Just North of Nowhere (39 page)

The other clowns held a ladder straight in the air for Clown to climb. Clown ran right up and when he reached the top, he tried to climb the air but flopped over, hanging by his feet. The others ran all around the ring with the ladder, Clown with it, on top, waving his arms, teetering, falling a dozen times – falling
almost
, but never really! Finally, Clown grabbed the upraised muzzle of the gun!

“See the gun,” Daddy said, “It's not real, Clem.”

…and Clown slipped –
whooooops
– fell head first, down inside the big colored gun's not-real barrel…

…and didn't come out the other end.

Then Clem heard him. He yelled from inside the gun.

“He's stuck!” Daddy yelled over the crowd, laughing.

Other clowns looked, couldn't find him, not anywhere.

Everyone pointed, yelled and yelled, “Clown’s down! Inside and can’t get out.”

Clem pointed! “Inside!” he yelled.

THEN they got it! They tipped the barrel, and looked. They tipped it back and opened up the other end.

“He’s in the breach,” daddy said. “He's stuck; stuck in the breach!”

Funny noises from the band, the calliope. People laughed.

Clem laughed.

The clowns stuffed big red sticks inside the gun. “Dynamite!” Daddy yelled.

They poured powder from a tub; stuck firecrackers, skyrockets, smoking bombs, everywhere.

“Not real!” Daddy yelled. “Make-believe!”

Clem watched.

The clowns turned 'round, hid their eyes, stuck fingers in their ears! One pulled a rope attached to the gun.

The Gun boom was louder than anything Clem had ever, ever, ever heard. Louder than backfire, thunder, louder than anything had ever been, ever in all the world. Smoke blew – CRA-BAM—from the gun and filled the circus.

…and out flew clown, so slow, somersaulting through the air, his feet and arms spinning, his head—his head twirling. The crowd gasping. “Ooooh!” they yelled.

Clown spun and spun and came apart in air.

Scream!
the crowd said.

Clown was red wet, splashing bright, streaming gray parts. His clown suit uncame and Clown parts spilled spinning everywhere across the air.

Shriek!
the crowd said and scrambled. All the seats jerked under Daddy and Clem.

“Ha ha.” Clown said inside Clem. Down his backbone, Clem felt Clown laugh and laugh.

“Clown.” Clem said.

Daddy hugged Clem's eyes, didn't let the squirming boy watch what became of flying Clown.

Later, from the whispers, Clem figured Clown had gone to the land of Death. All Daddy and Mommy said aloud was, “Terrible,” or “Horrible.”

Okay, the truth was: Clem didn't figure it. Clown told him one night, later, in the dark.

“Want to see?” Clown said.

Clem saw Clown's head spin, spin free and fly so fair. Parts of clown flew everywhere.

“I'm in the land of Death,” Clown said, “You'll find out someday!”

He sang the last part.

The new House was boring. No Cliffy. No Olaf the Dog. Big kids home from school. The cliff he wasn't to go near.

Days later, Clown showed Clem how to be funny, REALLY funny.

“Ha, ha, ha,” Clem said all night thinking about it.

Ha, ha,
he kept thinking all day long.

Mommy looked at him every now and them and smiled her “what's-so-funny,” smile.

He made his “Oh-I-don't-know,” sing-song face. And laughed more and ran away.

Dinner was tuna casserole.

“It’s a hot-dish, hot night, huh?” Mom's Pop said waving the kitchen air with his paper.

“Sorry,” Mommy said then said grace; sad, saying God should take care of Tuffy the bird—who'd gone to sleep last year—and He should take REALLY good care of Daddy, very good care of Daddy, who lived with him now.

Clem could not keep it to himself, he was so happy he was going to be funny! Clown had only reminded him, just a little. He'd seen it at the circus from Daddy's lap, really funny clown stuff. He'd seen it in cartoons, too, on television: Sweep. BOOM!

