Chronological order and historical context of Mr.

Vertigo
Mr. Vertigo begins in 1920s Saint. Louis (City), Missouri (State). Near the
Mississippi River.
Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. The
“Show-Me State”
Themes:
 Roaring 20’ (1920) Jazz, flappers, alcohol (bootleggers),
gunslingers, saloons, baseball (Cardinals) or the Cards
 Fall of New York (1929) October crash
 The Great Depression (1929)
 Racism
 Ku Klux Klan (1915- 1930) Its peak in 1920
 World War II (1939-1945) Walter parent’s died there
His father gassed over in Belgium
His mother was shot by a cop
 American exceptionalism
 Town of Cibola: The Seven Cities of Gold (Coronado expedition of
1540)
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1754/cibola---the-seven-cities-of-
gold--coronado/
Historic figures:
 Babe Ruth
 Charles Lindbergh
 Wyatt Earp
1924: Early November. Master Yehudi and Walter “Walt” Claireborne Rawley
first meet each other. Walter was 9 years old. The lessons lasted 3 years.
Walter has been living with his uncle Slim and her aunt Peg for 4 years now.
He is an orphan; they do not love him. Master Yehudi treats Walter like an
animal. Walter has a “gift”, no miracle, just a skill. He has been looking for Walt
all these years. They travelled to the West, to Kansas City (In Missouri) on the
Blue Bird Special. They took 2 more trains, and arrived at the town of Cibola in
Kansas (other State). A horse with a buckboard wagon arrived, it was Mother
Sue (fat and toothless with blankets and a hat). Walter meets Aesop (black
Ethiopian boy of 15). Racism. They took care of Walter in the house, but he
wanted to run away for the first 6 months (in the middle of nowhere in a boring,
old farmhouse). Mr. Yehudi won the farm on a bet 7 years earlier. They were
patient with Walter. He ran away 4 times that first winter, once getting as far as
Wichita (City in Kansas). Mr. Yehudi started to train Walt in the barn with the
animals, he took care of the barn. Walter was “worthless” in the eyes of Mr.
Yehudi. Walt hated them, but he felt greatest ire and resentment for the Master,
he was hurt. Walt was uneducated. But the dumber Walt was, the better he was
going to learn, there is less to undo. The first thing Mr. Yehudi does is break
Walter spirit. Walter works at the barn. Until spring, Yehudi educated Aesop
(they were studying), to turn him into a scholar. Walter thought that this project
meat more than his. Yehudi found Aesop 12 years ago, in Georgia in a rural
shack, dressed in rags, extremely hungry, his mom who was a child herself,
was dead from tuberculosis. Aesop is brilliant. Yehudi wanted to send him to
college in 3 years. Yehudi thinks EEUU is a violent, hypocritical country. Walter
though that Yehudi loved Aesop and hated him. Mother Sue was illiterate too,
but her relationship with Walter was odd, she looked like a man, she was a
block of wood, a wall, no feelings or expressions, she was silent, she paid no
attention to Walt. She took care of him, but made Walt feel alone. A hollowed-
out sensation. Walt felt invisible when he was with Mother Sue. Aesop showed
kindness to Walt, but he was against him from the start, he could not accept
him. Aesop talked like an English lord and he was the master’s favourite. Aesop
didn’t seem to care that Walter despised him. No matter how hard I tried to hurt
him, he never let me get under his skin. For Walt, Aesop was a black devil, a
“nigger”. Aesop tells Walt that he is too consumed in his righteousness. Aesop
tells Walt that Yehudi loves him and believes in him. Walter though that Yehudi
was the king of the gypsies. Yehudi is an Hungarian, born in Budapest, grew in
Brooklyn, New York. Both father and grandfather were rabbis (Jewish teacher).
He is a “kike” in the eyes of Walt. Mother Sue is an Oglala Sioux, she is an
Indian (tribu). Her grandfather was Sitting Bull’s brother, she was a top
bareback rider in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Walter was living with a Jew,
a black man and an Indian. Walt tries to escape for the fifth time, in December,
but fails for the strong wind and cold. Walt invented wild theories and
speculations (Aesop was born white but turned black by Yehudi as a
punishment for failing to fly, that his life was destroyed, that he had fallen off the
barn’s roof and now his body looked like a crippled person’s one). Walter
though Yehudi as a “Jewish demon”. Walter tries to escape for a sixth time in
the daylight, to reach the town of Cibola and go back east to Saint Louis. But
Yehudi stopped him in his buckboard wagon. Yehudi warns Walt that they have
enemies which are not happy with their presence in their county. They have to
stay away from them to be safe. There were people who wanted to kill Walt.
Walt tried to escape for a third time and failed because of Mr. Yehudi. “Not even
my innermost thoughts could be hidden from him”.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siux_oglala
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_West_shows
1925: In February, Walt thought that if there was a shortage of some vital
supply, Yehudi would have to go for more, and he could escape. Walt wants to
escape. He failed, his nerve failed him, fear. “An invisible forth would rob me of
my strength”. Walt escapes a forth time, and a passing motorist drove him to
downtown Wichita. Walt arrives to “Podunk City”. Walter wanted to get out of
there by train, it started to snow, it was March, the worst season for storms in
there. Walt was lost in the snow and wind, freezing. He reached town in the late
afternoon, after five or six hours. At night, the snow hemmed to his neck.
Freeze to death or suffocate. He was away from town, in the countryside, night
and cold. He saw a light, a house, there was a woman, Mrs. Witherspoon. She
took care of him. A man was sitting there drinking coffee. It was the master. He
cannot escape Master Yehudi. Walt starts screaming and insulting Yehudi, and
blacks out. Walter has high fever and is close to die in Mrs. Witherspoon’s
house and then taken home. He could not remember anything for weeks.
Mother Sue “Mother Sioux” took care of Walt, dancing and praying to the Great
Spirit with her Oglala drum. Yehudi said that Walt illness was the “Ache of
Being”, knowing that he would never triumph against the master. When Walt
woke up, he did not felt rancor, the hatred transformed into love. Walter felt the
love and concern for his well-being that Mother Sue felt. She kissed him, the
first kiss anyone gave to Walt since his mother died. Walt listens a conversation
between the master and Aesop, Aesop tells the master to not be so hard on
Walt, then the master goes to Walt’s bed and says that he can’t die on him, that
he has great things to share, and that he is not against him. “You’ve got the gift,
son”. Walt attitude started to change, escape was pointless, so Walter decided
to give the most of what he’s been given. Perhaps was his brush with death.
Walt was well again and was getting used to them. Training was harder, spring
came. Walt started to work at the barn again with his family. Walt’s opinion of
Aesop changed drastically, now he was a friend to him, his first real friend.
Aesop changed the way Walt was, changed his life. He changed Walt’s
prejudices and the bond that grew between them. Without him, Walt wouldn’t
have done it. The master wept for Walter, but now he became tough again. The
planting season was over. After Walt turned 10, in May, the training started. The
13-stage started. There are 33 stages in total. What lies ahead is much
worse. They went to the tool shed, he gives Walt a shovel, they were going to
dig. Yehudi digged a giant hole, and wants to burry Walt alive only with a
breath-hole for 24 hours. Walt did not have a choice. This makes Walt reflect.
Each test was more terrible than the one before it. A passivity lurked in Walt’s
soul, no determination, will or courage. The further he was pushed, the less
pride he felt for his accomplishments. Walter did all sorts of tortures, including
cutting off the upper joint of his left pinky. August. Walt did not love the master,
but he did not hate him either. He no longer had to threaten Walt, he did not
question the purpose of the tasks. Walt never believed the master, but he let
him do to him whatever he wanted. “If he didn’t come through for me by my
thirteen birthday, I was going to lop off his head with an axe.” Mother Sue and
Aesop supported Walt. The tasks were between days, weeks and Yehudi left to
leave Walt heal. Aesop told Walt tales. Walter saw Aesop as the best poet, as a
scholar, a scientist, a freethinker, the number one lover of all England. His
relationship with Mother Sioux changed, now she tucks him in bed, and Walt
cries in front of her, like mother and son, “she was the person I trusted most in
the world.” For 1 year, Walter suffered the tasks. Mother Sioux tells Walt that
she saw her father and brother fly before, that she believe in Yehudi.
 The stories of the cloak and the puddle
 The search for El Dorado
 The lost colony at Roanoke
  The thirteenth years in the Tower of London
 Sir Walter Raleigh “the most perfect man who ever lived”, real life
adventurer and hero
1926: Spring. Farm work like a holiday to Walt. He was older and stronger.
Walt wanted to be respected, to be noticed by the master. A new way of fighting
back. Every time the master told him to slow down, he felt better, he got
possession of his soul. His pinky joint healed. Walter spent 18 months in Cibola
(1 year and 7 months). Saint Louis was a phantom city for Walt. Walt saw that
Yehudi was wearing a kind of necklace: a leather thong with a small transparent
globe hanging like a jewel, it was his missing pinky joint, encased in the
pendant with some kind of clear liquid. He cut it when he was 10 years old. It
had a special meaning for Yehudi, “I wear it to remind myself of the debt I owe
you”, Walter wants it back. Yehudi tells Walt to make a bargain: “Once I get you
off the ground, you can have it back.” Yehudi says to Walt that he is already
standing on the brink, almost there. May. The hottest summer in living memory.
It did not rain for 3 months. Mid-August. They had to stretch out their food, and
they probably were going to be hungry by winter. Drought. Walt was happy, he
weathered his initiation, but now the struggles were mental. Himself vs himself.
Yehudi was not an obstacle anymore. “He would issue his commands and the
disappear form my mind.” The physical stages were over, Yehudi did not study
Walt ‘s reactions anymore. Master Yehudi changed: now he is gentle, soft voice
of a seducer, as he lured him into accepting one bizarre task after another.
The weather broke in early September. The crops had failed. Prospects for the
future were bleak. Farmers were devastated. Prices down, credit scarce, bank
foreclosures. Yehudi says that the “peckerwoods” are going to blame someone
for this. This is dangerous for them. Autumn. Yehudi was worried. Unnameable
disaster. The master coddled Walt all summer, but after that Yehudi lost interest
in Walt. Yehudi was absent more frequently, and abandoned his study sessions
with Aesop. Liquor on his breath. Yehudi was sad. Something very bad is going
to happen soon. He acted with surprising warmth.
Early October: Yehudi shows a newspaper to Walt, “your team won”, its 38
years since they came on top. The Saint Louis Cardinals. “Redbirds”. They won
the World Series. 1926 champions.
 Grover Cleveland Alexander
 Tony Lazzeri
 Rogers Hornsby
 New York hotshot
 Babe Ruth “Sultan of Swat”
Boredom and quiet. Walter asked Aesop to teach him how to read. Yehudi
approved; Walter was hurt. Yehudi wanted to keep Walt stupid for the training?,
What happened? That was an advantage. He had given up on Walt?, Why he
deserted Walt when he most needed Yehudi?. Walter learns the letters and
numbers, but it’s a hollow victory. November: the food shortage was eliminated.
Yehudi arranged a delivery of canned goods. Abundance. Yehudi promised to
get them all though no matter what happens. The crisis was over. But they took
it for granted, abundance started to loose its charm, and now you are right back
where you started, you want something more. Learning lessons, abundance,
Walter thought that they would make a difference, but no. He could not have the
only thing that he wanted: the love of the master. Everything Walter was flowed
directly from Yehudi. “He had made me in his own image. “Yehudi was not there
for Walt anymore. Walt is 11 years old now. Aesop was 17. Yehudi was courting
Mrs. Witherspoon in Wichita (Marion Witherspoon) and getting his heart broken.
Early December, Aesop cut his finger opening a can of peaches, and it swelled
up with pus and rawness, then, a high fever. Yehudi had a fair knowledge of
medicine. Aesop had gangrene and had to have his finger cut with no
anaesthetic. Mother Sioux felt really bad, whimpering and sobbing as Aesop
suffered. Yehudi told her to get a grip on herself. Her tearful interruptions made
Yehudi send her out of the room to get more boiling water, she fell down the
stairs and broke her leg. The house was as gloomy as a hospital. 2 invalids to
be taken care of. Aesop felt self-pity and dejection, Mother Sioux cursed herself.
There was no time for the lessons in the house. Christmas was approaching,
when Walt was supposed to be off the ground. Walt has been turned into a
regular citizen. One morning, Walter could not find Yehudi nowhere. Walter
though that he run out on them, he was desperate, crying, though that Yehudi
had betrayed him. Lying on his stomach, with his face pressed against the floor,
there were no more tears to cry, he grew still, tranquil, he was calm, no
thoughts, no feelings in his heart, he was weightless inside his own body,
floating on nothingness, indifferent and detached to the world around him. He
could fly and eased back to the ground. Then he fell asleep. The Master arrived,
Walter wakes up and has no energy, his head hurt and his eyes could not
focus. Walter was on the verge of tears, Walter said that he though Yehudi have
left him. (grabbing his leg). Vulnerability and despair felt Walt because he flew.
He felt dread. (to feel extremely worried or frightened about something that is
going to happen or that might happen). He did not know himself anymore, so
alien in its newness, he could not talk about it. He cried a lot. Yehudi comforted
Walt, and then Walter took sight of Mrs. Witherspoon, she was going to stay in
the house until things get back to normal. She was a friend of the family and
business partner; she was going to pay for all the costs of the house. The
household run smoothly for 3 weeks. She was a high-class lady. The Master
was in love with her. She turned him down in marriage 3 times. Walter still didn’t
say that he could fly. He explored and studied the mysteries and terrors of his
new “gift”, to master the skill, to absorb its gruesome and shattering
implications. “I would be set apart from others for the rest of my life.” After so
much practising, he could levitate at will in a matter of seconds. It wasn’t
necessary to lie down on the floor, If he put himself in the proper trance, he
could do it standing up, and that he could begin to fly with his eyes open. Aesop
and Mother Sioux were better. It was hard to find an excuse to shut himself in
his room, and the master was with Mrs. Witherspoon all the time, so he didn’t
care that much.
Now that Walt could fly, “Master Yehudi was beginning to lose his godlike
properties for me, and I no longer felt under the sway of his influence.” Walter
advanced to the next stage of his development. Walt didn’t give much attention
to Aesop because he was too busy, Aesop kept asking him why he spent so
many hours alone in his room. 15/16 of December: Walter lied and said that he
was preparing a present for Christmas. Walt heard the master and his lady
talking about it. Walter wanted to show off his new talent at Christmas dinner,
that would be the present. When they were opening the gifts, Walter decided to
cancel his demonstration. Aesop and the master said that was Walter’s turn to
show his special gift. Walter finally levitates in front of everyone, of 6 or 7
inches. Everyone was gaping in wonder. The master was smiling, crying,
reaching for the leather strap of his collar, he slipped the necklace over his head
and was holding it out to Walt. Walt took his finger joint and fell to his knees,
burying his face in his lap.
1927: Walter walks on water for the first time. He was 12 years old.
Mrs. Witherspoon left. Walt worked and practiced for the first 6 months.
Levitation was only the beginning, scores of people possessed the ability to lift
themselves off the ground, he needed to do more than just hover around a few
inches off the ground.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodevil
The magician on the vaudeville circuit pull off the stunt of the floating girl,
glittering costume who hangs in mid-air as a hoop is placed around her (no
strings, no wires), this had put the real levitators out of business. Everyone
knew it was a fake, so when confronted with an act of real levitation, the
audience believed it was a sham. They passed the 33 steps already, and that
from now on everything was up to Walt. Yehudi says that there are 2 ways of
grabbing the public’s attention: Loft and locomotion. Loft is getting yourself up
into the air, by three, six, or twenty feet. The higher you go, the more
spectacular the results will be. And locomotion is moving through the air,
forward and backwards. Speed did not matter, but duration was vital. The
longer he can fly, the better the will be.
