chapter ten
At the shopping mall, a giant, noisy parking lot carnival was going full tilt. The place swarmed with shoppers, visitors, strolling entertainers, and scores of kids. Everyone dressed up, playing clown for a day.
A temporary midway of charity bazaar booths offering games of skill and chance lined the walkways.
A ring of hay bales encircling a carousel of padded steel pipes and bridled ponies made up the Enchanted Pony Ride. The enchantment consisted of colorful unicorn horns attached to the browbands of the ponies’ headstalls.
At a propane fire pit, Wilderness Girls, in khaki skirts and camo vests, toasted marshmallows and sold campfire cuisine.
At Seafood Sam’s booth, a large, decorated display tank held Goliath, billed as the biggest lobster in the tri-state area.
Three Wilderness Girls hung over the side of Goliath’s tank. They waved a stick across the water, enticing the monster lobster to grab it. Out of the murky water, a giant, lightning quick claw snapped the stick, splashing the Wilderness Girls. Soaked and left holding the stub of a stick, the girls squealed until Seafood Sam chased them away from the tank.
Buster’s clownmobile rolled up to the edge of the crowds. Lucy slipped out and flinched up against the side of the vehicle as a passel of shoppers all done up as clowns swarmed by. She dashed around to the rear of the clownmobile. Buster was already there waiting for her.
“So, you feeling a little more spiritually connected to me?”
Lucy pivoted and fast-walked around to the front of the vehicle. Buster was right there waiting for her.
“You’re getting pretty fast in those.” He pointed at her feet.
Lucy pivoted—right into Franklin who had been standing behind her.
“All right, all right.” Buster pushed Franklin’s arms away from Lucy. “How’d you get here?”
What Franklin said was, “Trade secret.”
What Franklin did was a little more desperate.
As the van pulled away and left Franklin standing there back at the apartments, he burst into a dead run in the opposite direction. He achieved cartoon velocity in less than half-a-second. A personal best, if he’d thought to clock himself.
Commandeering rides as he went, Franklin perched on the handlebars of the paperboy’s bike, doubled up with a skateboarder, straddled a mom’s baby jogger, and finished up on the roof rack of a Volkswagen. It stopped just short of Buster’s clownmobile, dumping Franklin onto the asphalt. Franklin had barely enough time to spring up behind Lucy, ready for her to collide with him. It gave him another moment of full frontal contact to savor the rest of his life.
The crowd of kids gathered around Buster’s clownmobile grew with the spectacular arrival of the lanky, blue-haired clown.
Franklin said to Lucy, “Why aren’t you gone?”
“I’m having trouble achieving escape velocity from Buster, the human glue-stick here.”
Franklin turned to the crowd of youngsters.
“Hey, kids! You know what Mister Dippy’s got in those great big pockets of his? Free candy bars! Get them before he gets away!”
The kids dived for Buster’s pants.
“Whoa! Get out of there, ya pickpockets!” shouted Buster, overwhelmed by the snaking hands of swarming candy bandits reaching deep into his pockets all the way down to his socks.
“Quick!” Franklin waved to get Buster’s attention as he struggled under the weight of a dozen sweet-seeking missiles. “Head for the stage! It’s your only hope!”
Buster high-stepped it for the safety of the mini-stage, slapping at the grabby-handed kids.
Franklin turned to Lucy. “Get lost. The only things Buster keeps in his pockets are holes.”
Lucy hesitated only a moment. Franklin thought she might even say thank you. Instead, she turned and ducked away, disappearing through the crowd.
Franklin joined Buster on the mini-stage set among the charity booths of the midway. He dropped his giant carpetbag of props with a clunk. Buster stuffed the linings of his turned-out pockets back in, then swiveled his pants to straighten them.
Franklin dived head first into the carpetbag, digging out juggling clubs, flipping them over his shoulder. As Franklin flipped each club, Buster snatched it mid-flight until he had all four of the clubs spinning in the air. He finished with a flourish, the clubs fanned out in his hands.
