The Ones That Got Away

by Stephen Graham Jones

Lonegan went on. “You could reach your hand into the hole, I’m saying. Right down to the joint of her hip.”

  “And your medicine fixed it?” the preacher anticipated, his voice rising.

  Lonegan palmed a smoky jar from the shelves, said, “This poultice, yes sir. A man named Running Bear showed me how to take the caul around the heart of a dog and grind—”

  The preacher blew air out his nose.

  “He was Oglala Sioux,” Lonegan added, let that settle.

  The preacher just stared.

  Lonegan looked around at the faces in the crowd, starting to side with the preacher. More out of habit than argument. But still.

  Lonegan nodded, backed off, hands raised. Was quiet long enough to let them know he was just thinking of this: “These—these snake oil men you’ve taken me for, Brother. People. A despicable breed. What would you say characterizes them?”

  When the preacher didn’t answer, a man in the crowd did: “They sell things.”

  “I sell things,” Lonegan agreed.

  “Medicine,” a woman clarified.

  “Remedies,” Lonegan corrected, nodding to her respectfully.

  She held his eyes.

  “What else?” Lonegan said, to all.

  It was the preacher who answered: “You’ll be gone tomorrow.”

  “—before any of our hair can grow in,” an old man added, sweeping his hat off to show his bald head.

  Lonegan smiled wide, nodded. Cupped a small bottle of the blue oil from its place on the panel, twirled it to the man.

  He caught it, stared at Lonegan.

  “I’m not leaving,” Lonegan said.

  “Yeah, well—” a man started.

  “I’m not,” Lonegan said, some insult in his voice now. “And, you know what? To prove it, today and today only, I’ll be accepting checks, or notes. Just write your name and how much you owe me on any scrap of paper—here, I’ve got paper myself, I’ll even supply that. I won’t come to collect until you’re satisfied.”

  As one, a grin spread across the crowd’s face.

  “How long this take to work?” the bald man asked, holding his bottle of blue up.

  “I’ve seen it take as long as six days, to be honest.”

  The old man raised his eyebrows. They were bushy, white.

  People were already pushing forward again.

  Lonegan stepped up onto his hub, waved his arms for them to slow down, slow down. That he wanted to make a gift first.

  It was a tightly-woven cloth bag the size of a man’s head.

  He handed it to the preacher, said, “Brother.”

  The preacher took it, looked from Lonegan to the string tying the bag closed.

  “Traveling like I do,” Lonegan said, “I make my tithe where I can. With what I can.”

  The preacher opened it.

  “The sacrament?” he said.

  “Just wafers for now,” Lonegan said. “You’ll have to bless them, of course.”

  Slowly at first, then altogether, the crowd started clapping.

  The preacher tied the bag shut, extended his hand to Lonegan.

  By dinner, there wasn’t a drop of fox urine in his possession.

  When the two women came to collect him for church the next morning, Lonegan held his finger up, told them he’d be right there. He liked to say a few prayers beforehand.

  The women lowered their bonneted heads that they understood, then one of them added that his mare had run off in the night, it looked like.

  “She does that,” Lonegan said with a smile, and closed the door, held it there.

  Just what he needed: a goddamn prophetic horse.

  Instead of praying then, or going to the service, Lonegan packed his spare clothes tight in his bedroll, shoved it under the bed then made the bed so nobody would have any call to look under it. Before he ever figured this whole thing out, he’d lost two good suits just because he’d failed to stretch a sheet across a mattress.

  But now, now his bedroll was still going to be there Monday or Tuesday, or whenever he came for it.

  Next, he angled the one chair in the room over to the window, waited for the congregation to shuffle back out into the streets in their Sunday best.

  Today, the congregation was going to be the whole town. Because they felt guilty about the money they’d spent yesterday, and because they knew this morning there was going to be a communion.

  In a Baptist church, that happened little enough that it was an event.

  With luck, nobody would even have noticed Lonegan’s absence, come looking for him.