The oven door was open. Letting heat out so the kitchen wouldn't stay hot all night.

They sat around the kitchen table.

Mommy's Pop talked about the bank.

Mommy listened.

Clem bit his cheeks so he wouldn't laugh.

Mommy talked about her day.

Mom's Pop went to the sink for another cup of that good coffee of hers. Clem stood up, stood back, let the old man pass, to get to his chair, the old man still talking. Clem held the chair for Mom's Pop and Mom's Pop—oh this was going to be SO funny—Mom's Pop started to sit and…

…Sweeeeep…
Clem slipped the chair away. Perfect…

…BOOM!
Mom's Old Pop hit the floor, coffee cup rolling through the air like Clown's head!

…
Splash…

Hotness spattered Clem, all over him and the old man and
SLAM...
Mom's Pop's head hit the stove, behind. Mommy screamed.
WHAM CRACK
went the world.

Clem wanted to laugh it had been so perfect, like Clown said it would. But hot coffee hurt and Mom's Pop didn't jump up and chase him around and around with a big soft frying pan like Clem thought he might, and Mommy screamed and screamed, and the hot coffee hurt but just a little. And days later, after Mom's Pop was in HIS box, the big policeman said it was an accident.

The Big Guy closed his little black notebook and slurped the cup of coffee Mommy had given him. He shook his head and said he was so very sorry.

“Sometimes,” he said. Then he didn't say any more. He stuck the notebook in his pocket and looked at Clem.

“It's okay, Vinnie,” Mommy said.

It wasn’t. She hadn't cried so much since Daddy went in his box to the Land of Death and didn’t wake. Vinnie the Policeman's hair was wet and short. Clem saw white head skin under the hair, head like bone. Sweat rolled down his cheek. “He just thought it was a… Like it is on the TV,” Vinnie said to Mommy. He didn't laugh. “Happened so quick it couldn’t be helped…”

She was very, very angry with Clem when they were alone. Or she cried. Then she'd hug and hold him and tell him they were all each other had left, each other was all there was. Clem wasn't sure if she was mad at him or Daddy or her Pop.

Clown laughed later, at the Wake party like Mommy had had when Daddy went to his box. As with the aneurism party, no one laughed, no one woke.

Clem stood by the railing at the little window above the big room. Clown whispered from behind. “You could jump,” he said. “Look! Out there,” he whispered.

Clem looked. The chandelier hung out there, its glass icicles so still and quiet, above everyone's head.

“Jump, grab and swing! Swing way above everything.”

Clem thought about it.

“Swing like a monkey hanging from a vine. Everyone loves monkeys. Ha, ha, ha.”

The glass shivered, tinkled. The door below was shut, the windows too, but the glass ice on the chandelier tinkled and their colors twirled winks in Clem's eye.

“Monkey see?” Clown said. “Monkey DO!”

Clown pretended to leap.

Clem didn't.

Clown laughed, anyway.

No. Clem didn't like school. He'd never been there and he didn't want to go.

Mommy said he had to; sat him down and gave him a talking-to—a
good
talking-to! “You have to go so you might as well have fun,” she said. “You'll have friends there. There'll be games, and people your age, and Cliffy. Cliff'll be there.”

“Will Olaf?” Clem said through the snot.

“Olaf?” she said, “Cliff’s dog? No. But there'll be lots of cool things. You'll see.”

“What?”

She started telling. Again.

He listened, but when it came to the day he cried.

Mommy knelt in front of him. They were on the edge of the playground. He cried and cried and hung to her leg when she tried to walk away. Finally, she picked him up and took him, screaming, inside and put him down by a big desk in a big colored room.

A woman behind the desk – she was smaller than Mommy—smiled at Mommy, then at him. There were words then Mommy left.

Other boys and girls were crying, too, but they soon stopped to watch him. He hated being alone. He was alone.

Then Cliff was there and he wasn't alone.

“Sorry about your grampop,” Cliff said.

