The Clown Chronicles (Stories From The Bayou)

by Lon Frank

  As Olive carefully and slowly rolled the little red car out into the highway and started gently off towards the east, Lucky gave a slight sigh, glad to again be on familiar ground with his two new friends. Only a second later, he wished he had held onto his breath, as the Beach Boys tape picked up with,

  “...and we’ll have fun fun fun...”

  And as Olive stomped the accelerator on the high-performance, 306-horsepower engine, she stage-whispered in a voice made of smoky burlap and honey,

  “Hold on to your Munchkins, boys; we’re off to see the Wizard!”

  * * *

  Little towns like Sanderson, Dryden and Langtry blew past the windows of the souped-up Mustang like sets in a tornado disaster movie. Elmo sporadically sang along with the Beach Boys while Olive furiously power-shifted through the outskirts of each passing settlement. For the most part, Lucky just hunkered down in the torture chamber of the low slung rear seat and hoped his bladder would outlast that of the femme fatale at the wheel. They stopped for gas at the border town of Del Rio, where Olive took advantage of the pause to drink an Orange Crush and hand out six salvation tracts to other travelers.

  It was just over five and a half hours later when the odometer rolled over at 400 miles, and the red land-rocket rolled onto the valet parking apron of Casa Grande del Oro. The luxury hotel spread its courtyards and private balconies along two blocks of the famed San Antonio River Walk. Olive pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead.

  “Well, fellers, it does look kinda pricey, but we’re on an adventure, and anyways, I always say, ‘it’s flat to fly and round to roll’. Now let’s get us some of that fancy food and a couple of them fishbowl margaritas.”

  Lucky shot a worried glance over at Elmo and decided to keep an eye on Olive, just in case her head started to smoke and spin around. But the rancher just held a finger alongside his nose and watched as Olive got out and handed the keys to the young parking attendant. Somehow her buttons had seemingly refastened themselves and her skirt behaved absolutely demurely in the evening breeze.

  Elmo climbed out of the passenger seat and then grabbed Lucky by the wrists and pulled him like a breach-birth calf out of the little car’s womb. As he helped the travel-crippled old man to regain his formerly upright posture, Elmo whispered close to his ear.

  “It wouldn’t do to mention the way she drives. She don’t think nothing of it. All these years, she’s a reg’lar goldarned Jekyll and Hyde and she don’t even know it.”

  As he limped behind the couple into the plush lobby, Lucky massaged his lower back and muttered to himself, “Jekyll and Hyde, my hind foot! Jack the goldarned Ripper would be more like it.”

  * * *

  The late twilight was particularly pleasant along the riverside walk through old San Antonio, and since all their collective joints were complaining from the afternoon’s ride, the trio of friends decided to stroll for a while before dinner. The old brick of the water-side path was about ten feet below street level and was quiet and shady with lush plantings and hanging gardens from the restored balconies above.

  Olive had changed into a pale and flowing silk gown, which made her appear to float along the walkway as though she were the ghost of an aristocratic debutante, returned for her evening promenade. Elmo, of course, wore his cleanest blue jeans, and a pure white Wrangler shirt with dark gray snaps. His silver trophy buckle glinted off the tiny wave tops in the dark waters of the little confined river. They held one another’s hands and nodded to smiling passersby.

  Waddling a few paces behind them in a constant low noise of creak and rustle, Lucky hurriedly kept pace in his new Justin ropers, stiff, unwashed jeans and an identical white western-cut shirt.

  Three blocks from their hotel, they decided to climb to street level to get a clear look across the plaza at the world-famous old mission. Once an unassuming neighborhood church and yard of mud brick walls, the Alamo came into history by the time-honored manner of spilled blood. The distinctive facade of the main building caught the last rays of the sun and glowed softly metallic, like one of the little souvenir paperweights sold in the hotel gift shops.

