, Jonson said.
He boarded the train’s center car, took a window seat, slumped down, straddled the valise with the false backing between his legs. He lowered his hat over his eyes, lifted it again once the platform was behind him. He stood, walked to the next car, waited to see if anyone would follow.
The towns became smaller and less frequent, the crops more and more varied. Jonson shut his eyes, felt the fatigue begin to drain from his body, as though he were allowing the train to carry him after days of walking. There was no going back now, he thought. The person he would be was not the person he would have been. He sat up, focused his mind on the career he was returning to rather than the one he had just started. He felt glad to be returning alone.
III
Jonson’s Boy
1
It was me who found my father’s body and the body of the whore it was tangled up in. The whore’s wig was crumpled blond and bloody beside them. Bits of her real hair and skull were mixed with my father’s on the plywood bedboard. I spun my head before I saw their faces. I knew it was my father by the scar on his foot where he’d sliced off his own birthmark. There were bruises up and down the whore’s legs and I figured it was my father who’d put them there.
The only window in the room was open, the curtains parted and no breeze blowing. I set the whiskey bottle my father had sent me for on the dresser and crossed the room. I bent down, leaned my head outside.
The hotel backed onto the desert. I stayed looking out, listening to the bugs and squinting to catch a lizard or a desert rat darting over the sand or through the scrub. The sun was most of the way down. It was a quiet night, cool and dry with only the stars moving.
I turned around, straining to miss the bed with my eyes. My father’s clothes and the whore’s clothes were clumped in a pile on the floor. I picked up his pants with my fingertips, went through the pockets and checked inside his shoes. Any money he’d had was gone. His grouch bag was gone and the vials with it. I found the browser’s card in an ashtray on the side table. I slid it out, dug it inside my sock. I worked the whiskey bottle into my bag, then stepped to the bed. The sheet was bunched under their feet. I tugged it loose, pulled it over their shoulders and then their heads. Blood soaked into the fabric in uneven circles.
Outside, I stood on the wooden sidewalk that ran the length of the town’s main and only street and tried to make out the time on a clock built into a church steeple, but then I saw that both its hands had broke off. There was a fat man smoking a cigarette and sitting on a stone bench under the hotel’s window. I asked him what time it was but he didn’t answer. I asked again, but he only coughed out smoke.
I had fifty cents left from when I’d bought the whiskey and that wouldn’t get me to New York. The theater hadn’t paid us for our turn because my father had fallen from the barrel he was supposed to be dancing on. After he fell he just sat there laughing, his legs spread open and a dark stain growing. Son, your old man ain’t worth shit, the manager said. My father laughed all the way through the theater and into the back alley where I thought the manager would beat him, but he just slammed the door. Our lost pay made forty dollars we didn’t have.
This time of night the only people on the street had been drinking or were about to be. Some were drinking to be drunk and some were waiting for the late-night train. There was a crowd in front of the bar. One of them was singing and another was dancing to his song. The others watched and laughed. I thought about selling them my bottle but then I thought they’d just take it.
The thea
ter was the last building on the west end of town. I sat on the edge of the wooden curb and practiced what I would say. I picked rocks out of the dirt and tossed them from one hand to the next. I looked in the windows and up the alleys, but there wasn’t anybody else around.
I’d start by telling him how much I liked his theater. It’s true it was the nicest building in town. The sign above the entrance was hand carved and glazed, with green and yellow leaves painted along the edges. On each side of the entrance door were posters from old shows. Most of the theaters we played look like any other store, flat in front with no decoration. Here, you knew what was waiting inside.
I knocked on the door we’d been thrown out of, but nobody answered. I pulled on the handle, but it wouldn’t open. The door was close to the wings and I heard a banjo playing onstage.
I went around to the front and took one of the quarters from my pocket. The woman who sold tickets stopped staring at her magazine long enough to make change. There weren’t any words on the page she was reading, just a colorless picture of a falcon with lots of lines and shadows.
Inside, the theater was dark and I had to wait before my eyes could see through the dim light. The banjo player was gone and in his place was a magician who swallowed things and then slid them out of his pockets and sleeves. He swallowed his key, his tie, his shoelace, his gold cufflinks. He asked people in the front row to throw him anything smaller than a cannonball. One woman tossed him a flower and the man she was with stood and handed over his watch. The magician pulled the flower out of his sleeve and the watch out of his breast pocket. When he was done he said, Are you sure you want these back?
The curtain came down and I ran to the front and climbed into the wings. A troupe of acrobats were lined up waiting to tumble onstage. The magician was emptying his pockets into a small canvas bag. I kept walking until I reached the manager’s office. He was sitting at his desk, counting bundles of bills and writing out numbers with a long feathery pen.
Jonson’s boy, right? he said. You want something?
Yes, sir, I said.
So does everybody.
I don’t want much, I said. Just my half.
Half of nothing is nothing, he said. Blame your old man. If I were you, sixteen couldn’t come fast enough.
I’m not here about him.
He set down the pen and folded his hands behind his head.
You mean he didn’t send you?
No sir. He didn’t.
You expect me to believe you came hopscotching over here by your cocksucking little self?
It’s the truth.
It’s horse shit.
He slid the bundles into an open drawer.
You in trouble, kid?
No.
You sure?
Yeah.
I’ll tell you what, he said. Take off your shirt.
What?
Take off your shirt and turn around.
Why?
Consider it a wager. If there aren’t welts up and down your spine I’ll give you all of it. Yours and your old man’s. A wager between men.
He stood and smiled. He kept smiling.
All I want is half, I said.
You’ll get all or nothing.
Ten dollars, I said.
