Jonah Man (13 page)

She looks like the type to know, Jonson said.

Cynthia lifted a cloth napkin, wiped food from around the baby’s mouth.

He won’t have that problem, she said.

What problem?

He’ll have you to talk to, she said. He won’t need to make anyone up.

Sometimes fake people are better, Jonson said.

She studied her plate as though searching out a wayward crumb.

That sounds smart, she said. But it isn’t.

Jonson smiled.

I guess you owe me.

Men make me up, she said. They call me by different names. Women they knew or wish they knew. They tell me how to act. Not all of them, but some.

Jonson began clearing the table, collecting fruit rinds, wiping rings from beneath their cups.

Why do you think they do that? she asked.

He stood over her.

You mean would I do that?

She hesitated, then nodded.

Cause of my wife?

She nodded again. Jonson couldn’t decide if she meant to rile him, or if there was something she really wanted to know.

I tried, he said. And I failed. I guess I don’t have the imagination.

She rose to help him with the dishes.

That’s good, she said.

The only patrons had moved upstairs; Max was leaning across the bar, talking to one of the girls, stroking her shoulder. Jonson and the Madame took a small table in the far corner.

I wish he would exercise something like discretion, she said, eyeing her nephew. I wouldn’t care if it was insincere.

You worry about him?

There’s no bottom too deep for him to find.

But you keep him around.

He serves his purpose.

What about Cynthia?

What about her?

You worry about her?

That girl is brilliant. If she were a man, or if she had people...

You have money. You could be her people.

The Madame smiled.

Maybe Max isn’t the only one I have to watch for.

It ain’t that.

What then?

I think you know. That’s why you’ve got her watching my kid.

You mean she isn’t built for this?

Something like that.

When I found Cynthia she was cowering in an alley, wearing a kitchen apron and nothing else. Bleeding from I won’t say where. She didn’t know what had happened. She couldn’t remember her name. I’d say I am her people.

You found her, or someone brought her to you?

Is there a difference? She’s smart. I know for a fact there are clients who pay her just to talk.

She remind you of you at your age?

No. For me everything was simple. I liked fucking better than sewing.

Sure, but fucking only got you so far.

You haven’t known her as long as I have. She’s progressing.

Jonson grinned.

You kind of collect people, don’t you? he said.

I cultivate loyalty.

You’re sentimental.

I believe in second chances. I’ll admit to feeling some attachment. I can reconcile that with business by promising myself I’ll never offer a third chance. It isn’t that I’m hard, it’s that I can’t allow myself to be soft. My limits are predetermined. If somebody crosses those limits, my response is automatic. I don’t allow myself to think about it.

That ever been tested?

Yes.

And?

If I told you, then I’d be thinking about it.

I guess you would.

She stood to leave, gestured toward the bar.

Would you look at this? she said.

Max was face down on the zinc, the bottle he’d been drinking from spinning empty on its side.

A man his size ought to be able to drink a pond.

I’m sorry, the girl said.

Don’t be sorry, be useful. Jonson, see this animal to his room. I don’t care if you have to knock him out cold and drag him by the heels—there’s nothing in that head you could damage. I’m going to stay and have a chat with his girlfriend.

Jonson lifted Max’s head, wiped blood from his lip with a bar rag, then raised him to his feet. Max offered no resistance, made an effort to support his own weight as Jonson steered him across the room.

I ain’t a bad man, Max said.

All right.

I ain’t.

Sure.

Upstairs, he shied Max onto his bed, switched on the light and shut the door. Without knowing he would, he began to remove Max’s boots.

You don’t care, Max said. I know you don’t.

About what?

Anything.

Is this about those trips?

I could stop her, Max said. Girls and liquor ought to be enough.

Then stop her.

Max coughed, spat a gout of bile onto the floor.

You did what you were told, he said. Get out.

Jonson snicked off the light.

Be smart, Max, he said.

Jonson took to wandering the upstairs halls, listening. The girls had distinct styles: some screamed as though being riven apart; some bawled commands; some let out slow, spiring moans. Jonson would linger, struggling to supply an image, hearing only pinchbeck affection, overwrought passion, all of it sounding like work. Lying on his cot in the early morning, he would try again, feel nothing.

Once, when Max and the Madame were gone, he took the skeleton key from the bar, tried the Madame’s quarters, found them padlocked, moved upstairs to Max’s room. Shutting the door behind him, he flicked on the light, eyed the space: a pornographic novel on the nightstand, a bolo knife jutting from under the bed, hummocks of laundry ranging the floor. In the top drawer of the chifforobe, he found a single pair of socks tucked into a ball. He weighed them in his palm, reached his fingers through the tubing, removed a roll of cash wrapped around a chemist’s vial. Prodding the vial loose, he lifted it to the light, tilted it forward and back. The cyanic liquid changed hue, darkening as bits of silver dispersed. He uncorked a stopper, breathed in, found no odor. Routing through a pile of laundry, he pulled up a coarse handkerchief, tipped a clean edge into the vial. The liquid permeated a small circle of fabric, seemed to eat away the purple dye.

Jonson sat on the unmade bed, working the stopper back into the vial, the vial into the roll of cash.

She ought to know better, he said aloud. You’re too damn dumb for secrets.

The Madame returned from a trip alone.

I need you to stable the horse, she told Jonson.

Where’s Max?

Fuck Max.

I don’t know anything about…

Learn.

He found the buggy standing crooked on the concrete pathway outside, its bellows top folded down, the footboard scraping the brothel’s façade. He circled around, ran his fingers through the horse’s mane, slapped the animal’s neck.

You been running good, he said.

He walked the horse forward, lifted a match from his front pocket and lit the torches affixed to either side of the forebay door. Shaking the match out, he discovered pinlets of blood cutting sideways across his palm.

You all right there? he asked, patting the horse’s muzzle, searching its neck for scrapes or abrasions, finding none.

He picked the reins back up, found patches of still-moist blood spotting the driver’s ends, found more blood on and beneath the driver’s seat. He unfastened the trace chain, led the horse to its stall, then wiped down the buggy with a burlap rag. He buried the rag and reins in a pile of straw.

Cynthia was waiting up. Jonson peered into the crib, stroked his son’s cheek.

I’ll do it, Cynthia said.

Do what?

What you asked, she said. If you still want.

I wasn’t really asking.

Still.

He sat beside her, bracing his legs to keep the cot from toppling.

I’m not being mean, he said. I just ain’t ready.

OK, she said.

It’s the truth.

You piece of shit, the Madame said, striking at his form beneath the blanket. Don’t you know to wipe a horse down?

What?

He’s dead.

Who?

The palomino. You left him lathered. You killed my best horse, you son of a bitch.

Jonson stood, caught her wrists, shook the whip from her hand.

Shut that kid up or I swear to god I’ll kill it. I swear to fucking god I will.

Where’s Max?

You killed my best horse.

Fuck your horse. Where’s Max?

Who?

Max.

What Max? There is no Max. Max is gone.

She was sobbing, convulsing. Jonson backed away, waited for her to finish.

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.