Chapter 4

Chapter 4-A

Revised March 6, 2011

The Clown

Before Wesley had both feet inside the front door, Eve’s hands reached out towards him.  He grabbed her under the arms and spun around the living room three times, before tossing her onto the faded green sofa.

 “Hey princess, you wanna go to the bonfire tonight?  If it’s O.K. with mama.”

            “Yeeeeah!” she sang out.

            “Wesley, is that you?” his mother shouted from her bedroom.

            “Yep. Did you get Eve’s costume yet?”

            “Yes, It’s laying on her bed, next to the sword.”

            “You gonna go with us?”

            His mom came out of the bedroom, with a basket of dirty clothes.
 “No, I really do need to make a trip to the laundry mat. How ‘bout I drop you and Eve off at the library and then come back in a couple of hours. Around eight o’clock.”

            “I gotta go to work with Brian at eight, can you come back around 7:30?”

            “Sure. That’s fine.” She didn’t even ask him what he was going to do with Brian. Deep inside, she felt certain that whatever he was doing was something she didn’t want to know. He was doing  well in school, and brought home steady money, and for her, those two facts meant one thing- Wesley was on the right track in life. A kid making ‘bad’ money would not be talking about going to college. Just last week he asked her to  help him fill out the scholarship forms that were offered to veteran’s children.  

“Wes, can you grab your laundry bag out of your room and bring it to the car?” she asked, just before she went out the back door.

“Yea. I’ll get it.”  He said, as the back door shut. “Hey Eve, go get your costume on. The judging starts in about an hour. I’m gonna put mine on.”

            “You have a costume? Are you gonna be the prince?” Eve tilted her head and twirled one of her pigtails around her index finger.

            “Yes, the Prince of Darkness.”

            “That’s not a real prince.”

“Yes it is. But he isn’t bad or scary like most people think. This prince shows up when you are in the dark and really scared. And, he always has a flashlight.”

“Have you met him?”

“Yea, when I was fourteen.”

“What does he look like?”

            “I’ll tell you about him later. Now, go put on your costume.”

Eve spun around twice in the hallway before heading to her bedroom.

            Wesley went to his room, closed the door and grabbed Huck Finn off his nightstand. He lifted out a small key that was pressed into the back cover. He slid under his bed and pulled out a small metal box, big enough for a pair of kid shoes. He knelt on the faded-yellow shag carpet, feeling rather heavy all over, wondering if unlocking this box was something he was really supposed to do or not.

It seemed, recently, like he really didn’t have a choice at all, that it was something like his destiny. Only he wasn’t even sure he believed in destiny. That just seemed to put everything in a box. No one had choices if it was all just a part of some big map that was already drawn out.  Since he started his job, he’d begun to think that he was sort of drawing his own map, and that some of the roads were more important to travel than others. The road he was on felt a lot like the river Huck felt drawn to explore. He wasn’t really sure if the end of the road was so important, it was the people he was connecting with right now, that seemed to hold a place in his life. Not unlike the three or four books among the thirty or forty he’d read and re-read since he was eight. There was just something in them that he was trying to absorb, like the last rays of sunshine when he was fishing by the lake. Once the sun was down, he couldn’t see the hooks well enough to bait them. He felt pretty sure that this road he was on was about to come to an end. He couldn’t imagine staying in this place of limbo for much longer. Worrying about Eve, his mom, his own future. It had to end.

He carefully lifted out a top shelf, which had photos of him and his dad, two match box cars and a sea-blue marble. He picked up the blue car and spun the wheels in the palm of his hand. Right now, that world of match box cars seemed like a lifetime ago. Almost like it wasn’t even his life anymore. It belonged to someone else in another galaxy. He was there with his dad, racing the cars on the dual orange track, in the middle of the living room. He could see his own chin, laying on top of his folded hands, as he watched the cars leave the track and tumble onto the yellow carpet.

He put the car back while picking up the marble. He tucked it into his right pocket, not really sure why. He knew it didn’t make any sense. But he felt like he wanted to stay connected to the past, and the marble seemed to be the cord between the two worlds.

He rolled it between his index finger and thumb for a few minutes while looking out his window at the reddish orange sky. He saw the moon peeping through the feather-like clouds. He wondered if his dad had looked at the sky the night before he died. He told Wesley to look at the moon every night at eight p.m., and that he'd be looking at it four a.m., as he got out of bed.
"We'll see it together. And neither one of us will wonder what the other is doing in that moment. We'll know for certain."  
He heard the back door shut and was jolted back to his room.

He took out three black shapes. The first, a pair of black spandex pants. Over those, he slipped on a pair of black sweat pants that were draped over his foot board. The next black wad was a long-sleeved Nike dri-fit black shirt. In the skin-tight fabric, his upper body showed the results of his exercises. When he started the basic training routine six months ago, he’d only half-heartedly completed the 50-50-50 program. Fifty each of push-ups, sit-ups pull-ups. Now, he was easily doing one hundred of each.