  With luck, they’d all be guilty enough to palm an extra wafer, let it go soft against the roofs of their mouths.

  After a lifetime of eating coarse hunks of bread, the wafer would be candy to them. So white it had to be pure.

  Lonegan smiled, propped his boots up on the windowsill, and tipped back the bottle of rotgut until his eyes watered. If he’d been drinking just to feel good, it would have been sipping bourbon. For this, though, he needed to be drunk, the kind you could smell at ten paces.

  Scattered on the wood-plank floor all around him, fallen like leaves, were the promissory notes for yesterday’s sales.

  He wasn’t going to need them to collect.

  It was a funny thing.

  Right about what he figured was the middle of lunch for most of the town—he didn’t even know its name, he laughed to himself—he pulled the old Colt up from his lap, laid the bottom of the barrel across the back of his left wrist, and aimed in turn at each of the six panes in his window, blew them out in the street.

  Ten minutes and two reloads later, he was in jail.

  “Don’t get too comfortable in there now,” the bearded man Lonegan had made for the law said. He was wearing a stiff collar from church, a tin star on his chest.

  Lonegan smiled, leaned back on his cot, and shook his head no, he wouldn’t.

  “When’s dinner?” he slurred out, having to bite back a smile, the cake a definite thing in his mind again.

  The Sheriff didn’t respond, just walked out.

  Behind him, Lonegan nodded.

  Sewed into the lining of his right boot were all the tools he would need to pick the simple lock of the cell.

  Sewed into his belt, as back-up, was a few thimblefuls of gunpowder wrapped in thin oilcloth, in case the lock was jammed. In Lonegan’s teeth like a make-do toothpick, a sulfur-head match that the burly man had never even questioned.

  Lonegan balanced it in one of the cracks of the wall.

  He was in the best room in town, now.

  That afternoon he woke to a woman staring at him. She was sideways—he was sideways, on the cot.

  He pushed the heel of his right hand into one eye then the other, sat up.

  “Ma’am,” he said, having to turn his head sideways to swallow.

  She was slight but tall, her face lined by the weather it looked like. A hard woman to get a read on.

  “I came to pay,” she said.

  Lonegan lowered his head to smile, had to grip the edge of his cot with both hands to keep from spilling down onto the floor.

  “My father,” the woman went on, finding her voice, “he—I don’t know why. He’s rubbing that blue stuff onto his head. He smells like a barbershop.”

  Lonegan looked up to this woman, wasn’t sure if he should smile or not.

  She was, anyway.

  “If’n you don’t see its efficacy,” he said, “then you don’t got to pay. ma’am.”

  She stared at him about this, finally said, “Can you even spell that?”

  “What?”

  “Efficacy.”

  Now it was Logan’s turn to just stare.

  “Got a first name?” she said.

  “Lonegan,” Lonegan shrugged.

  “The rest of it?”

  “Just Lonegan.”

  “That’s how it is then?”

  “ ‘Alone again . . . ’ ” he went on.

  “I get it.”r />
  “Regular-like, you mean?”

  She caught his meaning, set her teeth but then shook her head no, smiled instead.

  “I don’t know what kind of—what kind of affair you’re trying to pull off here, Mister Alone Again.”

  “My horse ran off,” Lonegan said, standing, pulling his face close to the bars now. “Think I’m apt to make a fast getaway in these?”

  For illustration, he lifted his right boot. It was down at heel. Shiny on top, bare underneath.

  “You meant to get thrown in here, I mean,” she said. “Shooting up Molly’s best room like that.”

  “Who are you, you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’m the daughter of the man you swindled yesterday afternoon. I’m just here to complete the transaction now.”

  “I told you—”

  “And I’m telling you. I’m not going to be indebted to a man like you. Now how much is this going to cost me?”

  “Say my name.”

  “How much?”

  Lonegan tongued his lower lip out, was falling in love just a little bit, he thought. Wishing he wasn’t on this side of the bars, anyway.

