Jonah Man Read Online Free

listening to the train’s gears. Soon I’m at the Majestic, my scalp slick under the calcium spot. I rise up on the pedals, spread my palm over the seat, lift myself into a handstand, a good ten feet off the stage. I stay balanced like that, buttressed by the applause. I’m about to dismount with a flip when Jonson whistles in my ear. He slides his hand up my shoulder, closes it around my throat. Before I have my balance, he’s straddling my body, pinning my prosthetic down. The applause stop short.
    Listen you dumb son of a bitch, he says. I want you
thinking on this while that shit settles in—stay clear of my boy. You hear me? Stay away.
    He tightens his grip. I do what I can to nod.
    That works for us both, he says.
    In the morning, the conductor finds me lying on the floor between the benches, my face hidden in the crook of my good arm.

Marion, California
    May 1902
     
    We arrived in town early on a weekend morning. I sat on the back flap of Connor’s covered wagon, the balls of my feet brushing the ground while he drove the main street. At each corner I hopped off, pitched a double-sided placard with the same message painted on either side: FOLLOW THE CLARION CALL AND BE CURED.
    We parked in a stone-walled square, set a card table before the fountain, weighted the table legs with medicine bags, covered the top with a paisley cloth and lined rows of bottles on either side of a signboard listing the ailments Connor’s brew could cure. The last entry read, MANY, MANY MORE.
    I changed in the back of the wagon while Connor readied his voice, repeating the same nonce word up and down the scale, stretching his jaws wide and pushing out his tongue. My costume was thick for summer, the deerskin sleeves taut at the elbows, the moccasins too small. I coated my hands, face, and neck with a deep-red base, added black and white war-stripes beneath my eyes, applied a light powder to keep the base from melting. I fitted tomahawks into loops along the belt, pulled on a feathered headdress and tied the strap beneath my chin.
    By mid-morning the sky was starting to brighten, the air to warm. Connor fetched his bugle from the jockey box, gestured
for me to take my place beside the table. I stood with my arms stiff at my sides, a tomahawk locked in each fist, feathers dangling from the handles.
    Remember, Connor said. Just keep your eyes fixed on a spot in the distance. Nothing to it.
    The hawkers, carters and vagrants who frequented the square were the first to gather round. Then came clerks, construction workers, boys who’d been playing stickball in a nearby alley, tourists and retirees, the sick and lame. The square filled. People raised up on tiptoes, stood on the stone coping surrounding the fountain. Connor set aside his trumpet, addressed the crowd.
    Ladies and gentlemen, he started, what I offer you today is a cure-all discovered by my grandfather, refined by my father, and further refined by me. An ancestral brew known to cure the sick and bolster the strong. I would be betraying my ancestors’ memory were I to name the ingredients, but I can say this: the components are pure and the formula patented. I carry the patent with me should you need convincing. This is no potion, and I am no alchemist. What’s more, should it fail to treat your ills, simply keep the empty bottle and when I return this way in a month’s time, I will refund your money, every cent.
    How about you come back in a month and if it worked we pay you then?
    I’m a patient man, Connor said. But not that patient.
    What does it do, exactly?
    A fine question, Connor said. A very good question indeed. When I said it was a cure-all, I meant just that. Allow me to provide an example. A woman, a school teacher, told me she’d never gone a day in her life without an ache or a pain of some kind—a stiff back, a bum knee, a sore tooth, a strained neck, and any other discomfort you might name. A migraine every evening and nausea the next morning. She bought a