The last object was smaller than the other two, but contained 3 separate items: gloves, a ski-mask, and shoe covers. He pulled the elbow-length gloves on, but stuck the ski-mask and shoe covers into the Spiderman back-pack hanging on his door knob. He slide the box back under the bed. After he was dressed,   he opened his bottom dresser drawer and pulled out something that looked like a camera-case and dropped it into the back-pack before zipping it shut. He checked himself in the mirror hung on the back of his bedroom door. He pulled his sleeves down over his wrists, flexed his shoulder muscles, and patted his stomach before grabbing his backpack. He put the key back in Huck Finn, grabbed his dirty laundry, and closed his door.

            Eve met him in the hallway, barefoot, with her red karate-style robe and white leggings.

            “Where are your shoes, Eve?”

            “I can’t find them.”

            “Did you check under your bed? Or the couch?”

            “No. Will you help me?” She tilted her chin down, opened her wide-eyes giving her the look of Bambi on his first excursion out of the forest.

            “Sure.” They went into Eve’s room and Wesley laid face down on the floor right next to her bed. Why was he finding himself face down on the floor so often these days? He lifted the edge of her lavender comforter,   reached into the darkness and pulled out a one-legged Barbie. “What’s this? A special Olympic’s Barbie?” Let’s see if she can fly.” He flipped his wrist and she flew over his head landing sideways on top of Eve’s dresser.

            “Nice shot!” cheered Eve.

            Next, he pulled out a Clifford bedroom slipper and handed it to Eve. “You been lookin’ for this?”

            “Nope.  Don’t like Clifford anymore.”

            “Why not?”

            “He’s too big.  He can’t sit in anyone’s lap now.” Eve took it straight to the trash can and dropped him in. “Bye bye Clifford.”

            “Okay. Have you looked in your closet, Eve?” He said as he slung out several legos and a jump-rope.

“No.”

“Well, go look.”

She walked over to the closet while Wesley pushed himself up off the floor in one quick jump.

“Here they are! Oh! Look at this!” She added. “A clown!”

Wesley turned to see Eve hugging a soft, stuffed clown about the same height as her/she.

“Let me see that.” Wesley had a sinking feeling come over him. He hated smiling clowns, always had. Faces with fake smiles. He never understood why someone would need to paint on a smile.  The frowning clowns didn’t bother him. They seemed honest. Somehow, a person with a painted frown was telling the world that there was a deep sadness, so deep that you couldn’t talk about it. Wesley knew what that felt like. He smiled even when he didn’t want to. He felt guilty sometimes, when he’d have good laugh. Like he was betraying his dad and his mother. He thought he would be a sad clown one day.

Wesley took the clown, sat down on her bed, and inspected it head to toe. It was soft, made out of sock material. Looked hand-made. There was no tag, and it smelled like fresh paint.

“Eve, can I have this?” He knew she’d say yes. She liked it when he wanted her toys. That usually meant he was going to play with her, be with her, in her world.

“Sure. Will you help me tie my shoes?” She said, tossing them on the bed beside him.

“Yea. Where’s your head-band?”

“Right here!” She grabbed a shiny gold piece of fabric hanging off her door-knob, hopped on the bed, stood up, and wrapped it around his eyes, blind-folding him. “Now, come find me.” He heard her feet run towards her closet. He didn’t really feel like playing hide-n-seek, but he remembered being four years old, and his dad playing this game with him. It was probably the clearest of all his memories. His favorite place to hide was the second shelf of the deep linen closet. One time his dad had actually climbed onto the third shelf, just above him, and reached down and grabbed him. Even though he knew it was his dad, something about the large hand creeping down through all the blankets made his blood run.

He counted out loud to ten and then said, “Ready or not, here I come!”

He pulled off the blind fold and looked under her bed. Then he went to her drawers, which were obviously too small to hold her, and pulled them out one at a time. “No, not in here,” he uttered, following the unwritten rules of hide-n-seek, which said you had to first look in unrealistic places, while announcing to the hidden, your failed attempt and discovering them. Finally, he went to the closet and moved around her toys. He expected a squeal, but heard nothing. He pushed her coats aside and stuck his hand in the pile of stuffed animals at the back.

“Eve, found you!” He announced, again, following the rules. But she wasn’t there. Although he knew she was probably standing very close by, his heart began to race and he felt like running, screaming her name through the house. He decided to check the hall closet before allowing real panic to set in. On his way out, he noticed the curtains move in an unnatural motion. Pink toes wiggled on the wood floor, like they were dancing. He sighed and felt his frozen blood begin to thaw and course through his veins. His impulse was to run to her, pick her up and squeeze her little body next to his chest, as if she had come back from the brink of death. Instead, he tugged on her big toes and waited for her to giggle, which she did.

“Now get your shoes on little princess! Before I call the guards and have you thrown in the dungeon!” He snatched up the clown as he walked out of her room. He stopped at his bedroom door and tossed the creepy clown on his bed before walking into the kitchen.  As he opened the fridge and reached for the milk, his leg vibrated. He thought it was just an inner muscle twitch, before remembering that he had put his phone in the pocket of his spandex.

                 It was a text from Brian, “What’s up?”

