This is what it is all about, he knows: improbability. It is the joke that this whole circus is built around: a tiger, an elephant, a hot air balloon, right here in Des Moines or Indianapolis or Altoona. Seven clowns and a monkey piling out of a car, one after the other in a tangle of funny shoes and makeup and hobo clothes, and just when you think there surely couldn’t be more room in that car, here comes another one.
Arial
He
is driving, like always, curling the little car in ever-tightening spirals,
pushing it, feeling the centrifugal force and allowing the audience to blur in
his vision, a whirl of light and color, color and light, a beautiful
hallucination, one of many that exist only within the small universe of the
circus.
It is the only universe that matters to
him and right now he is its god. All eyes are focused on the tiny car that he
navigates through the tight, intricate web that is the Astounding Traveling
Circus of the World: the elephants off to the right, the center ring to his
left, the trapeze artists and jugglers milling off to the side, the zebras and
the lion and the tiger and the poor bedraggled dancing bear, the mini-hot air
balloon that will carry the Lewis the Conductor to the rafters for the grand
finale.
He accelerates even as he pulls the car in
an increasingly unlikely circle. This is what it is all about, he knows:
improbability. It is the joke that this whole circus is built around: a tiger,
an elephant, a hot air balloon, right here in Des Moines or Indianapolis or
Altoona. Seven clowns and a monkey piling out of a car, one after the other in
a tangle of funny shoes and makeup and hobo clothes, and just when you think there surely couldn’t be more room in that car, here comes another one.
He feels Stumpy’s palm on his leg and taps
once, a warning. His hands tighten on the wheel. Like the kiss wasn’t
unprofessional enough. Should never have taken a boyfriend in the circus, he
thinks, much less in his own shop.
The audience grows louder, applauding and
whooping and whistling, building to the inevitable conclusion. He drives, the
calm eye of this particular hurricane. It is what he does. He is a professional.
He would never tell Stumpy, of course, but
this, right now, the actual act itself – the audience and the costume and the
stupid routine – is the only thing he truly loves.
Stumpy
The
car might as well be his own heart, tightening, going faster and faster, bump
bump bump, threatening to careen out of control at any moment. And he is
supposed to concentrate on the audience, the show, with Arial’s thighs pushing tight
against him?
It is all he can do to fight the erection
– not another night like Cleveland, a biological disaster that almost got both of
them fired. He doesn’t even need the job – Jesus, the job is shit. He could be
making better money doing customer service again. But he needs this: the two of
them, literally whirling through the world, city to city, thigh to thigh, heart
to heart.
He casts a conciliatory glance to his
left, but Arial is stone-faced, businesslike as always. And it makes his heart
whirl and plunge again to think that he’s done anything that could upset this
thing that they have, this delicate balance like the reeling car itself – out
of control and beautiful.
It was just a peck, a good luck kiss, and
he doesn’t think anybody else saw a thing. But still, he understands that there
are lines that simply cannot be crossed. The circus is a thing of the past and
this applies as well to the internal politics, the tightly wound social fabric
of the Traveling Astounding Circus of the World. To Arial, a lifer who has
never had an email account or owned a computer, a man from a different time, a
man who, if there was such a thing, could easily be elected mayor of the
Circus, any rupture in this fabric is a Hindenberg occasion.
He breathes in and out. It will be okay.
It will be okay because it has to be.
Clifford
Feel
your character. Find your center. Breathe in. Breathe out. Be here now. Find
your center. Feel your character.
This is not where he thought acting was
going to take him, but he reminds himself again that this is a career, a
calling, that he is in it for the long haul. He is a running a marathon, even
if the rest of them are running a sprint, looking for an easy check, drinking
and screwing their way across the country in a rambling swath of minor league
cities.
Sometimes it is difficult to keep all of
this in perspective.
