An Agent of Utopia

by Andy Duncan

  “Cripes!” Willard said. “How’s he keep from fainting, his head down like that, huh, Lou?”

  “He trains, Champ,” said his manager, one haunch on the sill. “Same’s you.”

  Training had been a dispute between the two men lately, but Willard let it go. “Cripes!” Willard said again, his mouth dry.

  The street below was a solid field of hats, with an occasional parasol like a daisy, and here and there a mounted policeman statue-still and gazing up like everyone. Thousands were yelling, as if sound alone would buoy the upside-down figure writhing 150 feet above the pavement.

  “Attaboy, Harry!”

  “Five minutes, that’s too long! Someone bring him down!”

  “Five minutes, hell, I seen him do thirty.”

  “At least he’s not underwater this time.”

  “At least he ain’t in a milk can!”

  “Look at him go! The straitjacket’s not made that can hold that boy, I tell you.”

  “You can do it, Harry!”

  Willard himself hated crowds, but he had been drawing them all his life. One of the farm hands had caught him at age twelve toting a balky calf beneath one arm, and thereafter he couldn’t go into town without people egging him on to lift things—livestock, Mr. Olsburg the banker, the log behind the fancy house. When people started offering cash money, he couldn’t well refuse, having seen Mama and Papa re-count their jar at the end of every month, the stacks of old coins dull even in lamplight. So Jess Willard, at thirty-three, knew something about what physical feats earned, and what they cost. He watched this midair struggle, lost in jealousy, in sympathy, in professional admiration.

  “God damn, will you look at this pop-eyed city,” Lou said. “It’s lousy with believers. I tell you, Champ, this fella has set a whole new standard for public miracles. When Jesus Christ Almighty comes back to town, he’ll have to work his ass off to get in the newspapers at all.” Lou tipped back his head, pursed his lips, and jetted cigar smoke upstairs.

  “Do you mind?” asked the woman directly above, one of three crowding a ninth-floor window. She screwed up her face and fanned the air with her hands.

  “Settle down, sister, smoke’ll cure you soon enough,” Lou said. He wedged the cigar back into his mouth and craned his neck to peer around Willard. “Have a heart, will you, Champ? It’s like looking past Gibraltar.”

  “Sorry,” Willard said, and withdrew a couple of inches, taking care not to bang his head on the sash. He already had banged his head crossing from the corridor to the parlor, and from the bathroom to the bedroom. Not that it hurt—no, to be hurt, Willard’s head had to be hit plenty harder than that. But he’d never forgotten how the other children laughed when he hit his head walking in the door, that day the Pottawatomie County sheriff finally made him go to school. All the children but Hattie. So he took precautions outside the ring, and seethed inside each time he forgot he was six foot seven. This usually happened in hotel suites, all designed for Lou-sized men, or less. Since Havana, Willard had lived mostly in hotel suites.

  Leaning from the next-door window on the left was a jowly man in a derby hat. He had been looking at Houdini only half the time, Willard the other half. Now he rasped: “Hey, buddy. Hey. Jess Willard.”

  Willard dreaded autograph-seekers, but Lou said a champ had to make nice. “You’re the champ, now, boy,” Lou kept saying, “and a champ has gotta be seen!”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Willard said.

  His neighbor looked startled. Most people were, when they heard Willard’s bass rumble for the first time. “I just wanted to say congratulations, Champ, for putting that nigger on the canvas where he belongs.”

  “I appreciate it,” Willard said. He had learned this response from his father, a man too proud to say thanks. He tried to focus again on Houdini. The man seemed to be doing sit-ups in midair, but at a frenzied rate, jackknifing himself repeatedly. The rope above him whipped from side to side. Willard wondered how much of the activity was necessary, how much for effect.

  The derby-hatted guy wasn’t done. “Twenty-six rounds, damn, you taught Mr. Coon Johnson something about white men, I reckon, hah?”

  Ever since Havana. Cripes. Houdini’s canvas sleeves, once bound across his chest, were now bound behind him. Somehow he’d worked his arms over his head—was the man double-jointed?

  “Say, how come you ain’t had nothing but exhibitions since? When you gonna take on Frank Moran, huh? I know that nigger ain’t taken the fight out of you. I know you ain’t left your balls down in Cuba.” He laughed like a bull snorting.