 The Polo Grounds in New York City
Walt doesn’t think he can stand it. Yehudi tries to convince Walt on doing both
techniques, he said that he will be flying like a god. Walter spent most of the
winter working alone in the barn. The master saw how Walt was doing, gave a
few words of encouragement and leave. January was the hardest month, with
no progress. He still levitated only six inches, and moving though the air
seemed impossible. “Trail and error”, said the master. In early February, Aesop
and Master Yehudi left the farm to go on a tour of colleges and universities back
East to enrolled Aesop in September, they planned to be gone for a full month.
They visited Boston and New York, with major league ball clubs and trolley
cars, pinball machines. Walt wanted to go with them so bad. It was awful for
Walt to be left behind, because he didn’t make any headway on his loft and
locomotion. So Walt spent the month of February alone with Mother Sioux, it
was winter. He was too dejected to practice his stunts. Walt missed the master
and Aesop and Mrs. Witherspoon, so he started to ask about their past to
Mother Sioux, but she didn’t gave a lot of information during the daytime.
Mother Sioux was a tight-lipped person, but once she settled into the right
mood, she was good at telling stories. Mother Sioux took Walt to her bedroom
and started to show him all kinds of objects from her past, mementoes. She
worked for Buffalo Bill, she was pretty when young, and Indian princess.
Historic event of Mother Sioux’life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Dance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Fort_Laramie_(1868)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/1868-two-nations-
made-treaty-us-broke-it-and-plains-indian-tribes-are-still-seeking-justice-
180970741/
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/fort-laramie-treaty
https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/plains-treaties-fort-laramie/#
It started when she was 16, the Ghost Dance craze that swept on the Indian
lands in the late 1880s. Those were the bad times, the years of the end of the
world, red people (Indian people) believed that magic was the only thing that
could save them from extinction. The cavalry was closing in from all sides,
crowding them off the prairies onto small reservations, the Blue-Coats had too
many men to make a counterattack feasible. Dancing the Ghost Dance like a
Holy Roller 1was the last line of resistance. White man’s bullets, Sitting Bull2
was Mother Sioux great uncle and he defended himself and the tribe dancing.
The U.S Army got scared of rebellion and told Sitting Bull to stop, but he told
them to shove it, he could jitterbug in his own tepee if he wanted to, and who
were they to meddle in his private business?, so General Blue Coat, called in
Buffalo Bill 3to powwow with the chief. Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull were
buddies from back when Sitting Bull had worked in the Wild West Show4.
“Cody” (Buffalo Bill) was the only paleface Sitting Bull trusted. So Buffalo
Bill trekked out to the reservation in South Dakota, but once he got there, the
general changed his mind and wouldn’t allow him to meet with Sitting Bull.
Buffalo Bill was ticked off. Just as he was about to storm away, he caught
sight of Mother Sioux and signed her on as a member of his troupe. This
meant a difference of life and death for her. (if she stayed, the soldiers
were going to kill her) She worked in the show business with Buffalo Bill.
A few days after her departure, Sitting Bull was murdered in a scuffle with
some of the soldiers who were holding him prisoner. Then 3 hundred woman,
children, and old men were mowed down by a cavalry regiment at the Battle of

1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roller
2
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sitting-Bull
3
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Bill#Explorador_del_Ej%C3%A9rcito_de_los_EE._UU.
4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_West_shows
Wounded Knee5, witch wasn’t a battle so much as a turkey shot, a wholesale
slaughter of the innocent.
“Custer’s6 revenge” “I was two years old when Crazy Horse 7filled his body
with arrows, and by the time I was sixteen, there was nothing left.”
Walt told that Aesop told him that there wouldn’t have been no black slaves
from Africa of the white folks had been given a free hand with the Indians, that
they wanted to turn the redskins into slaves, but the Catholic boss man in the
old country put the nix on it. So the pirates went to Africa instead and rounded
up a lot of darkies and hauled them off in chains. “Indians were supposed to be
treated good.”
Mother Sioux have been everywhere: not just in America and Canada, but on
the other side of the ocean as well. She had performed in front of the king and
queen of England, she had signed her autograph to the tsar of Russia,
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_II_de_Rusia, she had drink
champagne with Sarah Bernhardt.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Bernhardt
After six or seven years of touring with Buffalo Bill, she married an Irishman
named Ted and was in the British Isles. They had a daughter named Daffodil.
For 7 years she was happy, but then disaster struck. Ted and Daffodil were
killed in a train wreck, and Mother Sioux returned to America. She married
another Ted, a pipe fitter, who was a sot and roughneck. She began to drink
too, so great was her sorrow whenever she compared her new life with her old
one. They wound up living together in a tar-paper shack on the outskirts of
Memphis, Tennessee. She meet Yehudi in the summer of 1912, he saved her.
He was walking along with the young Aesop in his hands (2 days after he’d
rescued him in the cotton field), when he heard shrieks and howls from Mother
Sioux’ house. Ted was pummelling her, knocking her teeth, Yehudi entered the
shack and put an end to the donnybrook by sneaking behind Ted Two,
clamping his thumb and middle finger onto his neck, and applying enough
pressure to dispatch him to the land of dreams. Yehudi washed the blood from
Mother Sioux. Then he made a proposal: Come with me, I have a little boy in
wants of a mother. If you take care of him, I’ll take care of you. Yehudi was 29.
For the next 15 years she stuck with him, raising Aesop as if he were her own.
They often visited Chicago. That was where Mrs. Witherspoon hailed from. She
married her late husband when she was 20 or 21, he was raised in Kansas, the
son of a wealthy family from Wichita, handsome. Jim Thorpe.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe They were happy for three or four
years, but Mr. Witherspoon was an alcoholic, and pathological gambling, and
his fortune shrunk. They had to move back to the family home in Wichita, and
5
https://www.britannica.com/event/Wounded-Knee-Massacre
6
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armstrong_Custer#Guerras_indias
7
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalla_de_Little_Bighorn#:~:text=La%20lucha%20de%20Custer%2C
%20cuadro,Charles%20Marion%20Russell%20(1903).&text=El%20enfrentamiento%20result
%C3%B3%20en%20una,las%20visiones%20de%20Toro%20Sentado.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caballo_Loco
that Charlie Witherspoon would have to look for a job. Yehudi entered, in the
back room of a Rush Street pool hall ant 4 am with Mr. Witherspoon, sitting
around at a green table with cards in their hands. Yehudi was the only was left
in the game, and the last chance of Charlie, he bet his property in Cibola,
Kansas and his own wife (he relinquished all claims to his own wife). They were
playing chess. Yehudi won the house and the woman and Charlie killed himself.
Walter though about how Mrs. Witherspoon was still having money if her
husband died broke. She invested bits of their monthly income in stocks,
corporate bonds, and other financial transactions. She produced some robust
profits. So, Walt asked why Mrs. Witherspoon wasn’t married with Yehudi, since
she belonged to him, “Ain’t nobody can own another’s body no more.” Said
Mother Sioux. Entre ellos dos se histeriqueaban.
Walt was trying to understand all these stories. Walt began working again, to fill
the time, he was bored. He locked himself in the room and after 3 days he
discovered what he has been doing wrong: his approach. He though that loft
and locomotion could only be achieved by a 2-step process: levitate as high as
he could, then push out and go. He trained to do the first thing, and the second
thing he needed to do a grafting onto the first. But the second thing cancelled
out the first step. He would lift himself but as soon as he thought about moving
forward, he would flutter back to the ground. He failed a thousand times. Walter
jumped straight into the wall to be unconscious. But when he leapt, he was
floating, even as he was rushing forward the wall, going up, but he bounced off
the wall and was at the floor in pain. He understood what the secret was. Think
arc, trajectory. It was a matter of going up and out at the same time in one
gesture. He worked on this technique for 20 days. He perfected the skill of
locomotion, but duration was the abiding issue. The early results were 3 to 15
seconds and 7 or 8 feet. It was a shuffling ghost-walk. But he kept on
working without discouragements. He figured that it was best to concentrate on
locomotion, then, when he achieved some mastery in that area, he would turn
his attention to loft.
Yehudi and Aesop returned. All of them were looking forward to new lives
beyond the boundaries of the farm. Aesop would be going to Yale by
September, with all of them following by the turn of the year. Yehudi calculated
that Walt would be ready to perform in public in the next 9 months.
 American exceptionalism
“I wasn’t Walt Rawley anymore, the white trash nobody without a pot to piss in, I
was Walt the Wonder Boy, the diminutive daredevil who defied the laws of
gravity, the one and only ace of air. Once we hit the road and let the world see
what I can do, I was going to be a sensation, the most talked-about personality
in America.”
Aesop’s tour back East was a success. Not a single college had turned him
down, but Yale offered a four-year scholarship with all sorts of benefits. It was a
huge achievement for a self-taught black youngster to enter those cold-hearted
institutions. Walt really believed that Aesop was a genius even though he didn’t
quite understand the significance of Aesop’s triumph. Walt was bowled over by
the new clothes Aesop brought back from his trip. Aesop started to dress with
suits and he was more elegant and important now. He started shaving, and
Aesop told Walt all the thing the master had taught him in the big cities they
visited. “Kansas in an illusion”, “a stopping place on the road to reality.”, said
Aesop.
“This hole is so backward; the state went dry before they even heard of
Prohibition in the rest of the country.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States
Aesop drank beer in a speakeasy in New York. An illegal establishment on
MacDougal Street, in Greenwich Village.
Aesop had sex with a prostitute in a Harlem bordello, her name was Mabel, she
wasn’t old or young, fattest, blackest mama, she was really big. Aesop has
entered manhood and was writing his autobiography, before he left home. But
he couldn’t decide on the title. He toiled 8 or 10 hours a day on it. Walt said that
it was going to become a masterpiece. This was 65 years ago, says Walt (he is
writing in 1992). Walt remembers Aesop writing his autobiography clearly.
Master Yehudi and Walter spent their days in the fields, practicing. The master
said that there wouldn’t be any planting that year, because there were enough
food to last through the winter and by spring they will be long gone. Walter’s
locomotion was a success, and Yehudi was willing to let the farm go to pot. But
they worked really hard, Walter was really motivated. When the weather turned
warm, they kept going until after dark. Walter was inexhaustible, happiness
swept though his body.
May 1st: Walt was able to walk from 10 to 12 yards
May 5th: 20 yards
In less than a week he pushed it to 40 yards: 120 feet of airborne locomotion,
nearly 10 minutes.
That was when the master hit upon the idea of having Walt walk over water.
There was a pond in the property, they did all their work over there, barely
saying a word to each other for hours on end. The water intimidated Walt, since
he didn’t know how to swim. The pond was 60 feet across, and the water level
was at least half of over Walter’s head. He fell 16 or 20 times the first day, and 4
times the master had to jump in and fish Walter out. Walter conquered his fear
of water by pretending it wasn’t there, if he didn’t look down, he could propel his
body across the surface without getting wet. By the last days of May 1927 he
was walking on water with the same skill as Jesus himself.
Somewhere in the middle of that time, Lindbergh made his solo flight across
the Atlantic, traveling nonstop from New York City to Paris in 33 hours. “the
Lone Eagle”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh May, 20 1927
They heard from it from Mrs. Witherspoon, who drove out from Wichita one day
with a pile of newspapers in her car. The farm was so cut off from the world.
Walt always found strange that Lindbergh’s stunt coincided so exactly with his
own efforts, “that at the precise moment he was making his way across the
ocean, I was traversing my little pond in Kansas, the two of us in the air
together, each one accomplishing his feat at the same time.”
“It was as if the sky had suddenly opened itself up to man, and we were the
first pioneers.” Walt felt linked to him after that, as if they shared some dark
fraternal bond.
“It couldn’t have been a coincidence that his plane was called the Spirit of
St.Louis, that was my town, too, the town of champions and twentieth-
century heroes, and without even knowing it, Lindbergh had named his
plane in my honor.”
Mrs. Witherspoon hung around for a couple of days. She left, and the master
and Walter kept practising locomotion to loft. He practiced horizontal travel, now
it was time for vertical. Lindbergh was an inspiration to Walt, but he wanted
to do him one better: to do with my body what he’d done with a machine.
It would be more stupendous, a thing that would dwarf his fame overnight. But
Walt couldn’t make an inch of headway for a week and a half.
In June 5th, the master made a suggestion that began to turn things around:
your necklace might have something to do with it, for the weight. Walt said that
it was his lucky charm, and that he couldn’t do nothing without it. The master
said that he levitated for the first time when he didn’t had the necklace, the
master had it. The master said “You can’t be whole to do what you have to
do”, “you have to leave a part of yourself behind before you can attain the
full magnitude of your gift.” Walt says that then clothes are bogging him
down too. Yehudi wants to try with no clothes on. Walter removed the good
look charm and placed it in the master’s hand.
Walter managed to double his previous record: ascending to heights of 12 to 14
inches. By nightfall, he raised 2 and a half feet off the ground.
Master Yehudi was correct. The thrill was spectacular, Walt was on the verge of
flying, but above 2 feet it was difficult to maintain a vertical position without
tottering and feeling dizzy, it was so new that he couldn’t find his natural
equilibrium. Walt felt “long”, his upper body responded in one way and his lower
body in another. Walt went into a prone position (lying face down) when starting
to fly, because it was safer and more comfortable than to be standing. Walt
managed to go forward and to complete an unbroken circle, a somersault.
Everything seemed possible to us now: the conquest of both loft and
locomotion, actual flight. Our whole future fell into place at last. One night after:
Ku Klux Klan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
June 6: Master Yehudi had been dreading this. Spring. Walt and the master
were practising, 7:30 they ate supper, 10 o’clock they heard the sound of
horses, Walt just completed a double somersault at the edge of the pond and
was waiting for the master’s comments, but he grabbed Walter’s arm in a
sudden, panic-stricken gesture. “Listen. The bastards are coming.” It was
horses in their direction. “Don’t move.” “Don’t move a muscle until I come back.”
Yehudi started to run toward the house, tearing though the fields like a sprinter.
Walt followed him, before getting in, flames were visible, war yodels, shots rang
out, human screams, the master kept running, but then stopped. Walt continued
to run, but the master wrestled Walt to the ground and said that it was too late,
because they can die if they entered the house. There’s 12 of them and they all
got rifles and guns. There’s nothing we can do for the others.
“So we stood there helplessly behind the trees, watching the Ku Klux Klan
do its work. A dozen men on a dozen horses pranced about the yard, a
mob of yelping murderers with white sheets over their heads, and we were
powerless to thwart them.”
They draw them out of the burning house (A and MS) and strung them up to the
elm tree, each one to a different branch, and in minutes they were both death.
My two best friends were murdered before my eyes, and all I could do was
watch, fighting back tears as Master Yehudi clamped his palm over my mouth.
Once the killing was over, a couple of the Klansmen stuck a wooden cross in
the ground, doused it with gasoline, and set it on fire. The cross burned as the
house burned, and then they climbed up to their horses and rode off to Cibola.
The house collapsed.