It is the same every night, in every city:
the same car, the same clowns, Arial at the wheel, Stumpy mooning to his right,
Shoopy and Poppy and Franny and Shorty and Nibbles jammed into the back. The
smell of popcorn and elephant shit, the car’s exhaust, Stumpy’s Axe body spray,
Shoopy’s sweet alcohol breath and the monkey’s musky stink fogging in from the
back seat.
Breathe in and out. Breathe in. Breathe
out. In. Out.
In.
Out.
Center.
What is your character’s motivation? Clifford
is a sad clown. Clifford was sexually abused by an uncle who just happened to
be a clown. Every night, the young boy
would hope against hope that tonight would be the night he would not hear the
heavy slap of the clown shoes making their way down the stairs. Every night,
the crisp clip-clop of cheap plastic on wood. Every night, the boy would pull
up the covers and pretend he was dead, and then, when this failed, he would
close his eyes and wait for it to be over.
Everything Clifford does – from his facial
expressions to the way he trudges across the stage – stems from this one thing.
After every performance, when they are stuffed back into the car and the rest
of the clowns are high-fiving or breathing a sigh of relief, unscrewing their
flasks or screwing up their courage for the night ahead, Clifford weeps.
There is a price he pays for this – the
man behind the clown, the actor. It is a price he gladly pays, like those
before him. He is an artist.
Shoopy
He wishes
he could take just one more nip, but it won’t do, not again. He burps and takes
care to push his Rumplemintz breath downward and to the side, away from Arial,
who flat out won’t put up with any bullshit. This means he is exhaling directly
onto Shorty, of course, but Shorty is way past caring.
Shoopy cares just enough to not get fired.
He is forty years old and knows who he is.
There are not many jobs that align well
with his lifestyle, literally no other jobs where being at least a little off
center, a little buzzed, actually improves your performance. Of course, the
problem is keeping to just a little
off center.
He likes the circus well enough, better
than the Xerox job or the sales floor at Best Buy. They travel, work at night.
Short hours and a per diem. Plenty of young people who like to hit the bars at
night, or play cards in their trailers, easy enough to find a party and not
feel so old and used up and stupid about it.
He is comfortable in his own skin. He is
not going to be Mick Jagger or Derrick Jeter, isn’t even going to be one of
those guys in the Memphis Horns, or a journeyman shortstop, a bit player in some
bad sitcom. And so this: one of seven
men in makeup and funny shoes, jammed into a car.
It isn’t exactly a rock star existence,
not where he thought he would be, but it’s better than nine to five. As long as
he can keep it to just a little off center, he’ll be fine for now. Still, one
more nip would have been nice.
Poppy
He
was supposed to be an athlete. A professional. First in districts senior year
in high school, gymnastics scholarship to Ohio State, Olympic qualifier. And
then the fall on the uneven bars, a shattered forearm, failing grades, the ad
on craigslist and here he is, twenty two years old and packed into a car
between an alcoholic and a midget, wondering if he’ll be able to get the smell
of monkey off his forearm before the cast party tonight. Where are they?
Pennsylvania or Ohio, rolling mountains and pickup trucks. Altoona, maybe.
He needs to get his resume together. Learn
HTML. Maybe art school? He always did enjoy drawing, at least before gymnastics
took over all his time. But it’s all computers now. Maybe that’s good. Maybe
not.
Arial is driving a little faster than
usual. Pissed off because his little boyfriend kissed him before the show. Like
everybody doesn’t know they’re together. Like anybody gives a shit who is with
who, what they’re doing in the privacy of their own trailers. They are grown
men in makeup who perform the same awful carnie routine every night – every
single night for the past, what, like, million years?
Tonight is the night. Get his resume
together. That’s the first thing.
Shorty
Of
course he’s named Shorty. Shorty the Fucking Clown. He had wanted to be Buffalo
Bill, had a whole cowboy clown thing happening – a real one, having just come
off the rodeo circuit, healed now but the crack in his tailbone still aches if
he sits for more than an hour – but then, there they are in the employment
office and, like always, like elementary school and high school and the job in
the Buttercrust factory, like every time he walks into a fucking bar, he’s
Shorty.
