by Lon Frank
“Well now, don’t that just boil yer crawdads. They’s got me locked in somehow. An’ whoever ‘they’ is, they better know that this ol’ boy needs to drain the radiator.”
Again placing his hands on the invisible surface, he leaned his face close and used all the volume he could muster.
“Ahhhhhhhh-EEEEE! You boys better fetch me a coffee can in here!”
A sudden low growl within the cavernous recesses of his oversized striped clown trousers prompted him to add,
“An’ a little washtub full of court bouillon wouldn’t hurt nobody’s feelin’s none, neither. You HEAR?”
As the echoes of his voice faded away, he again looked around his area of incarceration. It seemed to be a large circular room lined with other cubicles identical to the one he occupied. In the ones near or opposite his, he could make out other shapes starting to stir with interest in the sudden intrusion of noise. As they walked, crawled or slithered to the front of their individual cubicles, he could see that the creatures sharing his current situation were only recognizable from childhood nightmares; a brilliant yellow wingless birdlike creature with a metallic blue pig’s snout; an opaque dumpster-sized creature with it’s internal red and green organs clearly visible like some kid’s science project; and a one-legged head with large watery eyes, elongated proboscis and fleshy appendages which apparently served both as ears and wings.
“Well, now whatta you know, a flyin’ little elephunt. Yo! Dumbo! When’s feeding time for the critters in this zoo, anyway?”
Suddenly, seamless doors opened in the floor of the room’s center and a noiseless elevated platform brought up one of the creatures from the old clown’s disturbing, half-remembered nightmare. About four feet tall and covered in what appeared to be wrinkled latex, it moved with fluid grace and constantly changed from one subtle color to another, as though it were an oil sheen on the dark water beneath the bayou dock. It was accompanied by a floating dome the size of an overturned kiddie pool.
The old clown rapidly stumbled back as the creature approached the front of his cubicle, and passed easily through the barrier.
“Now just you hold on a minute there, Michelin boy. My leg ain’t broke now, an’ I just might kick yore little green... uh, yellow... uh, uh, orangish butt!”
The creature carried a small, futuristic etch-a-sketch which he now rapidly manipulated and held up for the old man to read.
“GreETinGs eArtH OnE. aRe You nOT ouR gUeST? WitH PePpEroNi! DO yoU nOT hEar thE FRothY-mOuTh rAVinGs oF yoUR mINd? nO? YEs! BegONE!”
Whereupon the levitating dome opened to reveal an empty Folgers coffee can and a small washtub of steaming catfish court bullion.
The old clown’s mouth opened and closed slowly several times but he could form neither tangible thoughts nor available words. The then-pinkish creature again held up the miniature screen.
“SilENcE!!!!!! aND enjOY!! JAckaL!!! InFIDel!!! CAn yOu NOt seE tHE cIRcuS oF yoUr inSaNItY????? DO yoU nOt hEar THE bEllBoY At thE dOOr???? GooD mORniNg!!! WitH HyEnAS anD OvER eaSy!!!
As the creature turned and retreated toward the platform, leaving the Star Trek room service cart, the old clown stuck a tentative finger in the Creole delicacy and then carefully touched it to his tongue. The grease paint smile began to turn up at the edges as he realized the apparent house rules of his little prison.
“Now just a sec there Zircon, or Xenon, or Farfegnugen, or whatever they call ya’. You mean all’s I gotta do is AX fer somethin’, and you fetch it up here?”
“I mean, you wouldn’t have none of them Cuba seegars, now would ya’? Or a jar of cuzzin Lester’s wine, or, or, one a them girlie picture magazines, huh?”
The creature stared with lidless, emotionless eyes and disappeared through the doors in the floor.
* * *
Old LaFeet the Clown pushed the armrests forward and raised the footrest of the burgundy leather Barcalounger, took a small sip of silky liquid from a pint fruit jar and surveyed his now double-sized cubicle which was draped with orange-and-white canvas and carpeted in two-inch rainbow shag. Above a round, queen-sized vibrating bed hung a large portrait of a young woman dressed in transparent flowing silk scarves and waving as she rode standing astride two magnificent white stallions.
