by Daniel Kraus
Only the third product gave me pause, though I knew it should not concern me what the stupid of the world inflicted upon their stupider loved ones. It was a flat, thin box containing a slip of cheap purple velour and five needles neither as sharp nor as fine as the ones used in my act. They called this The Oriental Pin Therapy of the Astonishing Mr. Stick.
The simulacrum of my face on labels big and small magnified my import in the eyes of the audiences. Lines for my show stretched ever longer. I was delighted. By summer 1901 my program began to sell out on a regular basis. Mr. Hobby passed by my cage one morning discussing with a worker how to rejigger the pews so as to squeeze in more paying customers. I’d been ruminating on the same and called out to him. He stopped and I explained my idea for placing boards perpendicular to the pews so as to add up to twenty additional seats. Hobby nodded in the most peculiar way.
Only later did I realize that by offering a suggestion for improving the show, I no longer considered it a debasement. This, you will agree, was psychological headway. I dwelled on it overnight, wondering if my brain had begun to sour as had my flesh, yet began the following day with a sense of anticipation. Can you make sense of this, Reader? People were traveling from miles away, often on the backs of mules, with the express purpose of seeing me, and the drawings of me on our handbills were more flattering than any “Wanted” poster. That’s it—I was wanted.
A week later I was helped back to my tent by Mr. Hobby only to find that my cage had been pushed into a corner, where it loomed like a gargoyle. I gave Hobby a querulous look. He inhaled hard enough to flutter his mustache and gestured his forehead at the center of the room. There sat a derelict cot, as well as a narrow chest of drawers. I was speechless. I nodded my appreciation, forgetting that Pageant administrators were the ones who’d caged me in the first place.
That night I lay on the cot staring straight into the rippling darkness of the tent top. I heard enough pissing and smelled enough cigarettes to know that some marplot had been posted to ensure that I did not flee. It was wasted labor. Escape and revenge, the promises that had once kept my foul body kicking, no longer held appeal. Oh, ’twas a long night of pondering imponderables only to end up in the same spot: right there, where I was getting every damn thing I ever wanted.
Freedom from the cage provided excellent opportunity to work on physical rehabilitation. At night, while sentries kept watch, I took advantage of the tent, pacing up and down and lifting heavy objects (a foot stool, a box of tonic) as well as delicate ones (a teacup, a spoon). My progress was swift. Resurrecting muscles, I found, was akin to resurrecting speech. The ability swirled above my head like a firefly and I had only to learn how to reach out and snag it.
It was a beautiful autumn morning when I limped out to the road with my walking stick to watch the erection of a Pageant banner inscribed with the show’s new full title: Dr. Whistler’s Pageant of Health and Gallery of Suffering Featuring Defier of Death the Astonishing Mr. Stick. I hope you do not find it too unattractive that I took from the moment a good deal of pride. I breathed deep, a behavior I simulate though it serves no biologic purpose, and felt the burrs and pollens of a new season adhering to the dry surfaces of my interior. I tapped the Little Miracle Electric Mexican Stuttering Ring against my stick and thought of Johnny for the first time in weeks.
I turned and there he was, squinting at the same banner from a distance. His eyes fell upon me, but when I gave him a friendly nod, his expression became one of anguish and betrayal. My good feeling sogged with shame. For a time I’d lent the lad’s accursed life purpose. Now that I’d taken ownership of my role here, he had no hope. Some mornings I would spy him kicking around old bottles in a dispirited search for one more swallow. On scattered nights I would notice him slumped by the communal fire, drooling and crying. Our most promising intersection was the Gallery of Suffering, and one evening I did stumble across him. Sadly, it is a literal statement: the lad was passed out and face down in the grass where his disgusted handlers had left him.