Life is truly nasty, brutish and, fuck
fuck fuck…short. One long string of stature jokes and imbeciles and drunks, one
after the other, each dumber and meaner and taller than the last.
Fuck it.
He allows his body to go slack as the car
winds in ever smaller circles, accelerating, moving faster, tempting fate to
lift it off the ground. He can picture it – the crash, the tangle of limbs, the
gasps from the crowd, blood and bones and gristle and fire.
Whatever.
His eyes go unfocused and the audience is
nothing but a whirl. The monkey on his lap – of course, the little person has
to carry the goddam monkey, right, there’s a symmetry in that? – clutches his
arm tighter. Too tight. The monkey needs a bath, a nail clipping. His
monkeynails dig into Shorty’s forearm, leaving eight perfectly matched little
cuts and two thumbsize bruises.
Opposable thumbs, he thinks.
Blood oozes. Shorty closes his eyes and
feels the little car go faster.
Nibbles
Bananas!
Biscuits. Soon they will feed Nibbles. They will do what they do and then they
will feed Nibbles. He is sitting in the moving thing, on the way to do what
they do. Sitting on the lap of the small man.
The moving thing goes fast. It turns hard
and Nibbles holds onto the small man’s arm. The moving thing is going faster
than usual. Nibbles is scared. Biscuits! Nibbles is scared.
Franny
These
homosexuals have not accepted Jesus as their lord and savior. It is a mockery,
a sin. This entire circus is going to
hell and nobody cares. He ticks the sins off on his fingers: divination and
sorcery, fornication, alcohol abuse, blasphemy, atheism, impurity against
nature.
Mortal sins, all of them. The circus is a
literal Sodom and Gomorrah.
He has been a Christian for one hundred
and forty seven days. At first it was a trial, then a gift, and now, lately, a
responsibility.
Of course he suspected, had heard the
whispers, seen the winks, the way Stumpy’s hand lingered on Arial’s thigh. But
now he knows. His heart is still beating wildly. Impurity against nature. It is
the perfect description. Two men kissing, their stubble rubbing up against one
another, cracked lips caked with pancake makeup. It is one of the most
disturbing scenes he has ever witnessed, and his reaction is physical, a roil
within, a stone he knows he must pass.
“And for their sins they were destroyed by
brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven.”
Amen.
The car is hurtling toward the big finish.
Off to the side, the hot air balloon filling with gas. The car pulls in
tighter, coming around for one more circle. He leans forward, past the gymnast
and the midget, he pushes his arm past the drunk, over the shoulder of the homosexual.
The air balloon is yards away. He turns the wheel.
+ + +
This story was previously published at (now defunct) Dark Sky Magazine. It is part of a collection in progress, Massive Cleansing Fire, in which every story ends in a massive cleansing fire.
This is what it is all about, he knows: improbability. It is the joke that this whole circus is built around: a tiger, an elephant, a hot air balloon, right here in Des Moines or Indianapolis or Altoona. Seven clowns and a monkey piling out of a car, one after the other in a tangle of funny shoes and makeup and hobo clothes, and just when you think there surely couldn’t be more room in that car, here comes another one.
This is what it is all about, he knows: improbability. It is the joke that this whole circus is built around: a tiger, an elephant, a hot air balloon, right here in Des Moines or Indianapolis or Altoona. Seven clowns and a monkey piling out of a car, one after the other in a tangle of funny shoes and makeup and hobo clothes, and just when you think there surely couldn’t be more room in that car, here comes another one.
This is what it is all about, he knows: improbability. It is the joke that this whole circus is built around: a tiger, an elephant, a hot air balloon, right here in Des Moines or Indianapolis or Altoona. Seven clowns and a monkey piling out of a car, one after the other in a tangle of funny shoes and makeup and hobo clothes, and just when you think there surely couldn’t be more room in that car, here comes another one.