  “You like the service this morning?” he asked.

  “I don’t go to church with my father anymore,” the woman said. “Who do you think swindled us the first time?”

  Lonegan smiled, liked that.

  “Anyway,” the woman went on. “My father tends to bring enough church home with him each Sunday to last us the week through. And then some.”

  “What’s your name?” Lonegan said, watching her.

  “That supposed to give you some power over me, if you know?”

  “So you think I’m real then?”

  Lonegan shrugged, waiting for her to try to back out of the corner she’d wedged herself into.

  “You can call me Mary,” she said, lifting her chin at the end.

  “I like Jezebel better,” he said. “Girl who didn’t go to church.”

  “Do you even know the Bible?” she asked.

  “I know I’m glad you didn’t go to church this morning.”

  “How much, Mister Lonegan?”

  He nodded thanks, said, “For you, Jezebel. For you—”

  “I don’t want a deal.”

  “Two dollars.”

  “They sold for two bits, I heard.”

  “Special deal for a special lady.”

  For a moment longer she held his stare, then slammed her coin purse down on the only desk in the room, started counting out coins.

  Two dollars was a full week’s work, Lonegan figured.

  “What do you do?” he said, watching her.

  “Give money to fools, it would seem,” she muttered.

  Lonegan hissed a laugh, was holding the bars on each side of his face.

  She stood with the money in her hand.

  “I bake,” she said—spit, really.

  Lonegan felt everything calming inside him.

  “Confectionary stuff?” he said.

  “Why?” she said, stepping forward. “You come here for a matrimony?”

  “ . . . Mary Lonegan,” Lonegan lilted, like trying it out.

  She held the money out, her palm down so she’d just have to open her fingers.

  Lonegan worked it into a brush of skin anyway, said at the last moment, “Or you could just—you could stay and talk. In the next cell, maybe.”

  “It cost me two more dollars not to?” she said back, her hand to her coin purse again, then stared at Lonegan until he had to look away. To the heavy oak door that opened onto the street.

  The Sheriff was stepping through, fumbling for the peg on the wall, to hang his holster on.

  “Annie,” he said to the woman.

  Her top lip rose in what Lonegan took for anger. Not directed at the lawman, but at her own name spoken aloud.

  “Annie,” Lonegan repeated.

  “You know this character?” the man said, cutting his eyes to Lonegan.

  “We go back a long ways, Sheriff,” Lonegan said.

  Annie laughed through her nose, pushed past the lawman, stepped out into the sunlight.

  Lonegan watched the door until it was closed all the way, then studied the floor.

  Finally he nodded, slipped his belt off with one hand, ferreted the slender oilcloth of gunpowder out.

  “For obvious reasons, she didn’t bake it into a cake,” he said, holding it up for the lawman to see.

  “Annie?” the lawman said, incredulous.

  “If that’s the name you know her by,” Lonegan said, then dropped the oilcloth bag onto the stone floor.

  The lawman approached, fingered the black powder up to his nose. Looked to the door as well.

  By nightfall, Annie Jorgensson was in the cell next to Lonegan’s.

  “Was hoping you’d bring some of those pastries you’ve been making,” he said to her, nodding down to the apron she was wearing, the flour still dusting her forearms.

  “Was hoping you’d be dead by now,” she said back, brushing her arms clean.

  “You could have brought something, I mean.”

  “That why you lied about me?”

  “What I said, I said to save your life. A little courtesy might be in order.”

  “You think talking to you’s going to save me?” she said. “Rather be dead, thanks.”

  Lonegan leaned back on his cot, closed his eyes.

  All dinner had been was some hardtack the Sheriff had had in his saddlebag for what tasted like weeks.

  Lonegan had made himself eat all of it, though, every bite.

  Not for strength, but out of spite. Because he knew what was coming.

  “You’re sure you didn’t go to church this morning?” he said to Annie Jorgensson.