  Willard sighed. He’d leave this one to Lou. Lou wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds in the ring, but he loved a quarrel better than any boxer Willard knew.

  “Balls?” Lou squawked, right on schedule. “Balls? Let me tell you something, fella.”

  Now Houdini’s arms were free, the long canvas strap dangling. The crowd roared.

  “When Moran is ready, we’ll be ready, you got me?” Lou leaned out to shake his finger and nearly lost his balance. “Whoa,” he said, clutching his hat. “Fella, you’re, why, you’re just lucky there’s no ledge here. Yeah. You think he’s taking it so easy, well, maybe you want to spar a few rounds with him, huh?”

  Now Houdini had looped the canvas strap across the soles of his feet, and was tugging at it like a madman. More and more of his white shirt was visible. Willard resolved that when he started training again—when Lou got tired of parties and banquets and Keys to the City and let Willard go home to the gymnasium, and to Hattie—he would try this upside-down thing, if he could find rope strong enough.

  “Well, how about I spar with you, buddy? Who the hell are you, Mr. Milksop?”

  “I’m his manager, that’s who I am! And let me tell you another thing . . .”

  Houdini whipped off the last of the jacket and held the husk out, dangling, for all to see. Then he dropped it and flung both arms out to the side, an upside-down T. Amid the pandemonium, the jacket flew into the crowd and vanished like a ghost. Trash rained from the windows, as people dropped whatever they were holding to applaud. Willard stared as a woman’s dress fluttered down to drape a lamppost. It was blue and you could see through it. Even the guy with the derby was cheering, his hands clasped overhead. “Woo hoo!” he said, his quarrel forgotten. “Woo hoo hoo!”

  With a smile and a shake of his head, Lou turned his back on it all. “The wizard of ballyhoo,” he said. “Too bad they can’t string up all the Jews, eh, Champ?” He patted Willard’s shoulder and left the window.

  As he was winched down, Houdini took inverted bows, and there was much laughter. Willard, who had neither cheered nor applauded, remained motionless at the window, tracking Houdini’s descent. Someone’s scented handkerchief landed on his head, and he brushed it away. He watched as the little dark-haired man in the ruffled shirt dropped headfirst into the sea that surged forward and engulfed him. His feet went last, bound at the ankles, patent-leather shoes side by side like a soldier’s on review. Willard could imagine how they must shine.

  That night, as Willard followed Lou up the curving, ever-narrowing, crimson-carpeted stairs leading to the balconies of the Los Angeles Orpheum, the muffled laughter and applause through the interior wall seemed to jeer Willard’s every step, his every clumsy negotiation of a chandelier, his every flustered pause while a giggling and feathered bevy of young women flowed around his waist. Hattie didn’t need feathers, being framed, in Willard’s mind, by the open sky. These women needed plenty. Those going down gaped at him, chins tipping upward, until they passed; those going up turned at the next landing for a backward and downward look of frank appraisal. “We had a whole box in Sacramento,” Lou muttered as he squinted from the numbers on the wall to the crumpled paper in his hand. “Shit. I guess these Los Angeles boxes is for the quality.” A woman with a powder-white face puckered her lips at Willard and winked. Grunti
ng in triumph, Lou overshot a cuspidor and threw open a door with a brown grin. “Save one of the redheads for me, willya?” Lou hissed, as Willard ducked past him into darkness.

  Willard stopped to get his bearings as a dozen seated silhouettes turned to look at him. Beyond, the arched top of the stage was a tangle of golden vines. The balcony ceiling was too low. Willard shuffled forward, head down, as Lou pushed him two-handed in the small of the back. “Hello,” Willard said, too loudly, and someone gasped. Then the others began to murmur hellos in return. “So good to meet you,” they murmured amid a dozen outstretched hands, the male shapes half-standing, diamond rings and cufflinks sharp in the light from the stage. Willard was able to shake some hands, squeeze others; some merely stroked or patted him as he passed. “A pleasure,” he kept saying. “A God’s honest pleasure.”

