We must have traveled two miles before either one of us found the courage to speak. We were out among the farms and pastures by then, tooling along a bumpy byway in our drenched and sopping clothes. With each jolt of the car, another spurt of pond water gushed from us and sank into Mrs. Witherspoon’s deluxe suede upholstery. It sounds funny as I tell it now, but I wasn’t the least bit tempted to laugh at the time. I just sat there stewing in the front seat, trying to control my temper and figure out what had gone wrong. In spite of his errors and miscalculations, it didn’t seem fair to blame the master. He’d been through a lot, and I knew his judgment wasn’t all it should have been, but 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. It was my butt on the line out there, and when all was said and done, it was my job to protect it.
“Well, partner,” the master said, doing his best to crack a smile, “welcome to show biz.”
“That wasn’t no show biz,” I said. “What happened back there was assault and battery. It was like walking into an ambush and getting scalped.”
“That’s the rough and tumble, kid, the give and take of crowds. Once the curtain goes up, you never know what’s going to happen.”
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful, sir, but that kind of talk ain’t nothing but wind.”
“Oh ho,” he said, amused by my plucky rejoinder. “The little lad’s in a huff. And what kind of talk do you propose we engage in, Mr. Rawley?”
“Practical talk, sir. The kind of talk that’ll stop us from repeating our mistakes.”
“We didn’t make any mistakes. We just drew a bum audience, that’s all. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t.”
“Luck’s got nothing to do with it. We did a lot of dumb things today, and we wound up paying the price.”
“I thought you were brilliant. If not for that flying bottle, it would have been a four-star success.”
“Well, for one thing, I’d sincerely like to ditch this costume. It’s about the awfulest piece of hokum I ever saw. We don’t need no otherworldly trappings. The act’s got enough of that already, and we don’t want to confuse folks by dressing me up like some nancy-boy angel. It puts them off. It makes me look like I’m supposed to be better than they are.”
“You are better, Walt. Don’t ever forget that.”
“Maybe so. But once we let them know that, we’re sunk. They were against me before I even started.”
“The costume had nothing to do with it. That crowd was stoned, pickled to the toe jam in their socks. They were so crosseyed, not one of them even saw what you had on.”
“You’re the best teacher there is, master, and I’m truly grateful to you for saving my life today, but on this particular point, you’re as wrong as any mortal man can be. The costume stinks. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but no matter how hard you yell at me, I ain’t never wearing it again.”
“Why would I yell at you? We’re in this together, son, and you’re free to express your opinions. If you want to dress another way, all you have to do is tell me.”
“On the level?”
“It’s a long trip back to Wichita, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t discuss these things now.”
“I don’t mean to grumble,” I said, jumping through the door he’d just opened for me, “but the way I see it, we ain’t got a prayer unless we win them over from the get-go. These rubes don’t like no fancy stuff. They didn’t take to your penguin suit, and they didn’t take to my sissy robe. And all that high-flown talk you pitched them at the start—it went right over their heads.”
“It was nothing but gibberish. Just to get them in the mood.”
“Whatever you say. But how’s about we skip it in the future? Just keep it simple and folksy. You know, something like ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to present,’ and then back off and let me come on. If you wear a plain old seersucker suit and a nice straw hat, no one will take offense. They’ll think you’re a friendly, good-hearted Joe out to make an honest buck. That’s the key, the whole sack of onions. I stroll out before them like a little know-nothing, a wide-eyed farm boy dressed in denim overalls and a plaid shirt. No shoes, no socks, a barefoot nobody with the same geek mug as their own sons and nephews. They take one look at me and relax. It’s like I’m a member of the family. And then, the moment I start rising into the air, their hearts fail them. It’s that simple. Soften them up, then hit them with the whammy. It’s bound to be good. Two minutes into the act, they’ll be eating out of our hands like squirrels.”
It took almost three hours to get home, and all during the ride I talked, speaking my mind to the master in a way I’d never done before. I covered everything I could think of—from costumes to venues, from ticket-taking to music, from show times to publicity—and he let me have my say. There’s no question that he was impressed, maybe even a little startled by my thoroughness and strong opinions, but I was fighting for my life that afternoon, and it wouldn’t have helped the cause to hold back and mince words. Master Yehudi had launched a ship that was full of holes, and rather than try to plug those holes as the water rushed in and sank us, I wanted to drag the thing back to port and rebuild it from the bottom up. The master listened to my ideas without interrupting or making fun of me, and in the end he gave in on most of the points I raised. It couldn’t have been easy for him to accept his failure as a showman, but Master Yehudi wanted things to work as much as I did, and he was big enough to admit that he’d gotten us off on the wrong track. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a method, but that method was out of date, more suited to the corny prewar style he’d grown up with than to the jump and jangle of the new age. I was after something modern, something sleek and savvy and direct, and little by little I managed to talk him into it, to bring him around to a different approach.
