chapter eleven~01
It was already dark outside when the door of the Big Top Tavern blew open. Franklin, shredded, windblown, and tire-tracked from crotch-to-forehead, stood in the doorway. He made for the nearest stool and planted himself on it.
“Gimme a wedgie.” Franklin’s voice was as graveled as the roadbeds over which he’d been dragged.
Red set up three rocks glasses, one with a jigger of bourbon, one with a jigger of scotch, and one with a jigger of rum, all neat. He racked the glasses between the triangle of his thumbs and forefingers to slide the triptych of liquor into place in front of Franklin.
Franklin dipped his bar napkin in the first glass and dabbed at the raw spots all over his face.
“Unlucky day?” asked Red.
“Unlucky? Nahhh.” Franklin knocked back the rest of the bourbon in the first glass. “Speeding toward the highway, hanging from the back of a truck, falling off just before the on-ramp and all that traffic? You might call that lucky. Missed being run over by, not one, not two, but three long-haul truckers following right behind? You might call that lucky. Being run over by a gorgeous woman on a motorcycle who feels so bad she gives you a ride all the way back into town, and you get to hold her around her perfect waist the whole way? You might call that lucky.” Franklin took up the second glass. “Not me. But somebody might.” He knocked back the second shot, one eye squinted shut against the burn running down his gullet. He blew out hard, licked his lips and set aside the second glass. “Water.”
Red set down a glass of water.
“Yeah,” said a voice out of the darkness. “Lucky. A lobster in your pants. The old Slasher would’ve filled the tank with piranha.” It was Lisker, nursing his drink and his own wounds at the other end of the bar.
“You sound disappointed,” said Franklin.
“Ever hear the one about the trick wading pool at the kids’ party in Dubuque? Clown steps in and woosh! drops clean out of sight. Slasher used a backhoe. Worked through the night. Neighbors never heard a thing. Clown stepped into a twenty-foot hole filled with water. Right to the bottom. Gone!” Lisker snapped his fingers.
“You want real ingenuity? Try Montana,” said Lisker. “This clown used to drive all over the place in a candy-striped school bus. One day, on some back-road in the boonies, way, way out, clown sees a big wooden hand waving on a fence post. He stops. Opens the door. What’s he see? Three dozen starving Yorkies, all wearing ruffled collars and red balls on their tails. They’re up the steps and inside the bus like a shot.” Lisker sipped his drink. “No one could ever figure out how the Slasher managed to round up so many feral Yorkies.”
“Sounds like you miss it.”
“My personal favorite though, by far, was the tiny car in Arkansas, stuffed full of clowns. You know? Classic stuff. Scooped it up in a skip loader and dumped it into an industrial manure pit. Now every spring torenias and black-eyed susans grow all over the place.” Lisker took another slug of his drink.
“The lobster? The shopping cart? The truck? Physical comedy like that doesn’t happen by accident. Ouch.” Franklin pressed his thumb to the bloody crack in his lip.
“Didn’t look like you planned any of it.”
“Can I quote you? On my résumé?”
Lisker snorted, clearly unconvinced.
“You know what I’m thinking, pal? I’m thinking today’s just a warm-up. The Slasher is getting ready to pull something big. When it happens, I’m gonna be there to slap the cuffs on.”
“If you thought the Slasher was behind all that, why didn’t you slap the cuffs on then? Save me the road burns.”
“For a few practical jokes you could find in the Big Book of Cheap Gags for Boys? Nobody pays a million bucks for the movie rights to the story of how Ace Private Eye Dick Lisker caught the Baggy Pants Class Clown.”
“Movie rights?”
“For the book I’m writing. Last chapter. Me and the Slasher. Mano a mano. Gonna be big.”
Lisker slid off his stool, steadying himself. He pointed at Franklin, sighting along his index finger.
“I feel it in my bones. Because, if the Slasher doesn’t break out of this slump soon with something spectacular, it’s back to working personal injury claims for me.” Lisker tottered toward the door. He stopped, his hand on the door handle, and turned back to Franklin. “In a way, you’re doing me a favor.”
“I am? How?”
“Fooling yourself, thinking maybe the Slasher’s gone soft on you, of all the clowns around here.” Lisker shook his head. “Spices up the last chapter with a little romance. Sad sack clown and the beautiful killer? He’s wearing a bull’s eye like every other clown in this burg. Everybody knows it but him. You might want to keep that in mind next time you go all suck face on some strange broad who just happened to blow into town.” Lisker winked, aimed his finger pistol at Franklin again, pulling the trigger and clicking his tongue. He went out the door, disappearing into the night lit by neon and street lamps.
“That’s three times.” Lucy’s voice came out of the dark at the other end of the bar.
“That he nearly caught you?”
“That you covered for me.”
“Accidents. I’ve always been clumsy. People think it’s a drinking problem.” Franklin hooked the water glass rim under his nose and tipped it up, his tongue lapping at the air as water trickled down the sides of his face. He stopped. “Since I was a kid. I’ve tried to quit. But I need the laughs.”
Franklin listened to the silence at the other end of the bar.
“In the dark, no one can see you smile,” he said. “Maybe you heard it before.” Franklin took a pull at the third drink, swirled the liquid, washing his teeth with it and threw his head back for a cleansing gargle deep in his gullet. He looked over at Lucy. “Sure-fire way to peg the meter on a breathalyzer test. Officer Joe’d have to throw me in the jug for public intoxication, right? Spend the night in jail? Buster’s happy. You’re happy. I get some sleep.”
Nothing but a chasm of silence in the dark beyond.
“At the bus stop? I didn’t take your wallet. I was trying to help.”