It was October when our caravan paused outside of a small town that would loom large in the strange history of Zebulon Finch: Xenion, Georgia. We were met at its outskirts with the dismal sight of two men lynched among the Spanish moss of a single oak; the limb creaked at the weight. These men were white. No, not exactly white; they were plum from a week’s rot. Pinned to each of their chests was a card sporting a one-word warning:
CHARLATAN
The Barker gave the order, reins were pulled, and the front horses began to circumnavigate. By then, I had graduated to sitting at the front of a wagon and I had my driver whip our animals so that we caught up with the Barker. I gave him a piece of my mind, which he bore with his special brand of barely contained contempt. Shall we be intimidated by cheap scare tactics, asked I? Do not the good people of Xenion, Georgia, need their liniments and extracts and soaps and snuffs? What shall they do about their whooping cough and clubfeet and varicose veins and flatulency? Plus, what about my new forty-dollar velvet-and-corduroy suit and sixteen-dollar hat? For what had they been procured if not to show?
Truly, my boundless stupidity is something to behold.
X.
DIG DEEPLY ENOUGH INTO YOUR microfiche, your archive of yellowed newsprint, and you shall find it. Historical record shows that on November 11, 1901, the Astonishing Mr. Stick was arrested in Xenion, Georgia, for Ungodly Acts.
It was not quite night when I heard the ruckus. I was sitting on the edge of my cot picking the lint from the suit of which I was so proud. Shouting in and of itself was nothing unusual at the Pageant—some folks were feverish with sickness, others were discovering Gød, still others were nettled about being sold a product yesterday that evidenced no results today. But the shouts grew nearer and I began to make out specific oaths. My stage name was among them. My fans, sighed I, how rabid they are.
Next came the scuffling of feet and the meaty sound of fists to flesh. Moments later the tent flap shot open and wild-eyed men with sleeves rolled to the biceps came at me and placed their rough hands upon my person, three to an arm. Without the aid of my walking stick I was dragged across the dirt on my knees straight out of the tent.
There were torches all about even though it was but dusk. There were also pitchforks and shovels, enough to make a man nervous. On the main stage Professor Bach was faking a rather heroic Georgian twang in hopes of keeping the eyes of the locals fixed in his direction, but that battle was lost; those curious about liver pads were already drifting to the superior distraction of a brewing fight.
Grabbing for me was an assortment of Pageant bigwigs, which I appreciated, though they were no match for these burly Georgians, who were in no mood for negotiation. I caught only glimpses of telling detail: Mr. Hobby’s spectacles askew; one of the Soothing Foursome doubled over and bloody of lip; and the Barker, screeching vitriol at a slender man in a cleric’s collar and a fat man wearing a copper star.
As I was dragged in the direction of town, I realized that my last hope was Pullman Larry. With but a few quick shots from his fine-tuned firearm, he could blast the garden tools right from the abductors’ hands. But he did not interfere. Either he was off yanking a tooth (there were twenty or thirty still left in Georgia, from what I could tell), or was enjoying the degradation of his unworthy successor, flashing his big white choppers in the troubled torchlight.
By the time we reached the local jail, the knees of my beloved new suit were ruined and the dead flesh below embedded with gravel. I was lifted across a threshold and shoved into a counter, behind which appeared Sheriff Nelson (I had gleaned his name as assorted bumpkins offered their congratulations on a varmint well trapped). He was in affable spirits, grinning as he took up a pen and ledger and asked for my name.
“Mr. Stick.”
“Full name, please.”
I thought for a moment.
“The Astonishing?”
Sheriff Nels
on winked at a man to my left and a fist drove into my kidney. On instinct I reacted as does a living man, curling into the impact and crying out. There was, after all, no gauging the sturdiness of my dead body. Enough blows like that and I might get to see that kidney of mine when it plopped onto the floor.
Still, I managed a fib.
“Aaron. Aaron Stick.”
The sheriff raised an eyebrow.
“Not ‘The Astonishing Amazing Dingdonged Aaron Stick’?”
Plenty of laughter from that gibe! All at once I felt quite dejected. I shook my head to concede that, no, I was not quite astonishing. Sheriff Nelson began talking far too rapidly for me to follow. It was legal pap he had regurgitated countless times in the past and when it was through, my coachmen picked me up by the armpits and transported me to the jail’s only cell, a six-by-six-foot box where I was dumped onto a wooden bench. My first thought upon landing was a dismal one. My hat, thought I. I’ve lost it, and it so well matched my suit.