Summer. They buried them on the property, and drove off leaving Cibola. They
went to Mrs. Witherspoon’s house in Wichita. Master Yehudi’s grief was really
bad. He scarcely lived, crying, he looked like a block of stone. He was ravaged
by sorrow and self-recrimination. He only got worse as the weeks went by. He
said that he saw it coming, and that it was his fault because he didn’t lift a finger
to stop it. This scared Walter. The master was all useless and inert. Walt was
just a kid, he didn’t quite understand life yet. Walt cried for a few days, but after
that, he was ready to put it behind him and get to other things. “I missed Aesop
and Mother Sioux, I ached to be with them again—but they were gone, and no
amount of begging was going to bring them back.” Walt said that he couldn’t
wait to get started with his career. But Master Yehudi still languished from June
to July. July became August and the master couldn’t rebound from the tragedy.
Walt felt let down, he resented the master for his lack of inner toughness, his
refusal to face up to the shitiness of life. As his grief dragged on, Walt lost some
faith in the master. If not for Mrs.Whiterspoon, Walt would have thrown in the
towel and split. She told him to be patient and to try to understand the master.
As time went on, Mrs.Whiterspoon and Walt were disgusted with the master.
Mrs. W is “salty”, and Walter says that they have a lot of thing in common.
(They were living in Mrs. W house). She’d been on her best behaviour when
she visited the farm, not to offend MS and A, but now she showed her true
nature. She had bad habits and had self-indulgence. She had a penchant for
booze ( 6 or 7 gin and tonics per day), cigarettes, a overall laxness (without
much care, attention or control), she had a ladylike exterior. She would drink her
favourite beverage and use vulgar language, she wasn’t bound to a high moral
purpose, her only aim in life was enjoy herself and make as much money as
she could. Walter and Mrs. W became friends, Walter liked her. Mrs. W was
fond of Walt. Mrs.W kept Walt happy, she found him as such a sterling $
companion. She was thinking about the future of her bank account. Walt
thought that she pal around with him because she saw him like a business
opportunity. (because he could fly). She knew that his career would make her
rich. It was always in the service of her own interests, she kept him in the fold,
to make sure he didn’t sneak away before she’d cashed in on his talent. Walt
doesn’t blame her for acting like that. Walt’s magic make little impression on
Mrs. W. Walt practiced his routine 1 or 2 hours a day, he confined himself to the
indoors, in the upstairs parlor. Mrs.W rarely bothered to watch these sessions,
but when she entered, she would observe the spectacle of his levitations
without twitching a muscle, studying him with objectivity. No matter how
extraordinary the stunts were, she accepted them as part of the natural order of
things. “My act was no more than a means to an end for her.” Bue she was
good to Walt. She spent money on Walt, he spent those days in the lap of
luxury. Most afternoons, they would escape the heat by taking a spin though the
countryside in the emerald sedan, Mrs- Whiterspoon loved speed, she dad no
fear, 70 or 80 miles an hour, Walt felt panic and fear, that would affect his
stomach, and he let out one fart after another. He almost died of shame, she
burst out laughing, and she stopped the car. They talked, and she said that she
was a hell of a driver, and that he shouldn’t worry, he was safe. Walt wanted her
to put that on writing, but she told him that if he felt that she was going too fast,
he had to close his eyes and yell. Walt tried to do that. But in early August Walt
crapped his pants and burst into tears but the ride continued, and came into a
halt 10 minutes later. Walt was soaked in sweat, shit and tears. Mrs.
Witherspoon said that they broke the century mark. “I’ll bet you I’m the first
woman in this whole tight-assed state who ever did that.” (American
exceptionalism). Now that the car had stopped, the smell from my pants was
getting more noticeable. Walt started sobbing. Mrs- Witherspoon noticed. He
said that he had a little accident, that that can happen to anyone. Walt never felt
so embarrassed in all his life. She took him to a pond to clean himself. She told
him to strip off his clothes, he didn’t want to do it if she was looking, but she
want going to turn around. There he was sating with his dick in the breeze
before a grown woman, his white legs stained with brown mush, and his
asshole reeking like yesterday’s garbage. It was one of the low point in his life,
but Mrs. Witherspoon didn’t make a sound, not one groan of disgust, not one
gasp. With tenderness, she dipped her hands into the water and began cleaning
him. They had to leave the undies and the pants there. He had to go without
them. “There’s no much to hide anyway.” “A cute little dicky-bird it is.” “bald
nuts, babydoll thighs.”, “You’ve got everything it takes to be a man.” Mrs-
Witherspoon gathered up the whole package in her palm and gave it a little
healthy shake. “But you are not quite there yet.” “No one is going to see you in
the car.” “I’ll smuggle you into the house though the back door.” “I will never
tell.” Said Mrs. Witherspoon. Sometimes, she was about the best there was, but
other times she would do something unexpected, tease you, snub you or go
silent on you and the mood would go sour. Walt didn’t quite understand that, but
then he noticed that she was pining for Master Yehudi (desire). The turning
point came about 2 nights after the shit episode. They were sitting in the
backyard, watching the fireflies dart in and out of the bushes and listening to the
crickets chirp their tinny songs. “That passed for big-time entertainment in those
days, even in the so-called Roaring Twenties8.” “There wasn’t a hell of a lot
that roared in Wichita.” After 2 months, they were bored as hell, they’ve used up
all the available resources. It wasn’t worth the effort to go put anymore. They
were really bored.
Mrs. Witherspoon started to say: “I used to think he was the most dashing stud
ever to trot out of the fucking stable.” “Who’s that?” “What do you think,
pisshead?” “Oh”, “Mr.Birdman”, “All we can do is hope his soul mends before
it’s too late.”, “I’m talking about his picker. He still got one, doesn’t he?” “I guess
so.” “Well, a man has to do his duty. He can’t leave a girl high and fry for two
months, a pussy needs love, it need to be stroked and fed.” Walt blushed, and
said “Are you sure to be telling me this Mrs. W?”, “There’s no one else,
sweetheart.” “You’re old enough to know about this things.” Walt said that he
was going to let nature take care of itself, but Mrs. W says that that is wrong, a
man’s go to tend his honey pot. Mrs.Whiterspoon told Walt that she had other
offers, and that she was sick and tired of waiting. “I’ve been diddling my own
twat all summer.” “But you turned down the master 3 times”, “Things change.”, It
was going to turn ugly, Walt dint want to listen about her disappointed cunt.
Walter said, “I didn’t have the heart to join in and attack his manhood.” He
would have walked away, but she would start to scream at him.
Suddenly, a loud noise exploded from within the house. A boom. Mrs.
Witherspoon found this funny. “Do you hear that? That’s the sound of my
thoughts, my skull’s about to crack in two!”. Then, there were shattering glass
noises, Walt ran to the house, Mrs. W followed him but was too drunk to get
very far. Walt looked back and saw her slip, flat on her face. She stood there on
the ground laughing her guts all over the lawn. Walt though that someone had
broke into the house and was attacking Master Yehudi. Walt got through the
back door and climbed the stairs, but all was quite again. Strange. He walked
down the hall to the master’s room and knocked “Come in” said the master.
Walt went in and there was the master with a curious little smile. Everything was
destruction around him. Everything was broken. Then he started talking to Walt
with a calm voice, “What brings you up here in this late hour?” “Are you all
right?” says Walt. “Of course.” Said the master. “An exercise in catharsis, son.”
Said the master. “A kind of heart medicine.” “You done all this yourself?” “It had
to be done. I’m sorry about all the commotion, but sooner or later it had to be
done.”
“From the way he was looking at me, I sensed he was back to his old snappy
self.” He seemed to be mixing kindness and sarcasm. “Does that mean that
8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties
things are going to be different around here now?” “We have an obligation to
remember the dead. That’s a fundamental law.” “If we didn’t remember them,
we’d loose the right to call ourselves human.” And Walt said “There ain’t a day
that goes by when I don’t think about our dear darlings and what was done to
them, it’s just that time is wasting, and we’d be doing the world an injustice if we
didn’t think about ourselves, too.” The master said, “You have a quick mind,
son.” Walter said “There is Mrs. Witherspoon, too. She’d passed out on the
lawn.” “I’m not going to apologise for things that need no apology. I did what I
had to do, and I took as long as it had to take. Now a new chapter begins.” It’s
time you show them your stuff. “Just rig up a place for me to do it, said Walt.
1927, August 25: Walt gave his first public performance as Walt the Wonder
Boy at the Pawnee County Fair in Larned, Kansas. It almost was Walt’s
swansong (his last performance). It wasn’t that Walt flubbed up the act, but the
crowd was mean-spirited, filled with drunks, that if not for the master, Walter
might not have lived. They drove half a mile and came to a little pond with green
water and white scum floating on top. It was a woeful site for such an historic
occasion, but the master wanted Walt to start small.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ty_Cobb
“Do well here, and we’ll start talking about the big time in a few months.”, The
was no grandstand for the spectators, witch made them complaint, they were
chiseled before he made his entrance. There were 60 or 70 of them, all of them
bumpkins. When Master Yehudi stepped forward in his black tuxedo and silk
hat to announce the world premiere of Walt the Wonder Boy, the wisecracks
and heckling began, Walt was wearing the worst costume, a long white robe
with leather sandals and a hemp sash tied around his waist. The master called
it an “otherworldly look” (spiritual). He felt like a twit in that getup. “Walt the
Wonder Girl” they yelled. Walt found the courage to begin only for Aesop. Walt
wasn’t going to let himself fail him. I owned it to my brother to give it the best
shot I could. So Walt walked to the edge of the pond and went to his spread-
arms-and-trance routine, struggling to shut out the catcalls and insults. He
heard some oohs and ahs when his body rose off the ground. Walt would have
won over the crowd if not for a birdbrain that hurled a bottle in Walt’s direction.
19/20 it past me and no harm was done, but the thing clunked him in the noggin
(head). The blow addled his concentration, and rendered him unconscious, and
Walter sank to the bottom of the pond. The master saved him. So they left
Larned in disgrace. They thrown them eggs, stones and watermelons. No one
seemed to care that I almost died from that blow on the head, they went on
laughing, and the master took Walt to Mrs. W car. I was still semi delirious, I
coughed and puked all over the master’s shirt as he ran across the field with my
wet body bouncing in his arms. Walt heard that opinions were divided: some
people took the religious view, asserting that we were in league with de devil,
other called us fakes and charlatans, and other had no opinion at all. They
managed to get inside the car before the rowdies caught up with us. A few eggs
thudded against the rear window, no glass shuttered, no shots rang out. They
escaped with their hide intact.´
  David Jones locker https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Jones
We travelled 2 miles before someone speak. Pond water gushed from us and
sank into Mrs. Witherspoon’s deluxe suede upholstery. Walter just sat there
stewing in the front seat, trying to control my temper and figure out what had
gone wrong. It didn’t seem fair to blame the master. It was my fault for going
along with him. I never should have allowed myself to get sucked into such a
half-assed, poorly planned operation. “Welcome to show biz” said the master.
“That was assault and battery.” The master said that once the curtain is up, you
never know what’s going to happen. Walt said that that kind of talk ain’t nothing
but wind, the master said, the little lad’s in a huff, “What kind of talk do you
propose we engage?”, Practical talk, the one that will stop us from repeating our
mistakes”. The master said that they didn’t make any mistakes, they just drew a
bum audience. Walt said that they did a lot of dumb things today, and they
wounded up paying the price. The master said that he was brilliant, and if not of
that flying bottle, I would have been a four-star success. Walt says that he
would like to ditch his costume (get rid of). It’s about the awfulness piece of
hokum I ever saw. We don’t need no otherworldly trappings, the act’s got
enough of that already, we don’t want to confuse folks by dressing me up like
some angel boy. It puts them off. It makes me look like I’m supposed to be
better than they are. We don’t need to let them know that Walt is better than
them. They were against him before he even started. The master said that the
costume had nothing to do with it, the crowd was too stoned, not one of them
ever saw what you had on. Walter says to the master that he is SO WRONG.
The costume stinks, I ain’t never wearing it again. The master said that if he
wanted to dress another way, he just had to tell him. It’s a long trip back to
Wichita. Walter said that they had to win them over from the get-go. These
rubes don’t like no fancy stuff. No pinguin suit of yours, no sissy robe, no high-
flown talk you pitched them at the start. Just keep it simple and folksy. A simple
presentation, and you can wear a plain old seersucker suit and a nice straw hat,
no one will take offense. They will think you’re a friendly, good-hearted Joe out
to make an honest buck. That’s the key. I present myself as a little know-
nothing, a farm boy dressed in denim overalls and plaid shirt, a barefoot
nobody, a geek mug like their sons and nephews. It’s like I’m a member of the
family. And then, the moment he starts raising into the air, their hearts failed
them. It’s that simple. It took 3 hours to get home, and Walter speak his mind to
the master: costumes, venues, ticket-taking, music, show times and publicity.
The master was impressed, a little startled by Walt’s thoroughness and strong
opinions. The master listened to his ideas without interruption, and gave in in
most of the points Walt raised. He accepted his failure as a showman, he
admitted that he’d gotten them off on the wrong track. His method was out of
date, a corny prewash style than to the new age. Something modern, sleek,
savvy and direct. Walt managed to bring the master around into a different
approach. Still, in certain issues he refused to fall in line, Walt wanted to
perform in Saint Louis, but the master said that it was the most dangerous spot
for him. He’ll be death if he goes back. You’ll never get out of there alive. Walt
didn’t understand, but there was no way that he could go against him. One
month later in late September, Saint Louis was hit by the worst tornado 9 of the
century. We were on our way to Vernon, Oklahoma by then, and Walter knew
because of the morning edition of the local rag. “He knew things I would never
know, he heard things no one else could hear, and not a man in the world could
match him.” Walt trusted A LOT in Master Yehudi, “If I ever doubt his words
again, I told myself, may the Lord strike me down and scatter my corpse to the
pigs.”
August 25th: going back to Mrs. Witherspoon house in Wichita. After our long
conversation about revamping the act, Walt felt better about their prospects, but
his mind wasn’t totally at ease. There were other matters that troubled Walt
more deeply, essential flaws in the arrangement: Walt brought up the subject of
Mrs. Witherspoon, why she didn’t come with us, the master said that she didn’t
want to get in the way, but she was their backer, the one who’s footing the bill,
didn’t she want to stick around and keep a close eye to her investment?, she’s a
silent partner, said the master. In life, she got a tongue on her, but this is
business, said the master. Walter told the master that Mrs. W that when the
master was out of commission, she did some awfully strange things, she gave
me the creeps. The master said that she’s been distraught, she is a lot more
fragile than you think she is, she had some rough things to swallow there past
months, you just have to be patient whit her. “That’s pretty mucho the same
thing she said about you.” OMG. The master said that she was a smart woman,
a little high-strung and her heart’s in the right place. Walter said that Mother
Sioux told him that the master was fixing to marry Mrs. Witherspoon. The
master replied that yes, and the no, and then yes and again no. That anything
could happen between them. Walt said that she was a frisky one “Just when
you think you’ve roped her in, she slips the knot and bolts to the next pasture.”
The master said that it was best to do nothing for that reason. If you stand
there, there is a chance that the thing you want will come right to you. Walt said
that if master Yehudi ever married, it wont be a smooth ride. Leave the love
business to me and concentrate on your work. Walt wanted to tell the master
the thing that he didn’t understand about women, but he was a genius and a
wizard, and didn’t have the balls to do it. Walter knew what Mrs. W wanted, and
the master was not going to go anywhere with her unless he took the bull by the
horns, she didn’t want to get deferred to (to delay until next time), she wanted to
be stormed and conquered, and the longer he was waiting, the worse his
chances would be. But Water couldn’t do it, so he kept shut.