  She didn’t answer. It didn’t matter much if she had though, he guessed, and was just lying to him about it, like she had with her name. Either way there was still a wall of bars between them. And he didn’t know what he was going to do with her anyway, after. Lead her by the hand into the saloon, pour her a drink?

  No, it was better if she was lying, really. If she was a closet Baptist.

  It would keep him from having to hold her down with his knee, shoot her in the face.

  Ten minutes after a light Lonegan couldn’t see the source of was doused, the horses at the livery took to screaming.

  Lonegan nodded, watched for Annie’s reaction.

  She just sat there.

  “You alive?” he called over.

  Her eyes flicked up to him, but that was all.

  Yes.

  Soon enough the horses kicked down a gate or a wall, started crashing through the town. One of them ran up onto the boardwalk it sounded like, then, afraid of the sound of its own hooves, shied away from them, into some window. After that, Lonegan couldn’t tell. There was gunfire, for the horse maybe. Or not.

  The whole time he watched Annie.

  “Mary,” he said to her once, in play.

  “Jezebel to you,” she hissed back.

  He smiled.

  “What’s happening out there?” she asked, finally.

  “I’m in here,” Lonegan shrugged back to her. “You saying this doesn’t happen every night?”

  She stood, leaned against the bars at the front of her cell.

  One time before, Lonegan had made it through with a cellmate. Or, in the next cell, like this.

  He’d left that one there, though. Not turned, like the rest of the town, but starved inside of four days anyway. Five if he ate the stuffing from his mattress.

  It had been interesting, though, the man’s reactions—how his back stiffened with each scream. The line of saliva that descended from his lip to the ground.

  “I’ve got to piss,” Lonegan said.

  Annie didn’t turn around.

  Lonegan aimed it at the trap under the window, was just shaking off when a face appeared, nearly level with his own.

  It was one of the men from the Saturday crowd.r />
  His eyes were wild, roving, his cheeks already shrunken, making his teeth look larger. Around his mouth, blood.

  He pulled at the bars of the window like the animal he was.

  “You’re already dead,” Lonegan said to him, then raised his finger in the shape of a pistol, shot the man between the eyes.

  The man grunted, shuffled off.

  “That was Sid Masterson,” Annie said from behind him. “If you’re wondering, I mean.”

  “Think he was past the point where an introduction would have done any good,” Lonegan said, turning to catch her eye.

  “This is supposed to impress me?” Annie said, suddenly standing at the wall of bars between them.

  “You’re alive,” Lonegan told her.

  “What are they?” she said, lifting her chin to take in the whole town.

  Lonegan shrugged, rubbed the side of his nose with the side of his finger.

  “Some people just get caught up when they’re dying, I guess,” he said. “Takes them longer.”

  “How long?”

  Lonegan smiled, said, “A day. They don’t last so long in the sun. I don’t know why.”

  “But you can’t have got everybody.”

  “They’ll get who I didn’t.”

  “You’ve done this before.”

  “Once or twice, I suppose. My oxen gets in the ditch like everybody else’s . . . ”

  For a long time, Annie just stared at him. Finally she said, “We would have given you whatever, y’know?”

  “A good Christian town,” Lonegan recited.

  “You didn’t have to do this, I mean.”

  “They were asking for it,” Lonegan said, shrugging it true. “They paid me, even, if I recall correctly.”

  “It was that poppy water.”

  Lonegan raised his eyebrows to her.

  “I know the taste,” she said. “What was it masking?”

  In reply, Lonegan pursed his lips, pointed with them out to the town: that.

  “My father?” Annie said, then.

  Lonegan kept looking at the front door.

  Her father. That was definitely going to be a complication. There was a reason he usually passed the night alone, he told himself.

  But she was a baker.

  Back in her kitchen there was probably all manner of frosting and sugar.

  Lonegan opened his mouth to ask her where she lived, but then thought better of it. He’d find her place anyway. After tonight, he’d have all week to scavenge through town. Every house, every building.