The door slammed loud enough to vibrate the wood beneath me. How many wrongful deeds had I performed under the Black Hand? Yet never had I fielded a warning from a lawman, much less an arrest. Now I let others hurt me by trade—and into the pokey I went? The irony was cold.
Presently I became aware that I was not alone. Sitting on the opposite bench was a bearded old man with wild hair and a magenta complexion, clad in tattered military regalia. I nodded acknowledgement before detecting his snore. The man’s naked feet were swollen and muddy and somehow obscene; they twitched within a rectangle of segmented moonlight. I followed the beam to a small, barred window near the low ceiling. Captured in the light was my second cellmate, a colored man. He was a few years my senior and stood with his forehead against the wall as if trying to follow a faraway song.
I found myself tied of tongue. My experience with Negroes was limited. Abigail Finch had barred their kind far from home and grounds, so afeared was she of their coarse looks and thieving hands. They had been a rare sight in Little Italy as well, though when I ventured farther into the city I saw them plenty, ambling along the side of the road, mouths moving with a confounding tempo, having devised a method of speech that prevented white men from reading lips.
Well, I had to distract myself somehow, didn’t I?
“What did you do, boy?” asked I.
His eyes flicked toward the moon.
“Stole.”
A-ha! So Abigail Finch had been right.
“And what did you steal?”
“Corn.”
“A cob of it?”
His lips thinned.
“A bag.”
“Why did you go and do that?”
He shrugged.
“You don’t have any idea?” pressed I.
A dream-snort ripped through the body of the wild-haired man. I flinched and I thought I saw the ghost of a smirk grace the Negro’s lips. That angered me! I manicured for him a pointed glare.
“Tell me, boy. What’s the punishment for stealing a bag of corn?”
“A fine.”
“That’s it?”
He shrugged.
“What else?” I pressed.
He frowned out the window. “Got to pay for the corn.”
“Very reasonable. You have the money?”
“Already paid.”
“Then why are you here?”
The Negro pushed the sweat of his forehead into the stiff crinkles of his hair. Moonlight made the pinks of his palms glow white. This time he did not respond, which I attributed to either his disbelief that I would understand or to general antipathy. This did not help mollify my growing affront. I had not risen from caged aberration to premiere attraction to be given the cold shoulder by a mulish colored!
“Then allow me to guess. You are here because you are pigheaded. Your mood is churlish. You refuse to apologize. Come now, grade my guesswork. Am I correct?”
He stared out of the window for a time before responding.
“I guess so.”
“I guess so, what?”
“I guess so, sir.”
That final word hissed like a blade across flint. I leaned back to take full measure. He was broader than I and could doubtlessly pluck my limbs from my torso as a child does a fly. But the night’s battery had inured me to such fears and instead I found myself intrigued by this monosyllabic brute, the middling interest he showed in his own fate, his pensive study of the autumn eve.
“Ever loquacious, aren’t you?”
“Sir?”
“You do not talk much.”
“No, sir.”
“Four coloreds travel with my company. Voices clear as crystal water. Mannerly. Obliging. Agreeable. They are a credit to your race. Too much, I think.”
“What are their names?”
The question came with confrontational fleetness. My mouth opened with retaliatory speed—the fighting instinct, I guarantee you, had not vacated Zebulon Finch along with his physical vitalities! But I could not strike. Indeed, what were the names of the Soothing Foursome? One of them had taken a punch for me that very night. My cellmate blinked his thick eyelids with the insouciant patience of a boxer.
I did not like this Negro.
Thus I played the childhood game of Name the Presidents.
“Their names are George, John, Thomas, and James.”
My cellmate weighed that for a moment.
“Fine names, sir.”
“And you,” asked I, “have you a name?”
The boy loved long pauses.
“John,” said he. “John Quincy.”
