Clown in the Moonlight

by Tom Piccirilli

  He had old scars from drunken brawls and new ones from the joint that gave him a sense of character he'd never exhibited before. Like me, he'd gone gray prematurely. He had a short but well-coiffed mane of silver with a few threads of black running through it. I noticed he'd also had a manicure and a facial. He glowed a healthy pink. He'd been moisturized and exfoliated and closely shaved. The nancies on C-Block could open up a salon in East Hampton and make a mint off Long Island's wealthy blue- haired biddies.

  I expected that with his execution only two weeks off, and with five years gone and all the uneasy blood still between us, we would need to pause and gather our thoughts before we spoke. I imagined we would stare at each other, making our usual judgments and taking each other's measure. We'd then bypass trivial concerns to speak of extreme matters, whatever they might be. With a strange reservation, a kind of childlike hesitation, I lifted the phone and cleared my throat.

  Collie moved with the restrained energy of a predator, slid forward in his seat, did a little rap-a-tap on the glass. He grasped the phone and first thing let loose with a snorted, easy laugh. He looked all around until he finally settled on my eyes.

  He usually spoke with a quick, jazzy bop tempo, sometimes muttering out of the corner of his mouth or under his breath as if to an audience situated around him. This time he was focused. He nodded once, more to himself than me, and said, "Listen, Ma hates me, and that's all right, but you, you're the one who broke her heart. You—"

  I hung up the phone, stood, and walked away.

  I was nearly to the door when Collie's pounding on the glass made me stop. It got the screws looking in on us. I kept my back to my brother. My scalp crawled and I was covered in sweat. I wondered if what he'd said was true. It was the best trick he had, getting me to constantly question myself. Even when I knew he was setting me up I couldn't keep from falling into the trap. I wondered if my mother's heart really had broken when I'd left. I thought of my younger sister, Dale, still waiting for me to read her romantic vampire fantasy novels. My father on the porch with no one to sit with. My gramp losing his memories, fighting to retain them, now that there was nobody to stroll around the lake with and discuss the best way to trick out burglar alarms.

  Collie kept on shouting and banging. I took another step. I reached for the handle. Maybe if I'd made my fortune out west I would have found it easier to leave him there yelling. Maybe if I'd gotten married.

  Maybe if I'd raised a child.

  But none of that had happened. I took a breath, turned, and sat again. I lifted the phone.

  "Jesus, you're still sensitive," he said. "I only meant that you need to stop thinking about yourself and go see the family—"

  "I'm not going to see the family. Why did you call me here, Collie?"

  He let out a quiet laugh. He pointed through the huge glass window off to the side of us, which opened on an area full of long tables. His gaze was almost wistful. "You know, we were supposed to be able to talk over there. In that room, face- to- face. On this phone, talking to you like this, it's not the way I wanted it to be."

  "How did you want it to be?"

  He grinned and shrugged, and the thousand questions that had once burned inside me reignited. I knew he wouldn't answer them. My brother clung to his secrets, great and small. He'd been interviewed dozens of times for newspaper articles and magazines and books, and while he gave intimate, awful details, he never explained himself. It drove the courts, the media, and the public crazy even now.

  And me too. Words bobbed in my throat but never made it out. The timeworn campaigns and disputes between us had finally receded. I no longer cared about the insults, the torn pages, the girls he stole from me, or the way he'd run off on short cons gone bad, leaving me to take beatings from the marks. It had taken a lot of spilled blood to make me forgive him, if in fact I had. If not, it would only matter another few days.

  On the long night of his rampage, my brother went so far down into the underneath that he didn't come back up until after he'd murdered eight people. A vacationing family of five shot to death in a mobile home, a gas- station attendant knifed in a men's room, an old lady beaten to death outside a convenience store, a young woman strangled in a park.

  None of them had been robbed. He hadn't taken anything, hadn't even cleaned out the register at the gas station.

