Mr. Vertigo (4 page)

I had no doubt that Master Yehudi was responsible for what had happened. In that early stage of our history together, I attributed all sorts of supernatural powers to him, and I was fully convinced that he had brought forth that ferocious wind for no other reason than to stop me from running away. For several weeks after that, my head filled with a multitude of wild theories and speculations. The scariest one had to do with Aesop—and my growing certainty that he had been born a white person. It was a terrible thing to contemplate, but all the evidence seemed to support my conclusion. He talked like a white person, didn’t he? He acted like a white person, he thought like a white person, he played the piano like a white person, and just because his skin was black, why should I believe my eyes when my gut told me something else? The only answer was that he had been born white. Years ago, the master had chosen him as his first student in the art of flying. He’d told Aesop to jump from the roof of the barn, and Aesop had jumped—but instead of catching the wind currents and soaring through the air, he’d fallen to the ground and broken every bone in his body. That accounted for his pitiful, lopsided frame, but then, to make matters even worse, Master Yehudi had punished him for his failure. Invoking the power of a hundred Jewish demons, he’d pointed his finger at his disciple and turned him into a ghastly nigger. Aesop’s life had been destroyed,
and I had no doubt that the same fate was in store for me. Not only would I wind up with black skin and a crippled body, but I would be forced to spend the rest of my days studying books.

I absconded for the second time in the middle of the afternoon. The night had thwarted me with its magic, so I countered with a new strategy and stole off in broad daylight, figuring that if I could see where I was going, there wouldn’t be any goblins to menace my steps. For the first hour or two, everything went according to plan. I slipped out of the barn just after lunch and headed down the road to Cibola, intent on maintaining a brisk pace and reaching town before dark. From there I was going to hitch a ride on a freight train and wend my way back east. If I didn’t mess up, in twenty-four hours I’d be strolling down the boulevards of dear old Saint Louis.

So there I was, jogging along that flat dusty highway with the field mice and the crows, feeling more and more confident with each step I took, when all of a sudden I glanced up and saw a buckboard wagon approaching from the opposite direction. It looked surprisingly like the wagon that belonged to Master Yehudi, but since I’d just seen that one in the barn before I left, I shrugged it off as a coincidence and kept on walking. When I got to within about twelve yards of it, I glanced up again. My tongue froze to the roof of my mouth; my eyeballs dropped from their sockets and clattered at my feet. It was Master Yehudi’s wagon all right, and sitting on top of that wagon was none other than the master himself, looking down at me with a big smile on his face. He eased the wagon to a halt and tipped his hat to me in a casual, friendly sort of way.

“Howdy, son. A bit nippy for a stroll this afternoon, don’t you think?”

“The weather suits me fine,” I said. “At least a fellow can breathe out here. You stay in one place too long, you start to choke on your own exhaust.”

“Sure, I know how it is. Every boy needs to stretch his legs. But the outing is over now, and it’s time to go home. Hoist yourself aboard, Walt, and well see if we can’t get there before the others notice we’ve been gone.”

I didn’t have much choice, so I climbed up and sat myself beside him as he flicked the reins and got the horse going again. At least he wasn’t treating me with his customary rudeness, and burned as I was that my escape had been foiled, I wasn’t about to let him know what I’d been up to. He’d probably guessed that anyway, but rather than reveal how disappointed I was, I pretended to play along with the business about being out for a walk.

“It ain’t good for a boy to be cooped up so much,” I said. “It makes him sad and foul-tempered, and then he don’t get down to his chores in the right spirit. If you give a guy a little fresh air, he’s that much more willing to do his work.”

“I hear what you’re saying, chum,” the master said, “and I understand every word of it.”

“Well, what’s it gonna be, captain? I know Cibola ain’t much of a burg, but I’ll bet they got a picture show or something. It might be nice to go there one evening. You know, a little jaunt to break the monotony. Or else maybe there’s a ball club around here, one of them minor league outfits. When spring comes, why not let’s take in a game or two? It don’t have to be no big-time stuff like the Cards. I mean, Class D is okay with me. Just as long as they use bats and balls, you won’t hear a word of complaint from this corner. You never know, sir. If you give it half a chance, you might even take a shine to it yourself.”

