Mr. Vertigo (17 page)

“It ain’t fair,” I said, sniffling through another rush of tears. “It ain’t fair, and it ain’t right.”

“You know that, and I know that, and as long as we both know it, Aesop and Mother Sioux are taken care of.”

“They’re writhing in torment, master, and their souls won’t never be at peace until we do what we’ve got to do.”

“No, Walt, you’re wrong. They’re both at peace already.”

“Yeah? And what makes you such an expert on what the dead are doing in their graves?”

“Because I’ve been with them. I’ve been with them and spoken to them, and they’re not suffering anymore. They want us to go on with our work. That’s what they told me. They want us to remember them by keeping up with the work we’ve started.”

“What?” I said, suddenly feeling my skin crawl. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“They come to me, Walt. Almost every night for the past six months. They come to me and sit down on my bed, singing songs and stroking my face. They’re happier than they were in this world, believe me. Aesop and Mother Sioux are angels now, and nothing can hurt them anymore.”

It was about the strangest, most fantastical thing I’d ever heard, and yet Master Yehudi told it with such conviction, such straightforward sincerity and calm, I never doubted that he was telling the truth. Even if it wasn’t true in an absolute sense, there was no question that he believed it—and even if he didn’t believe it, then he’d just turned in one of the most powerful acting performances of all time. I sat there in a kind of feverish immobility, letting the vision linger in my head, trying to hold on
to the picture of Aesop and Mother Sioux singing to the master in the middle of the night. It doesn’t really matter if it happened or not, for the fact was that it changed everything for me. The pain began to subside, the black clouds began to disperse, and by the time I stood up from the table that morning, the worst of the grief was gone. In the end, that’s the only thing that matters. If the master lied, then he did it for a reason. And if he didn’t lie, then the story stands as told, and there’s no cause to defend him. One way or the other, he saved me. One way or the other, he rescued my soul from the jaws of the beast.

Ten days later, we picked up where we had left off, driving away from Wichita in yet another new car. Our earnings were such that we could afford something better now, so we traded in the Ford for Wondermobile II, a silver-gray Pierce Arrow with leather seats and running boards the size of sofas. We’d been in the black since early spring, which meant that Mrs. Witherspoon had been reimbursed for her initial expenditures, there was money in the bank for the master and myself, and we no longer had to pinch pennies as we had before. The whole operation had moved up a notch or two: larger towns for the performances, small hotels instead of rooming houses and guest cottages to flop our bones in, more stylish transportation. I was back on the beam by the time we left, all charged up and ready to roll, and for the next few months I pulled out one stop after another, adding new wrinkles and flourishes to the act almost every week. I had grown so accustomed to the crowds by then, felt so at ease during my performances, that I was able to improvise as I went along, actually to invent and discover new turns in the middle of a show. In the beginning I had always stuck to the routine, rigidly following the steps the master and I had worked out in advance, but I was past that now, I had hit my stride, and I was no longer afraid to experiment. Locomotion had always been my strength.
It was the heart of my act, the thing that separated me from every levitator who had come before me, but my loft was no better than average, a fair to middling five feet. I wanted to improve on that, to double or even triple that mark if I could, but I no longer had the luxury of all-day practice sessions, the old freedom of working under Master Yehudi’s supervision for ten or twelve hours at a stretch. I was a pro now, with all the burdens and scheduling constraints of a pro, and the only place I could practice was in front of a live audience.

So that’s what I did, especially after that little holiday in Wichita, and to my immense wonderment I found that the pressure inspired me. Some of my finest tricks date from that period, and without the eyes of the crowd to spur me on, I doubt that I would have mustered the courage to try half the things I did. It all started with the staircase number, which was the first time I ever made use of an “invisible prop”—the term I later coined for my invention. We were in upper Michigan then, and smack in the middle of the performance, just as I rose to begin my crossing of the lake, I caught sight of a building in the distance. It was a large brick structure, probably a warehouse or an old factory, and it had a fire escape running down one of the walls. I couldn’t help but notice those metal stairs. The sunlight was bouncing off of them at just that moment, and they were gleaming with a frantic kind of brightness in the late afternoon sun. Without giving the matter any thought, I lifted one foot into the air, as if I were about to climb a real staircase, and put it down on an invisible step; then I lifted the other foot and put it down on the next step. It wasn’t that I felt anything solid in the air, but I was nevertheless going up, gradually ascending a staircase that stretched from one end of the lake to the other. Even though I couldn’t see it, I had a definite picture of it in my mind. To the best of my recollection, it looked something like this:

LAKE

At its highest point—the platform in the middle—it was roughly nine and a half feet above the surface of the water—a good four feet higher than I’d ever been before. The eerie thing was that I didn’t hesitate. Once I had that picture clearly in my mind, I knew I could depend on it to get me across. All I had to do was follow the shape of the imaginary bridge, and it would support me as if it were real. A few moments later, I was gliding across the lake with nary a hitch or a stumble. Twelve steps up, fifty-two steps across, and then twelve steps down. The results were nothing less than perfect.

After that breakthrough, I discovered that I could use other props just as effectively. As long as I could imagine the thing I wanted, as long as I could visualize it with a high degree of clarity and definition, it would be available to me for the performance. That was how I developed some of the most memorable portions of my act: the rope-ladder routine, the slide routine, the seesaw routine, the high-wire routine, the countless innovations I was heralded for. Not only did these turns enhance the audience’s pleasure, but they thrust me into an entirely new relationship with my work. I wasn’t just a robot anymore, a wind-up baboon who did the same set of tricks for every show—I was evolving into an artist, a true creator who performed as much for his own sake as for the sake of others. It was the unpredictability that excited me, the adventure of never knowing what was going to happen from one show to the next. If your only motive is to
be loved, to ingratiate yourself with the crowd, you’re bound to fall into bad habits, and eventually the public will grow tired of you. You have to keep testing yourself, pushing your talent as hard as you can. You do it for yourself, but in the end it’s this struggle to do better that most endears you to your fans. That’s the paradox. People begin to sense that you’re out there taking risks for them. They’re allowed to share in the mystery, to participate in whatever nameless thing is driving you to do it, and once that happens, you’re no longer just a performer, you’re on your way to becoming a star. In the fall of 1928, that’s exactly where I was: on the brink of becoming a star.