  It wasn't our way. It had never been our way. I thought of my grandfather Shepherd again. One of my earliest memories was of him telling us all around a Thanksgiving dinner, You're born thieves, it's your nature, handed down to me, handed down from me. This is our way. He'd been getting ready to cut into a turkey Collie had boosted from the King Kullen.

  Collie turned on the charm, showed me his perfect teeth, and said, "Been a long time, Terry. You look good. Trim, built up. You're as dark as if you'd been dipped in a vat of maple syrup."

  "I work on a ranch."

  "Yeah? What, busting broncos? Roping cattle? Like that?"

  "Like that."

  "Where? Colorado? Montana?"

  That question made me frown. I'd been eager to know how he'd managed to track me down. I'd been off the grift for years, living under an assumed name, doing an honest job. I thought I'd covered my tracks well, but four days ago, after coming in from digging fence posts, I'd received a phone call from a woman whose voice I didn't recognize. She'd told me Collie wanted to see me before he died.

  "You already know. How'd you find me?"

  "I put in a call."

  "To who?"

  "Who do you think?"

  He meant our family, who had connections all over the circuit. I'd half-expected that they'd somehow kept tabs on me. They must've gotten in touch with the people I'd bought my fake ID from and shadowed me through the years. I should have realized my father wouldn't let me go so easily.

  But that voice on the phone didn't belong to anyone I knew. I wondered if my other identity had been completely blown and I'd have to start over again, rebuild another new life. How many more did I have left in me?

  "It's been good seeing you, Terry. I'm glad you came. We both need a little more time."

  I'd barely slept over the last four days, and all the miles gunning across the country suddenly caught up with me. I felt tired as hell. "What are you talking about, Collie?"

  "Come back tomorrow or the day after. They gave you shit at the door, I can tell. Rousted you, strip-searched you? If they try that again, tell them to fuck themselves." He raised his voice again and shouted at the screws. "Dead man walking has at least a couple of extra privileges!"

  "Listen, I'm not—"

  "Take some time to settle yourself."

  "I don't want to settle myself. I'm not coming back tomorrow, Collie."

  "Go home. Visit the family. I'll tell you what I need when I see you again."

  I started breathing through my teeth. "What you need. I'm not running drugs for you. I'm not icing anybody on the outside for you. I'm not sending around a petition to the governor. I'm not coming back."

  It got him laughing again. "You're home. You're going to see the family because you've missed them. You've been gone a long time and proven whatever point you had to make, Terry. You can stick it out on your own. You're your own man. You're not Dad. You're not me." He cupped the phone even more tightly to his mouth. "Besides, you love them and they love you. It's time to say hello again."

  Life lessons from death row. Christ. I felt nauseous.

  I stared hard into my brother's eyes, trying to read a face I'd always been able to read before. I saw in it just how plagued he was by his own culpability. He was shallow and vindictive, but he rarely lied. He didn't often deny responsibility and he never cared about consequences. There was absolutely nothing I could do for him.

  "I'm not coming back," I told him.

  "I think I need you to save someone's life," he said.

  "What?"

  "Tomorrow afternoon. Or the day after, if you want. And don't be late this time."

 
; I hung up on his smile and let out a hiss that steamed the glass.

  Already he'd bent me out of shape. It had taken no more than fifteen minutes. We hadn't said shit to each other. Maybe it was his fault, maybe it was mine. I could feel the old singular pain rising once more.

  I shoved my chair back, took a few steps, and stopped. I thought, If I can get out now, without asking the question, I might be able to free myself. I have the chance. It's there. The door is three feet away. I can do this. I can do this.

  It was a stupid mantra. I'd already missed my chance. I'd turned back once already, and I was about to do the same thing again. I knew Collie would still be seated, watching me, waiting. I turned back, grabbed the phone up again, stood facing the glass, and said, "The girl in the mobile home."

  He almost looked ashamed for an instant. He shut his eyes and swung his chin back and forth like he was trying to jar one memory loose and replace it with another. He pursed his lips and muttered something to his invisible audience that I wasn't meant to hear. Then he grinned, his hard and cool back in place. "Okay."