So they returned to Wichita and got busy making plans for a fresh start. Mrs. W
said nothing about the water stains on the seats, she though of them as a
business expense, part of the risk you take when you set your sights on making
big money. It took 3 weeks to wrap up the preparations, and the master and
Mrs. W were pretty cozy with each other. Maybe I was wrong, and the master
knew exactly what I was doing. But on the day of our departure, he committed
an error, which showed up the weakness of his overall strategy. Heartbreak.

9
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_September_29,_1927
When they were saying their farewells, the master said “We’ll see you in a
month and three days” “Off you go boys”, There was an awkward silence after
that, and Walter said: “Why not hop in the car and come with us?”.
She said to the master “Well, what do you think, should I go with you or not?”
And he said “It’s up to you, my dear.” Patter her on the shoulder. ???
Her eyes clouded for a second, but it was not all lost. She said “No, you decide;
I wouldn’t want to be in the way.” And he said “You’re a free agent, Marion. It’s
not for me to tell you what to do.” ??
I saw the light go out in her eyes. She shrugged “Never mind.” “There is too
much to do here anyway.”
The opportunity of a lifetime lost forever. The master let it slip right through his
fingers.
They travelled in a different car this time (a black Ford), they set-off in mid-
September, they were headed to Oklahoma, the first state booked for the tour,
and they pulled into Redbird 2 days later, It’s going to work this time, Walt told
himself. Redbird, just like my ball club in Saint Louis, my dear old chums the
Cardinals. It was the same act in a new set of clothes, but everything felt
different and the audience took a shine to Walt the moment he came on. Master
Yehudi did his cornpone spiel to the hilt. Walt wore a Huck Finn 10costume, and
they knocked them dead. 6 or 7 woman fainted, children screamed, grown men
gasped in awe and disbelief. It lasted 30 minutes, gliding his little body over the
surface of a broad and sparkling lake. Pushing himself to a record of height of 4
and a half feet before floating back to the ground and taking his bow. The
applause was thunderous. They whooped and cried, they banged pots and
pans, they tossed confetti into the air. This was my first taste of success, and
Walt loved it, “I loved it in a way I’ve never loved anything before and since.”
They travelled all around eastern Oklahoma:
 Dunbar and Battiest
 Jumbo and Plunketsville
 Pickens, Muse and Bethel
 Wapanucka
 Boggy Depot and Kingfisher
 Gerty, Ringling, and Marble City
They made a lot of money. Bookings ceased (stopped) to be a problem, and
Walter and the master spent most of their time on the road. They went to:
 Texas
 Arkansas
 Louisiana
10
https://www.google.com/search?
q=huck+finn&rlz=1C1ALOY_esAR944AR944&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi0kNGrnob9A
hVOqZUCHTlSDpcQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1280&bih=609&dpr=1.5#imgrc=6RIFiaWE8qS6uM
Going south as winter come on. Walt tended to fill in the dead time between
performances by visiting the local Bijou to see the latest flick (movie). The
master had business to take care of, so he seldom went with Walt. Walt would
come back to find the master alone in the room, sitting in a chair reading his
book, it was always the same book. It was written in Latin, and the author’s
name was Spinoza. Walt asked the master why he kept studying that book over
and over again, he told him that it was because you could never get to the
bottom of it. The deeper you go, the more there is, and the more there is, the
longer it tales to read it. “A magic book.”, Walt said, “It can’t never use itself up.”
“Yes, it’s inexhaustible.” “One gets drunk on the mystery of the world, for the
price of one drink.” One book that never ends, and its different each time, there
is more each time.
“You drink down the wine, put the glass back on the table, and lo and behold,
you reach for the glass again and discover it’s still full.”
“And there you are, drunk as a skunk for the price of one drink.”
Walt was happy with the master on the road, just moving from place to place
was enough to keep my spirits up, but the crowds, the performances and the
money we made were the best. Those first months were hands down the best
months Walter had ever lived. Even though the initial excitement wore off, and
Walt grew accustomed to the routine, he still didn’t want it to stop. The bad
things were as nothing to Walt. We’d climb into the Ford and blow out of town,
another 70 or 100 bucks stashed away in the trunk, watching the landscape roll
by as we chewed over the finer points of the last performance. The master was
a prince to Walt, always encouraging and counselling and listening to what Walt
said, and he never made Walt feel that he was one bit less important than he
was. They reached a permanent equilibrium. He did his job and Walt did his,
and all together they made the thing work.
“The stock market didn’t crash until two years later11, but the Depression
12
had already started in the hinterlands, and farmers and rural folks throughout
the region were feeling the pinch.”
We came across a lot of desperate people on our travels, and Master Yehudi
told me never to look down on them. They needed Walt the Wonder Boy, that
entailed a lot of responsibility. Walt was 12 here.
“To watch a 12 year old do what only saints and prophets had done before him
was like a jolt from heaven, and my performances could bring spiritual uplift to
thousands of suffering souls.” But that didn’t mean I shouldn’t make a bundle
doing it. Walt had to touch people’s hearts. That’s why the master started my
career in such out-of-the-way places, in forgotten corners and crevices on the
map. He wanted the word about me to spread slowly, for support to begin from
the ground up. It was a way of controlling things. The bookings were organized,
the turnouts were good, and we had a roof in our heads when we went to sleep

11
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market_crash
12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
at night. Walt was doing what he wanted to do, and the feeling it gave him was
so good. Every now and then, we encountered a bump in the road but master
Yehudi was prepared for that situations.
One example was when a truant officer came knocking on the door of our
rooming house in Dublin, Mississippi. Why isn’t this lad in school? The master
pulled a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his coat. It was covered with
official stamps and seals, the officer apologized for the mixup embarrassed and
left. God knows what was written on that paper.
Latter part of 1927 and the first half of 1928: Walt lived in total concentration.
Never thought of the past or the future, but on the present. We didn’t spend
more than 3 or 4 days a month in Wichita, the rest of the time we were on the
road, in the black Wondermobile. The first real pause came in the middle of
May. Walter’s 13 birthday was coming, and the master thought it was a good
idea to take a couple of weeks off on Mrs. Witherspoon’s house. Relax, eat
home cooking, count our money, and then pack up our bags and take off again.
Once they got there and settled in for their holiday, Walt sensed that something
was wrong. It wasn’t the master or Mrs. Witherspoon, they relation was
harmonious just then. Nor anything connected to the house, but the moment we
walked though the door, Walt felt an inexplicable heaviness that invaded his
heart, a murky sort of sadness and disquiet. Walt couldn’t get rid of it. It seemed
to be growing, by the third night, Walt was overcome by an irresistible urge to
cry. He sobbed into the pillow. The next morning, in breakfast, waiting for Nelly
Boggs to serve us the food, Walt started talking:
“Remember the law you talked me about?”
“What law is that?”
“How we wouldn’t be human no more if we forgot the dead.”
“Of course I remember.”
“Well, it seems to me we been breaking that law left and right.”
“How, so, Walt? Aesop and Mother Sioux are inside us. We carry them in our
hearts wherever we go. Nothing’s ever going to change that.”
“But we just walked away, didn’t we? They “was” murdered by a pack of devils
and demons, and we never did nothing about it.”
“We couldn’t. If we’d gone after them, they would have killed us, too.”
“But what about now? If we’re supposed to remember the dead, then we don’t
have no choice but to hunt down the bastards and see they get what’s coming
to them. What about my pal Aesop? What about funny old Mother Sioix?
They’re moldering in their graves is what, and the trash that hung them’s still
running free. Walt wants revenge. He was crying.
“Get a grip on yourself” the master said. (angry)
“Sure, we can go after them.”, “We could track them down and bring them to
justice, but that’s the only job we’d have for the rest of our lives. The cops won’t
help us, I’ll guarantee you that, and if you think a jury would convict them, think
again. The Klan is everywhere, Walt, they own the whole rotten charade.
They’re the same nice smiling folks you used to see on the streets of Cibola—
Tom Skinner, Judd McNally, Harold Dowd—they’re all part of it, every last of
them. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. We’d have to kill them
ourselves, and once we went after them, they’d go after us. A lot of blood would
be shed, Walt, and most of it would be ours.”
It ain’t fair. Said walt
Aesop and Mother Sioux are taken care of. M
“They’re writhing in torment, master, and their souls won’t never be at peace
until we do what we’ve got to do.” W
“No, Walt, you’re young. They’re both at peace already.” M
“Yeah? And what makes you such an expert on what the dead are doing in their
graves?” W
“Because 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.” M
“What the hell are you talking about?” W
“They come to me, Walt. Almost every night for the past 6 months. They sit 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.” M
“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 believed
it, then he’d just turned in one of the most powerful acting performances of all
time. 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, and most of the grief
was gone. If the master lied, then he did it for a reason and if he didn’t lie, then
the story stands as told, one way or the other, he saved me. W
10 days later, we were driving away from Wichita in another new car. They
could afford something better now, a Pierce Arrow. They’d been in the black ($)
since early spring, and they paid (reimbursed) Mrs.Whiterspoon for her initial
expenditures. There was money in the bank for the master and Walt. They had
larger towns for the performances, small hotels instead of rooming houses and
guest cottages, more stylish transportation. Walt was back on the beam by the
time they left, for the next few months he pulled out one stop after another,
adding new wrinkles and flourishes to the act almost every week. Walt had
grown so accustomed to the crowds, felt at ease during his performances, he
improvised, inventing and discovering new turns in the middle of a show. He
was no longer afraid to experiment, locomotion had always been Walt’s
strength, the thing that separated him from every levitation, but his loft was
average, middling 5 feet. He wanted to improve on his loft, to double or even
triple that mark, but he didn’t have the luxury of the all-day practice sessions,
the old freedom of working under Master Yehudi’s supervision for 10 or 12
hours. I was a pro now, and the only place he could practice was in front of a
live audience. So that’s what he did, and the pressure inspired him. Some of his
finest tricks date from that period. Without the eyes of the crowd, I doubt that I
would have mustered the courage to try half the things I did. It started with the
staircase number, which was the first time Walt used an “invisible prop”, we
were in upper Michigan, and in the middle of the performance, just as he rose to
begin his crossing to the lake, he caught sight of a building in the distance. It
was a large brick structure, and it had a fire escape running down one of the
walls. He couldn’t help but notice that metal stairs, they were gleaming in the
late afternoon sun, the sunlight was bouncing off of them, so he started to climb
an invisible staircase, and was going up, gradually ascending a staircase that
stretched from one end of the lake to the other.
He was 9 and a half feet above the surface of the water ( a good 4 feet higher).
The eerie thing was that he didn’t hesitate, once he had that picture on his
mind, he depended on it to get him across. All he had to do is follow the shape
of the imaginary bridge. Then, he was gliding across the lake without any
stumble or hitch. 12 steps up, 52 steps across, and 12 steps down. The results
were perfect.
Walt discovered that he could use other props: he just had to imagine the thing
he wanted, visualize it with high degree of clarity and definition and it would be
available for him for the performance. That was how he developed some of the
most memorable portions of his act. The countless innovations he was heralded
for:
 The rope-ladder routine
 The slide routine
 The seesaw routine
 The high-wire routine
These turns enhance the audience’s pleasure, they thrust Walt into a new
relationship with his work. He wasn’t just a robot anymore, he was evolving into
an artist, with new tricks in every show. Unpredictability excited him. If your only
motive is to be loved, the public will grow tired of you. You have to keep testing
yourself, pushing your talent as hard as you can. You to it for yourself and for
your fans, taking risks for them, he was on his way to become a star. They
participate in the things that drive you to do it.
Fall 1928: on the brink of becoming a star
Mid-October: central Illinois the were there, and they were going to go back
to Wichita, they just finished up a show in Gibson City, with Buck Rogers
skyline of water towers and grain elevators. They’ve checked out of the hotel
and were drinking something. They were the only costumers, the bell on the
door jangled and a third costumer walked in: Walt glanced up, and it turn out to
be his Uncle Slim. It was winter, and he was dressed in a threadbare summer
suit. He shivered as he cross the threshold. Walt was stunned. Master Yehudi
turned around, Slim was still standing in the entrance, then he caught sight of
them and broke into a grin. This meeting was no accident, he’d come to Gibson
City because he wanted to talk. Trouble.
Uncle Slim pretended to be kind, amiability. “Who should I run into but my long-
lost nephew?” This is like destiny. Walt and the master remained in silence.
Uncle Slim parked himself beside Walt. “I’m just so bowled over by this joyful
occasion.”, he banged Walt on the back and tousled his hair, still pretending
how happy he was to see Walt. Uncle Slim had bad intentions.
“It gave me the chills to be touched by him like that.” Said Walt. “I squirmed
away from his hand” said Walt, but Slim did not paid any attention to the rebuff.
“It looks like world’s been treating you pretty good these days, don’t it? Your
mentor here must be flushed with pride and money. I can’t tell you the good it
does to me, Walt, seeing mi kin make a name of himself in the big world.” Said
Uncle Slim.
“State your business, friend.” Said the master. “The kid and I were just on our
way out, and we don’t have time to sit around shooting the breeze.”
“Can’t a guy catch up on the news with his own sister’s son? What’s the rush?”
said Uncle Slim
“Walt’s got nothing to say to you, and you’ve got nothing to say to him.” Said the
master
Slim said that something happened to Aunt Peg and that Walt had the right to
know. She is dead. She got took by that tornado that demolished Saint Louis
last year. And Slim escaped, he was on the other side of town, working. Walt
said that it was too bad that it didn’t happen the other way around, “Aunt Peg
was no great, but she didn’t sock me around like you did.” Said Walt. “That’s no
way to talk to your uncle. Mr. Yehudi and me got things to talk about.” Said
Uncle Slim. Master Yehudi said that they’ve got nothing to talk about and that
they had to go. Slim stops them, forgetting his fake charm, anger, just as usual.
“You and I made a deal, and you’re not going to worm out on me now.” Uncle
Slim said to the master. What deal? The master asked. “The one that we made
in Saint Louis 4 years ago. You promised me a cut of the profits, and I’m here to
claim my fair share. 25%, that’s what you promised, and that’s what I want.”
Uncle Slim said.
“As I recall, you were so glad to be getting rid of him. The deal was that I asked
for the boy, and you gave it to me.” The master said.
“I had my conditions. 25%. You agreed. You’re not going to tell me there’s no
deal. You promised me, and I took your word.” said Uncle Slim
“If you think there’s a deal, then show me the contract.” The master said
“We shook hands on it.” Uncle Slim said
“You’re a liar, Mr.Sparks. If you have a complaint against me, take it to a lawyer,
and we’ll see how well your case stands up in court. Come on Walt, let’s go.
They are waiting for us in Urbana.” said the master
Walt and the master stood up. Uncle Slim (Edward J.Sparks) threatens master
Yehudi and Walt. “Be warned, pal. I’m coming after you. You’ll be sorry.” Said
Slim
He pursued us to the door of the restaurant, showering us with his deranged
threats as we climbed into the Pierce Arrow and the master started up the
engine. That was how we left him: beside himself with fury as he watched as
pull away, shaking his fist at us and mouthing his inaudible vengeance. Uncle
Slim had a purpose now, the fucker had finally found a mission in life.
They were out of town. The master defended Walt, he said that it all was a
nonsense from start to finish, that if Slim laid a hand on Walt, the master would
kill him. He swore it.
Walt was proud of the way the master handled the situation, but he was
worried. Slim was my mother’s older brother. Now that Slim had set his mind on
something, he wasn’t likely to be distracted from his goal. Walt didn’t want to
consider Slim’s side of the dispute. Maybe the master did that promise or
maybe not. The only thing that Walt wanted was to have that son-of-a-bitch out
of his life for good. Slim was violent with Walt. All was hatred. Whether he had a
rightful claim or not, he didn’t deserve a penny. Now it was all up to Slim, Walter
knew that Slim was coming, that he’d keep on coming until his hands were
pressed around his throat. These fears and premonitions didn’t leave me, in the
days and months that followed, affecting Walt’s mood, his growing success was
contaminated. It was particularly bad at the beginning, everywhere we went, I
kept expecting Slim to pop up again. He was liable to appear at any moment.