Still, on certain issues he refused to fall in line. I was keen on taking the act to Saint Louis and showing off in front of my old hometown, but he nipped that proposition in the bud. “That’s the most dangerous spot on earth for you,” he said, “and the minute you go back there, you’ll be signing your own death warrant. Mark my words. Saint Louis is bad medicine. It’s a poison place, and you’ll never get out of there alive.” I couldn’t understand his vehemence, but he talked like someone whose mind was set, and there was no way I could go against him. As it turned out, his words proved to be dead on the mark. Just one month after he spoke them to me, Saint Louis was hit by the worst tornado of the century. The twister shot through town like a cannonball from hell, and by the time it left five minutes later, a thousand buildings had been flattened, a hundred people were dead, and two thousand others lay writhing in the wreckage with broken bones and blood pouring from their wounds. We were on our way to Vernon, Oklahoma, by then, on the fifth leg of a fourteen-stop tour, and when I picked up the morning edition of the local rag and saw the pictures on the front page, I almost regurgitated my breakfast. I’d thought the master had lost his touch, but once again I’d sold him short. 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. If I ever doubt his words again, I told myself, may the Lord strike me down and scatter my corpse to the pigs.
But I’m going too fast. The tornado didn’t come until late September, and for the time being it’s still August twenty-fifth. Master Yehudi and I are still sitting in our clammy clothes, and we’re still driving back to Mrs. Witherspoon’s house in Wichita. After our long conversation about revamping the act, I was beginning to feel a little better about our prospects, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that my mind was totally at ease. Putting the lid on Saint Louis was one thing, a minor difference of opinion, but there were other matters that troubled me more deeply. Essential flaws in the arrangement, you might call them, and now that I had bared my soul about so much, I figured I should go for the brass ring. So I plunged in and brought up the subject of Mrs. Witherspoon. I had never dared t
o speak about her before, and I hoped the master wasn’t going to haul off and belt me in the snout.
“Maybe it’s none of my business,” I said, stepping as gingerly as I could, “but I still don’t see why Mrs. Witherspoon didn’t come with us.”
“She didn’t want to be in the way,” the master said. “She thought she might jinx us.”
“But she’s our backer, ain’t she? She’s the one who’s footing the bill. You’d think she’d want to stick around and keep a close eye on her investment.”
“She’s what they call a silent partner.”
“Silent? You’re funning me, boss. That Mrs. is about the unsilentest frail this side of a car factory. Why, she’ll chew off your ear and spit out the pieces before you can get a word in.”
“In life, yes. But I’m talking about business. In life, there’s no question she’s got a tongue on her. I’m not going to argue with you about that.”
“I don’t know what her problem is, but all those days when you were out of commission there, she did some awfully strange things. I’m not saying she ain’t a good sport and all that, but there were times, let me tell you, there were times when it gave me the creeps to see her carry on the way she did.”
“She’s been distraught. You can’t blame her, Walt. She’s had some rough things to swallow these past months, and she’s a lot more fragile than you think she is. You just have to be patient with her.”
“That’s pretty much the same thing she said about you.”
“She’s a smart woman. A little high-strung, perhaps, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders, and her heart’s in the right place.”
“Mother Sioux, may her soul rest in peace, once told me you were fixing to marry her.”
“I was. Then I wasn’t anymore. Then I was. Then I wasn’t. Now who knows. If the years have taught me anything, kid, it’s that anything can happen. When it comes to men and women, all bets are off.”
“Yeah, she’s a frisky one, I’ll grant you that. Just when you think you’ve roped her in, she slips the knot and bolts to the next pasture.”
“Exactly. Which explains why it’s sometimes best to do nothing. If you just stand there and wait, there’s a chance the thing you’re hoping for will come right to you.”
“It’s all too deep for me, sir.”
“You’re not the only one, Walt.”
“But if and ever you do get hitched, I’ll lay odds it won’t be a very smooth ride.”
“Don’t worry yourself about that. Just concentrate on your work and leave the love business to me. I don’t need any advice from the peanut gallery. It’s my song, and I’ll sing it in my own way.”
I didn’t have the balls to push it any farther than that. Master Yehudi was a genius and a wizard, but it was growing abundantly clear to me that he didn’t understand the first thing about women. I’d been privy to Mrs. Witherspoon’s innermost thoughts, I’d listened to her drunken, bawdy confidences on many an occasion, and I knew the master was never going to get anywhere with her unless he took the bull by the horns. She didn’t want to be deferred to, she wanted to be stormed and conquered, and the longer he shilly-shallied around, the worse his chances would be. But how to tell him that? I couldn’t do it. Not if I valued my own skin I couldn’t, so I kept my mouth shut and let the matter ride. It was his damned goose, I told myself, and if he was so bent on cooking it, who was I to stand in his way?
