Death of A Clown

by Heather Haven

  “But what’s your side of it?” I ask, after putting them in my pocket.

  “Listen,” he turns back to me and answers softly. “I can’t help who I am, but I never force it down anyone’s throat. You know what they call most of us behind closed doors?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Of course, you do. Even in the circus, we’re different.”

  “Explain it to me.”

  “We’re the third sex. We’re the elephant in the room, love, the one everyone knows is there but nobody talks about. But once fingers point, it comes out in the open and I could

  lose my job. That little creep tried to cost me my job! Then what would I have done?” His royal self returns full volume, along with the accent. “I gave that boy my heart and he ripped it up and threw it on the ground like so much garbage. That’s all I was to him, garbage.”

  “Bard, keep it down, will you?” demands a rotund clown with a large yellow wig. “We’re trying to play cards.”

  “Sorry about that, gentlemen.” Henry concentrates on gluing on a red nose. I watch him, thinking even we girls don’t wear that much crap for a show.

  “So where were you early yesterday morning, Henry, say between five and seven?” I smile at him.

  A look of horror crosses his face. Taking me unaware, he jumps up, knocking his chair over and lunges at me, one powerful hand at my throat.

  “Get thee gone, strumpet,” he hisses, spraying saliva in my face. “And take with you your crack of doom. I don’t care if you are management’s little tart.” He tries to lift me off the ground by my neck.

  I feel my spine stretch and my throat squeeze shut. Henry’s small but very strong. I give a moment’s struggle, but bring up my knee and aim for his groin. I get, as the Bard might say, ‘a palpable hit.’

  He releases me and drops to the floor with a small cry. The card players glance over at us again, but can see little. I force a smile and wave at them, as I bend down, locking eyes with Henry.

  “You ever do that again, you miserable son of a bitch, and I will make you very sorry.” I reach down with one hand and haul him up. With the other, I pick up his overturned chair and push him into it.

  Whatever aggressive manliness he was feeling moments before is gone. He whimpers into his hands. “Here I am, being nice and answering your questions and you go and accuse me of killing that boy.”

  “I never said that, Henry, but I don’t see why you can’t tell me where you were.”

  “It was the girl,” he says, leaning against his makeup table. “She turned him against me. Everything was fine until she came along. Even that other tart didn’t have that effect on him.”

  “What other tart?”

  “That trapeze one; the bitch that thinks she’s too good for everybody. He dumped her for the little knife girl. Came to him, whining, crying, making him feel sorry for her.” A look of loathing crosses his face. “You women are all alike. You should all go and hang yourselves.”

  I lean down into his face. “That’s a pretty hateful thing to say, all things considered, Henry. I can see where you might be the kind of person who wouldn’t think twice about slipping a piece of wire around someone’s neck.” My hand goes to my throat.

  The Bard is silent, his thoughts somewhere else. I wait while he stares into the mirror.

  “I loved that boy,” he tells his reflection. “I was good to that boy. I gave that boy everything. And then he went and did this to me. ‘Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms.’” And with that the Bard starts to cry, huge tears running down his cheeks.

  “Damn,” he says, snapping up one of the rags and blotting his cheeks. “I’m ruining my makeup.” He looks over at my reflection in his mirror. “Why can’t you leave me alone? I was finished with Edward over four months ago. Why should I enact revenge now?”

  “Because ‘revenge is a dish best served cold,’” I answer, getting up. “It isn’t Shakespeare but it’ll do.” Henry stares at me, his mouth hanging open.

  I leave in search of the magazine-reading clown, who was listening to Henry and me so intently before. He’s one of the older clowns, hailing from Brooklyn, and I think he goes

  by the name of Dinghas. I find him around the corner of an adjacent tent smoking a cigarette and pacing back and forth. He halts when he sees me.

  “Hi. You’re Dinghas, aren’t you?” He doesn’t reply but merely nods. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  I think he might bolt but he doesn’t. He grinds his cigarette into the earth, looks at me, breathing hard, and says, “He told you, didn’t he?”