That was what made the situation so hard to bear. “It was the uncertainty, the
thought that all my happiness could be smashed in the blink of an eye.” The
only safe space was standing before a crowd and doing my acts. Slim wouldn’t
dare to make a move in public. Given all the anxiety that Walt felt the rest of the
time, performing became a kind of mental repose. I threw myself into my work
as never before, given the freedom and protection it gave me. Now, he was
Walt the Wonder Boy: a person who did not exist except when he was in the air.
The ground was an illusion, was false, only the air was real now, and for 23
hours a day, I lived as a stranger to myself, cut off from my old pleasures and
habits, a bundle of desperation and fright.
There was a lot of work. Winter. After returning to Wichita, the master worked
put an elaborate tour, with record number of weekly performances. He got us to
Florida for the worst of the cold weather. They were there from mid-January to
the end of March (1929). For this extended trip, Mrs. Witherspoon came with us.
She brought me nothing but good luck. Slim didn’t appear. There were packed
audiences, large box-office receipts, and good companionship (they went to the
movies). Those were the day on the Florida land boom. It was my first
experience going out in front of swells (rich people). Polish and sophistication,
blue-bloods. They took him with gusto. It made no difference, my act was
universal, it floored everyone in the same way, rich and poor alike.
When we returned to Kansas, Walt started to feel more like himself again. Slim
hadn’t shown his face in over five months. They took off to the upper Midwest at
the end of April, and Walt stopped thinking about him, more or less. That scary
scene in Gibson City was in the past. Walt was relaxed and confident. Walt was
hitting puberty. His guard was down, the blade fell at the very moment I was
least expecting it. The master and I were in Northfield, Minnesota, a little town
about forty miles south of Saint Paul, and Walt, as his custom prior to evening
performances, he went to the local movie house. He saw Cocoanuts, a Max
Brothers comedy sit in Florida. Walt was crazy about those clowns, especially
Harpo. The theatre was full. He started to watch the movie, about 20 or 30
minutes into it, I sniffed something strange, a sweet medicinal odor from behind
me. It was a strong smell, and it was getting stronger, before I turned around
and see what it was, a rag drenched in that pungent concoction was clamped
over my face. I struggled to break free of it, a hand pushed me back, and the
fight suddenly went out of me. My muscles went limp; my skin melted, my head
detached itself form by body. Whatever I was from then on, it wasn’t any place
I’d been before. THEY KIDNAPPED HIM. IT WAS UNCLE SLIM.
Slim kidnapped Walt. He wanted money and revenge. He had a partner, Fritz.
They were mental lightweights. They stashed him in a cave on the outskirts of
Northfield for 3 days, they drugged him with ether, the took him to a basement
in Minneapolis or Saint Paul for 1 day, the to the country again, into an
abandoned prospector’s house in South Dakota, very desolate. Slim chose to
do it as slowly as he could, he wanted the master to squirm. Slim was so
satisfied with himself. He wasn’t too rough, but he did slap Walt. Verbal abuse.
Threats. Walt couldn’t guarantee that Slim was not going to kill him once he
collected the money. Not knowing what Slim was going to do tortured Walt.
Fritz only helped, he didn’t say much to Walt for 10 or 12 days, but when the
first ransom note was sent to the master, Slim started driving off every morning
to town, so they stayed alone (Fritz and W). Fritz didn’t sacred Walt the way
Slim did. It was nothing personal against Walt. Walt asked Fritz if Slim was
going to kill him, Fritz answer that he did not know. Walter tries to convince Fritz
that Slim was not going to pay him for his work, that the letter’s that Slim is
sending in the post office are going to get tracked and “they’ll trace your turtles
to this shack in no time.” Fritz tells that they got another partner, that Slim was
writing to him. They pass the notes to the folks with the cash. “There ain’t no
way they’ll fond us here.” That’s it. Walter couldn’t turn Fritz against Uncle Slim.
Fritz didn’t answer Walt. (if Slim was going to kill him). The only hope of Walt
was that the master rescued him. The weeks passed. Once the ransom notes
and negotiations started, Walt detected a gradual hardening of Slim’s mood, he
was less confident, he was no longer enthusiastic. He was in a foul-tempered
mood, angry. The pressure was getting to him, why? Walt didn’t know.
By early June Slim pushed himself close to the snapping point, even Fritz was
showing symptoms of wear and tear. Slim and Fritz began to fight, to have
squabbles. It was getting hotter. Walt was sad, he was thirsty, he cried.
One afternoon, while Walt was crying, Slim said that tomorrow was Walter’s big
day. “Tomorrow we get the dough.” Said Slim. 50 thousand was going to be.
The bills were unmarked. Walt didn’t respond and turned his head away. Slim
said that he had to look at him when he was talking to him, Walt kept his eyes
fixed on the floor, Slim slapped Walt across the cheek. Walt looked up, and Slim
grinned. “And here you got that Jew crud willing to fork over 50 grand to get you
back.” Slim thought that the master was just bluffing, that he is making more
promises that he intend to keep, (that he was not going to give Slim the money).
Walt looked Slim but didn’t answer, Slim was nearly on top of Walt. Slim said
that Walt was the talk of the whole fucking country, that he had seen him
perform several times, 6 or 7 times in the past year. Slim asked Walt how the
hell do you get yourself off the ground like that? What’s the gimmick?, Walt was
not going to talk, but Slim slapped Walter again. Walt answered that there
wasn’t any gimmick, Slim didn’t believe it. So Slim yanked Walter out of his
chair, and he wanted Walt to show him how he could fly without any trickery.
“We’ll step outside and have a little demonstration.” “You get yourself off the
ground, or your ass is fucking grass.” Slim dragged Walt into the other room,
but Walt still had the ropes fastened around his arms and legs, he could do
nothing do fight back, Walt’s head thumped against the floor and splinters
jabbed into his scalp, he screamed, begging for mercy as the blood trickled
thought my hair. Fritz untied Walt, but he said that if he did, Walt was going to
fly clear away from the, Slim betted that Walt wouldn’t get a foot off the ground,
and even if he does, who the fuck cares? Slim got his gun, one shot in the leg
and that’s it. Fritz untied Walt, and Walt was scared, he felt a surge of fear, Walt
said that he wasn’t going to do it, but Slim obliged him, but Walt said no again,
Slim kicked Walt, he was on the floor in pain, Fritz said “lay off him, Slim”, Slim
said “Who asked your opinion, tubby?”, “Cut if out” said Fritz (he was 3 times
heavier and stronger), because he didn’t liked to be called them names. “What
names are you talking about, fatso?” said Slim, “It ain’t nice to mock a fella like
that.” Said Fritz. “You want another name, then start shedding a few pounds.”
Said Slim. This time Slim has pushed him too far. (to Fritz). They were arguing,
and Walt had his arms and legs free, all he had to do is pick the moment to
escape it came when Fritz took a step toward Slim and poked him in the chest.
“You got no call to go on like that, not when I asked you to stop.” Fritz said.
Without making a sound, I began crawling in the direction of the door, inching
forward as smoothly and unhurriedly and I could. Something heavy fell behind
me, scuffling shoes on the bare wood floor, shouts and grunts and foul words, I
was pushing my hand against the screen door, I opened it with one shove, crept
forward another half foot or so, and the tumbled out into the sunlight, landing on
the South Dakota dirt.
1928/1929: WALT ESCAPED. His muscles felt all strange and spongy. When
he tried to stand up, his muscles gone stupid on him, and he couldn’t get them
to work, he began to stumble, fell, lunch forward and fell again. He didn’t have a
second to waste. Walt made it to Slim’s car, Walt knew his way around cars, the
master had taught him how to drive, there was no time to adjust the seat, his
legs were too short so he had to slide down, hanging onto the steering wheel for
dear life. The first cough of the motor halted the fight inside the cabin, and by
the time I got the car in gear, Slim was already bolting out the door and racing
toward me with his gun in his hand. I spun out in an arc, trying to keep as much
distance between us as I could, but the bastard was gaining on me, and I
couldn’t take my hand off the wheel to shift into second, I saw Slim lift the gun
and take aim. I swerved left, barrelling straight into him with the fender. It caught
him just above the knee, and he bounced off and fell to the ground, that gave
me a few seconds to work with, before Slim could stand up, I’d straightened out
the wheel and pointed myself in the right direction. I threw the car into second
and pressed the pedal to the floor. A bullet went crashing thought the rear
window, another one into the dashboard, I groped for the clutch with my foot,
shifted into third, and the I was off, to 30, 40 miles an hour, there were no more
bullets. I’d left that shitbag in the dust, and when I came upon the road a few
minutes later, I was home free.
Walt was so happy to see the master again. “I’ll never let you out of my sight
again.” “I’ll never go nowhere without you, not for the rest of my days.”
They were in Rapid City, South Dakota. Walt was kidnapped for 5 and a half
weeks, Walt was so grateful, the reunion was held in Rapid City, because that’s
where I wound up after my escape. The heap ran put of gas before I’d driven
twenty miles, a traveling salesman picked Walt up just before dark. Walt asked
him to dropped him at the nearest police station, and when those cops found
out who he was, they treated him like a prince. They fed me, gave me new
clothes and a warm bath. By the time the master arrived the next afternoon,
Walt talked to reporters and took pictures. My kidnapping had been front-page
news. Walt was famous now, a showman. When the master arrived, hugs and
tears, they went out of there in a chauffeur-driven car. An hour and a half later,
we were sitting in a private compartment on an eastbound train, headed for
New England and Cape Cod. They were not going to stop off in Kansas, they
were into bed and Walt asked about Mrs. Witherspoon:
“What’s the matter with Wichita?” asked Walt
The master said that it was too hot in there, that the ocean of Cape Cod will
help him recuperate. Walter asked about Mrs. W and the master said that she
won’t be along this time. Why not? Because she’s engaged to be married. She
had to do it, and I didn’t stand in her way. Walt was angry. The master said “she
didn’t do me a bad turn.” Walt said “I spit and curse on that two-faced bitch for
doing you wrong.” She did that because of Walt, to get the money to save him.
“Fifty thousand dollars, sport. You think that kind of money grows on bushes?
When the ransom notes started coming in, we had to act fast.” “It’s a lot of
dough, sure, but we must have earned twice that much by now.” Not even
close, Marion and the master couldn’t even raise half that amount between
them. They did money, but they barely kept their heads above water for all the
overhead. They didn’t have the money. Orville Cox has proposed to Mrs. W 5
times in the past year, but she turned to Cox for the fifty thousand, a sum he
was too willing to part with, but only on the condition that she cast me aside and
join him at the altar. Walter said ?? “But that’s all done now. I got away from
Slim on my own, and nobody had to fork out no fifty thousand. Orville’s still got
his rotten dough and by rights that means Mrs. W’s still free.” The master said
that she was planning to marry him anyway. Walt wanted to break it up, to
snatch her away of the wedding. The master told Walt to let her go. Walt said
that it was his fault. The master said that it was his uncle’s fault, and that he
mustn’t blame himself. Go to sleep. When they were having breakfast in the
dining car, the master looked troubled, he was thinner, something changed in
him, he looked diminished, less imposing, belly? Was he unwell? Indigestion?
How bad was it? But Walter himself was too skinny and had to eat well. Walt’s
stomach shrunken. The master pointed out Walt’s skin: his zits. The master said
that if Walt’s pimples don’t clear up, he was going to show him how to take care
of them and keep the new ones at bay, that his grandmother had a secret
remedy. Acne. The beach is going to do you a world of good.
They spent more than a month in a little beach house on the Cape Cod shore,
Timbuktu. They had a false name: Timothy Buck and Timothy Buck II. A woman
named Mrs. Hawthorne drove from Truro every day to cook and clean for us.
We soaked up the sun, took long walks on the beach, slept 10 or 12 hours
every night. After a week, Walt felt fit enough to try levitation again: we worked
out behind a cliff, where Mrs. Hawthorne couldn’t spy on us: I was a little rusty
at first, and I took some flops and spills, but after 5 or 6 days I was back in my
old form. The fresh air was a great healer, and even if the master’s remedy
didn’t do all he’d promised, half my zits began to fade on their own. Walt began
to have a nasty habit: he started to masturbate. Walter’s dick grew, in size and
stature. As for the master, Walter saw 3 or 4 stomach-clutching episodes, and
the facial twinges occurred almost regularly now, a slight wince as he chewed
his food and saw his hand dart under the table and clutch his belly. But his
spirits were bright, he made arrangements for Walt’s upcoming tour. Walt was
big stuff now. The kidnapping had seen to that, and Master Yehudi was more
than ready to take full advantage of the situation. The master settled us into our
Cape Cod retreat, he could afford to play hard-to-get, he could dictate terms,
press for new and unheard-of percentages from the booking agents, demand
guarantees matched by only the biggest draws. I’d reached the top a lot sooner
than either of us had expected, the master booked Walter into scores of
theaters up and down the East Coast until the end of the year. In real cities.
 Providence
  Newark
 New Heaven
 Baltimore
 Philadelphia
 Boston
 New York
The act had moved indoors, and from now on we’d be playing for high stakes
(possible loss of a high amount of money). “You’re an aerial artist now, Walt,
the one and only of your kind, and folks are going to pay top dollar for the
privilege of seeing you perform.” “One by one they’ll follow you up the stairs of
heaven. By the time it’s over, they’ll be sitting in the presence of God.” Walter
like a God. The kidnaping was the worst thing that had ever happened to me,
and yet it turned out to be my big break, he’d been given a month’s worth of free
publicity, when he escaped from Slim he was already a household name. The
news of my escape created a second sensation on top of the first. He was a
victim and a hero, he was loved. America was at my feet. But Uncle Slim was
still at large, the cops raided the shack in South Dakota, but they found no trace
of the culprits. He should have been scared, on the alert for more trouble, but
he didn’t spend much time worrying. He was confident that he could best Slim
again. Master Yehudi promised to protect Walt, and Walt believed that. Walt
wasn’t going to go to any movie theatre on his own anymore, and as long as the
master was with him, what could possibly happen? Walter thought of the
kidnapping less and less as the days wore on. Walter thought about it just to
wonder how badly he hurt Slim with the car, Walt wanted to have done serious
damage to Slim. Walt was very busy with his show. I didn’t have a spare
moment to sulk or feel frightened. Walt didn’t think about Slim nor Mrs. W.
Walt’s thoughts were turned to a more immediate problem: how to remake
Walt the Wonder Boy into a theatrical performer, a creature fit for the
confines of the indoor stage. They began working on new routines by trial
and error in the beach. They wanted to make every minute count. Before,
Walter performed for 1 hour, having every show to himself. But vaudeville was
different, he had to share the bill with other acts, and the program had to be
boiled down to 20 minutes. Everything had to be squeezed into a smaller place,
but it didn’t mean “worse”. We had some new tools at our disposal, and the trick
was to turn them to our advantage:
 Lights (effects)
 Music (instruments)
 People could concentrate
A hush would greet me the moment the curtain went up, the performance would
be from a few simple stunts to the wildest, most heart-stopping finale ever seen
on a modern stage. After a couple of weeks. Shape and coherence. Structure,
rhythm, and surprise. The act was going to unfold like a story, and little by little
we’d build up the tension, leading the audience into bigger and better thrills as
we went along, saving the best and most spectacular stunts for last. The
costume was a white shirt and loose black trousers, with white dance slippers
which created a contrast with the brown floor of the stage. They broke the act in
4 parts, like an act in a play:
1. Part the first (act like a know-nothing) 2 min and then pull first stunt
2. Part the second (he hungs in midair, invisible ladder, plank, staircase,
rope, swing, slide, 5 feet off the ground, 3 feet, 7 minutes.