By mid-October we found ourselves in central Illinois, playing out a last few gigs before we headed back to Wichita for a well-earned breather. If I remember correctly, we’d just finished up a show in Gibson City, one of those lost little towns with a Buck Rogers skyline of water towers and grain elevators. From a distance you think you’re approaching a hefty burg, and then you get there and discover those grain elevators are all they’ve got. We’d already checked out of the hotel and were sitting in a diner on the main drag, slurping down some liquid refreshments before we jumped into the car and took off. It was a dead hour of the day, somewhere between breakfast and lunch, and Master Yehudi and I were the only customers. I had just downed the last bits of foam from my hot chocolate, I remember, when the bell on the door jangled and a third customer walked in. Out of idle curiosity, I glanced up to take a gander at the new arrival, and who should it turn out to be but my Uncle Slim, the old chinless wonder himself? It couldn’t have been warmer than thirty-five degrees that day, but he was dressed in a threadbare summer suit. The collar was turned up against his neck, and he was clutching the two halves of the jacket in his right hand. He shivered as he crossed the threshold, looking like a chihuahua
blown in by the north wind, and if I hadn’t been so stunned, I probably would have laughed at the sight.

Master Yehudi’s back was turned to the door. When he saw the expression on my face (I must have gone white), he wheeled around to have a look at what had so discombobulated me. Slim was still standing in the entrance, rubbing his hands together and surveying the joint with his squinty eyes, and the moment he zoomed in on us, he broke into one of those snaggletoothed grins I’d always dreaded as a boy. This meeting was no accident. He’d come to Gibson City because he wanted to talk, and sure as six and seven made thirteen, the unluckiest number there was, we were staring at a mess of trouble.

“Well, well,” he said, oozing false amiability as he sauntered over to our table. “Fancy that. I come to the back of beyond on personal business, drop in at the local beanery for a cup of java, and who should I run into but my long-lost nephew? Little Walt, the apple of my eye, the freckle-faced boy wonder. It’s like destiny is what it is. Like finding a needle in a haystack.” Without a word from either the master or myself, he parked himself in the empty chair beside me. “You don’t mind if I sit down, do you?” he said. “I’m just so bowled over by this joyful occasion, I have to get off my pins before I pass out.” Then he banged me on the back and tousled my hair, still pretending how happy he was to see me—which maybe he was, but not for any of the reasons a normal person would be. It gave me the chills to be touched by him like that. I squirmed away from his hand, but he paid no attention to the rebuff, chattering on in that slimy way of His and baring his crooked brown teeth at every opportunity. “Well, old bean,” he continued, “it looks like the world’s been treating you pretty good these days, don’t it? From what the papers tell me, you’re the cat’s pajamas, the greatest thing since rye bread. Your mentor here must be flush with pride—not
to speak of just plain flush, since his wallet can’t have suffered none in the process. I can’t tell you the good it does me, Walt, seeing my kin make a name for himself in the big world.”

“State your business, friend,” the master said, finally breaking in on Slim’s monologue. “The kid and I were just on our way out, and we don’t have time to sit around shooting the breeze.”

“Hell,” Slim said, doing his best to look offended, “can’t a guy catch up on the news with his own sister’s son? What’s the rush? From the looks of that machine you got parked at the curb, you’ll get where you’re going in no time.”

“Walt’s got nothing to say to you,” the master said, “and as far as I’m concerned, you’ve got nothing to say to him.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Slim said, reaching for the crumpled cheroot in his pocket and lighting up. “He’s got a right to know about his poor Aunt Peg, and I’ve got the right to tell him.”

“What about her?” I said, barely getting my voice above a whisper.

“Hey, the kid can talk!” Slim said, pinching my cheek with mock enthusiasm. “For a moment there, I thought he’d cut out your tongue, Walt.”

“What about her?” I repeated.

“She’s dead, son, that’s what. She got took by that tornado that demolished Saint Louis last year. The whole house fell on top of her, and that was the end of sweet old Peg. It happened just like that.”

“And you escaped,” I said.

“It was the Lord’s will,” Slim said. “As chance would have it, I was on the other side of town, doing an honest day’s work.”

“Too bad it wasn’t the other way around,” I said. “Aunt Peg was no great shakes, but at least she didn’t sock me around like you did.”

“Hey, now,” Slim said, “that’s no way to talk to your uncle. I’m your own flesh and blood, Walt, and you don’t have to tell no fibs about me. Not when I’m here on such a vital errand. Mr. Yehudi and me got things to talk about, and I don’t need no cracks from you gumming up the works.”

“I believe you’re mistaken,” the master said. “You and I have nothing to talk about. Walt and I are running late now, and I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse us.”

“Not so fast, mister,” Slim said, suddenly forgetting his fake charm. His voice was seething with petulance and anger, just as I’d always remembered it. “You and I made a deal, and you’re not going to worm out on me now.”

“Deal?” the master said. “What deal was that?”

“The one we made in Saint Louis four years ago. Did you think I’d forget or something? I’m not stupid, you know. You promised me a cut of the profits, and I’m here to claim my fair share. Twenty-five percent. That’s what you promised, and that’s what I want.”