  "So tell me," I said.

  "What do you want to hear?"

  "You already know. Just say it."

  "You want to hear that I did it? Okay, I aced her."

  "She was nine."

  "Yeah."

  "Tell me why."

  "Would you feel better if she was nineteen? Or twenty- nine? You feel better about the old lady? She was seventy- one. I killed her with my fists. Or—"

  "I want to know why, Collie."

  "You're asking the wrong questions."

  "Tell me or you'll never see me again."

  His icy eyes softened. Not out of shame but out of fear that I would leave him forever. He licked his lips, and his brow tightened in concentration as he searched for a genuine response.

  "I was making ghosts," he said.

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "I appreciate you showing up. Really. Come back tomorrow, Terry. Okay? Or the day after. Please."

  I thought of a nine- year- old girl standing in the face of my enraged brother. I knew what it was like to be caught in that storm. I imagined his laughter, the way his eyes whirled in their sockets as he made her lie down on the floor beside her parents and brothers, pointed a .38 at the back of her head as she twisted her face away in terror, and squeezed the trigger.

  I made it to my car and threw up twice in the parking lot. I drove through the prison gates and waited on the street until I spotted the guard who'd made me repeat my name three times.

  He eased by in a flashy sports car so well waxed that the rain slewed off and barely touched it. For a half hour I followed him from a quarter mile back, until he turned in to a new neighborhood development maybe ten minutes from the shore.

  The rain had shifted to a light drizzle. I watched him pull in by a yellow two- story house with a new clapboard roof and a well- mown yard. There was an SUV in the driveway and the garage door was open. Two six- or seven- year- old boys rolled up and down the wet sidewalk wearing sneakers with little wheels built into them.

  I drove to the beach and sat staring at the waves until it was dark. I'd been surrounded by mountains and desert for so long that I'd forgotten how lulling the ocean can be, alive and comforting, aware of your weaknesses and sometimes merciful.

  Five minutes off the parkway I found a restaurant and ate an overpriced but succulent seafood dinner. I'd been living on steak and Tex-Mex spices for so long that it was like an exotic meal from some foreign and romantic land. The lobster and crab legs quieted my stomach and loosened the knot there. I listened in to the families around me, the children laughing and whining, the parents humorous and warm and short- tempered.

  The wind picked up and it started to rain harder again. Streams of saturated moonlight did wild endless shimmies against the glass. I drank a cup of coffee every twenty minutes until the place closed, then I sat out at the beach again until the bluster passed.

  It took me three minutes to get into the screw's house. I stood in the master bedroom and watched as he and his wife spooned in their sleep. She was lovely, with a tousled mound of hair that glowed a burnished copper in the dark. One lace strap of her lingerie had slipped off her shoulder, and the swell of her breast arched toward me.

  I found his trousers and snatched his wallet. He had a lot of photos of his children. I left the house, drove to the water, and threw his wallet into the whitecaps. I didn't want his money. I didn't want to know his name. I didn't even especially want to hurt him. I was testing myself and finding that I'd both passed and failed.

  I was still a good creeper. The skills remained. My heart rate never sped. I didn't make a sound.

  I hadn't broken the law in five years, not so much as running a yellow light. My chest itched. My scars burned. The one where Collie had stabbed me. The one from my broken rib. And the largest one, made up of Kimmy's teeth marks from the last time we'd made love. She bit in so deep under my heart that she'd scraped bone.

  I drove home through the storm, thinking of the ghosts I had made.

  Shadder

  (from Futile Efforts)

  Parks got off the bus at the stop around back of Louie's Suds'n'Slop, where the whores and the moonshine runners rattled the trailers on the other side of the parking lot. Louie's jukebox twanged and mewled about motherless kids, dying dogs, and broken hearts. The yeehaws, boot-stompin', and the sharp crack of the cue ball busting up the rack made Parks' teeth ache.