  Olive gripped her mate’s hand more tightly as she felt the inherent Holiness of this place where once, men gathered to butcher one another over flaming ideals of liberty and loyalty. And where the bones of the fallen on each side now nurtured a great city as proud of its rebel heritage as it was of its Hispanic ancestry. A city where streets named Hilldebrand, Wurzbach and Fredericksburg mingle comfortably with Zarzamora, Culebra and Blanco; where blue corn tortillas share menus with lasagna or schnitzel, and Fiesta includes one and all.

  An old city in a new world, San Antonio was a haven for travelers of the last two centuries. Some came here to rest, some to settle. Some came from the far corners of the world. Some came farther.

  As they turned to retreat back to the level of the river, Lucky froze in the middle of the road. Elmo looked back and grabbed him just as a passing ‘57 Chevy with side murals depicting a reclining and scantly clad Mexican maid, lurched by with a blast of Tejano music coming from its open windows.

  “Hey, bud, you wanna be a hood ornament on a low rider, or somethin’?”

  But Lucky wasn’t paying attention to the traffic or to Elmo. He was still staring at a small statue alongside the road on the next block. A plaque on its pedestal said in simple letters, ‘Hertzeberg Circus Museum’. Olive followed his gaze.

  “Oh, look, Elmo. Isn’t it cute? A little white elephant.”

  * * *

  Along the San Antonio Riverwalk, various small ethnic eateries set up little round wrought-iron tables in imitation of European sidewalk cafés. Each had a colorful umbrella advertising imported Rhineskeller wine or Corona beer.

  The trio of friends sat at a waterside table for an hour, eating little Czech sausages wrapped in buttermilk pastry. They were somewhat a departure from the traditional fruit-filled confection, but were the most popular item on the menu of Molina’s Kolaches (‘We Gotcha Kolache’), and were just the thing on an already-hot South Texas morning. Lucky was careful to finish in time for them to be waiting when the little circus museum opened at 9:30.

  When the massive oak door swung open precisely at the advertised moment, they were subjected to the coldly analytical gaze of a tall and severe looking young woman. Her tailored, gray pinstripe suit hung from her squared shoulders in perfectly straight lines, unimpaired by womanly curves or bulges of any kind. As the lanky rancher, his wife and their still-limping friend passed by her in single file, she spoke to the air above their heads.

  “Good morning, and welcome to the Hertzeberg Circus Museum. Our tours are self-guided. My name is Agnes Maggart, and I shall be pleased to answer any questions you may have about our collection. Thank you.”

  Within the cool semi-dark of the first room, Lucky looked back at the hawk-eyed docent and mumbled to himself, as he had begun to do more and more frequently.

  “Lord have mercy, it’s the Anti-Arbena.”

  As they drifted from one exhibit to the next, Lucky began to wonder just why he felt so intent on coming to the little museum. But then, they drifted into a room of old circus photos and he once again began to receive dusty mental images of gaudy tents and bearded ladies. One picture in particular caught his attention. It was a forlorn little circus trailer at rest in an overgrown meadow, shaded by a huge moss-shrouded oak. He was just beginning to lean forward as if he could fall into the light-faded image, when Olive gave a little gasp.

  She was tapping the glass of a large photo which captured the 1894 Barnum Circus parade in front of the Alamo. It was one of those old panoramic images, and the swinging trunks of the elephants were blurred by the time required for exposure. But it wasn’t the picture she was excited about.

  “Come here, Elmo. Take a look at this!”

  In the lower left hand corner in flowing script were the words, ‘Eden Studio, San Antonio’.

  “Well, I’ll be dunked in sheep dip and deep fried.
It’s the same goldarned thing that’s on the picture of Grandaddy and Nana Maria. Eden Studio.”

  At Elmo’s mention of Eden Studio, Miss Maggart’s gaze darted immediately to them from where she was studiously observing the suspiciously mesmerized old man in front of the clown photos. She silently moved closer to the couple now searching for other Eden marks in the display.

  “Are you particularly interested in the early photographic records of Eden Studio, by any chance?”

  Olive and Elmo immediately took the bait, and began to tell the severe young woman about the old picture and the cryptic message in the pamphlet, which Olive repeatedly assured her was the work of The Almighty, through a humble, lunatic preacher in the desert.