So we returned to Wichita and got busy making plans for a fresh start. Mrs. W. said nary a word about the water stains on the seats, but I suppose she thought of them as a business expense, part of the risk you take when you set your sights on making big money. It took about three weeks to wrap up the preparations—scheduling performances, printing handbills and posters, rehearsing the new routine—and during that time the master and Mrs. Witherspoon were pretty cozy with each other, a lot more lovey-dovey than I’d expected them to be. Maybe I was all wrong, I thought, and the master knew exactly what he was doing. But then, on the day of our departure, he committed an error, a tactical blunder that showed up the weakness of his overall strategy. I saw it with my own eyes, standing on the porch as the master and the missus said their farewells, and it was a painful thing to behold, a sad little chapter in the history of heartbreak.
He said: “So long, sister. We’ll see you in a month and three days.” And she said: “Off you go, boys—into the wild blue yonder.” There was an awkward silence after that, and since it made me feel uncomfortable, I opened my big mouth and said: “What do you say, ma’am? Why not hop in the car and come with us?”
I could see her eyes light up when I said that, and sure as dog and god are the same word spelled backwards and forwards, she would have given six years off her life to chuck everything and climb aboard. She turned to the master and said: “Well, what do you think? Should I go with you or not?” And he, pompous oaf that he was, patted her on the shoulder and said: “It’s up to you, my dear.” Her eyes clouded over for a second, but even then all was not lost. Still hopeful of hearing the right words from him, she gave it another shot and 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.” And that was that. I saw the light go out in her eyes; her face closed up into a taut, quizzical expression; and then she shrugged. “Never mind,” she said. “There’s too much to do here anyway.” Then, forcing a brave little smile to her lips, she added: “Drop me a postcard when you get a chance. The last I heard, they still go for a penny apiece.”
And there it was, folks. The opportunity of a lifetime—lost forever. The master let it slip right through his fingers, and the worst part of it was, I don’t even think he realized what he’d done.
We traveled in a different car this time—a black secondhand Ford that Mrs. Witherspoon had picked out for us after our return from Larned. She’d dubbed it the Wondermobile, and though it couldn’t match the size and smoothness of the Chrysler, it did everything it was asked to do. We set off on a rainy morning in mid-September, and one hour out of Wichita I’d already forgotten about the hearts-and-flowers fumble I’d witnessed on the porch. My mental beams were fixed on Oklahoma, the first state booked for the tour, and when we pulled into Redbird two days later, I was as keyed up as a jack-in-the-box and crazier than a monkey. It’s going to work this time, I told myself. Yes sir, this is where it all begins. Even the name of the town struck me as a good omen, and since I was nothing if not superstitious in those days, it had a powerful effect on my spirits. 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 somehow, and the audience took a shine to me the moment I came on—which was half the battle right there. Master Yehudi did his cornpone spiel to the hilt, my Huck Finn costume was the last word in understatement, and all in all we knocked them dead. Six or seven women fainted, children screamed, grown men gasped in awe and disbelief. For thirty minutes I kept them spellbound, prancing and tumbling in midair, gliding my little body over the surface of a broad and sparkling lake, and then, at the end, pushing myself to a record height of four and a half feet before floating back to the ground and taking my bow. The applause was thunderous, ecstatic. They whooped and cried, they banged pots and pans, they tossed confetti into the air. This was my first taste of success, and I loved it, I loved it in a way I’ve never loved anything before or since.
Dunbar and Battiest. Jumbo and Plunketsville. Pickens, Muse, and Bethel. Wapanucka. Boggy Depot and Kingfisher. Gerty, Ringling, and Marble City. If this were a movie, here’s where the calendar pages would start flying off the wall. We’d see them fluttering against a background of country roads and tumbleweed, and then the names of those towns would flash by as we followed the progress of the black Ford across a map of eastern Oklahoma. The music would be jaunty and full of bounce, a syncopated chug-chug to ape the noise of ringing cash registers. Shot would fol
low shot, each one melting into the other. Bushel baskets brimming with coins, roadside bungalows, clapping hands and stomping feet, open mouths, bug-eyed faces turned to the sky. The whole sequence would take about ten seconds, and by the time it was over, the story of that month would be known to every person in the theater. Ah, the old Hollywood razzmatazz. There’s nothing like it for hustling things along. It may not be subtle, but it gets the job done.
So much for the quirks of memory. If I’m suddenly thinking about movies now, it’s probably because I saw so many of them in the months that followed. After the Oklahoma triumph, bookings ceased to be a problem, and the master and I spent most of our time on the road, moving around from one backwater to another. We played Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, dipping farther and farther south as winter came on, and I tended to fill in the dead time between performances by visiting the local Bijou for a peek at the latest flick. The master generally had business to take care of—talking to fair managers and ticket sellers, distributing handbills and posters around town, adjusting nuts and bolts for the upcoming performance—which meant he seldom had time to go with me. More often than not, I’d come back to find him alone in the room, sitting in a chair reading his book. It was always the same book—a battered little green volume that he carried with him on all our travels—and it became as familiar to me as the lines and contours of his face. It was written in Latin, of all things, and the author’s name was Spinoza, a detail I’ve never forgotten, even after so many years. When I asked the master why he kept studying that one book over and over again, he told me it was because you could never get to the bottom of it. The deeper you go, he said, the more there is, and the more there is, the longer it takes to read it.