Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

When I slammed the Bronco door, I watched him in the rearview mirror. He jerked upright, quickly started his engine, and whipped into the street so I could back out of the driveway. Only problem was that he pulled out in the short direction leading to the Ferrelli house. The street was too narrow for me to pass him, and it seemed churlish to make him come back in and back out the other way, so I headed in the only direction he’d left me.

All I had to do was turn right at the looped end of the street and drive the extra distance past the summer-closed waterside properties to Stevie’s house. But in the short stretch to the turn, I thought about what Priscilla had said about the truck. She obviously knew something, and my guess was that Josephine and Pete did too. Josephine had evidently decided to wait and let Priscilla tell me in her own time, but Pete might be persuaded to talk.

I slowed to a stop and pulled out the card Pete had given me with his clown class address. On the back, he had scribbled the days and hours he taught. Class was going on right now, so with the deputy tail close behind me, I headed north, back over the bridge toward Lockwood Ridge Road.

Sarasota has been a circus town since the late twenties, when John Ringling made it the winter quarters for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. My parents grew up seeing famous performers like Lou Jacobs, Emmett Kelly, and the Flying Wallendas on the street. They watched the filming of The Greatest Show on Earth , and during the world premiere went to the big circus parade down Main Street. Sarasota High School kids still perform high-wire and trapeze acts at Sailor Circus, and a second generation of the original Sarasota circus people have established Circus Sarasota, a European-style onering circus. Circus is so much a part of Sarasota that I’d always taken it for granted, like the manatees and dolphins.

Pete’s clown class was in a one-story white stucco building with circus murals painted on the outside walls. A huge black-topped parking lot surrounded it, but there were only about two dozen cars. I parked the Bronco and went into a deserted lounge with a long bar running along one side and a scattering of round cocktail tables in the middle. I threaded my way through the tables, following the sound of laughter, and found another room that had the look of a restaurant’s main dining area, with all the tables rearranged so people could see the speaker. Pete stood at the front of the room, and everybody else was intently watching him.

He grinned when he saw me, and I waggled my fingers at him and took a seat at a table by the door. I had expected the class to be young people, but they were mostly middle-aged or older, with a sprinkling of teenagers. All of them had friendly open faces and bright inquisitive eyes.

Pete took up his lecture where he’d left off. “You’ve learned wardrobe, juggling, and makeup. From now on we’ll be concentrating on skits. Before this course ends, we’ll go to some hospitals and perform skits. In the circus, skits are called gags. There are some standard gags like the Firehouse Gag that every clown knows, but you’ll be creating your own gags too. You have to do it the same way a movie director plans a scene—seeing it the way the audience will see it. A gag has three parts: the beginning, the middle, and the blowup. You set the situation in the beginning, lead the audience to believe a certain outcome in the middle, and surprise them with a different outcome in the end. My old friend Angelo Ferrelli—known to you as Madam Flutter-By—was a master at creating clever skits.”

One of the teenagers said, “Was he an Auguste?”

Pete looked pained. “No, he was a Whiteface. For those of you who don’t remember, Auguste makeup is in natural tones. In traditional skits, the Whiteface clown has the dominant, more dignified role, while the character or tramp clown is the one who gets kicked in the pants or hit with a pie. Tramp makeup is scruffy and unshaven like Emmett Kelly. Regardless of type, a clown is called a joey , and when a joey dies, we say he’s done his last walkabout.”

Pete disappeared behind a screen and, in what seemed like only a couple of seconds, reappeared transformed by a wild red wig, a round red nose, and baggy plaid pants. He and a woman named Loretta then demonstrated a skit that hung on her explaining how to fold a bandanna, while Pete followed instructions using a banana. It was silly and childish and made me laugh so hard I forgot about murder and fear and venomous snakes.

The skit ended with Pete looking foolishly at his plastic-lined pockets, where he had put his folded banana. Behind him, Loretta was surreptitiously squirting shaving cream onto a paper plate.

She balanced the filled plate on her fingertips and said, “Hey, Pete!” When Pete raised his head, she hit him square in the face with the pie, which for some reason caused us all to howl uproariously. Loretta tenderly brushed away the foam with a soft whisk while students furiously scribbled notes.

Pete said, “We don’t use whipping cream for pies because it makes such a mess.”

He turned to the audience. “Speaking of making a mess, anybody know why we don’t throw confetti in the circus anymore?”

He waited a beat and answered himself. “Because it sticks to hot dogs and falls in people’s drinks, and when the circus moves on somebody has to clean it up. We use popcorn now. Nobody minds getting hit with popcorn, and when the tent comes down the birds eat it.”

Pete ducked behind the screen again, and it suddenly hit me that the pain-forgetting laughter that had filled the room was the whole point of clowning. That’s why clowns are called holy fools. The Albert Schweitzers and Mother Teresas of the world are revered for their work with the sick and dying, but clowns do it anonymously. They put on funny faces and crazy costumes and do rib-tickling skits for no reason other than to make people forget their troubles for a few minutes.

The egomaniacs who kill and rob and destroy think themselves powerful, but any idiot can create destruction. The truly powerful are the men and women who use imagination and hard work to create moments of innocent laughter. For the first time, I understood why Conrad Ferrelli had wanted to give clowns and other circus professionals their own retirement home. They deserve it.

In a few seconds, Pete came out looking like himself again.

To the class, he said, “I want you to watch a video now of some famous clown skits. Watch closely. Take notes. This is something I’m going to want you to do for the rest of the course. The skits look easy. They look unrehearsed and spontaneous, but every move is carefully choreographed. Every skit has been rehearsed hundreds of times. You have to know all these gags and be able to perform them smoothly before you graduate. When the video ends, take a break and meet back here at one o’clock.”

I looked at my watch. It was eleven-fifteen. With luck, I could pick Pete’s brain until one o’clock.

He headed toward me with an enormous grin. “What a nice surprise.”

“Pete, would you have breakfast with me?”

“Honey, I had breakfast five hours ago, but I’ll have lunch with you. And I was just kidding about women saying I’m too small.”

“I’m sure you’re a titan among men, Pete, but that’s not why I want to have lunch with you.”

“You want to ask me questions about Conrad Ferrelli, don’t you?”

“Do you mind?”

“Hell, no, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. But I’ll bet people looking at us will think I’m your hot honey.”

I laughed. “If I’m lucky, Pete, that’s what they’ll think.”

“Come on, I’ll take you to a place that has the best hot Cubans in town.”