3. Part the third standing on air, he rises into the air, climbing to a height of
seven feet, 8 minute routine of aerial acrobatics, danger into pleasure,
euphoria, ecstasy, 6 inches off the ground,
4. Part the forth 7 feet off the ground, the orchestra plays “America the
Beautiful” He walks on the air above and out into the audience
Walter worried about the end (the part where I had to leave the stage and go off
on an aerial tour of the audience, because he didn’t have total confidence in his
loft abilities. If he didn’t maintain a height of 8 feet and a half or 9 feet, all sort of
problems could arise. People could jump up and swat at his legs, what if
someone actually grabbed hold of my ankle and wrestled me to the ground? A
riot would break out in the theater, I’d wind up getting myself killed. “You can do
it" said the master. You got to 12 feet in Florida last winter. “I can’t remember
the last time you dipped under 10.”
The hardest trick was the ladder jump, new, the entire program hinged on my
being able to pull it off. Walt had to be only 3 inches off the ground, but the
difficulty was in the transition: tripping froward, grabbing the rung, and going up
at the same time. I had made progress on reducing the length of my
prelevitation trances: from 6 or 7 seconds into less than 1. But he still lifted off
from a standing position, and now that he had to make such radical change, he
had to rethink the whole process from top to bottom, but he did it. Master
Yehudi dubbed it the Scattershot Fling: felling forward, I’d plant my feet on the
ground for a fraction of a second, and then blink and raise my arm, latching my
hand onto the unseen rug, and then I’d start going up. It lasted 3 quarters of a
second, and it became the turning point of the show.
3 days before we left Cape Cod, the Pierce Arrow was delivered to our door by
a man in a white suit, all the way from Wichita, Walt thought that it was Orville
Cox, but it was Mr. Bigelow, another one of Mrs. W lunkhead admirers, a young
boy of about 24. “She must have done a hell of a snow job to conscript him into
running such a long-distance errand for her.” Walter talks with Mrs. Hawthorne
(small bony figure), what’s for dinner? She answers, she was from New
England. Walter shows her (Mrs. Hawthorne) that he could fly. Shock and
consternation spread across her face, she fainted onto the floor with a tiny thud.
As it happened, Bigelow and the master were just entering the house at the
point, running into the kitchen, master Yehudi got there first, when Bigelow
arrived, my feet were already touching the ground. Whats this??? Tha master
said, “Just a little accident” Walt said, Master Yehudi was angry. Walt regretted
the whole stupid prank. “Go to your room, you idiot, and don’t come out until I
tell you. We have company now, and I’ll deal with you later.” Master Yehudi
said. When Mrs. Hawthorne recovered, she promptly picked herself up, and
marched out the door, vowing never to set foot in our house again. Walt had
scared the poor woman half to death. That’s exactly what he wanted to do, but
now that he’d done it, it didn’t seem so funny to me anymore. They stayed on
for another 2 days after that, but that was the last we ever saw of her. The
meals deteriorate, but Walt had to clean the house on the morning they packed
up and left. Bigelow hang around for only a few hours, and by late afternoon a
taxi came to fetch him, to drive him to the nearest railroad station, where he
would begin his long trip back to Kansas. He was a buddy of Orville Cox, the
man that Mrs. Witherspoon had chosen over me and the master. To make
matters worse, master Yehudi was on his best behaviour, not only did he shake
his hand, but he entrusted him with delivering his wedding present to the bride-
to-be. Just as the cab door was about to close, the master placed a large,
beautifully wrapped package into Bigelow’s hands. Walter had no idea of what
was hidden in the box. Walt was going to ask the master, but he forgot. Seven
years went by before Walt discovered what the gift was.
From Cape Cod we went to Worcester, half a day’s drive to the west in the
Pierce Arrow. Walt apologized to the master again, so that problem was
yesterday’s news. They stayed in the Cherry Valley Hotel, a dingy hooker’s nest
two doors down the Luxor Theatre. They rehearsed in the music hall. That’s
where the first performance was going to be, it was a far cry from the grand
entertainment palace I’d been hoping for, but the theaters would get better once
we hit some of the larger stops on the tour. Worcester was a good quiet place to
begin, he said, to familiarize myself with the feel of the stage. I caught on fast,
but there were all sorts of kinks and glitches to be worked on. The master was
consumed by a thousand and one details.
The hotel was conveniently located, but the nights in that flea-bag almost did
me in. With all the whores walking up and down the stairs and sauntering
through the halls, my dick throbbed me like a broken bone and gave me no rest.
Walt beat his meat, because he was surrounded with hookers and sounds. One
night, I must have made too much noise, the eve of the Worcester performance,
and the master suddenly woke up, give it a rest, kid!!, you’ll tire yourself out,
wanking takes its toll, save it for when it really counts. We have some big days
and nights ahead of us, and you’re going to need every ounce of strength
you’ve got.”
We stunned them in Worcester, Springfield, Bridgeport, New Haven witch
proved to be a blessing in disguise since it buttoned the lips of the doubters
once and for all. With so much talk about me circulating in the air, I suppose it
was natural that some people should begin to suspect fraud, cheating. “Come to
the theatre and judge for yourself.” They received a lot of box-office receipts.
After 2 or 3 weeks of mounting controversy, things finally came to a head in
New Haven, where Yale College was located. Walt remembered his brother
Aesop just prior to the performance, he was an emotional wreck, and try as he
did to get his bearings, he turned in the flattest performance of his career. When
the moment came to crank it up and fly over the heads of the audience, I
couldn’t maintain altitude. By sheer will-power I’d managed to lift myself to 7
and a half feet, but that was the best I could do. After that, things were from bad
to worse. Halfway out over the orchestra seats, I decided to make a last effort to
see if I couldn’t get myself a little higher, maybe 6 or 8 more inches. Not only
was I not going up, but after a few seconds I realized that I was actually
beginning to sink slowly, by the time I reached the back rows, I was down to 6
feet. The fun began. A bald-headed goon shot out of his seat and whacked me
on the heel of my left foot, then someone else batted my other foot. I tumbled
out of the air like a dead sparrow and landed forehead-first on the rim of a metal
chair back. The impact was so sudden and so fierce, it knocked me put cold.
Nine thousand people shouting and jumping every which way, an outbreak of
mass hysterics that spread through the hall like a brushfire.
“Unconscious thought I might have been, my fall had proved one thing, and it
had proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt for all time. The act was real. There
were no invisible wires attached to my limbs, no helium bubbles hidden under
my clothes, no silent engines strapped around my waist. One by one, members
of the audience passed my dormant body around the theater groping and
pinching me with their curious fingers as if I were some kind of medical
specimen. The master had sprung from his position backstage and was fighting
his way toward me. The verdict was unanimous, Walt the Wonder Boy was the
real goods.
The first of the headaches came that night, Walt and master Yehudi meet at the
bathroom, the master was in pain, gasping and retching as if his insides had
caught fire. He did everything to cover up what just had happened. Master
Yehudi explained that he “I gorge myself on rancid cherrystones. I should learn
to lay off those buggers. Every time I eat them, I come down with the goddamn
bends.” Walter didn’t believe him.
Walter was feeling better. What worried Walter was the master’s condition. The
truth couldn’t be hidden anymore. But Walt didn’t dare to mention it. The
thought that the master had been struck by some terrible disease was too
frightening even to consider. Rather than jump into morbid conclusions, I let him
cow me into accepting his version of the incident. Walt was afraid.
They went from New Haven to Providence, then to Boston, then to Albany,
then to Syracuse, then to Buffalo. It was late summer, early fall. The master
and I were on a roll now, and it seemed that nothing could stop us anymore.
Hundreds of shows were turned away at the box-office every night. Walt was
very famous now. My fellow performers were a little envious, when the mobs
poured in to see my act, they saw the other acts too, and that meant money in
all our pockets. Over that weeks and months, Walt spent a lot of money on
entertainment before his show. Walt wanted to make friends backstage, but the
master didn’t like that. But Walt figured that he would be on the vaudeville circuit
for years to come, and he saw no point in making enemies. Unbeknownst to
Walt, the master had arranged by the end of September, a one-man spring tour.
He has already been hatching his own plans for the future. The better things
went for us, the higher he set his sights. The current tour wouldn’t be over until
Christmas, and yet he couldn’t resist looking beyond it to something even more
spectacular. The idea was to work our way east from San Francisco to New
York, playing the ten or twelve biggest cities for special command
performances. We’d book the shows in indoor arenas and football stadiums
like Madison Square Garden and Soldier’s Field, no crowd would be smaller
than 15,000. “A triumphal march across America.” “If you can swing a tour like
that, we’ll rake in millions.” “Keep on doing what you’ve been doing, and
Rawley’s March is a sure thing.”
They were gearing up for the first theatrical performance in New York: we
wouldn’t be there until Thanksgiving weekend, but it was going to be the
highlight of the season. Ten Bostons and ten Philadelphias wouldn’t equal one
New York. 86 performances in Buffalo and 93 in Trenton: the sum wouldn’t
amount to a minute’s worth of stage time in the Big Apple. New York was
ground zero on the show business map, no matter how many raves I got in
other cities, I wouldn’t be anything until I took my act to Broadway. That’s why
the master had booked New York for so late in the tour. He wanted me to be an
old hand by the time we got there. By October 12, I’d done 44 variety theater
gigs, and they still had more than a moth to go. I had never endured such
suspense.
13/14: Richmond
15/16: Baltimore
Then, headed to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Immediately upon finishing the show,
just as I took my bow and the curtain came down, I passed out and feel to the
floor, I had felt perfectly fine until that moment. Five minutes later, I opened my
eyes in the dressing room, I felt a little light-headed, but then I stood up, and the
headache returned, savage, blinding pain. Walt was loosing his balance.
Headache and dizziness. The master called Wilkes Barre and canceled my
performance for the following night. I slept soundly in the Scranton hotel, and by
the next morning he felt well again, utterly free of pain and discomfort. We sett
off to Pittsburgh in good spirits. The next night, however, when I did my show at
the Fosberg Theatre, it was Scranton all over again. Just as the curtain came
down and the act was done, I collapsed. The headache started up again
immediately after I opened my eyes, and this time it didn’t go away in one night.
When Walt woke up, the daggers were still lodged in his skull, and didn’t leave
until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Master Yehudi have been forced to cancel that
night’s performance.
Everything pointed to the knock on the head I’d received in New Haven. It was a
concussion? As long as I kept my feet on the ground, I remained in good health.
The headaches and dizziness came only after I performed. The condition was
linked with levitation? The master wondered if my brain hadn’t been jarred in
such a way as to put undue pressure on my cranial arteries every time I went up
into the air, which in turn caused the excruciating attacks when I came down.
He wanted to put me in the hospital and have some X rays taken off my skull. A
week of ten days off might be just what you need. Walt didn’t want to go to the
hospital, he wanted to kept going doing shows. The master would cancel
Reading and Altoona, Elmira and Binghamton. I’m thinking about New York,
that’s the one you’ve got to be in shape for. Walt insisted to do the acts anyway,
with pain. “My head don’t hurt when I do the act.” “Problem is, the act is
wiping you out. You keep coming down with those headaches, and you
won’t be Walt the Wonder Boy much longer. I’ll have to change your name
to Mr. Vertigo.”
There comes a time in every levitator’s career when the air is fraught with peril
(dangerous). They made a bargain: I’d play Reading the next night, and if I was
well enough to go in Altoona the night after that, I would perform as scheduled.
Was Walt loosing his touch? They only thing Walt could do was to fight his way
through it, to go on performing util he got better or couldn’t take it anymore.
Better to be dead than to lose my powers. If I couldn’t be Walt the Wonder Boy,
I didn’t want to be anyone.
Reading turned out badly, much worse than he feared. I did the show and
collapsed, just as I’d known I would, Walt opened his eyes 15 or 20 minutes
later, I didn’t even have to stand up to feel the pain, the instant he woke up, the
agony began. I woke up in a Philadelphia hospital ten hours later, and for the
next 12 days Walt didn’t budge (move). The headache continued for another 2
days, he woke up in the 3 day, and the pain was gone. Sedation. Examinations
and procedures. Master Yehudi sat by my side throughout this ordeal. The
press, the papers in the front pages, they were updated and knew his
whereabouts.
1929
Then the New York stock market crashed, and I got pushed off the front
pages. I wasn’t paying much attention, but I figured the crisis was only
temporary, and once that Black Tuesday business was over I’d be back in the
headlines where I belonged.
The only thing I cared about was getting the show back on the road. My
headache was gone and I felt terrific, super normal. As soon as the tests results
are in, he could leave the hospital. But the doctors couldn’t find a thing wrong
with me. Walt was 14 by then. He was healthy. The doctors couldn’t determine
the precise cause of the headaches and dizziness. Walter was so happy. But
the master said that there aren’t going to be any more shows, “We’re all washed
up, kid. Walt the Wonder Boy is kaput.” Master Yehudi’s expression turned
sadder. “We’ve come to the end of the line, and there’s not a fucking thing we
can do about it.” But I’m healthy!! “That’s the trouble. There’s nothing wrong
with you—which means there’s nothing to be cured. Your career is over.” “The
problem is puberty, adolescence. But there is only one cure for your condition,
but I wouldn’t dream of inflicting it to you. I’ve already put you through enough.”
“I’m talking about castration, Walt. You cut off your balls, and then maybe
there’s a chance.” Master Yehudi didn’t expected Walt to do that, he wanted to
stop it. Nothing was guaranteed. So, Walt decided not to do it. There’s a
permanent condition, and there is no cure for it, the headaches will be with you
for the rest of your life. For every minute you spend in the air, you’ll be racked
with pain for 3 hours on the ground. The older you are, the worse that pain will
be. It was so sad, depressing. “I’d struggled to make a success of myself for so
long, and now, just when I was about to become one of the immortals of history,
I had to turn my back on it and walk away.” Walt was angry, furious. Master
Yehudi accepted it with maturity. Walt couldn’t take it, so he was desperate to
prove the master wrong, so right there, in that Philadelphia hospital room, on
November 3rd, 1929, he made a last attempt to resurrect his career: he lifted
himself off the ground, not accepting what was happening. “For every second
you stay up there, you’ll have three minutes of pain. I guarantee it.” So Walt
came down. And it happened. Walter was desperate, he wanted a shot, but the
master didn’t help him. “You’ll get over it, in less than an hour, you’ll be as good
as new.” Master Yehudi started packing the bags. Walt deserved it, because he
didn’t listen to the master. “The glory days were over, Walt the Wonder Boy was
dead, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d ever show his face again.”
We walk back to the master’s hotel in silence, and when they reached the
entrance, Walt said good-bye. “You’ll be looking for a new boy now, and there
ain’t much point in hanging around if I’m just going to be in the way.” And why
would I look for another boy? “I ain’t no good to you no more.” You think I’dropp
you like that? “Why not? Fair is fair, and if I can’t deliver the goods, it’s only right
for you to start making other plans. They still partners. 5 years is a long time,
after all we’ve been through together, I’ve sort of grown attached. I’ve got some
plans to discuss with you. They’ve got 27,000 dollars. Walt thought that the
master was finished with him, that he’d kick me out and never give it a second
thought. I wasn’t just a pay check to him. “master Yehudi was still with me and
he was carrying a pocketful of matches to light the way.”