I can’t help you run away, son.
I’m not your son, I said. I did work for you and now you have to pay me.
He picked up a silver letter opener that was only a blade with no handle.
Nothing, he said.
I waited for applause, then made my way back over the stage. I had my hand on the door when I heard a drum roll and more clapping. I turned, saw a boy half my age standing with a melon balanced on his head while his sister aimed her bow and arrow. The girl hit the melon square and split it in two halves that fell slow off her brother’s head. The boy reached into a basket and pulled out an apple and held it sideways between his teeth. The girl unsheathed a knife from her belt and without looking flung it so that it stuck in the center of the apple and didn’t touch her brother’s throat. The boy set aside the knife and the apple and reached back into the basket and came up with as many small oranges as he could fit in his fists. He juggled them and kept them going in the air and the girl took up her bow and arrows and shot them down one by one. I figured his body was scarred from all the times she’d missed.
Outside, the ticket lady was eyeing the same drawing of the same colorless bird. I asked for my quarter back and she looked annoyed like she’d almost had that picture memorized and now she’d have to start over.
We don’t hand out money, she said.
But I’ve got my ticket.
Then you’re welcome to go back inside.
You don’t understand, I said. I’m in the shows.
Then why’d you buy a ticket?
I thought I had to.
Well then, she said, you learned something.
2
The table cloths were woven like bed spreads and the chairs looked like thrones. The browser sniffed the wine before he let our waiter pour it.
So, what is it we’re talking about? my father asked.
A seriocomic of the highest caliber. A flash act with a wow finish. An olio the size of the stages you play now.
Nothing gamy?
In a Pastor establishment?
Tony Pastor?
Yes, sir. Mr. Tony Pastor.
Well now.
Indeed.
The browser turned to me, smiled.
You’d be replacing a son whose voice, at the onset of certain physiological changes, took an unfortunate turn.
Ha, my father said. You mean the kid squeaks.
Not an uncommon phenomenon. But, between us, this development is something of a pretense—the boy was never the strongest link. With a talent such as your son’s, they would be looking to expand the part. In fact, there would be a scene in which he held the stage—the full stage—alone. People will notice. Important people. Sir, he said, leaning toward my father, I’ve been around since the nickel theaters, and I have seen only a handful—a small handful—of performers as skilled as your boy.
He turned back to me.
I assume you’re sixteen? he said. Looking at you now, I might even say seventeen.
He’s forty, my father said. Ain’t you got nothing for papa?
I have a single income that dwarfs your combined present income.
My father leaned back, grinning.
You talk good, he said, but how do I know you ain’t a shine out for attention? Maybe you live down the road.
The browser lowered his fork and knife.
Tell me, he said, who do you follow on your current bill? Who follows you?
A corncob-flute player and an amputee juggler.
Bilge water. At Pastor’s, your son will share the stage with a London theater troupe, a concert violinist, people who have played the world’s courts. Everything top flight. Can you picture what I’m describing, son?
I could. I saw it now. Faces backlit by the calcium ray. My heels kicking up sawdust.
Here’s the thing, my father said. We got obligations.
Obligations?
Things we ain’t done with.
You do understand what I’m offering you?
I do. It’s generous, my father said. I know it. But the truth is, he ain’t sixteen. And he’s got some growing left.
But I’m ready now, I said.
I turned before he caught my eyes.
I am offering him an opportunity to grow, the browser said. And if you are worried about the family he will be accompanying, I can assure you...
I said it can wait. The big stage will be there. Right now, he’s got a circuit to finish.
The browser let his head drop.
Very principled, he said. But, if I may say so, misguided. Your circuit would not show you the same loyalty. Here’s my card. You know where I am staying. I leave for New York in the morning.
Well, my father said when we were walking back, that
was a damn fine meal.
I looked at him. His eyes were red around the rims and he wasn’t smiling. He laid a palm on my shoulder.
That man was trying to buy us, he said. We can’t be bought. Your turn will come. Soon enough. I promise.
I thought: Someone bought you. He saw it in me.
Careful, he said.
I moved away. My body wanted to run. Not toward or from anything. It wanted to let out what I couldn’t keep down.
3
The train station was at the far edge of town. I thought I’d trade the whiskey for a ticket, but I didn’t want to walk back past the hotel. I pictured faces in the windows watching as my father’s naked body was carried off by men I’d never met. There’d be people standing around, the sheriff and the hotel owner and the hotel owner’s wife. The wife would tell the sheriff that the man in that room had a boy with him and the sheriff would say he’d find me, only I didn’t want to be found.
I passed through an alley, sidled down the embankment that led to the tracks. I could see the station lights the length of the town away. I started walking, counting each track as I went, trying to make out anything that moved. There were things in the desert that could kill you before you knew it, lizards that sidestepped like tiny crabs and cactuses that were so small you couldn’t see them.
I heard the growling before I saw the dog. It came out of the brush on the embankment and stood staring at me, its haunches planted and its head down. A shepherd, all bone beneath the fur.
Good boy, I said. Good, good boy.
I bent my knees and slung my bag in front of me. The movement was enough to make him lunge. I hooked my arm through the straps, lifted the bag like a shield and grabbed up a stone. It was almost on me by the time I threw and I saw its mouth turn bloody. I jumped, kicked it solid in the throat, then pelted it with a fistful of rocks while it choked and yelped and dragged itself back to where it came from.
A man stepped out of the scrub and stood facing me so I couldn’t pass. He was tall and ugly, dressed in a ragged slicker with boots that ran to his knees. He had a whip coiled in one hand and I could tell by the dog that he knew how to use it.
Jonah Man Page 9