He shivered slightly with pleasure, swallowed, then carefully unwrapped and lit a fragrant Conquistador El Presidente. He blew a large smoke ring and as it expanded above his head, shot another smaller one through its center, then continued his dissertation to his fellow travelers.
“ Now, like I was sayin’. The secret to being a successful attraction is to find a sideshow that appreciates its geeks. I mean, remember the tattooed lady I was tellin’ y’all about? The one who had Elvis on her pelvis and Conway Twitty on her left, er ...uh ...shoulder? Well her and I hooked up with this little cat and pony show once, down on the bayou back home, an’...”
* * *
– EPILOGUE –
A full-blown party was winding down at Sheryl Bon-bon’s café. The day started with the Crusade of Peace and Light, which turned out to be a phenomenal financial success for the Reverend Dr. Driver, and progressed into a New-Orleans-style street procession of clowns, jugglers, acrobats and circus animals. The joyous sounds of a restored calliope wagon accompanied the revelers as the rowdy funeral procession marched all the way into town from the bayou meadow. An empty horse-drawn hearse was filled with newly gathered meadow flowers and brought up the rear behind trailer cages of birds, barking seals and a particularly ferocious orange cat.
Leading the parade, in matching sky-blue majorette costumes, were Miss Mary Kay Goodbody and the equally stunning Miss Gezelle Guilbeau, who was recently released into the custody of the ponytailed preacher, upon his considerably elegant and persuasive plea for clemency on her behalf.
The sun was gathering courage in the east for its assault upon the mists loitering in the shadows of newly-leaved pecans along the low bayou bottoms when the partygoers began to drift home for a recharging nap before beginning their second day of bereavement. Only a single table was still occupied in the little café. The interchangeable Canadian animal trainers, Chris and Trish, were finishing each other’s sentences.
“Well, I guess he’s really gone now,”
“But the circus is here again, he somehow saw to that.”
Bobbie Blue Socks nodded an uncharacteristically sober head, which was mimicked by the others sitting slumped in their chairs, or leaning their chins heavily upon elbows or hands folded on the scrub-worn Formica surface. The once-upon-a-time fire-eater spoke the thought on every mind.
“Well, whatta we do now? The Ringmaster’s told us all about the little legacy old LaFeet left in his safe. Do we just divide it up among the circus family, or give it away, or what?
A veiled gypsy beauty wearing a daringly low-cut red and gold blouse lifted a small crystal ball onto the table and stared into it.
“Velll, now darlinks, I zee a great and glowink biggsy topee. All britey and lonelyz sittink un ze meadowz, watink for ze kiddiez.”
A female clown still wore her gold clown nose, and spoke with a slightly nasal impediment.
“Wood id be poddible? I mead, we’re all so, so chaged dow?”
An aging daredevil who had ridden his three-wheeled motorcycle with a stuffed gorilla on the back to join his friends in this last tribute absentmindedly scratched a crescent of white belly which protruded beneath his faded circus tunic before he spoke.
“Well, old LaFeet himself was ‘poddable’. And if HE was, then anything in the whole wide world is.”
Blackbear rose to the sudden recognition of the occasion and, lifting the tiny unicycle which had been wedged in his considerable posterior for most of the day, pointed to the door. They all stumbled out of the café in a strange, sleepy state of euphoria. Gayla, still wearing her flesh-colored riding leotard and flowing yellow Lady Godiva wig, slipped her arm through Bob’s and looked at the last twinkling stars.
“LaFeet alw
ays talked to the elephants on stormy nights about ‘La Belle Etoile’, the Starlight Girl. Do you really think maybe he’s just gone looking for her at last?”
The sun was just about to clear the line of moss-bearded grandfather live oaks to the east, and the weary, hollowed-out crescent of the moon was struggling to its bed through soft, newly gray-green branches of stately cypresses to the west. The little band of circus family shared the final moments of moonset engulfed only in the silence of their thoughts and the gathering shadows of a new day on the ancient and living bayou of the low country.
Book Two - The Return
“SHOOT AND DANG FIRE!”
