The Book of Moon

by George Crowder

  No, a real one. Since he couldn’t spend weekends with us, he took jobs appearing at children’s parties. He wore the full clown outfit—white face, red nose, wig, giant shoes. I guess he knew a lot of clown shtick, like doing pratfalls, silly stunts, juggling, magic tricks, tying balloons. Jasmine helped him on one of his gigs and said he was really good. The kids loved him and the single mothers were all giving him the eye. She said he wasn’t interested.

  I remembered that Dad had spent time as a rodeo clown, but I hadn’t thought it was a big part of his life. He had never talked about it. Moss and I weren’t all that big on clowns, but we weren’t scared by them, like some people were.

  The only clown I could think of was the star in Mom’s favorite opera, Pagliacci. She used to play that song over and over, singing in her bad Italian. I finally asked her what it was about and she told me the story, about a clown who has to make people laugh even though his life is ruined. After that, she started singing in English. I guess she thought I’d want to learn the song, too. I had no interest in that, but the words stuck, and they came to me now.

  Laugh, clown, laugh, at your shattered love

  Meanwhile, Mom bought a new red convertible. That really got her a lot of attention.

  Laugh at the pain tearing your heart.

  Chapter Thirty

  Anti-theist

  So is this approaching the misery of Job? Nah, not even close. Okay how about this? Remember how Satan afflicted Job with a disgusting skin disease, and Job tried to scrape his hide off with a broken plate? Remarkably, that’s starting to sound like a plan to me.

  Last week I went to the doctor with a rash on my arms and legs. He diagnosed it as poison oak. I told him I couldn’t imagine where I could possibly have run into poison oak, since I lead a concrete-and-asphalt-bound life. Yeah, right, he said. He looked at me like I was a pregnant lady claiming to be a virgin. Then he gave me some of that stupid pink lotion that turns to chalk and doesn’t do anyone any good. He told me to wash all the sheets, towels, blankets, and clothes in the house and wipe down every possible surface I might have come into contact with to remove all traces of the poison oil. I guess he thought he was treating Cinderella.

  Well, I did that. I’ve painted myself with so much calamine lotion that I look like the Pink Panther. The pink itchy panther. Mom says these things can take some time to clear up. It’s been five Ω₣∑!ж days!

  It’s bad during the day, but it’s unbelievable at night. After I put my cream on, there’s a window of about five minutes where I feel some hope. Then my skin comes to life. It might start behind my knees, or between my fingers or toes. I try to lie still, hoping it will stop. I know that scratching just aggravates it.

  But it doesn’t stop. The itching builds until my leg or my arm spasms and twitches. So I give it a scratch. Just a little one. A drop in the bucket of my itch. Then I let the faucet drip—scratch…scratch…scratch. Open the tap wide to fill the bucket—scratch, scratch, scratch. Put a damn fire hose in the bucket and crank it wide open—SCRATCHSCRATCHSCRATCH!!!!!!! But there’s no bottom to my itch bucket. My skin is bloody and raw and oozing like a festering carcass. The pain is better than the itch and I can drop off for a little while.

  Last night I tried sleeping in the bathtub. With water, of course. I was somewhat concerned about the possibility of drowning, but sleep deprivation and itching have made death more appealing.

  I got a couple hours sleep before Mom came in to pee and found me comatose and shivering in a cold bath. I was mumbling about Satan and God, which got her attention. She’s taking me to a dermatologist tomorrow. Our next stop will be the exorcist.

  According to the dermatologist, I’ve got scabies. He shook his head and gritted his teeth when he examined me and heard the doctor’s diagnosis of poison oak. This new diagnosis makes me feel better since it somehow justifies the misery I’ve experienced, not because it’s a less loathsome affliction than poison oak, which is, after all, just bad chemicals. Scabies are parasites, a whole new level of horrible.

  They are microscopic mites that burrow into your skin like termites, creating tunnels, pooping, and laying eggs. When magnified, they’re hideous creatures. The thought of these demons living inside me is even more repulsive than the itching they inflict, which is worse at night because that’s when the pests feel like digging.