3 or 4 plans.
1) first plan was the simplest: We’d move to New York and live like regular
people.
2) We’d go out on tour, giving lectures at colleges, churches, and ladies’ garden
clubs on the art of levitation
3) We’d pack up our belongings, get into the car, and drive out to Hollywood. I’d
start a new career as a movie actor, and he’d be my agent and manager. Walt
liked this idea/plan.
They were headed to a new life in the sunny hills of Tinseltown. They were
somewhere in Texas, a little past Forth Worth, Walter wanted to make a lot of
money. The master said “I just need to know there’ll be a future for you after I’m
gone.” But you ain’t even 50 yet!! Well, 46. They were talking about California
(they were going there). The master said that it can’t do us any harm to prepare
for what’s ahead. That he will not be here forever. Master Yehudi wanted to say
something, a confession. There was a message buried between the lines. Walt
remembered the stomach-clutching scene in the New Haven hotel. If Walt
caught him grimacing or grabbing his stomach again, he was going to speak up,
and hustle him to the first doctor he could find. Master Yehudi noticed Walt’s
worry, so he changed the subject. They left Texas and were crossing into New
Mexico, but no signs of illness they were. He managed to pull the wool over my
eyes again. He was so much quicker than I was. Master Yehudi always won.
And he went on winning to the bitter end. They spent days riding through New
Mexico and Arizona, the desert, Walt didn’t like it. Boring.
The darkest day of my life dawned in western Arizona on November 16,
1929. We were crossing the California border to begin our glide through the
Mojave toward the coast. We’d figured we’d make it to Los Angeles in time for
dinner.
 Buster Keaton https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buster_Keaton
 Harold Lloyd https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lloyd
Walt saw something on the road in front of them. They were running for their
lives. There was a gang of 4 men spread out across, they were standing in a
row, it was tough to make them out. They were signalling us to stop. They had
handkerchiefs over their faces, they had guns, the master threw the car into
reverse, the 4 men took off after that, running up the road. Master Yehudi had
turned his head in the other direction to look through the rear window, and he
couldn’t see what I saw, but as I watched the men gaining ground on us, I
noticed that one of them ran with a limp, but he moved faster than the others,
he was out in the lead by himself, the handkerchief slipped off his face and it
was Edward Sparks (Uncle Slim). My life was ruined forever. We couldn’t go
fast enough in reverse to get away, we had to turn around and go forward, but
the time it took to turn around would slow us down even more. But we had to
risk it. They turned around, but the guns were coughing behind us. A bullet
came blasting through the back window, the car bucked off the road, and a
moment later blood started gushing out of his right shoulder. The car went out
of control, and before he could get us turned back toward the road, the left front
tire skidded up the ramp of a large protruding stone and the whole machine
tipped over. Walt was unconscious. Slim and his men swoop down on the car
and rob us of the strongbox in the trunk, they slashed the other 3 tires, they
opened our suitcases and scattered our clothes in the ground. They didn’t shoot
them. They had the strongbox with all our money in it, they probably figured that
we’d die from our injuries anyway. Slim must have though that we had millions,
but it was 27,000 dollars. Split that into 4, and the shares didn’t up to much. It
made me glad to think about his disappointment.
When I woke up, I found myself lying on top of the master. He was still
unconscious, our clothes soaked in blood. Walt was ok, he got out of the Pierce
Arrow, he could see the master’s head dangling out the window through a
narrow crack, “Get me out of here, Walt.” “My arm’s all busted up, and I can’t
move on my own.” The master was in so much pain, Walt got the master out
with his belt. They were in the Mojave Desert. They were in the middle of
nowhere, but the worst of all was the master’s wound. He’d lost an awful lot of
blood in the past two hours. He had no strength, I sat him down in the shade of
the Pierce Arrow and then ran off to collect some clothing scattered about on
the ground to use as bandages, but it didn’t do much good. Master Yehudi was
about to die. Walt wanted to save him at all costs. “Three days from now, we
would have been in New York.” But Walter said, “One day from now, we’re
going to be in Hollywood.”
“Whatever you are, it’s because of me. I just want you to know that it works
both ways. Whatever I am, it’s because of you.” “Don’t worry, Walt. Everything’s
going to be all right.” Something changed in the atmosphere. The air was
strange.
The master asks Walt to climb back into the car and fetch the pistol from the
glove compartment. What do you want that for? The gun? Walt handed the
master the gun. Be careful, said Walt. That weapon’s loaded. The master said,
“Sit down beside me and listen to what I have to say.” We are in a nasty spot,
and we have to get ourselves out of it, if we don’t do it pretty soon, we’re both
going to die.” “Problem is, I can’t stand up and I can’t walk. Nothing’s going to
change that. By the time the sun goes down, I’ll only be weaker than I am now.”
“I stay here, and you go off on your own.” Walt said no. “Forget it. I ain’t budging
from your side, master.”
“Face the facts. This is the last day we’ve ever going to spend together.”
You don’t want me to suffer, but it’s the best solution for both of us.
You take this gun and shoot me through the head. First, you kill me and then
you go on your way. It’s just a bullet in the shoulder, it’s not going to kill you. But
master Yehudi has CANCER IN HIS BELLY. He doesn’t have more than 6
months to live, six months of pain and agony—that’s what I’ve got to look
forward to. I was hoping to get you started on something new before I kicked
the bucket, but that wasn’t meant to be. You’ll be doing me a big favour if you
pull the trigger. Walt won’t do it. So the master had to do it himself, “Remember
the good times, remember the things I taught you.” Then he shut his eyes and
squeezed the trigger.
WALT WANTS REVENGE NOW.
It took me 3 years to track down Uncle Slim. Walt looked for him from San
Francisco to New York. I turned back to the beggar I was born to be. He worked
and he stole too. Walt was 18 when he caught up with him. Roosevelt’s
inauguration was just 2 months away. Bootleggers were still in business, but
with Prohibition about to give up the ghost, they were selling off their last bits of
stock and exploring new lines of crooked investment. That’s how I found my
Uncle. Slim was just the sort to latch onto a dead-end operation like illegal
booze, close to home. Walt looked for him in Saint Louis, Kansas City, Omaha,
Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit. From Detroit he went
back to Chicago in January of 1933, the trail led to Rockford, Illinois, and
that’s where I found him: sitting in a warehouse at 3 o’clock in the morning,
guarding 200 smuggled cases of bonded Canadian rye. Walt had the master’s
gun, but it wasn’t enough to just kill Slim, he had to know who his executioner
was. Walt was going to make Slim drink a cup of strychnine while holding a gun
to his head, to make him drink down his own death. King Arthur. Holy Grail.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estricnina#:~:text=La%20estricnina%20es%20un
%20alcaloide,en%20particular%20p%C3%A1jaros%20y%20roedores.
Slim had a revolver….Walt pressed the gun into the back of his head, Walt
threated Slim, Walt gave a satchel to Slim and there he pocketed his gun.
Walter now is opposite Slim: the satchel had a jar with poisoned milk and a
silver chalice (caliz). Pour the milk into the cup, lift it in the air and say, “Long life
to you, Walt”, and the start drinking. Drink the whole thing down. Drink it to the
last drop. Slim slammed the empty cup down on the table and nothing
happened. Walt didn’t have the guts to kill Slim. Slim turned around and started
walking away, and I couldn’t bring myself to fire the gun. But the poison caught
up with him, and he died. But Walt dragged his corpse back toward the light to
have a better look, and just as I was going to put a bullet through Slim’s head, a
voice interrupted me from behind:
A man (Bingo) make Walt drop his gun, this man had a gun. What I am
supposed to do with you? Well, seeing as how you just lost one of your men,
you might think about hiring someone to replace him. He was Bingo Walsh, Mr.
Chicago, right-hand man to Boss O’Malley, You’re King of the Loop, Bingo, the
shaker and mover who cranks the wheel and makes things spin. Bingo smiled,
and he held the gun at Walt still, so Bingo said yes, that they’ll give it a shot. But
if you don’t work right, I’ll kill you, I dump you. “It sound fair to me. If I can’t do
the job, you cut off my head with an axe.” “If I can’t catch on with you, Bingo,
what’s the use of living anyway?”
That was how my new career began, Bingo broke me in and taught me the
ropes, and little by little I became his boy. O’Malley had one of the largest
setups in Cook County, and Bingo was responsible for running the show. They
run funny business: gambling parlors, whorehouses…
Bingo had one of the cleverest talents in the Midwest, I was lucky to have him
as my mentor, Bingo took me under his wing, and my whole life turned around.
Walt was much better economically speaking, and doors opened whenever I
knocked.
I started as a gofer, running errands for him and doing odd little jobs. It was the
Depression, after all, and where else was someone like me going to get a better
deal? Once I proved my loyalty to him, he didn’t hold me back. By early spring I
was already climbing the ladder. Bingo paired me with an ex-pug named
Stutters Grogan, and we began going to rounds of bars, restaurants, and candy
stores to collect O’Malley weekly protection money. Stutters Grogan was quiet
and he wasn’t much on speech-making. So Walt was the one who settle the
conflicts. Bingo moved Walt up to a position on the South Side running numbers
for the next 6 months. Walt was on colored neighbourhoods, they parted with
their nickels and dimes for a shot at winning a few extra bucks, everyone had a
system, and I liked listening to people tell me how they picked their
combinations. The numbers came from everywhere. Loteria? Bingo promoted
me again. From numbers I was shifted over to gambling, and by 1936 I was a
chief operating boss of a betting parlor on Locus Street. I ran a good little
business, I was 21, and any way you looked at it I was sitting pretty. I lived in a
classy room in the Featherstone Hotel. Woman. I was no longer a virgin when I
reached Chicago, but when I joined up with Bingo, I had my cash to buy my way
into any bloomers I fancied. Once I settled into my new life, I did everything I
could to make up for the lost time. I made a home for myself in the organization.
I never breathed a word to anyone about my past: I hurt too much to look back,
the best part of me was lying under the ground with master Yehudi in the
California desert, I drove me crazy thinking about it during the day, all the
Bingos in the world couldn’t begin to make up for him. Without the Master I was
no one, and I wasn’t going anywhere.
October 1936: I had one chance to pull out before it was too late, but I was too
blind to go for it when the offer fell in my lap. I looked and saw the last person in
the world I was expecting to see: There was Mrs. Witherspoon with her arms full
of bundles, rushing toward a taxi, I stood there, she glanced up, flicked her eyes
in my direction, and froze. I smiled. Her jaw literally dropped, and then she was
flinging her arms around me and planting lipstick all over my newly shaven mug.
They start to talk: So, Mrs. Whitherspooon didn’t marry, she stepped back in the
altar. (7 years later). She didn’t marry because of the present that master
Yehudi sent her. Billy Bigelow gave it to her from Cape Cod: once I
unwrapped it, I knew the marriage wasn’t meant to be. The present was a
globe of the world with a note in it:
“Wherever you are, I’ll be with you.”
There was only one man for me, if I couldn’t have him, I wasn’t going to fool
around with substitutes and cheap imitations.
They went to have lunch, to a private area, little Walt wasn’t so little anymore.
Mrs. W was surprised, Walt was doing alright for himself. They started to talk:
but Mrs. W knew a lot more about my last months with the master than I thought
she did. Mrs. W and the master were not going to get married: because of the
master’s cancer. Mrs. W didn’t care about how long he had to live, I just wanted
to be his wife. But he wouldn’t go for it. “This Cox fellow isn’t too bad. He’ll give
us the money to spring Walt, and then you’ll be set up in style for the rest of
your days. It’s a sweet deal, sister, and you’d be a fool not to jump at it.” He
loved us both, Walt. Mrs. W kept pressing Walt to talk about the last part of the
trip, to explain what happened to us after we got to California. So I told her. Walt
still has the master’s gun, he showed it to Mrs. W. “You did the only thing you
could,” said Mrs. W
“I let him down is what I did. He begged me to pull the trigger, and I couldn’t do
it. His last wish—and I turned my back on him and made him do it himself.”
Walt can’t remember the good times, I can’t get around that last day. I can’t go
back far enough to remember anything before it.”
Walt didn’t want to get rid of the master’s gun, if he did, Yehudi will be gone
forever.
They talked about the headaches and flying. A lot of people still think about you,
Walt. Yeah, I know. I’m a fucking legend. The problem is nobody believes it
anymore.
What about Wichita? Mrs. W packed her bags 5 years ago and haven’t set foot
in that town since. Who bought the house? I didn’t sell it, Billy Bigelow lives
there with his chatterbox wife and two little girls. I thought the rent would give
me some nice pin money, but the poor sap lost his job at the bank a month after
they moved in, and I’ve been letting him have it for a dollar a year.
You must be doing ok, Mrs. W. “I pulled out of the market the summer before
the crash. Something to do with ransom notes, cash deliveries, drop-off points
—it’s all a bit blurry now. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to
me. Your little misadventure saved my life, Walt. Whatever I was worth then, I’m
worth ten times that now.”
She is in Chicago just for business, she was going to go back to New York
tomorrow morning. Fifth Avenue. You look like big money now. Most of it comes
from oil. She talked to Walt about her deals and investments, and I aimed to be
out of there in half an hour.
Mrs. W asks Walt if he wanted to get a place in Texas, because she had some
new wildcat rigs there, and she needed someone to watch over the drilling.
Walter didn’t know about oil. You’re smart. You’ll catch on fast. Walt have
cleaned his grammar. No ain’ts. Walt made a lot of progress; he had some
money.
“Come in with me, and two or three years from now we’ll be partners.”
“I like what I’m doing now. Why go to Texas when I’ve got everything I want in
Chicago?”
“Because you’re in the wrong business, that’s why. There’s no future in this
cops-and-robbers stuff. You keep it up, and you’ll either be dead or serving time
before your 25 birthday.”
Mrs. W wasn’t just peeved at me for turning down her offer. Chance had thrown
us together again, and only a bungler would pass up the call of fate as blithely
as I had. She wasn’t wrong to feel disgusted with me, but I had my own path to
follow, and I was too full of myself to understand that my path was the same as
hers. If I hadn’t been so hot to run off and plant my pecker in Dixie Sinclair. I
might have listened to her more carefully, but I was in a rush, and I couldn’t be
bothered with any soul-searching that day.
“Okay, Mr. Big Time. Show off if it makes you happy. But if you ever wise up,
don’t forget where I am. Maybe you’ll come to your senses before it’s too late.”
She gave him her business card. But Walt never called. He lost the card while
fucking with the whore in suite 409 of the Royal Park Hotel.
Walt was riding the express train with a one-way ticket to Fat City. New York.
Walt gambled a thousand dollars. Walt requested a private counsel with Bingo
in his penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Michigan. Walt told Bingo that he
wanted to go his own way and open a nightclub that would occupy his energies
to the exclusion of all else. Showing how many advantages would accrue to him
in terms of both profit and pleasure, I eventually brought him around. Walt made
business with Bingo. All I wanted was my nightclub, and with Bingo’s fifty
percent subtracted from the take, I was still going to come out ahead. 110,000
dollars. His half would guarantee me protection from O’Malley. Bingo had a lot
of connections with the Chicago liquor board, the commercial laundry
companies, and the local talent agents. Walt called the place Mr. Vertigo’s.
The place opened on December 31, 1937. Walt had his nightclub for 3 and a
half years. But I messed up and blow my life apart, my own downfall, I was all
the way at the top when I stumbled. It was the number one hot spot in Chicago.