Have you ever witnessed such impertinence? Detecting my lie, the boy chose for himself the name of the president next in line! I became hotheaded, all right, but what could I do in quarters so confined? Lifting myself above this childish squabble would be advisable (the snoring wild man maintained more dignity than I!), but I could not disengage myself from this so-called John Quincy, the President of Thieves.
“Will you not ask what I did? Is your mind so incurious?”
“Already know, sir.”
“And how is that?”
He managed a shrug.
“All day folks been on about catching the Devil.”
“I see.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’ve no fear of the Devil?”
Moonlight made his lips gray against purple skin. There, a smile.
“Met the Devil already. You ain’t him, sir.”
The hooligans who’d torn me from my beloved cot had been convinced that I was profanity itself, so while it might be simple recalcitrance fueling John Quincy’s opposite assessment, I was nonetheless grateful. I searched about the cell to find a topic less stressful for us both.
“You know this man?” I gestured at the sleeper.
“That’s the General, sir.”
“A true general?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A secessionist? One of Lee’s?”
“Fought at Fort Wagner, sir. Gettysburg, too. Folks hereabouts mighty proud.”
“Yet he is caged with a Negro and the Devil.”
John Quincy shrugged.
“He in here each week. He gone battle-headed, sir.”
“Battle-headed?”
“Just wait, sir. You’ll see.”
XI.
CONCURRENT WITH THE COCK’S CROW came the foul noise of the General choking upon the bile of the habitual drunkard. With arms a-flail to dispel a horde of invisible bats, he leapt to his feet and expectorated onto the stone floor a wad of caramel mucus. Groaning, he stumbled toward the window, shoved aside John Quincy, and clung to the bars with both hands. The tips of his toes made him just tall enough to lodge his chin over the sill so that he could gasp at the fresh dawn.
“UNROLL THE
MORNING MAPS! LICK THE WICKS! COLD MEAL FOR FEAR OF STEAM! BEST FOOD GOES TO THE HORSES, FOR NERVOUS MEN WILL ONLY SICKEN!”
The energy with which he ejected this rot was astounding. The man was over sixty but had been one to be reckoned with in his prime. You could tell by how the iron bars shook within their sockets; the way his wide back stretched his sundered blouse; and, of course, that voice—that crackling, full-throated blast that would carry quite well across a field of cannon booms and musket fire.
He severed his tirade and I heard a woman calling to him from the street. The General hooked one of his arms through the bars and, sure enough, withdrew with a block of cornbread, which he began smashing into his mouth even as we heard the parting blessings of the woman on the street. Sixty seconds later the cornbread was demolished, with equal amounts residing in the man’s stomach and beard. Then he was back at the window blabbering and it was not long before another passerby gave him a package, this time a pyre of warm bacon swaddled within a monogrammed handkerchief.
It was midmorning when a visitor at the window began speaking to the General in a distinctive manner. No comforting tones were adopted, no foodstuffs gifted. Instead the tone was low and urgent, and I watched as the General’s eyes grew ever wider. At last the message was complete and the General scurried away and planted his back to the far wall. For the first time he looked at me.
“GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN! THOU ART AN OFFENSE UNTO ME, FOR THOU SAVOR NOT THE THINGS THAT BE OF GØD!”
The fervor was curdling. Even John Quincy edged away. I held up what I hoped was a becalming hand. Of course I had expected to suffer superstitious oaths before my adventure in the slammer was complete, but not from inside my own cell.
“HE WAS THERE IN THE WILDERNESS FORTY DAYS, TEMPTED OF SATAN! AND WAS WITH THE WILD BEASTS AND THE ANGELS MINISTERED TO HIM!” His shaggy face twitched as if beaned by a pebble. “NO, NO, I AM NOT READY! NOT PREPARED FOR THIS LONG JOURNEY OF ISCARIOT!” He flung his body against the cell door and reached through the bars with claws extended. “LET ME OUT! OH, SWEET SERVANTS OF JUSTICE, LET ME OUT! I AM NOT READY FOR THE IRON CHAIR UPON WHICH MY NAME IS BRANDED! LET ME OUT OF HERE, I BEG YOU!”