“I’m sure I would. But there’s a mountain of work still in front
of us, and in the meantime the family has to lie low. The more invisible we make ourselves, the safer we’re going to be. I don’t want to scare you, but things aren’t as dull in this neighborhood as they might seem. We have some powerful enemies around here, and they’re not too thrilled by our presence in their county. A lot of them wouldn’t mind if we suddenly stopped breathing, and we don’t want to provoke them by strutting our motley selves in public.”

“As long as we mind our own business, who cares what other folks think?”

“That’s just it. Some people think our business is their business, and I aim to keep a wide berth of those meddlers. Do you follow me, Walt?”

I told him I did, but the truth was I didn’t follow him at all. The only thing I knew was that there were people who wanted to kill me and that I wasn’t allowed to go to any ball games. Not even the sympathetic tone in the master’s voice could make me understand that, and all during the ride home I kept telling myself to be strong and never say die. Sooner or later I’d find a way to get out of there, sooner or later I’d leave that Voodoo Man in the dust.

My third attempt failed just as miserably as the other two. I left in the morning that time, and even though I made it to the outskirts of Cibola, Master Yehudi was waiting for me again, perched on the buckboard wagon with that same self-satisfied grin spread across his face. I was utterly disarranged by that episode. Unlike the previous time, I could no longer dismiss his being there as a matter of chance. It was as if he had known I was going to run away before I knew it myself. The bastard was inside my head, sucking out the juices of my brain, and not even my innermost thoughts could be hidden from him.

Still, I didn’t give up. I was just going to have to be more
clever, more methodical in the way I went about it. After ample reflection, I concluded that the primary cause of my troubles was the farm itself. I couldn’t get out of there because the place was so well-organized, so thoroughly self-sufficient. We had milk and butter from the cows, eggs from the chickens, meat from the pigs, vegetables from the root cellar, abundant stores of flour, salt, sugar, and cloth, and it was unnecessary for anyone to go to town to stock up on supplies. But what if we ran out of something, I told myself, what if there was a sudden shortage of some vital something we couldn’t live without? The master would have to go off for more, wouldn’t he? And as soon as he was gone, I’d sneak out of there and make my escape.

It was all so simple, I nearly gagged for joy when this idea came to me. It must have been February by then, and for the next month or so I thought of little else but sabotage. My mind churned with countless plots and schemes, conjuring up acts of untold terror and devastation. I figured I would start small—slashing a bag of flour or two, maybe pissing into the sugar barrel—but if those things failed to produce the desired result, I wasn’t averse to more grandiose forms of vandalism: releasing the chickens from their coop, for example, or slitting the throats of the pigs. There wasn’t anything I wasn’t willing to do to get out of there, and if push came to shove, I was even prepared to set the straw on fire and bum down the barn.

None of it worked out as I imagined it would. I had my opportunities, but each time I was about to put a plan into operation, my nerve mysteriously failed me. Fear would well up in my lungs, my heart would begin to flutter, and just as my hand was poised to commit the deed, an invisible force would rob me of my strength. Nothing like that had ever happened before. I had always been a mischief-maker through and through, in full command of my impulses and desires. If I wanted to do something,
I just went ahead and did it, plunging in with the recklessness of a born outlaw. Now I was stymied, blocked by a strange paralysis of will, and I despised myself for acting like such a coward, could not comprehend how a truant of my caliber could have sunk so low. Master Yehudi had beaten me to the punch again. He’d turned me into a puppet, and the more I struggled to defeat him, the tighter he pulled the strings.

