Stuart Kaminsky: Catch a Falling Clown

“If this happens at every town along the line, I swear I’m quitting the circus,” I said, backing toward the door.

The fat woman at the end of the bar let out a howl of laughter and pounded the bar, sending a whiskey glass tumbling to the floor.

“Let the man alone, Carlos,” she said, her voice jumping all over the place. “He’s a funny man.”

“Lope?” Carlos said, pointing his bottle at his downed drinking companion and drenching himself in alcohol.

“Lope asked for what he got,” she said, getting off her stool and looking at me. Carlos looked at the sleeping drunk and the bartender for support, but there was none. He wasn’t going to face me without an appreciative audience. He drained the last few drops of the bottle and backed against the bar.

“Mister,” said the woman, “I’m what passes for the town whore, and if I wasn’t drunk I wouldn’t say it.”

“Right,” I said a few feet from the door. “Thanks.”

“Lope ain’t a bad guy,” she said. “He works hard, got a big family, five kids. He deserves a drunk. Got no education.”

“I should have kept my mouth shut,” I admitted.

“You tiene razon man,” she laughed. “You got time for a drink?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m expected at the circus.”

“Back to the highway,” she said with a nod of her head. “Turn right. Look for Carroll Road. Turn right again and go about a mile. You’ll see it.”

She stepped forward where it was lighter, and she looked less fat than plump. Her teeth were white and even, and her face was smooth and smiling.

“Maybe there’s time for one drink more,” I smiled.

Lope groaned on the floor and tried to sit up.

“I don’t think so now,” said the woman. “Lope ain’t gonna be happy when he gets up. His brother is deputy sheriff.”

“Alex?” I said.

“You know Alex?” she shot back. Even the barkeeper perked up. Alex was a name to reckon with in Hijo’s.

“We met once,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come back for that drink, Miss …”

“Alvero, Jean Alvero,” she said. “And maybe you better not come back. I think it might even be better if you just go on up ahead and not get together with your circus in Mirador.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I answered and backed out of the door as Carlos bent to help a groggy, one-eyed Lope to his feet.

There is something about me that brings out the worst in dogs, cats, and humans. Something in me is a challenge. I used to think I was cursed. A woman who said she was a witch once put a curse on me. The woman was my own aunt, but her daughter, my cousin, who claimed she was a more powerful witch, supposedly took the curse off, which gives you some indication of my family tree. Curses aside, I think it is simply my face coupled with an uncontrollable urge to bring people to life by prodding them a little. My father wanted me to be a doctor. I’ve got the curiosity, but not the ambition.

I got into my car and backed out with the lights out. I scraped the police car parked next to me with a sickening scraaatch, turned on my lights, and headed back toward the highway.

Had I but known that three days later I’d be in a cage with a gorilla, I probably would have remained and taken my chances with Lope and Alex; but half the fun of being alive is not knowing what tomorrow will bring. The other half comes by pretending that you don’t care.

I found the circus in Aldreich Field without much trouble. It was a huge, dark series of tents, the largest one a central big top with a flag, a bunch of trucks, and mobile wagons. The dark outline of a train with a few dozen cars formed a rear wall behind the scene.

I followed the road to the closest tent, turned off into the mud, and got out to find the man who had hired me. The circus looked like a bunch of black paper cutouts, the kind of thing you’d pick up at the drugstore for a six-year-old whose parents you were visiting. There was even a radio sound-effects record to go with the picture, something right out of “I Love a Mystery.” Howling wind across the field, the murmur of animals, voices laughing, and someone raising someone else two bits on a poker hand behind one of the cutouts.

I made my way around mud holes, wagon ruts, footsteps, and debris to the nearest wagon with a light on. I knocked. Voices inside were arguing. I knocked again.

“A minute,” came a male voice with a European accent I couldn’t place.

The door swung open. It was a few feet above me, and at first all I could see was another black cutout against sudden light. This one looked vaguely like a man.

“Yes?” he said, looking down at me. My eyes adjusted and began to make out the man and another figure behind him. The man in the door was wearing a red velvet robe. His hands were in his pockets. His head was a mane of bright yellow hair over a smooth face; his voice suggested more years than the front showed. Behind him at a table sat a young man looking toward me, a thin, pale, yellow-haired imitation of the man at the door.

“Yes?” he repeated.

“I’m trying to find somebody,” I said.

“I am somebody,” he replied, pointing to his chest. “I am Sandoval.”

I was clearly supposed to know who Sandoval was, but my face must have made it clear that I didn’t.

“Sandoval of the great cats,” he explained. “My picture is on the posters. My animals are the most wild. Frank Buck and Clyde Beatty are not even amateurs compared to Sandoval.”

“Oh, that Sandoval,” I said, trying to get the conversation moving before I sank any deeper into the mud. “I’m looking for someone with the circus, someone I’m supposed to meet.”

I told him who I was looking for, and he gave me directions on how to get there. The kid at the table behind him listened, his eyes not on me but on the back of Sandoval, whose directions to me were a little vague.

“Good enough?” asked Sandoval, throwing his mane back.

“Thanks,” I said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” said Sandoval and then, over his shoulder, “Shockly, bid the man good night.”

The boy at the table half rose and said a weak good night. Sandoval sighed enormously and threw out his hands before whispering to me in a voice that could not only be heard by the boy but by anyone within a football field’s length.

“The war has made a ruin of all human endeavor,” he said. “We can get only apprentice boys with names like Shockly who must be taught even the minimal touches of confidence and pride.”

Sandoval had enough confidence and pride for the kid, the U.S. Marines, and the entire USC football team, but I nodded in professional agreement as he closed the door.

I made half a dozen wrong turns in the dark and stepped into something I didn’t want to think about before I found myself back at my car. I was tempted to curl up in the back seat, but the last time I had done that my back had been so sore in the morning that I couldn’t straighten up.

So I returned to my search. This time I ran into two frail figures side by side. I took them for late-night lovers at first, but when I stepped in front of them I realized that their union was even more permanent than love. They were Siamese twins joined at the hip and wearing a single giant coat to keep out the night.

They were used to seeing faces a lot more frightening than mine around a circus, and they gave me good directions on how to find my client. They also told me their names were Cora and Thelma. I thanked them and went on my way, wondering how the two of them had managed to carry on the whole conversation with both of them saying every word as if I were talking to an echo.

Three minutes later I was at the right railroad car, knocking. Someone inside said, “Hold it,” and a few seconds later the door opened and a voice with a Missouri twang said, “Yes?”