  I try not to act surprised. “Yes, he did, but I thought I should get your side of it.” I smile knowingly, like the good little actress I can be.

  “I knew he would,” Dinghas says. “I knew it. He can’t keep his mouth shut. Always going off in that phony accent of his, spilling his guts.”

  “Some people are like that. So what’s the real story?”

  “Real story? Hah! The guy was crazy about Eddie or, as he would say, ‘Edward.’” He does a fair imitation of Henry’s voice. “Followed him everywhere. Did everything for him. Mooned over him.”

  “That must have hurt,” I put in.

  “Sure it did. You think we don’t have feelings? Here it’s been the Bard and me for five years, and then this pipsqueak comes along and Henry…” He stops speaking and pulls a pack of Lucky Strikes out from inside one of his puffy black and white polka dot sleeves. He taps one out and offers me another, a good sign. I’m his new pal. I take the cigarette and murmur my thanks. He lights his, deep in thought and seems to forget about lighting mine. I’m just as glad. I don’t smoke.

  “Of course, you have feelings,” I say, revving the conversation back up. “But I really need to hear your side of the story. Otherwise --” I stop speaking and shrug, indicating I wouldn’t be responsible for the outcome. I won’t anyway, but I lay it on thick.

  He throws his hands in the air, moved by great emotion. “God, that idiot! I tell him to stop, but no. He has to take the note to her father.”

  I fight to keep surprise from registering on my face. Dinghas turns on me, shaking his finger in my face.

  “Listen, I didn’t have nothing to do with it. It was Henry who done it. All Henry. I says to him, I says, ‘stay out of it, mind your own business’ but would he listen? No.” He calms down after his outburst, fidgets with his cigarette, and puts it in his mouth.

  “When was that? When did he take the note to Constantin?”

  Dinghas sucks in cigarette smoke like it was air fresh off the ocean. “He was always following the kid, even when we got back together. I don’t know why. That night he sees Eddie acting strange so he watches him even closer. Henry follows the kid to the Pay Wagon, so I follows him.”

  “What time was that?” I ask.

  “Around midnight. They keep the Pay Wagon well lit every night straight through to the morning, whether it’s got money in it or not.” He looks at me. “Do you know why they do that?”

  “It’s called reinforcing a pattern. This way no one knows when it has cash and when it doesn’t.”

  He digests this new bit of information. “Maybe that’s why the kids chose it for a drop off point; it’s always lit up.”

  “Maybe. Go on about the note.”

  “Yeah. Anyways, I see Eddie tucking something behind the folded down awning, like it was some secret hiding place. Henry sees it, too, ‘cause when Eddie leaves, Henry runs right over and gets it. I come out from where I’m hiding and I says to Henry, I says, ‘What do you think you’re doing, Hank?’ I

  always call him Hank when he’s being bad. I says to him, ‘Leave the kid alone. Put that back and leave the kid alone.’ He just laughs. Then he reads the note and starts cursing up a

  blue streak. He says, ‘That miserable so and so thinks he can do a bunk and take off like that, well, I’ll show him’ and so on and so forth. I keep telling him to put the note back, but he says he’s
bringing it to the girl’s father. Jesus, he can be such a bitch.”

  “Are you sure that’s what he did?”

  “Dunno for sure.” He shrugs, takes another long draw, and absentmindedly exhales in my face. I try not to cough. “Said he was. But I dunno. He changes his mind a lot.”

  “Did you read the note?”

  Dinghas stubs out his cigarette and searches for a new one in the pack. I hand him the one he gave me. He light up before he speaks.

  “Yeah. I snatches it from him and I sees some of it before he grabs it back. Didn’t say much, just a new time Eddie was meeting the girl.” I watch him close his eyes and read the note once more in his mind.

  “Oh, yeah, and something about the kid wrote his mother and told her they was getting married. That really ticked Henry off.” He takes another long drag off his cigarette. “I felt sorry for the kid. He didn’t belong here.” Dinghas gestures to the surroundings. “Jesus, he was a Mormon, for Christ’s sake.” He turns to me. “You know what them is?”