Walt had a lot of sex.
September 1939: Just three days after the German Army invaded Poland,
Dizzy Dean walked into Mr. Vertigo’s and it all started to come undone.
Jugador de beisbol https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_Dean
Walt had Always been a big fan of the Saint Louis Cardinals, he was a Redbird.
They won the pennant in 30’ and 31’. In 32’ the team dropped to 7th place, but it
didn’t matter. Dizzy Dean was an established star, a big-time force on the
American scene. With life growing more comfortable for me all the time, I was in
a position to catch the Cards in action whenever they came to town. In 33’ Dean
broke the record of striking out 17 batters in a game. They’d added some new
players to the roster:
 Joe Medwick
 Leo Durocher
 Rip Collins
34’ turned out to be their glory year: Dizzy’s kid brother Paul won 19 games,
Dizzy won 30, and the team fought from 10 games back to overtake the Giants
and win the pennant. That was the first year the World Series was broadcast on
the radio, and I got to listen to all 7 games sitting at home in Chicago. Dizzy was
knocked unconscious: but his x rays revealed nothing. But he won the match
with Detroit.
Six months later, Dean opened the new season against the Clubs in Chicago.
Freddie Lindstrom. But the Cubs were the best in 1935. They year when Dizzy’s
ups and downs began to affect me in a far too personal way. He fracture his
skull. Walt was 27/28. Saint Louis dealt him for The Cubs. Dizzy was going to
Chicago.
1939. Dean was dumb. The Cubs were well out of the pennant race. Se
saludan. Dean thinks he remembers Walt. Walt says no. They enter. The next
season started.
April 1940: the war in Europe was going full tilt. Dizzy was back with the Cubs.
He wandered back into the club one night and greeted me like a long-lost
brother. He couldn’t have been more delighted to see me. How to resist a guy
like that? I’d done everything I could to harden my heart against him, and yet
came on in such a friendly way that I couldn’t help but succumb to the attention.
Dean stopped by often over the next 6 weeks, more than a passing
acquaintance. He came alone a few times to eat an early supper, and I’d sit whit
him shooting the breeze. Walt was not happy about Dean’s comeback to
baseball. Deal played bad, but Walt didn’t say a word. Walt had grown too fond
of him by then, Walt couldn’t bring himself to tell Dean the truth.
After a couple of months, his wife Pat persuaded him to go down to the minors
to work on a new delivery. The idea was that he’d make better progress out of
the spotlight. There was no hope for him. So Walt got up the nerve to say
something:
“Maybe it’s time to pack it and head home to the farm.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Problem is, I ain’t fit for nothin’ but throwin’
baseballs.”
Then Dean left for Tulsa, in the Texas League. This time he could barely hold
his own. The incredible thing to me was how calmly he accepted his disgrace.
What was the use of arguing? I figured it was only a matter of time now, so I
played along with him and kept my thoughts to myself. Sooner or later, he was
bound to see the light.
The Cubs recalled him in September. They wanted to see if the bush-league
experiment had paid off, but his performance was hardly encouraging, he was
mediocre. But The Cubs decided that Dean had shown enough of his old flair to
warrant another season, and so they went ahead and asked him back.
By the time spring came around again, I understood what had to be done. It
wasn’t as if I felt there was a choice. Destiny has chosen me as its instrument,
saving Dizzy was the only thing that mattered. If he couldn’t do it himself, then
I’d have to step in and do it for him.
I actually thought it was a duty to persuade Dizzy Dean he didn’t want to
live anymore. Walt planned to rescue him by talking him into his own
murder. This proved how sick my soul had become in the years since
Master Yehudi’s death. I’d latched onto Dizzy because he reminded me of
myself, and as long as his career flourished, I could relieve my past glory
through him as Walt The Wonder Boy. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if
he’d pitched for some town other than Saint Louis. Maybe it wouldn’t have
happened of our nicknames hadn’t been so similar. A moment came when I
couldn’t tell the difference between us anymore. His triumphs were my
triumphs, and when bad luck finally caught up with him and his career fell
apart, his disgrace was my disgrace. I couldn’t stand to live trough it
again, and little by little I began to lose my grip. For his own good, Dizzy
had to die. Not only for his sake, but for my sake as well. I had the
weapon, I had the arguments, I had the power of madness on my side. I
would destroy Dizzy Dean, and in so doing I would finally destroy myself.
The Cubs hit Chicago for the home opener on April 10. I got Diz on the horn
that same afternoon, and asked him to stop by my office, explaining that
something important come up. If you’re interested in a proposition that will turn
your life around, you’ll come. We set the appointment for 11 o’clock the next
morning. He walked in, all smiles. They started to talk. Dean caught the
cynicism in my voice and gave a defensive shrug.
“What’s the scoop?” “From the way you talked on the phone, it sounded like life
and death.”
“It is. That’s exactly what it is.”
“How so?”
“I’ve got something that it won’t cost you a cent, Diz”
“Everything costs, fella. It’s the law of the land.”
“I don’t want your money. I want to save you, Diz. Let me help you, and the
torment you’ve been living in these past four years will be gone.”
“And how you aimin’ to do that?”
“Any way you like. The method’s not important. The only thing that counts is
that you go along with it—and that you understand why it has to be done.”
???
“When a man comes to the end of the line, the only thing he really wants is
death.” (master Yehudi had told Walt that right before he killed himself)
Dean burst out laughing. It is a joke?
“I’ve been where you are. 12, 13 years ago, I was sitting on top of the world. I
was the best at what I did, in a class by myself. And let me tell you, what you’ve
accomplished on the ball field is nothing compared to what I could do. Then,
just like that, something happened and I couldn’t go on. But I didn’t hang around
and make people feel sorry for me, I didn’t turn myself into a joke. I called it
quits, and then I went on and made another life for myself. That’s what I’ve
been hoping and praying would happen to you. But you just don’t get it, do you?
Your fat hick brain’s too clogged to get it.”
Dizzy recognized Walt as Walt the Wonder Boy.
“Believe it, friend. When I told you I was great, I meant great like nobody else.
Like a comet streaking across the sky.”
“It breaks my heart to see what you’re doing to yourself. Let me help you, Diz.
Death isn’t so terrible. Everybody has to die sometime, and once you get used
to the idea, you’ll see that now is better than later. If you give me the chance, I
can spare you the shame. I can give you back your dignity.”
Dizzy said that Walt was crazy.
“Let me kill you, and the last four years will be forgotten. You’ll be great again,
champ. You’ll be great again forever.”
Walt wanted to make him see the wisdom of the plan for himself, not to force
him into it. I wanted him to want what I wanted, to feel so convinced by my
proposal that he would actually beg me to do it. But I scared him off with my
threats. No wonder he thought I was crazy. I went too fast. I’d let the whole
thing get out of hand, and now, just when we should have been started, he was
already standing up and making his way for the exit.
Walt had locked the door from the inside.
“Pull the trigger on Dizzy, and thus go back to the desert and do the job
that was never done. Make him beg for death in the same way Master
Yehudi had begged, and then undo the wrong by summoning the courage
to act.”
“He was begging for his life—not to kill him, but to let him live—and it was all so
upside-down, so different from how I’d imagined it would be, I didn’t know what
to do. Someone knocked on the door, a woman, it was his wife, Pat. Walt put
away the revolver and opened the door. Dizzy told his wife everything. “The little
fucker was gonna kill me!” “He was holdin’ a gun to my head, and the little
fucker was gonna shoot!”
Those were the words that knocked me out of the nightclub business.
Walt got arrested. If not for Bingo, I might have done some serious time for my
little stab at playing God, but he had all the right connections, and a deal was
struck before the case ever came to court. The judge gave a choice. Plead
guilty to a lesser charge and do 6 to 9 months at Joliet, or else leave Chicago
and enlist in the army. Walt chose the second option. Bingo had not sympathy
for what I’d done, he thought I was nuts. I agreed to compensate Bingo for his
legal help by signing over my share of the club to him. Losing Mr. Vertigo’s was
hard on me, but not half as hard as giving up the act have been, not a tenth as
hard as losing the master. I was nobody special now. Walt was 26 by then. He
climbed abroad the milk train and headed for boot camp. Considering what I
was about to leave behind me, I suppose I was lucky. Dizzy was gone, too. Hw
called it quits. I don’t know if my scare tactics had knocked some sense into
him, but I felt glad when I read about his decision.
I spent the next 4 years crawling through the mud, Walt was on the army. They
shipped me back in November 1945, Walt was burned down, incapable of
thinking ahead of making plans. I drifted around for 3 or 4 years. I was just on
the point of putting together a deal to open a place of my own when my luck
became rotten, turned sour. I went into debt. Walt worked in Boston and in Long
Island, he married, but it didn’t last long. He was unable to keep up with the
flow. I didn’t care. I had no ambitions. I just wanted to be left in peace, go where
the world took me, exhausted. Let someone else carry the ball for a change.
1950: I moved across the river to a low-rent apartment in Newark, New Jersey,
and started a new job in The Meyerhoff Baking Company. A women, a redhead
started looking at Walt. I’ve made only 2 good decisions in my life: the first was
following Master Yehudi onto that train when I was 9 years old, the second one
was marrying Molly Fitzsimmons. Molly put me together again. Quinn. Her ex-
husband died at war. Molly. The first woman I ever loved. They moved together.
Molly wasn’t able to bear children. I made her quit her job after the wedding, but
I stuck with mine, and Walt rose through the ranks at Meyerhoff’s. After they
promoted me, we had no money worries to speak of. The Quinns were a large
family. Uncle Walt.
I spent 23 years with Molly. Cancer came along and took her from me before I
was ready to let go. Breast cancer. She died at 55. Walt spent the next 6 or 7
months in an alcoholic stupor, lost my job at the factory, but 2 of my brothers-in-
law hauled me off to a drying-out clinic. For 60 days, he was in Saint Barnabas
Hospital in Livingston. And I started dreaming again: 44 years after my last
performance as Walt the Wonder Boy, it all came rushing back to me. Those
dreams turned everything around for me: they gave me back my pride, and after
that I was no longer ashamed to look at the past. The master had forgiven me.
He'd cancelled out my debt to him because of Molly, because of how I loved
her. And now he was calling out to me and asking me to remember him. He was
sober again; something had been lifted inside me. I was 58, my life was in ruins,
and yet I didn’t feel too bad about it. When all was said and done, I actually felt
pretty good.
Molly’s medical bills had wiped out whatever cash we’d managed to save. Walt
was broke, he only had his car. 3 days after I left the hospital, my favourite
nephew Dan called me from Denver about a job. He was a college professor;
the job was as a maintenance engineer (a mop jockey). Walt 2 days later
packed his things and set off on his Ford to the Rocky Mountains.
I never did make it to Denver. He wound up in another place. After so many
dreams in the hospital, the trip brought back a flood of memories, he crossed
the Kansas border, I wanted to spend a few hours in Wichita, and go back to
Mrs. Witherspoon’s house to see how the old place looked like. For all I knew,
she was dead now, just like everybody else I’d ever cared about. The city had
grown a lost since 1920’, but it still wasn’t my idea of a good time. They called it
the “Air Capital of the World”. Referring to all the aircraft companies that had set
up factories there, but I couldn’t help thinking about myself. Mrs. W’s house now
was part of the residential hub, the street was called Coronado Avenue. The
house looked good, now there were new modern accoutrements. November.
Walt wanted to enter the house. Mrs. Witherspoon was there!! She was 74 or
75 by then, she looked 63. She was the same! They didn’t see each other for 38
years in Lemmele’s. Tears, stories.
Mrs. W story: Instead of parlaying her millions into more millions during the
Texas wildcat boom, she’d sunk her drills into dry ground and gone bust. The oil
game was largely guesswork back then and she made one too many bad
guesses. By 1938, she’d lost nine-tenths of her fortune. She was no longer in
the Fifth Avenue league, she returned to Wichita. She thought it would be only
temporary, and by the time the war came, she was still there. 4 years had
passed and she began working as a volunteer nurse at the Wichita V.S
Hospital. After the war she went into business again, but this time she stayed in
Wichita. Laundromats. Washing machine. Walt showed up in 1974, and she has
20 Laundromats scattered around the city and another 12 in neighbouring
towns. She was wealthy again. Orville Cox was dead. Billy Bigelow was alive.
He lived just around the corner, and he worked with her as a manager in the
Laundromats business. They fucked sometimes. Billy had 70 but had 2 heart
attacks so he didn’t worked anymore. Walt stayed. He changed his plans. I was
back where I belonged: Mrs. W invited me to step in and take Billy’s old job. He
slept in the same room he occupied when he was a boy. Everything was ok for
3 or 4 years, the Billy died. Mrs. W seemed to lost interest in the company,
leaving most of the decisions in my hands. It was hard, 50 years they were
together. They wound up sleeping together in the same bed as they slept with
Master Yehudi, in the large double bed, it was the same bed she’d share with
master Yehudi in the old days. And now it was my turn to sleep beside her, to
be the man she couldn’t live without. They had sex sometimes. For the next 11
years we lived together like husband and wife. Mrs. W lived to 90 ot 91. Mostly
blind, deaf, unable to get out of bed, I sold off the business and did the dirty
work myself. O owned her that much. The funeral was a bang-up affair.
Everything belonged to me now: the house, the car, all the money. There was
enough for another 75 or 100 years. Walt throw her a big send-off, the biggest
Wichita had ever seen. That was a year and a half ago. Walt was 76 back then.
He didn’t know what to do. But he was rescued by the idea of writing this book.
He started last August. The 13 books/volumes were left by will to his nephew,
Daniel Quinn. And once Mr. Vertigo is published, I’’ll already be dead.
For the past 4 years a cleaning woman has been coming to the house several
times a week. Her name is Yolanda Abraham, she’s from Jamaica or Trinidad,
she is 30/35, a round, black woman. She doesn’t have a husband, but she has
a son, 8 year old boy Yusef. The kid was a pain in the ass and ugly, wise-talking
brat. Walt saw himself in his when he was that age, and his face resembles
Aesop, I can’t help myself, the boy has the devil in him. He’s brash and rude
and incorrigible, but he’s lip up with the fire of life, and it does me good to watch
him as he flings headlong into a maelstrom of trouble. Watching Yusef, I now
know what the master saw in me, and I know what he meant when he told me I
had the gift. This boy has the gift, too. If I had the courage to speak to his
mother, I’d take him under my wing in a second. In 3 years, I’d turn him into the
next Wonder Boy. The problem is the 33 steps. Walt wouldn’t take it. The things
the master and I did together wouldn’t be possible today. We lived in a different
world back then, we’re not as tough as we used to be, and maybe the world’s a
better place because of it. The bigger the thing you want, the more you’re going
to pay for it. When thinking about my dreadful initiation in Cibola, I can’t help
wondering if Master Yehudi’s methods weren’t too harsh. What if there were no
steps in the process? What if at all came down to one moment, one lightning
instant of transformation? I fly by myself; he didn’t teach me anything. Were the
tortures and cruelty all a sham? A diversion to trick me into thinking I was
getting somewhere, when in fact I was never anywhere. But what if this way
wasn’t the only way? What if there was a simpler, more direct method, an
approach that began from the inside and bypassed the body altogether? What
then?
Deep down, I don’t believe it takes any special talent for a person to lift himself
off the ground and hover in the air. Every human is capable of duplicating the
feats I accomplished as Walt the Wonder Boy. You must learn to stop being
yourself. Evaporate, let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul
pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That’s how it’s done. You spread
your arms. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around
you. Little by little, you began to weight less than nothing. And the you lift
yourself off the ground.