  The excitement in their voices brought Lucky out of a deep daydream featuring the peculiar smell of elephants. He hurried across the room and interrupted just as Elmo told the docent about cutting the seal on the back of the old photo at the breakfast table.

  “Yeah, but we didn’t find nothin’. Nothin’ at all. No sirree, nothin’. Zippo. Nada. That’s uh, that’s why we came here; we sorta figgered to find this Eden Studio and ask about maybe buyin’ some reprints, you know, or somethin’, I guess. You wouldn’t know where it is, I mean, now, would ya’?”

  Agnes Maggart’s eyes were as expressionless as those of the red snappers lying on ice in the old El Mercado Market Square, just four blocks to the north. But her lips curled in what surely must have been her best effort at a smile.

  “Well, actually, you have found Eden Studio. It was in this very building until Mrs. Eden’s death in 1939. In fact, their photos of early circuses became the primary item in Mr. Hertzeberg’s collection.”

  Elmo slapped his blue-jeaned thigh, causing a small puff of dust to float on the morning sun from a nearby window.

  “Well, now ain’t that a consarned blue ribbon miracle, if ever you heard one.”

  “Now, Elmo, dear, there’s no need to blaspheme. The good Lord led us here, that’s a fact. Surely, so this lovely girl could help us to fulfill our faithful pilgrimage and be restored by our return to Eden. Isn’t that right, sugar?”

  Agnes’s eyes darted in slight confusion from one to the other of the smiling couple.

  “Uh, yeah. Right. Anyhow, if you want to see the whole collection, we have recently archived it in computer format. It was Mrs. Eden’s dying stipulation that the photographs be made available to the public in perpetuity.”

  For some reason he didn’t understand, Lucky still felt that they shouldn’t tell everything to the suddenly helpful young woman. He knew he would have to assert himself in the conversation if they were to have a chance of learning the meaning of the ink drawing and its key.

  “Well, if that means we can see them, just you point us towards this ‘perpetuity’ where they’s bein’ kept in, and we’re on our way.”

  Agnes intuitively sensed that it was time for her to end her involvement in the conversation, and just pointed to a computer screen sitting on a desk in the corner.

  “It’s very user-friendly. Should you require assistance with the printer, please ask. I shall be greeting other guests.”

  As Olive sat down in front of the little computer, Lucky looked around at the four rooms of slightly dusty mementos, totally devoid of other sightseers, and mumbled,

  “Yeah, fer cryin’ out loud, I sure wouldn’t want to get trampled by all the other guests or nothin’.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Miss Agnes Maggart pushed a series of buttons on her untraceable cellular telephone. When a voice responded on the other end, she said,

  “Maggart here. Three subjects inquired about Eden this morning at oh-ten-hundred. They proceeded to view the archive and printed out the series that you were concerned about. Two old farmers, one male, one female. One additional old male; talked to himself, and ...waddled.”

  * * *

  The three friends again sat around an outdoor table in the gathering shadows of the late Alamo City afternoon. Their waiter at the hotel’s little courtyard restaurant brought over three large glasses of iced tea with lime and orange slices and sprigs of mint hanging on the rims. The decorative drinks were compliments of the young parking attendant in gratitude for the experience of driving Olive’s car the short distance to the parking garage. Elmo looked at the concoction before him with slight horror and grabbed the sleeve of the young waiter.

  “Just what in tarnation is that?”

  “Iced tea, sir, a specialty of the Casa Grande del Oro.”

  “Well now, son, I know ice tea, and it sure don’t have no ding-blasted fruit salad floatin’ on it, neither.”

  At which point the young man furtively glanced towards the station of the maitre d’ and bent down slightly, close to Elmo’s left ear.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Me and the other waiters call it Yuppie tea. My old man would probably have me gelded if he knew I was servin’ this stuff. I’ll be glad to take off the rabbit food for you if you want.”