“You ran. What was I supposed to think?”
“Try this. The idea of letting you go through my pockets seemed a tad suicidal at the time?”
“Not sure what I would have done if I’d caught you.”
“Me, either. Reason enough to avoid finding out.”
Lucy didn’t seem to have anything to say back. They sat there in a silence growing longer.
Finally, Lucy said, “You clowns can’t keep your hands or your mouth to yourself.”
“It wasn’t me kissing you out of the blue the other night.”
“The private eye was watching. Didn’t mean anything.”
“That’s okay. I was wearing the wax lips I like to use for kissing that doesn’t mean anything. Sorry about the pocket lint.”
Still nothing. If Franklin was smart, he’d slip off the stool, race back to the apartment, reclaim his room, and hide under his bed until his romantical delusions evaporated.
But he wasn’t smart. So he said, “You know what your problem is?”
“Clowns get to breathe the same air I do?”
“You haven’t spent enough time with the right clowns.”
Franklin, feeling the pleasant altitude he’d achieved, turned into quite the gallante. He slid off his stool, steadying himself with both hands on the bar until he could be sure of his balance. He crossed around to her and offered his arm. She recoiled.
“Cheap therapy. Trust me?”
“Why should I trust you?”
“I’m going to let you drive.” Franklin held out his car keys.
She studied him a moment. She slid off her own stool and took the keys from Franklin. She held them in the light, examining them.
If Franklin knew more about women, he might be able to read her look. Was it one of desperation or calculation? Was he being an idiot? Was he making it easier for her to transport his remains to some secluded spot and dump him?
“Hey? See you tomorrow?” asked Red.
“Yeah. The way my luck’s going.” She closed the keys in her fist. Lucy seemed to deflate at the thought of another day on the job among the clowns.
Lucy and Franklin made for the door, colliding shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway. Franklin gave way and made a sweeping gesture for her to go first.
“I don’t take freebies from clowns.” She waved for him to go first.
They studied each other for a moment. They both made for the door, wedging themselves in the doorway again, shoulder to shoulder.
“I’d have been disappointed if we hadn’t done that,” said Franklin, spitting out the tumble of her hair covering his face.
Lucy pulled free and launched herself through the door and into the night.
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The Funny Farmhouse Day Care Center sat in the middle of the block between two residential streets. The front lawn bristled with large wooden clown cut-outs.
Franklin had Lucy by the hand, a marvelous achievement if he’d been sober enough to appreciate it. He led her through the gaily-colored nightmare.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Franklin knocked on the wooden cut-outs, pleased at his brainstorm.
Lucy held back.
“Those are a whole new level of creepy.” She had a distinct urp and growl in her voice, clear signs a drinker’s soul-cleansing puke was on its way.
“Creepy?” Franklin couldn’t see it.
“The way their eyes follow me around.” Lucy shifted to test what she was seeing. “And how their lips curl up.” She twisted her lips open, baring her own teeth, mimicking what she saw. “What kind of deviant sticks a bunch of clowns right where kids have to walk?”
Franklin frowned, mouthing the word ‘deviant.’ He studied the clowns but couldn’t see what it was she saw. Lucy kept wincing, turning her face first one way then the other, snapping her teeth together.
“Shit! That one licked his lips.” Lucy pulled away from Franklin. “They’re all doing it!”
Lucy tripped, sitting down hard. She crab-walked backward until she could flip over, get to her feet, and dash off into the dark.
Franklin watched her disappear. He looked back at the clown cut-outs. Still flat and immobile. He trotted after her.
Lucy collided with a tool shed seeming to have sprung up out of the dark. She clawed at the door until she found the handle. She yanked it open, ripping the lock and hasp right out of the jamb, nearly knocking herself backward when it gave way to her pulling.
“Get rid of them,” she shouted, ducking inside the shed, slamming the door shut behind her. “They’re your friends!”
Franklin eased up to the shed door, careful of what a bottled-up crazy lady with that kind of strength might do to the soft flesh of an inebriated clown. He tugged at the door handle. She’d managed to jam it shut from the inside. He put his ear against the door. No sound.
“Are you okay in there? Hey? You okay?”
A gas motor coughed to life inside the shed.
“I’m fine now,” Lucy shouted over the motor’s whine.
The shed door swung open. Lucy appeared sporting goggles, work gloves, and a roaring chainsaw.
“Got some therapy of my own.” She waved the chainsaw, marching off toward the wooden clowns.
“Uh, wait.” Franklin slinked after her. Now the crazy lady was armed.
He caught up to her as she hacked at the cut-out clowns. She swept the chainsaw through the wooden figures, sending splintering heads, arms, and legs flying.
A crazed, berserker lumberjill, she was very good with that thing. He didn’t want to think where she got the practice.
Lights in the nearby houses started popping on.
Lucy eviscerated the last wooden clown as a police siren warbled in the distance. The flashing lights of the police cruiser became visible as it came up the street.
“Enough therapy for now,” he said. But she was already gone. The goggles, work gloves, and chainsaw lay discarded among the splintered wood. Franklin scuttled into the shadows.
Franklin reached his car and looked around for Lucy. He hunkered down as the patrol car passed by, lights flashing.
His car door opened, nearly clocking him as he squatted beside it. Lucy was inside, her hand over the dome light, covering up the gleam.
“Get in,” said Lucy, her teeth clamped down hard on the words.
Franklin crawled into the driver’s seat, eased the door closed until the latch clicked. He started the car, the syncopation of the cylinders struggling to catch rattled loud against the night. They creeped away, the darkness swallowing them up.
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