  Lou made Willard sit in the middle of the front row next to Mrs. Whoever-She-Was, someone important; Lou said her name too fast. She was plump as a guinea hen and reeked of powder. Willard would have preferred the aisle. Here there was little room for his legs, his feet. Plus the seat, as usual, was too narrow. He jammed his buttocks between the slats that passed for armrests, bowing the wood outward like the sides of a firehose. As his hams sank, his jacket rode up in back. Once seated, he tried to work the jacket down, to no avail. Already his face was burning with the certainty that all eyes in the hall were focused not on the stage but on the newly hunchbacked Jess Willard. “Don’t worry, he’s just now begun,” Mrs. Whoever whispered across Willard, to Lou. “You’ve hardly missed a thing.”

  His knees cut off the view of the stage below. He parted his knees just a little. Between them, on the varnished planks of the stage far below, Houdini patted the air to quell another round of applause. He was a short, dark, curly-haired man in a tuxedo. At his feet were a dozen scattered roses.

  “Thank you, my friends, thank you,” the little man said, though it sounded more like “Tank you”—a German, Willard had heard, this Houdini, or was it Austrian? Seen from this unnatural angle, nearly directly above like this, he looked dwarfish, foreshortened. He had broad shoulders, though, and no sign of a paunch beneath his cummerbund. Lou jabbed Willard in the side, glared at Willard’s knees, then his face. Sighing, Willard closed his knees again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen—are the ushers ready? Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I beg your assistance with the following part of the program. I require the services of a committee of ten. Ten good men and true, from the ranks of the audience, who are willing to join me here upon the stage and to watch closely my next performance, that all my claims be verified as accurate, that its every particular be beyond reproach.”

  The balcony was uncomfortably hot. Sweat rolled down Willard’s torso, his neck. Mrs. Whoever opened her fan and worked up a breeze. A woman across the auditorium was staring at Willard and whispering to her husband. He could imagine. All I can say is, you cannot trust those photographs. Look how they hide that poor man’s deformities.

  “Ten good men and true. Yes, thank you, sir, your bravery speaks well for our boys in Haiti, and in Mexico.” A spatter of applause. “The ushers will direct you. And you, sir, yes, thank you as well. Ladies, perhaps you could help us identify the more modest of the good men among us?” Laughter. “Yes, madam, your young man looks a likely prospect, indeed. A fine selection you have made—as have you, sir! No, madam, I fear your fair sex disqualifies you for this work. The stage can be a dangerous place.”

  Willard retreated to his program, to see which acts he missed because dinner with the mayor ran late. Actually, the dinner, a palm-sized chicken breast with withered greens, had been over quickly; you learned to eat fast on the farm. What took a long time was the mayor’s after-dinner speech, in which he argued that athletic conditioning was the salvation of America. Willard bribed a waiter for three thick-cut bologna sandwiches, which he munched at the head table with great enjoyment, ignoring Lou. Now, looking at the Orpheum program, Willard found himself more kindly disposed toward the mayor’s speech. It had spared him the “Syncopated Funsters” Bernie & Baker, Adelaide Boothby’s “Novelty Songs and Travesties” (with Chas. Everdean at the piano), Selma Braatz the “Renowned Lady Juggler,” and Comfort & King in “Coontown Diversions,” not to mention a trick rider, a slack-wire routine, a mystery titled “Stan Stanley, The Bouncing Fellow, Assisted by His Relatives,” and, most happily missed of all, The Alexander Kids, billed as “Cute, Cunning, Captivating, Clever.” And crooked, thought Willard, who once had wasted a nickel on a midget act at the Pottawatomie County Fair.

  “Thank you, sir. Welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, these our volunteers have my thanks. Shall they have your thanks as well?”

  Without looking up from his program, Willard joined the applause.

  “My friends, as I am sure you have noticed, our committee still lacks three men. But if you will indulge me, I have a suggestion. I am told that here in the house with us tonight, we have one man who is easily the equal of any three.”

  Lou started jabbing Willard again. “G’wan,” Willard whispered. “I closed my knees, all right?”

  “Knock ’em dead, Champ,” Lou hissed, his face shadowed but for his grin.

  Willard frowned at him, bewildered. “What?”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, will you kindly join me in inviting before the footlights the current heavyweight boxing champion—our champion—Mr. Jess Willard!”

