The Quick-Change Artist: Stories

The Interview

 The Interview LELAND RICHARDS WAS twenty-three, a farm boy from the Virginia Tidewater. Curiosity drew him to Niagara Falls in the summer of , and the roar made him jump right in. The water yanked every limb from its socket. Just in time, rescuers hauled him out with ropes and pulleys. Summoned to the banks of the Falls, a doctor knelt beside Leland, rolled him over to expel the water from his lungs, and popped his arms and legs back into place. Newspapermen couldn’t get enough. “Miracle Man,” ran one headline. “Did Niagara Falls call your name?” asked one reporter, a woman with a twist to her lips. “You could say it called me,” he said. Her eyes distracted him, and her lovely ears, showing beneath her hair. Joy began at his toes and spread up through his body. “Miss,” he said, “I’m a happy man. I went from being not unhappy, but you could say I failed to appreciate, go ahead and write this down, I failed to appreciate my life.” “I suppose you’ll become a minister,” the woman said, tapping her teeth with her pencil. Leland knew that his mother, ever aware of the importance of a woman’s teeth and skin, would have put a stop to the tapping. “A minister. No,” he said. The whirlwind had stripped him naked. Boys had fished his trousers out of the water—with his name still sewed to the waistband, thanks to Nancy, the woman back home who with her husband and family helped on the farm. Other reporters had asked if he had slaves. Nancy and her family were slaves. It was how it was. Thoughts of home fueled his buzzy gladness. The woman reporter said, “I can’t leave until you tell me something new, something you haven’t told anybody else.” Sunlight rolled through the windows of the hotel parlor in eye-watering brilliance. The landlady hovered, offering cold spiced cider. The landlady was no longer charging him. The Miracle Man was a luminary, good for business. A haberdasher had provided a new suit. A dentist pulled for free a tooth that was bothering him. Confectioners sent candy and nuts. The reporter accepted a glass of cider and sipped it. She had a hitch in her voice and in her walk, though Leland wouldn’t say she limped. For a short girl, she had a long stride. “It’s not fair,” she said. “People will pay attention to anything you say.” The parlor was filling up with honeymooners ready for card games and piano playing. Leland stood and guided the reporter out onto the porch, where rocking chairs seesawed to the motion of guests’ vigorous behinds and legs. “This is not the story I want to write,” the woman said, frowning. “I want to write about war. I can smell it coming.”  The Quick-Change Artist He took that for a farewell, but she had more to say. “Have you thanked the men who saved you?” she asked. “Of course.” He wanted the men to fish with him someday on the York River. He pictured them in his boat, with this woman back on shore where voices would reach her. In his mind, it was a mild gray day, with dogwood white on the bluffs above the river. She barely came up to his shoulder. With his hands, he measured the difference in their height. She would not be jollied. She finished her cider and set the glass on the porch railing. “How old are you?” he asked. “Nineteen.” “I have a sister your age,” he said. Two rocking chairs became vacant, and they sat down. He said, “When we were little, my sister and I, we used to play store. One would be the merchant, the other the customer.” “That doesn’t give me the story I’m after,” she said, but she was rocking right lively. “All right,” he said. “That sound. It was like voices. Laughing . An explosion that went on and on. It was what I’d been waiting for.” She was writing. “Longer I listened, the louder it got. You know how a shell sounds when you hold it to your ear?” Her lovely ear. She nodded. He said, “I answered that call.” She put her pencil down and rested her chin in her hands. She was a question mark, what with all the questions she asked...