  So, after a pretty wild run of luck, he was already burned up. You could swear ten thousand times that you'd never return to where you'd come from, but when you had no place else to go, you went right back. Jesus, look at the place--he thought he'd never even come within a thousand miles of the whole damn state, and now he was home again.

  The edges of his vision had been lit with swirling streaks of red over the last fifty miles of state highway, and now his hands were cold and aching. For the last three days, it had felt as if a steel band had been tightening around his chest, another around his head.

  Parks had been gone six years, married and divorced, and had written and directed two films. The first had been a sleeper hit which garnered feel-good reviews and a fair amount of cash. There'd been talk of an Academy Award nod. Though it hadn't happened, the very buzz about the possibility was nearly as good as if it had short-listed. He'd been prepped as a director to keep an eye on, and the studio had shined his ass and given in on some pretty stupid demands on his part. When you can get away with it, you push. So he did.

  The second film had gotten him kicked completely out of the biz. His wife had taken half of what he'd owned and the lawyers had chopped the rest down to a hole in the ground. He learned quickly who his real friends were. He didn't have any.

  Now Parks was twenty-seven, bankrupt, and on his way back to see his older brother Floyd, who hated him, just so he could steal Floyd's land.

  The ride wasn't over yet, and in some ways it was only starting. It'd make a good story for cable three-four years down the line. Rebuilding a career from the rubble, tragic figure rises to face new challenges. He could sell it down on Wilshire Boulevard so long as it had the right packaging. He could play himself once he got back into the game, so long as he had enough for the ante.

  The farm was just under five miles from the Suds'n'Slop but Parks walked it. He had no luggage besides a small satchel with a change of clothes and his latest script. He didn't intend to stay long. He already had a new attorney going through the paperwork back in Beverly Hills, but he owed it to Floyd to put in a visit face to face. It was going to be hell.

  Already Parks had lost all the calm and slickness he'd nurtured in L.A., and could feel it bleeding out from him as he moved from the highway onto the dark dirt roads. There was enough moonlight that he could still see, but he didn't even need it. He knew the way home and could find it blind.

  It took about an hour. By the time he saw the broad expanse of the farmhouse opening up t
hrough the starlit stalks, he was covered in sweat and smelled like his brother, his grandfather and father and all his many cousins who worked the earth. He trudged up the trail of flattened grass past the rusted hulks of pickup trucks and tractors that spotted the terrain like lost battlements of the ancients.

  Parks had just hit the first stair of the porch when Floyd flung open the broken screen door, said, "Come on in, if you must," and receded into the house. The mousetrap hinges on the screen had squealed their last, with the screws pulled completely free from the rotting wood.

  Parks stepped inside, feeling his mother somewhere behind him, out in the dark fields. It got to him so much that he actually turned around and had to take a quick look.

  Floyd was across the room drinking a can of beer, foam flecking his chin and collar. He had a farmer's muscular arms and a trucker's gut. His wife, Myrtle, had paled and softened into a doughy plumpness, and she now wore only a vacuous bovine expression of complacency. Her vacant eyes skittered over Parks' face but she couldn't seem to place him.

  They'd had four kids when Parks left for the west coast, but he didn't remember any of their names. Now six children were spread out on the first floor, and there was all kinds of thumping going on upstairs. Sounded like at least three more. They looked so similar–-shaggy blonde heads, sexless placid faces, plain overalls–that he thought of them almost as a single child. Seeing only the one kid at various stages of life rather than several running around. Somebody dropped a plate of cinnamon rolls on the floor and called out, "Broom!"

  Père Hull sat in a wheelchair in the middle of the room with a little TV tray in front of him, facing away from the television, which had a truck show on, guys screaming and engines roaring, crashing into shit. The old man was crocheting a teal scarf that looked about twenty feet long already. Even though the knuckles of his huge fists bulged with arthritis, the needles quietly clicked together at an incredible speed. Parks was impressed. His grandfather gave a grin and said, "You must be hungry. Long trip you've been on. Go eat something. Come talk later, if you got a mind to."