                  “Goin 2 bonfire wit Eve. U stil @ wk?”

                  “It’s slow. I’m off at 6:30. What time you goin’?”

                  “7. Gunna eat first.”

                  “Okay. See you there.”

                  “J” He closed his phone and headed back to the fridge to scan for some leftovers. The clown’s silent face covered his hunger pains. Without any delay, he concluded The Post-It Note People delivered the gift. As he walked down the hall, he fake-punched the wall trying to diffuse the rage that was quickly building up. He wanted to bash someone’s face, and hoped that he’d get the chance in the next few hours.

                  “Hey Wes, there’s mac-n-cheese in the fridge. And some leftover cornbread and green beans. Would you heat that up?” His mom asked, as she came back in the house.

                  “Yeah, got it.” Wesley pulled out a container of black-eyed peas. He’d brought them home from Trevor’s grandmother’s house from last Saturday.  She’d fed them like kings for cleaning out the gutters. For some reason, she thought cleaning gutters was a bigger job than mowing her three acres. He and Trevor had finished in less than two hours. Compared to the four and half hours her yard took, in the sweltering summer sun, the gutter job seemed like a picnic. He sat on a roof, with a view of the Appalachians, on a cool fall day and tossed leaves and pine straw into the wind. He almost felt like he should pay her.

Wesley was just glad she hadn’t seen him fall off the roof or she probably would have kept him at her house for a week, bringing him endless cups of hot tea and honey. That and bowls of mashed potatoes and gravy.  She didn’t hear him though, thanks to the soft pillow-like blooms he landed on. The Confederate rose garden was having a late-fall blooming extravaganza, which created a perfect landing zone. When he hopped up, he stood face to face with thorny stems eager to wrap around his throat.  If they’d been for sale, the sign would have read: Heirloom Roses- Ready to Kill.

 As he brushed himself off, and tried to rehabilitate the bush he’d squashed, he got the feeling that the whole event was a sign that he was close to something dangerous. He'd somehow incorporated this belief from his grandmother, who uttered her own beliefs throughout the day. "Nothing that redirects you is an accident."  His favorite, which seemed to fit with his near-scratched experience today, "Your father will show up in the things that you love. Watch for him."

When Wesley was falling off the roof, directly over the  roses, he felt a warm hand on his back. It wasn’t a light touch, it was a firm push. He just couldn’t figure out how Trevor had managed to get down without him notcing.

“Hey man, how did you get down off the roof? Did you jump?”

            "I didn't move, Wes. I just watched you fall."

            "But I felt your hand on my back."

            "When I saw you slipping, I wanted to get to you, but I couldn't. I felt like shit just sitting there, watching you dangle off the gutter."

Trevor said it must have been the heat. But that was crazy, because it was only about 63 degrees. Wesley knew that Trevor didn't believe in anything except women, whiskey and guns. "If I can't see it, it ain't happened," was his standard reply to anything the least bit suspicious.

*************************************************************

            Wes pulled out the black-eyed peas and headed to the microwave.

                  “Can we use the special cups tonight?” Eve asked, as she pointed to the corner cabinet that contained some finer dinnerware; silver goblets from Spain, English plates from London, and a tea set from Japan.

            “Hey mom, you gonna eat with us?”

            “Yes, be there in a minute. Pour me some tea, please.”

            Wes got down the dishes and Eve carefully placed all the fine dinner ware on the table. While she meticulously set each place, Wesley went back to his room to examine the clown. He sat on the bed, pulled the head off and sifted through the stuffing. He then pressed down on the stomach and all the extremities but felt nothing stiff. When he was certain that he’d left no part untouched, he picked up the cotton stuffing, the decapitated body, and the deflated head and tossed them into the trash can. As the head hit the wall and bounce to the floor, he noticed that one eye reflected the light, while the other one didn’t. It looked dead. He pulled both eyes off. It wasn’t hard, they were loosely glued, and compared them. The right eye had a piece of black rubber over it. He peeled it back and revealed a shiny, gold disk.

            “Nice job. Microphone.”

 He went to the kitchen, grabbed a baggie, and headed to the bathroom. He put the baggie in the inner pocket, pulled out his cell phone and sent a text to Brian.’      

            “Trubl. Big time.”

            “Stay calm. Talk to you soon.” Brian’s message created a measure of easiness in the midst of the heart pounding dilemma.

            Wes wanted to find the person who was sending this crap and choke him. He wanted to shake his head and scream, “You leave us the hell alone!” before shoving a knee into his chest. He envisioned standing next to a moving train, tossing the guy into the air, after knocking him out, and watching a limp body fall onto a pile of coal stacked in a moving train car. Why a train? Why coal? Trains took things places. Took them away. Whenever Wesley didn’t like someone, he envisioned putting that person on a train, after beating them up. He wanted to imagine killing them, but he just couldn’t bring himself to take a life. He knew what it felt like to lose one, so he couldn’t get that far in his imagination. He tried a couple of times, and it always brought him back to his own dad. Death. Dad. It was the equation he couldn’t re-work no matter how many times he tried.