  Willard opened his mouth to protest just as a spotlight hit him full in the face, its heat like an opened oven.

  Willard turned to Lou amid the applause and said, “You didn’t!”

  Lou ducked his chin and batted his eyes, like a bright child done with his recitation and due a certificate.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, if you are in favor of bringing Mr. Willard onto the stage, please signify with your applause.”

  Now the cheers and applause were deafening. Willard gaped down at the stage. Houdini stood in a semicircle of frenziedly applauding men, his arms outstretched and welcoming. He stared up at Willard with a tiny smile at the corner of his mouth, almost a smirk, his eyes as bright and shallow as the footlights. Look what I have done for you, he seemed to be saying. Come and adore me.

  The hell I will, Willard thought.

  No, felt, it was nothing so coherent as thought, it was a gut response to Lou, to the mayor, to Mrs. Whoever pressing herself up against Willard’s left side in hopes of claiming a bit of the spotlight too, to Hattie more than a thousand miles away whom he should have written today but didn’t, to all these row after row of stupid people, most of whom thought Willard hadn’t beaten Jack Johnson at all, that Johnson had simply given up, had floated to the canvas, the word they kept using, floated, Cripes, Willard had been standing there, had heard the thump like the first melon dropped into the cart when Johnson’s head had bounced against the canvas, bounced, for Cripes’ sake, spraying sweat and spit and blood, that fat lip flapping as the head went down a second time and stayed, floated, they said, Willard wasn’t a real fighter, they said, he had just outlasted Johnson—an hour and forty-four minutes in the Havana sun, a blister on the top of his head like a brand, Hattie still could see the scar when she parted his hair to look—outlasted, the papers said! Beneath the applause, Willard heard a distant crunch as he squeezed the armrest, and was dimly aware of a splinter in his palm as he looked down at Houdini’s smirking face and realized, clearly, for the first time: You people don’t want me at all, a big shit-kicker from the prairie.

  It’s Jack Johnson you want.

  And you know what? You can’t have him. Because I beat him, you hear? I beat him.

  “No, thanks!” Willard shouted, and the applause ebbed fast, like the last grain rushing out of the silo. The sudden silence, and Houdini’s startled blink, made Willard’s resolve falter. “I appreciate it,” he added. He was surprised by how effortlessly his voice filled the auditorium. “Go on with your act
, please, sir,” Willard said, even more loudly. Ignoring Lou’s clutching hand, which threatened to splinter Willard’s forearm as Willard had splintered the armrest, he attempted comedy: “I got a good seat for it right here.” There was nervous laughter, including someone immediately behind Willard—who must have, Willard realized, an even worse view than he did.

  Arms still outstretched, no trace of a smile now, Houdini called up: “Mr. Willard, I am afraid your public must insist?”

  Willard shook his head and sat back, arms folded.

  “Mr. Willard, these other gentlemen join me in solemnly pledging that no harm will come to you.”

  This comedy was more successful; guffaws broke out all over the theater. Willard wanted to seek out all the laughers and paste them one. “Turn off that spotlight!” he yelled. “It’s hot enough to roast a hog.”

  To Willard’s amazement, the spotlight immediately snapped off, and the balcony suddenly seemed a dark, cold place.

  “Come down, Mr. Willard,” Houdini said, his arms now folded.

  “Jesus Christ, kid,” Lou hissed. “What’s the idea?”

  Willard shook him off and stood, jabbing one thick index finger at the stage. “Pay me what you’re paying them, and I’ll come down!”

  Gasps and murmurs throughout the crowd. Willard was aware of some commotion behind him, movement toward the exit, the balcony door slamming closed. Fine. Let them run, the cowards.

  In indignation, Houdini seemed to have swollen to twice his previous thickness. Must come in handy when you’re straitjacketed, Willard thought.

  “Mister Willard,” Houdini retorted, “I am pleased to pay you what I am paying these gentlemen—precisely nothing. They are here of their own free will and good sportsmanship. Will you not, upon the same terms, join them?”

  “No!” Willard shouted. “I’m leaving.” He turned to find his way blocked by Lou, whose slick face gleamed.