“Doggone dang son of a pistol, anyway!”
Ever since Olive got religion down at the camp meeting at Alpine eight years ago, Elmo felt constrained to restrict his language to only somewhat innocuous and ineffectual expletives.
“Now, Elmo, you know it’s no use to talk such a way. The Lord sees our troubles and He will provide.”
Elmo pushed the door open and lurched out of the ancient Ford pickup. He moved around to the front and began to untwist the short length of wire holding down the hood. In deference to his lady love, his mutterings carried only to himself.
“Well, if He’s watchin’ now, He better hide his eyes, or see murder committed upon this con-sarned machine. Heck-fire, God Hisself pro’ly owned it when He was a kid. Got it from his grandaddy, betcha. Blasted ol’ rattle trap, anyway.”
Olive sat in the sweltering cab and watched the tan, lanky man work at the makeshift hood bindings. Her momma always called him ‘Jerky’ and warned Olive that if she ever needed to stab him, to use an old knife, because he was so tough and dry he’d ruin a good one.
She smiled slightly, partly at the recollection, and partly because of the warmth of the fire the young cowboy kindled in her heart nearly forty years ago. In fact, those years had conspired with the harsh sun and wind of their little ranch outside of Marfa to mold her entire face into a topography of laugh lines and crow’s feet.
As a dull, glistening moisture began to gather in these recesses of skin around her eyes, she began to fan herself with one of the religious pamphlets she kept handy on the dash. All the locals in Marfa knew to give the old pickup a wide berth when Olive was sitting in it, or end up with a handful of salvation tracts. This particular one was titled ‘Return to Eden’ and was written by a charismatic and somewhat mentally unstable preacher over in El Paso. Most folks found it so hard to decipher that they just put it away and faked an interest so as not to hurt Olive’s feelings.
But she liked it. The way the preacher used some little letters with lots of big ones, and used commas instead of apostrophes, and interspersed it all with equal signs; well, there was just an excitement about it. Kinda like the freak shows in the little carnival that always set up on the old school ground in the fall. She knew it was crazy, and so was old Al, the loony preacher that wrote it. But it was, after all, the Word, and as such, her intuition told her it contained a depth of solace for the human heart if ever it was needed.
And she had a premonition that before this night was over, she just might need all the solace she could get her hands on. They had been to town, where Elmo conducted his monthly banking business. This generally consisted of going into Cattleman’s Savings Association and drawing out $23.75 in cash, then walking next door to City Drug and giving it to Lula Torres, who took payments for Sierra Energy. It was ten years now since the single wire was stretched across to the ranch gate and brought up by Elmo to their adobe house under the mesa.
While Elmo was busy with his ‘man stuff’, Olive slipped into Huetterman’s Dry Goods, where the old Dutchman’s daughter, Arbena, laughed and told her that they had a good selection of new shirts in Elmo’s size, skinny/tall. Olive picked out a sky blue one with pale mother-of-pearl snaps down the front and on the sleeves and pockets, and put it on layaway for Christmas.
It didn’t matter that every single shirt that Elmo ever owned was exactly like this one, differing only in the variety of bright colors. Besides, she wanted to visit a spell with Arbena, who was a stoutly, attractive girl just coming into full womanhood. Unfortunately, she was coming into that state extremely well endowed with her buxom ancestors’ genes, and some of the local boys had taken to calling her ‘Arbena Hooters, man!’ Olive felt it her neighborly duty to assure the young woman that someday soon one of the laughing boys would suddenly swallow hard then hock his saddle to buy her a diamond ring.
But now Olive was sitting in the old truck on a rocky little road that led the thirty lonely miles out to the cabin that Elmo’s grandfather built, nestled into the Cuesto del Burro Mountains. When the old truck suddenly died, losing power to the headlights and the radio which she kept tuned to KSAV (‘all the Gospel, all the time’), they rolled to a dusty stop. It was then they noticed the Lights; that strange phenomenon of their patch of desert.
First reported in 1883 by an old-time rancher, the eerie Marfa Lights had been seen by hundreds of people, as they flashed and sparkled and wavered above the flats. They are an enduring mystery in an ever-shrinking world. Elmo and Olive saw them often. But never like this.