  I nod.

  “Anyways, Henry takes off with the note. I goes back to the train. Never hear him come in. I guess I fell asleep. He was there when I woke up, though, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Around eight-thirty.”

  “What else?”

  “Then we hear they found the kid dead.”

  “Anything else?”

  The clown slowly shakes his head, puffing on his cigarette. He’s through talking, just like a music box that’s run down, but I wait anyway. After a moment I say,

  “Thanks, Dinghas.”

  I turn to leave, but he takes hold of my arm. “You won’t tell Henry what I said, will you? I mean, him and I are back together now. I don’t want him mad. He can be such a bitch.”

  “Not unless I have to.”

  He doesn’t like my answer, but it will have to do. Dinghas gives me a half smile, pulls another cigarette out of the pack, lights it from the one he has going, and in a cloud of smoke, resumes pacing.

  I turn my back on him, draw out Henry’s keys and check them over. None look like the key Harold showed me earlier but that doesn’t mean the right one isn’t somewhere else in Henry’s possession.

  I put my hand to my throat, still hot from the Bard’s grip. Did Henry take the note to Constantin or did he take matters into his own hands? He has a temper, our Bard. I can see why Dinghas doesn’t want to make him mad.

  I make sure no one is around and toss Henry’s keys near the entrance to the clown’s tent. If he gets them back, fine. If he doesn’t, fine. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  8:45 p.m., Monday

  With Constantin’s act being cancelled for the night, management asks the clowns and the featured acts to extend their times, ‘stretch it out’ for the audience so the show won’t run short. To the delight of the audience, Emmet Kelly adds back a couple of retired segments from his act. I put my web costume on fast and dash out to watch, a rare treat for me. My favorite part is when Mr. Kelly ‘sweeps’ the spot light into the dustpan, the finale of his show, and I’m glad to be able to catch the last few minutes of it.

  When he’s done, the three featured trapeze artists follow. The girls troupe out, Rosie in the middle. I concentrate on her, all done up in gold sequins, and watch her climb up a rope and onto the trapeze. The lights fade in the house and several pin spots come up on the three, making for a sparkling, dramatic effect. Sometimes when I’m performing, I resent how much heat the lights generate in an already hot tent, with me working so hard. I tend to forget how much they add to the excitement, help the audience focus on what we want them to see.

  All three girls pose on their trapezes, while their sitters on the ground pull at the ropes, swinging them to and fro. In unison to the music, the girls throw themselves over backward and catch on to the bar with their ankles, as I’ve done many times in practice. The audience applauds politely.

  On the other side of the ring, three male catchers climb up web ropes, mount their own trapezes and swing out, with their backs to the girls. When the men go over the back of their

  trapezes, they lock their legs around the ropes of the bar, readying for their partners. The music swells as the catchers extend their arms toward the girls.

  All six flyers make sure they’re in perfect sync. In unison, the girls let go of their trapezes and fly into space toward the men. The men grab them by the wrists, take one swing back and forth then release the girls back toward their own trapeze. Each girl turns around in midair, grabs her bar, throws herself up and over it, landing on her abdomen in the angel pose. They repeat the beginning of the trick, but this time the girls do a backbend inside the catcher’s arms and, using the man’s shoulders, pushes off toward their own swinging trapeze. An appreciative applause fills the house.

  The spotlights die on the two end girls, but remains on Rosie. The audience watches her expectantly, hundreds of head moving back and forth in accord with her swings. She does her release and pulls into a tight somersault, coming out in perfect time to reach for the hands of her catcher. The two swing for two or three moments, posing to an adoring and enthusiastic crowd.

  When the catcher returns Rosie to her trapeze, she stands up on the bar, pushing herself higher and higher into the air, like a kid does in a playground. What she has to do is make her arc higher than her catcher’s in order to give her more time to do the final trick.

  There is a drum roll and Rosie does a swan dive off the bar and into the air, out and down. She whips herself into a somersault and again with perfect timing, straightens out, falling into her catcher’s hands. The crowd goes wild. Not only does she thrill her audience, but proves her expertise and wins them over completely.