  I asked the doctor if anyone had ever cured himself by excavating the bugs the way I was trying to. He laughed a little, but took me seriously. He said most people have the good sense to come to him long before that. He also said that if I’d kept going the way I was, I’d probably have contracted a serious skin infection before I killed all the mites. Instead he prescribed some cream that he thought would do a better job of exterminating them. And naturally, he told me to wash all the sheets, towels, blankets, and clothes in the house and wipe down every possible surface I might have come into contact with and left any stray scabies on. Or else torch the joint and relocate to the Antarctic, where they don’t have a lot of these fiends.

  Thank God for dermatologists and their chemicals. The bugs are dead and I can sleep again. I just hope this isn’t like a horror movie, where the monster reappears to scare the bejesus out of you just as you’re relaxing.

  Uh…thank God? Did I say that?! Figure of speech, right? If He gets any credit for dermatologists and their chemicals, then He’s got to take the blame for scabies, which are a really horrible creation.

  Also, how about mosquitoes, bubonic plague, ticks, flesh eating bacteria, brown recluse spiders, leprosy, human wolf syndrome, vampire fish, alien hand syndrome, furious rabies, and snakefish, to name a few of His masterpieces I think we could do without. Were these hideous things absolutely necessary?

  Or are they punishment for our evil thoughts and acts? That’s what Job believed—that his misfortune was divinely inflicted for something he’d done to displease the Lord, though he couldn’t imagine what it could have been.

  It appears that I am no longer nothing. I am becoming…something. Not an atheist, because I take the topic a bit too personally. I’m becoming an anti-theist.

  True believers are seriously getting on my nerves. In the last week, our door has been knocked on by Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and some guy who wanted to sell me the Bhagavad Gita. Walking down Pico, I was accosted by a minivan full of Orthodox Jews who tried to convert me. Then there’s the homeless Jesus freak on the corner in Westwood haranguing everyone to repent before it’s too late. All are totally certain their unique explanation of the meaning of life is the only one that’s valid. Why do so many religious people feel an overwhelming compulsion to talk you into enlisting with them? It feels like one giant pyramid scheme.

  (It must be noted that an exception to this rule are the bow-tie-clad messengers of Nation of Islam I encountered selling their newspaper on the corner of La Brea and Slauson. They were not looking for any white converts, since their founder, Elijah Mohammed, considered Caucasians to be “blue-eyed devils.” However, they were eager to sell me a bean pie, perhaps because my eyes are actually brown.)

  Wondering just how many other faiths might be clamoring for my vote, I do a little research to determine the number of religions that exist in the world. It turns out to be a surprisingly tough question to answer, and I give up after identifying a few facts.

  According to the Organization for Religious Tolerance, there are nineteen major world religions. That’s not really so many, right?

  Well…they subdivide into 270 different large religious groups. Okay. Still manageable.

  Then it gets complicated. Take Christianity for example. Worldwide, over 34,000 different Christian groups have been identified! Most of these believe their particular interpretation of the Gospel is the only one that’s valid, and that the other 33,999 are nothing but hooey.

  How can people who accept the Bible as the word of God find so many different ways to disagree on what it means?

  Wow—as Mr. Smith said, there are a l
ot of different Buddhist denominations, though I think the Christians have them beat. The funny names tire me out—Hinayana, Mahayana, Theravada, Nikayana, Sthaviravada, Mulasarvastivada—so I move on to another major faith. With only about 150 different sects, Islam is looking relatively homogeneous. Though it must be admitted, the Sunnis and the Shiites are frequently ready to kill each other. Do they each think the other guys are infidels, or what?

  Well, religious people tend to blame this sort of bad behavior on man’s imperfect nature, not the pernicious aspects of a belief in God. I think this is letting God off the hook on the question of faith and its merits. Does God really bear no responsibility for all the atrocities that are committed in His name? If so, just what is it that He supposedly is good for?!