Never this close.
* * *
The old man woke slowly, stretching his arms and legs before opening his pale, blue-veined eyelids. He had been dreaming of bright lights and little men with latex skin of ever-changing hues; a dream almost already forgotten, but one which would return to him forever on fitful nights.
He sat up suddenly, startlingly awake.
Almost half a mile away, the sound of Elmo’s abortive cursing and wire shaking drifted past the untrimmed hair in his ears. He saw the starlight reflect off the windshield of the old truck, and tried in vain to recall other times when the light flickered on dark bayou waters. He turned towards Elmo and Olive and took a few tentative waddles. He was on his way home. Wherever home might be.
* * *
The room was small and cozy, but somehow its warm friendliness seemed strange and foreign to the old man. It was an addition to the east wall of the larger house, with a genuinely rustic interior and smooth, white plastered walls. The roof beams were exposed and slanted slightly to the outer wall, which contained the sole small window. The door, like the bed and table, was obviously handmade; wide solid planks nailed to a cross frame, and suspended on large, wrought iron hinges. The bed was a simple framework of peeled and polished cedar posts, with an old-time rope foundation and single, stuffed mattress.
The bed was made with clean linens that smelled slightly of sunshine and dust, and covered with a double-wedding-ring-patterned quilt. The only other objects in the room were an old, dog-eared Bible on the perfect little table, and a melon-sized, black-on-white, fired pottery olla, sitting in the depth of the windowsill. The little pottery vessel had been made by an already-old man in 1880 at the Acoma Pueblo of New Mexico. It bore black geometric designs of abstract bird forms on the incredibly bright white clay slip which would make it instantly identifiable to any modern collector. It was a gift of the house’s builder to his young bride, after a trip to Santa Fe to trade for horses in 1882.
The man reached out to touch its softly glowing surface, just as the door swung open and Elmo ducked his way into the room. For the most fleeting of moments, it seemed to the stranger that the rancher came through some wavering liquid barrier, and he unconsciously took a tiny step backward.
“Like the pot, huh? My grandaddy gave it to Nana Maria when he first brought her out here. Her family members were some of the early Spanish settlers in old San Antonio. There’s a lot of Yankee tourists that would trade their kids for that little thing, I betcha.”
The stranger looked again at the little pot and weakly muttered something about how the abstract figures reminded him of something, but he just couldn’t recall.
“And that’s another thing. Since you can’t seem to remember your name, and how you was lucky to find us, and since you was wearing only them yeller long jo
hns when you found us, Olive thought we might just call you ‘Lucky’. Either that or ‘Long John’ or ‘Trapdoor’ or ‘Ol’ Yel...’”
“No, no. Lucky; Lucky will be just fine.”
“Well, Lucky it is then. And Olive says to put some of this aloe vera on that sunburn. You say you was only wandering for one day? Musta been mighty pale. Maybe you’re one of them Canada folks, down to see the park and got lost, wearin’ nothin’ but your drawers. Happened before, I betcha. Either that or you dropped in from Outer Space.”
Elmo broke into an easy laugh over his little joke, but Lucky could only manage a lopsided smile.
As Elmo turned to leave, allowing the stranger to adjust to his new surroundings and new name, he laid a faded pair of jeans and a lime-green shirt on the bed.
“An’ here’s some duds left by a hand that the Border Patrol picked up sudden-like last fall. You oughta fit them pretty good. Olive says there’s water hot, out in the washhouse, and you can probably get some of that ranch land offa you before supper.”
He paused with his bowed head touching the lintel of the little low-cut door, and took one last look at the strangely clad stranger.
“You know, it’s just a ding-dang wonder you weren’t et up by some big ol’ momma bobcat. They’s meaner than a rattler with a toothache this time of year. You sure are one lucky feller, and that’s the goldarned truth.”
As the image of a big cat bounded across the empty screen of his memory, Lucky, the stranger in long johns who was plucked like a wayward scarf out of the desert’s lost-and-found, wondered just what was his particular, goldarned truth.