Mr. Vertigo

Description

I was twelve when I first walked on water. The man in black taught me to do it, and I won’t pretend I learned the trick overnight. The master found me when I was nine, an orphan boy begging for cents in the streets of St. Louis, and worked with me diligently for three years before letting me perform publicly. That was in 1927, the year of Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh, the year the world began to fall forever. I kept doing it until just days before the October War, and what I did was greater than those two men could have dreamed of. I did what no American had done before, and no one has done since.

The master chose me because I was the smallest, the dirtiest, and the most despicable. He said, “You’re no better than an animal. You’re part of the human void.” This was the first sentence he said to me, and even though sixty-eight years have passed since that night, it seems as if I can still hear the words coming from the professor’s mouth: “You are no better than an animal. You will die before the winter is over if you stay where you are. And I will teach you how to fly if you come with me.”