  I note that after his skin affliction, Job’s next move was to confer with his amigos. What the hell. In for a penny, in for a pound. I’m going to call Macaroni.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Aron

  My best friend in elementary school was a kid named Aron Patel. We went to an amazing magnet school, called, appropriately, Wonderland Elementary. It’s located on Wonderland Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. If you get up there early you can sometimes see deer wandering in the hills next to the campus, and plenty of other wildlife. In Los Angeles, that’s something to write home about.

  There are other things that attract parents and kids to the school, however. Start with the insane test scores, just about the highest in the city. Lots of artsy-fartsy over-the-top parent involvement. A special event every day. Chinese New Year, Jewish New Year, Lunar New Year, Mardi Gras—though you can forget Lent, it’s no fun.

  Aron’s dad was way cool. He worked for the department of agriculture. One day he brought a pair of German shepherds to class.

  “They are vedy intelligent dogs, you will see. Here I have four suitcases. You there, young man. I will take the dogs into the hall. Hide the avocado in one of the suitcases. Don’t worry, they will be finding it.”

  The dogs immediately identified the suspicious suitcase. They also ripped open a couple of lunches that had avocados. One dog peed on the floor. The other went for the teacher’s desk and started barking like crazy. The kids loved the show.

  Our teacher, Mr. Ruskin, turned red and murmured something about an avocado. Mr. Patel coughed and said, “They don’t bark like that for avocados. They bark like that for a certain herb. Probably left by another teacher. You are a vedy good teacher.”

  Unfortunately, Aron’s mom was not so cool. When he entered fifth grade, she decided he should skip a few grades and go to college. No kidding. She pulled him out of school for a couple of months to tutor him for the entrance exam. I mean, Aron is smart, but he’s not Stephen Hawking, so this was a pretty crazy idea.

  Anyway, he managed to pass the test, so he wound up getting into college. His dad put up a fight, though. So Aron went to fifth grade in the morning and Los Angeles City College in the afternoon. And guess what? He said fifth grade was harder.

  Aron was never the calmest kid in the world, but this put a lot more pressure on him. He didn’t react well and started quivering and shaking all the time. He also didn’t have much time to hang out anymore, but before he went home he liked to go shopping.

  “Shopping” meant “shoplifting.” Yes, Aron became a kleptomaniac. I stopped admiring any objects, because if I did, Aron would go out and steal them. Books, CDs, electronic gear, whatever. Knowing my affinity for cutlery, Aron shoplifted a cleaver by stuffing it down the front of his pants. That’s a good way to lose the family jewels.

  A standard stop was a liquor store where a lot of the kids bought candy, sodas, and Hot Cheetos. I always paid for anything I wanted, but Aron naturally didn’t subscribe to that credo.

  It was not easy for Aron to be surreptitious because his body-in-motion attracted attention. People tended to stare at him, trying to figure out if he had Tourette’s or MS or juvenile Parkinson’s or whatever. Sometimes Aron would just confront the surveillant, demanding, “What are you looking at? Didn’t your parents teach you it’s not polite to stare? Everywhere I go, people are watching me!” Making a scene would invariably shame everyone into giving him enough privacy to steal something.

  The owner of the liquor store was an Indian man named Gurmeet. He took a special interest in Aron, which made it more challenging for him to loot. But the proprietor was pinned down at the counter, which gave Aron the edge. Carefully playing the mirrors and the cameras, he wafted through the store and often bagged things that he didn’t even want. Then we’d meet up at the counter to check out. Obviously, Aron never bought anything, which was pretty suspicious in itself.

  One day, Gurmeet finally said, “You are never buying anything.”

  “You don’t have anything I can eat,” said Aron.

  “Nothing?”

  “It’s my diet. I’m a vegan. And unfortunately I don’t like most vegetables. Do you have any bean sprouts?”

  “No. I do not have bean sprouts.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I don’t know why more places don’t carry bean sprouts.”

  “That is all you eat, bean sprouts?” Gurmeet was actually getting interested now.

  “Pretty much. I used to eat chicken and fish, but you know, it just wasn’t right. I mean, how do you draw the line? Beef? No. Chicken? Yes. Pigs? No. Fish? Yes.”

  “Lamb?” asked Gurmeet.

  “No.”

  “Shrimp and crab?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  “Kitty cat? Puppy dog?”