I went through a month of hell before I found the courage to give it another shot. This time, luck seemed to be with me. Not ten minutes after hitting the road, I was picked up by a passing motorist, and he drove me all the way to Wichita. He was about the nicest fellow I’d ever met, a college boy on his way to see his fiancée, and we got along from the word go, regaling each other with stories for the whole two and a half hours. I wish I could remember his name. He was a sandy-haired lummox with freckles around his nose and a nifty little leather cap. For some reason, I remember that his girlfriend’s name was Francine, but that must have been because he talked about her so much, going on at length about the rosy nipples on her breasts and the lacy frills attached to her undies. Leather Cap had a shiny new Ford roadster, and he sped down that empty highway as if there was no tomorrow. I got the giggles I felt so free and happy, and the more we yacked about one thing and another, the freer and happier I felt. I’d really done it this time, I told myself. I’d really busted out of there, and from now on there’d be no stopping me.

I can’t say precisely what I was expecting from Wichita, but it certainly wasn’t the dreary little cow town I discovered that afternoon in 1925. The place was Podunk City, a pimple of yawns on a bare white butt. Where were the saloons and the gunslingers and the professional card sharks? Where was Wyatt Earp? Whatever Wichita had been in the past, its present incarnation was a sober, joyless muddle of shops and houses, a town built so low
to the ground that your elbow knocked against the sky whenever you paused to scratch your head. I’d figured I’d get some scam going for myself, hang around for a few days while I built up my nest egg, and then travel back to Saint Louis in style. A quick tour of the streets convinced me to bag that notion, and half an hour after I’d arrived, I was already looking for a train to get me out of there.

I felt so glum and dejected, I didn’t even notice that it had started to snow. March was the worst season for storms in that country, but the day had dawned so bright and clear, it hadn’t even occurred to me to think the weather might change. It began with a small flurry, a few sprinkles of whiteness slithering through the clouds, but as I continued my walk across town in search of the rail depot, the flakes grew thicker and more intense, and when I stopped to check my bearings five or ten minutes later, I was already up to my ankles in the stuff. Snow was falling by the bucketful. Before I could say the word
blizzard
, the wind kicked up and started whirling the snow around in all directions at once. It was uncanny how fast it happened. One minute, I’d been walking through the streets of downtown Wichita, and the next minute I was lost, stumbling blindly through a white tempest. I had no clue as to where I was anymore. I was shivering under my wet clothes, the wind was in a frenzy, and I was smack in the middle of it, turning around in circles.

I’m not sure how long I blundered through that glop. No less than three hours, I would think, perhaps as many as five or six. I had reached town in the late afternoon, and I was still on my feet after’ nightfall, pushing my way through the mountainous drifts, hemmed in up to my knees, then up to my waist, then up to my neck, frantically looking for shelter before the snow swallowed my entire body. I had to keep moving. The slightest pause would bury me, and before I could fight my way out, I’d either
freeze to death or suffocate. So I kept on struggling forward, even though I knew it was hopeless, even though I knew that each step was carrying me closer to my end. Where are the lights? I kept asking myself. I was wandering farther and farther away from town, out into the countryside where no one lived, and yet every time I shifted course, I found myself in the same darkness, surrounded by unbroken night and cold.

After a while, nothing felt real to me anymore. My mind had stopped working, and if my body was still dragging me along, it was only because it didn’t know any better. When I saw the faint glow of light in the distance, it scarcely registered with me. I staggered toward it, no more conscious of what I was doing than a moth is when it zeroes in on a candle. At most I took it for a dream, an illusion cast before me by the shadows of death, and even though I kept it in front of me the whole time, I sensed it would be gone before I got there.

I don’t remember crawling up the steps of the house or standing on the front porch, but I can still see my hand reaching out for the white porcelain doorknob, and I recall my surprise when I felt the knob turn and the latch clicked open. I stepped into the hallway, and everything was so bright in there, so intolerably radiant, that I was forced to shut my eyes. When I opened them again, a woman was standing in front of me—a beautiful woman with red hair. She was wearing a long white dress, and her blue eyes were looking at me with such wonder, such an expression of alarm, that I almost burst into tears. For a second or two, it crossed my mind that she was my mother, and then, when I remembered that my mother was dead, I realized that I must be dead myself and had just walked through the pearly gates.

“Look at you,” the woman said. “You poor boy. Just look at you.”