“It was an accident,” Clem said, “couldn’t be helped.”

Cliff nodded. “I never knew someone who killed someone.”

Clem said, “What'd you do this summer?” and they talked and talked until the woman at the desk said it was time to begin. By then he didn't feel like crying.

That night, Clown wouldn't talk to him.

Clem went to the top room, looking. It was empty. The boxes were quiet.

“Okay,” Clem said and waited. “Good,” Clem said to the quiet. The house was empty except for Mommy and him and Clown. He said that to himself, but he knew Clown was there. He felt him in the dark, knew he was there. The room was full of him and his pipe tobacco smell and his bad dog-mouth and white teeth and the laugh inside and those stories about the Bank he could tell just like Mom's Pop.

When he went to sleep, Clown stayed in the space between the wall and bed. He just didn't want to talk!

“Good. I don't want you anymore, either” Clem said. After a little while, Clem slept.

When he woke it was still night and he had to tinkle. Clem opened his eyes.

Black.

He closed them.

The same.

He waited until he couldn't wait, then got out of bed. He reached out and shuffled, feeling toward the door, to where he knew the door would be…

And WHOMP! Hit a wall, fell to his knees. No door.

The room was different. He was in a new room, a room where the door wasn't where the door was. He crawled, feeling the wall.

Clown was crying, whimpers from below Clem's hands and knees, so quiet in the dark, up from the floor, through the carpet all around.

Clem crawled quicker and the sobbing followed.

Suddenly, a door. The door was closed and it should be open. Mommy! Mommy had closed him in, taken ‘way the light. He pulled the door open, ran, crawling on hands and knees into the hall… The hall—black dark and filled with hot cloth—grabbed him. The cloth wrapped his face and shoulders, the smell of mothballs filled him.

He rolled among things, hard things and soft: shoes, toys, boxes and boxes.

The Land of Death was made of houses like boxes. Boxes and stones was the land of death. And dust. There was dust here too. Dust and dark. Eyes were closed in the Land of Death.

Clown cried.

Clem knew he was in his closet. He knew he had gotten turned in his bed in the night, gotten out on the Clownside of bed. Still, he cried; cried and cried and no one came. He wet himself in the dark. The warm of the wet got cold. When he woke, Mommy was staring down at him from the open door. She stood in light and flying dust swam around her.

Halloween was fun.

Clem wanted to be a clown. “Like Daddy,” he said.

Mommy cried again and didn't know what he meant.

He went to Halloween as a Scotsman with a beard made from an old wig and a dress. Mommy made it for him.

Miss Iverson, the little lady, laughed and said it was a good costume; showed initiative.

Cliffy laughed because he was wearing a dress.

That day, Clem liked school; he liked it a lot.

Miss Iverson let them bob for apples after they'd guessed who each other were behind their masks.

As dusk gathered—Miss Iverson called evening “dusk”—the day became green with thunderclouds. Darkness rolled over the bluffs and filled the sky above the school, above the town.

Miss Iverson walked between their desks, her eyes wide. “Soon it'll be witching hour! Time for all good ghosts and goblins…” she looked at Clem, “…and Scotsmen, to be safe at home.”

She stood by Clem's desk. Clem could smell her: pretty wet flowers and a rainy day, like now.

Fat Stevie Hartranft stood by the door. His hand was on the light switch.

“’Walk home,’” she said. “’Home, you children, along the darkling paths through woods of ebon night. Go home amidst the cares and cries of the narrowing world…’” She was making her voice sound scary.

The room went dark.

Miss Iverson's face, suddenly, was Clown's face. Bright light filled her nose and cheeks and Clown looked right down from the shadows into Clem.

Clem hadn't seen Clown, hadn’t looked into that face since the big gun Boomed and Daddy had held his eyes and yelled, “Terrible, Horrible.”

“What do you know?” Clown said from her face. “What do you know of the Land of Death?” he said. He wouldn't stop saying it.