  “Ha ha. No kidding, does it make sense to elevate one creature with a central nervous system over another?”

  “No, young man. That is why I say, ‘kitty cat, puppy dog.’ I am making a point. If you eat other animals, why not eat kitty cat, puppy dog?”

  “Man, you’re on your way to veganism.”

  “You misunderstand. I like meat. I will eat everything. Even, maybe, kitty cat, puppy dog. Maybe human being.”

  “I think that’s illegal,” I said.

  “Okay, well, maybe not. But I do not have rules.”

  “You’re what’s called an omnivore with cannibalistic tendencies,” said Aron. “There aren’t many of you around.”

  Eventually Aron got careless. We were standing in line with several other people, and Aron decided to bag something right in front of Gurmeet. Without blinking, Gurmeet reached under the counter and pulled out a giant revolver. He leveled it at Aron and said calmly, “Stick ’em up, young man.”

  Aron twitchingly complied, clearly even more nervous than usual. His eyes bugged out as he stared at the gun. “Careful with that blunderbuss, man. It’s like from the Civil War.”

  Gurmeet snorted. “This is Colt forty-four magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world. It can blow your head clean off. So you have to ask yourself, are you feeling lucky today?”

  “What?”

  “Dirty Harry,” said Gurmeet. “Vedy good movie.”

  “I’ll add it to my Netflix queue,” said Aron. “Can I put my hands down?”

  “Yes. Take candy bar out of pocket before it melts.”

  Aron pulled a candy bar out of his pocket and put it on the counter.

  “Ummmmm,” said a little girl in an accusatory voice. “That’s stealing.”

  “Mommy,” her little brother asked. “Is the man gonna shoot him?”

  “I don’t think so,” said the mother. “But when you take what isn’t yours, bad things can happen.”

  “Lady,” pleaded Aron.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s a teachable moment.” She looked at Gurmeet. “Why don’t you put down the gun and call the police?”

  “Good idea,” he said, putting the gun under the counter and picking up the phone. “I’ll let them shoot him.”

  “What if you were to call my father, instead?”

  “You would like that, would you?”

  “It would be better than the police.”

  “Okay.
” Gurmeet handed him the phone. “Call.”

  Aron dialed, waited, then shook his head. “Voice mail.”

  “What about Mommy?”

  “Uh…I think I’d rather deal with the cops.”

  “They will call Mommy.”

  Aron put his head on the counter. “But you talk to her, okay?”

  “Okay. Dial the number and I will talk.”

  Aron dialed without raising his head, then passed the phone to Gurmeet. The shopkeeper switched to another language, rattled off several sentences, then waited. He raised his eyebrows, then replied angrily. He nodded several times, said a last word, and hung up.

  “She is vedy bad,” he said somberly. “And her Hindi is not good at all.”

  “That’s what Dad says,” Aron agreed.

  “Too bad we are not getting him,” said Gurmeet. He looked down at the candy bar on the counter. “Why do you take Snickers bar if you eat only bean sprouts?”

  “I’m pushing myself to try new things.”

  We didn’t have long to wait for Aron’s mother. She screeched into the parking lot and gunned her SUV into a space labeled for a compact car. She slammed her door open, smashing it into the car parked next to her, then contorted her bulk to wriggle out of her vehicle. As she launched herself towards the liquor store, the owner got his first good look at her.

  “Oh, my God,” he murmured. Mrs. Patel was a very large woman. Dressed in a brightly colored sari, she wore a multitude of necklaces and bracelets that jingled like a Hare Krishna festival. Her hair streamed out behind in a flowing mass, and dark eyes blazed from beneath a protruding, sweat-beaded brow.

  “I told you,” murmured Aron, as his mother burst into the store. It was the last thing he would say for some time.

  “What is the matter with you?” demanded his mother. “Who told you to come here? Who gave you permission? Why are you not at home studying, as your brother and sister? Stand still! What is the matter with you? Do you need an operation? Shall I take you to the hospital? They will cut off your feet. Stop moving around. What is the matter with you? This man says you are stealing. Are you stealing, or is he a liar?”