  I’ve done the first somersault into a catcher’s arms, but I’ve missed more times than not on the second, free-fall trick. I see too much at the beginning of the swan dive and at the end,

  when I go into the somersault, I can’t see anything at all. I have to rely on my instincts and timing. It scares me. There can be no fear, something I haven’t conquered yet.

  Not true for Rosie. She’s a real daredevil. I have to give her that. After her performance, she drops to the safety net, poses on the wooden ring and, to the audience’s deafening applause, exits into the aisle where I’m standing. She sees me out of the corner of her eye and, flushed with her triumph, begins to laugh and runs out. I’m certain she put my hairbrush under Mabel’s cinch.

  I push Rosie out of my mind and concentrate on my routine. The orchestra plays transition music while twenty-five web sitters run out to their spot on the perimeter of the three rings. They release the webs from their various latching, each about thirty feet away from the other. Meanwhile, the ringmaster is announcing to the audience they are about to see twenty-five, yes, count them, twenty-five of the most talented and beautiful girls in the world displaying death-defying skills forty feet in the air. If I ever paid attention to him, I might get a swelled head. On cue, I run out into place with the other girls and strike a pose.

  We’re wearing voluminous, red and hot pink beaded capes over matching, sparse costumes. The glitter alone when the lights hit all the beading is enough to dazzle half of the state. Along with the other girls, I drop my cape, climb up the web and start the routine. The lights on the ground lower to black and above, spotlights focus on each of us. After various acrobatic tricks sure to thrill, this routine always ends with a breathtaking spin.

  Each girl holds onto a hidden loop with her strongest hand, keeping the other arm by her side. The sitter begins to twirl the rope faster and faster until the force lifts each girl into the air, parallel with the ground. For a good thirty seconds we are life size, sparkling spinning tops, a finale

  made even more sensational by the orchestra’s dramatic music. From my point of view, thirty seconds is a long time to hold on when centrifugal force is trying to send me into
outer space.

  The sitters slow down to a stop in time with the music and we pose for the crowd, forty feet in the air. The showgirls, meanwhile, are strutting around the ring in their four-foot headdresses, complete with ostrich plumes and beads. Applause, applause, applause.

  Afterward, I climb down and follow the other girls to our dressing room, out of breath and sweating. It’s a hot, muggy night and between the crowd and the lights, it has to be around one hundred degrees near the roof of the Big Top.

  I strip and throw a lightweight robe over my g-string, glad to be out of the sticky costume. Sitting at my makeup table, I’m retouching my makeup when Margie lets out a short, high-pitched scream.

  She screeches a word that sounds a lot like “snake” over and over and jumps up. She knocks over her makeup table and chair and, still shrieking, runs to the entrance of our dressing room. I beat her there, grab her by the arms, and hold on tight.

  “Snake?” I repeat. She continues to scream, struggling to be free of me. “Is that what you said? What snake?” I shake her. “Margie, stop screaming and talk to me.”

  Doris races to us, reaching out for Margie. The other girls stay frozen where they are, half afraid, half concerned, uncertain of what to do.

  “I saw a snake, a Coral snake.” She gasps and points. “In my drawer. It’s a Coral snake. I touched it.” She shudders and begins to cry.

  “Did it bite you?” I say, hastily examining her fingers. I don’t see any puncture marks.

  “No, no, I don’t think so. I touched something moving and looked down. Oh, my God,” she sobs.

  The Coral snake is one of the most deadly snakes in the world, a first cousin to the Cobra. This is one of the things they teach you when you arrive in south Florida, among other safety measures. Not to be confused with the harmless Scarlet King snake, which looks similar, the Coral has a different arrangement of colored stripes. If what Margie saw was a Coral, then we have to find it and kill it right away.

  Doris takes over and embraces the shaking Margie, while I search for the snake near her area. The rest of the girls finally move, backing away from me. By now, people are gathered outside the dressing room entrance, demanding to know what’s going on inside.