  “Now, Elmo, dear, the good Lord put all wonderful things on this earth for our enjoyment, and I do wish you’d try some of them, if just to make me happy.”

  Elmo turned on his trademark grin, gave the waiter a wink, and lifted his glass to his smiling sweetheart of nearly forty years.

  “Well, little darlin’, if it’ll make you happy, I’ll guzzle a number three washtub full of this here Yuppie tea, or puppy tea, or any other dang-blessed thing this feller brings out.”

  As the young waiter returned to the kitchen area, another man, wearing a stained white straw fedora and cheap imitation Italian sunglasses, was peeking through the screen of foliage surrounding the courtyard. Barely over four feet tall and perfectly rotund, he was covered almost to his knees by a huge blue and yellow vertically striped shirt, which gave him an uncanny resemblance to the open umbrellas over the sidewalk tables. Around his neck hung a camera with an expensive telephoto lens. He whistled quietly at the young server.

  “Hey, you, c’mere. That the old broad with the fancy wheels?”

  * * *

  Lucky took the four 8 X 10 sheets of paper out of the bag bearing the little white elephant logo of the Hertzeberg Museum. They were prints of a series of seemingly related photos which they found in the computer archives earlier that morning.

  At first glance, the copied photos appeared to be abstract designs of a sort found on pottery of the various descendants of the mysterious Anasazi culture. Inhabitants and builders of the high cliff dwellings and pueblos of the four corners region, the Anasazi, so called after a Navajo word for the ancient ones, developed a technique which would blossom into the later, incredibly beautiful art crafts of western American Indians. Later day collectors would come to fight over the glowing, black-fired pottery vessels of Santa Clara Pueblo, the polychrome jars and bowls of San Idelfonso and Zia, and perhaps most striking of all, the black-on-white bird designs of the ollas from the little village of Acoma.

  Olive was the first to notice the old photos and pointed out the little birds in the designs to Elmo, saying they were just like the ones on Nana Maria’s little pot. But Lucky stared at them with unusual fascination. Somewhere in the recesses of his flickering memory lurked a recognition of these strange lines and figures.

  He now spread them out on the little table and had to almost stack them on top of each other because of the small space. Suddenly Lucky gripped the edge of the table and stood, leaning over the scatter of paper.

  “Look. Look here at the little symbols in the corners. See, all of the photos have them. But when we put them together...”

  He slightly rearranged the accidental alignment of the prints and straightened up, his mouth once again hanging open. Together, the designs on the papers aligned to form a larger pattern, some sort of blueprint or schematic, at once simple and yet indecipherable in its complexity. Ten seconds passed before Olive gently placed her hand on his, causing Lucky to close his mouth and remember to breathe.

  “W
hat is it, dear? Do you recognize it?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I, I really don’t know. Maybe if we make the marks line up at the other corners...”

  Once again he rearranged the papers and when he was done, it was Olive’s mouth which hung open. There before them was the simple outline of a large building which they all instantly recognized. A classic Antebellum Greek Revival mansion fronted with great columns and magnificent portico.

  The lines converged along the new border into a single line of stark, block-style letters, “Maison du Jet D’eau, Jeanerette.”

  From the vine-draped balcony directly above them came the muted clicks of a camera shutter.

  * * *

  Robert Redford’s life had been difficult. At the height of four feet, four inches, he reached his vertical limitations by the age of nine. A cute, chubby baby, he grew into a stout toddler, and then into a hefty preteen. By the age of thirteen, he was already becoming hardened to the unkind jeers and pranks of his peers when he was called upon by his peculiar, unflinching array of chromosomes to cross the threshold of puberty.

  During that period of their lives most boys are plunged overnight into an eternal struggle of emotion and heredity. The human male child, who by nature is an uncomplicated hedonistic heathen, capable of unthinking acts of destruction and inspiration, of cowardice as easy as courage, is suddenly confronted with the man he will become. Most make the transition with trepidation, being molded into noble conformity by societal pressure, or warping slightly into a new persona, guided by his particular ideologies and tempered by the chemical sorcery of testosterone.