The professor stands back, gestures for us to surround the cage. The pig-creature moves as close to the bars as the chain will allow, its purple tongue flicking out from between human lips, its nostrils flaring. I stick with the boy as he circles the sty. The creature’s hoofs are sutured to its skin, the stub-tail some kind of spinal deformity. His pink body is shaved smooth, bloated—a dwarf rather than a boy. Impossible to know if this was his design or someone else’s—if he hired the man who hacked off his hands and feet, or was tied down as a child. A college kid bangs on top of the cage with his fists. His friend dips a piece of licorice between the bars, jerks it away when the dwarf lunges. The professor grins.
We finish our tour and wait. The boy slides a penny into a mechanized trough, feeds the creature crumbled hardtack from his cupped palms. There’s nothing on the boy’s face to say if he’s feeding it out of pity or if he wants to see what it looks like when it eats. Either way, he should know better. This is the wrong kind of spectacle, its only purpose to keep a crowd going. No different than my days on the medicine trail, when I played the cigar-store Indian who came to life, juggling tomahawks and hollering war chants. Once enough people had gathered, Connor would sell them his medicine—homemade prune and sugar water, 80 proof. He claimed there was nothing it couldn’t cure.
The professor is barking us on to the wax works collection, but I turn around, exit the way we came. I wait for a while under the museum’s awning, squinting the light from my eyes. There’s a man on the opposite sidewalk, standing with his hands in his coat pockets, stretching his neck from side to side. I see him watching me, then notice that I’m standing with my hand and hook in my coat pockets, stretching my neck from side to side. I can’t make out his face, but I recognize the slumping shoulders, the hunched spine. It’s Jonson, dressed in a duster and a tan slicker, smiling at me through gaps in the traffic. I step to the curb, wait for the cars to clear. But before I can cross he’s turned the corner and is gone.
In the hotel, I open my valise, press on a bump in the fabric that releases the false backing. The bottom row of hooks rises, exposing two envelopes, a pencil, an eraser, a small pad of paper. I put the money that isn’t mine in one envelope, the money that is in the other. Sitting with my back to the bed, I empty the second envelope across my lap, count the bills, subtract their total from the tailor’s price. The numbers are close—a few more towns, a few more cities, and they will be the same.
I take up the pad, flip through the pages. Each page is drawn over with the outline of a man’s suit. I’ve filled the torsos with circles, stars, squares—the circles standing in for sapphires, the stars for rhinestones, the squares for rubies. On one suit I’ve drawn circle-studded stripes down each sleeve, on another I’ve dotted the arms with squares and stars. I’ve penciled in rhinestone collars, ruby collars, mixed collars. Some of the torsos I’ve covered with distinct shapes—the bulb and stem of a rose over each breast pocket; stick-figure fish swimming vertically, horizontally ; small birds in various stages of flight. Others I’ve filled with patterns—checkered rhinestones, wavy lines of sapphires, ruby pinstripes.
I turn through the pages, pencil in hand, erase a half-circle of squares from one torso, add a line of stars to another. With each addition or deletion I imagine the changing pattern of light. I close my eyes, place myself in the audience, squint at the reflection from the front row, the back row.
I snap the false backing shut, empty the insides of my prosthetics onto the bed. I divide the contents into two rows, one for vials with a single notch carved into the stopper, the other for vials with two notches. Each notch stands for a time I’ve skimmed. It’s early in the run, but already the double-notched vials outnumber the single-notched vials. I’ve never sold a triple-notched vial.
I tell myself I’ll conserve. I’ll take smaller and smaller tastes, until I’m cutting half-notches in the stoppers, until I’m able to go several days without carving any notches at all.
I pack away the prosthetics, leave one single-notched vial on the bed.
Chicago to Sioux City, Iowa
September 8, 1922
The night train is quiet. I have a compartment to myself. It’s rare to get a full bench, but now I have two, facing each other, and a door to block the sounds of people moving past. I stack my luggage overhead, cover a bench with a pillow and blanket. Before I’ve closed my eyes, the door jolts open, and Jonson’s standing there silhouetted by the hall light.
Thought you might like some company, he says, holding out a bottle.
I was asleep, I say.
To hell you were. Can’t nobody but my boy sleep on these things, and that’s only ’cause he was raised on them.
Neither of us mentions the museum.
Listen, he says, I come in friendship. We started on the wrong foot.
I didn’t think we were on any foot at all.
You can play it that way, he says. I’m trying to make things right.
He sits on the blanket at my feet. I pivot, press my back straight against the bench. Jonson’s ogling my hacked arm.
Ain’t seen the stump before, he says.
No need to cover it when I’m sleeping.
Might lose an eye, he observes.
I lean forward, pull my prosthetic from where I’d wedged it between two suitcases. Jonson watches me work in my stump, smiling. A number of his top teeth are gone.
He screws off the cap, hands me the bottle. Even as I put the mouth to my lips, I know he wants something in return.
I heard you done that yourself, he says.
Done what? I say, passing him the bottle. He taps his wrist, gestures like he’s sawing.
Why would I’ve done that?
There’s a juggler on every bill, he says. Ain’t but one with his hand cut off.
I don’t say anything. The compartment’s lit by a weak bulb, the window black save the occasional flicker from a gantry crane or farmhouse porch. I shut my eyes, feel myself warm to the whiskey.
Ain’t you had enough? Jonson asks.
Of what?
Split weeks and sleeper jumps. Dickering over your slot on the bill. How old are you, Swain?
Old enough.
I’d say older than that. What’s going to happen for you that ain’t already happened? Maybe it’s time to say die.
And do what?
He pulls his grouch bag from under his shirt, takes out a vial and lifts it into the light coming through the compartment door. The vial is filled with silver-blue liquid. Jonson watches me close.
Thought you was careful? he says.
I look him up and down. I hadn’t seen the signs, but Jonson, all gums and jaundice, had seen it in me. It’s clear now what his boy was doing in that store.
He balances the bottle between his knees, pulls the stopper from the vial. Using one hand to steady the other, he lets two drops fall into the whiskey.
I’ll fill this up later, he says, replacing