As Buster paraded around, soaking up the applause, Franklin went searching for the clubs he’d pulled from his bag. When he didn’t find them, Franklin turned to the kids, mouth stretched wide and arms outspread. He circled the stage, asking where, oh, where in the world his clubs had gone.
Buster, once more juggling clubs, bounced a club off the back of Franklin’s head.
Glaring at Buster, Franklin rubbed his head, hitched up his pants, and picked up the club, ready to bean him back. Buster flipped another club at him, and another, until they were juggling the clubs together, circling, Buster keeping an irate Franklin at bay.
Away from the stage, with everyone else fixed on Buster and Franklin, Lucy eased backward through the crowd, letting people fill in the gap she’d left.
The backside of the crowd thinned, clearing the way for Lucy to skedaddle. She tip-toed past a large, blue metal thrift store container piled up with donations of discarded clothing and housewares.
Before she could get her feet free and fly, a metal hinge creaked. The face of Lisker peeked out of the container.
“Leaving town?” he asked. “A little birdie told me you might be the mystery girl I’m looking for.”
Lucy threw a box of underwear at him and fled back through the crowd.
Up on stage, Buster tripped over a dirty spot and ordered Franklin to clean it up. Franklin frowned and did his slope-shouldered march over to the carpetbag. Pouting, he pulled out a bucket and a mop with a telescoping handle. Franklin scowled at Buster. He went to work cleaning the whole stage. Running the mop under Buster, Franklin forced him backward around the stage. Buster took hold of Franklin, still mopping furiously, and pointed him in the opposite direction. Once Buster’s back was turned, Franklin took aim with the mop. He raised it up over his shoulder, ready for a home-run swing at Buster’s head when suddenly Buster turned around.
Franklin jackknifed himself into an innocent mop stroke—over the shoulder, down to the floor, up over the shoulder, back to the floor. Just a clown mopping a floor. Nothing to see. Franklin waved at him to turn around and ignore what he was doing behind Buster’s back.
Buster turned his back again, then whipped around. But Franklin ignored him and kept mopping, faster and faster, his mop a pumping piston. Franklin backed into Buster, catching him in the gut with the mop handle in rapid fire strokes.
Buster, winded, staggered around the stage, recovering his breath. Franklin held his heart and pulled his mouth into a great big, sorrowful frown, making a great show of regret, even as he threw a secret laugh of victory at the audience.
Buster put an arm around Franklin and lifted his hat, tousled his hair, placed his hat on the ground and tromped it flat. He peeled it up off the ground and placed it with great care back on Franklin’s head.
Lucy swam through the crush of people along the midway and straight into a heavy-set woman. Lisker, now wearing a dress and curly wig, watched her from behind a magazine he’d rigged up with eye holes.
Lisker lowered his magazine. “Aren’t we in an awful hurry to get out of town?”
“Just one of the clowns,” said Lucy with a slapstickity laugh and clap of her hands.
“That’s not what the little birdie told me.”
Lucy fled back the way she came, elbowing her way through. She jinked and dodged between people still milling around the stage and among the booths.
By this time, a local rock band had taken over the stage, pounding away for the crowd. Franklin and Buster moved along the midway, doing their walkaround gags.
Lucy found a gap in the crowd and paused, breathing hard, her hands on her knees. She gave a quick glance behind herself and dashed right into the back of a tall, fat farmer with his straw hat pushed low on his head. The farmer lifted his hat. It was Lisker facing her, wearing his overalls backward.
“Okay, okay. Who’s this little bird?” Lucy huffed to catch her breath.
Lisker pointed across the midway.
Buster gave out with a big smile, using both hands to make moose antlers at her.
“Cheep-cheep!” Buster warbled at them, doing a little leap and a click of his heels.
Lucy backed into a gaggle of kids who swarmed her, plucking at her costume and tugging at her arms.
“Heyheyhey! I’m not a clown!” she shouted at them, prying their arms from her legs.
“I knew it!” Lisker grabbed her wrist.
“He’s the clown!” She pointed at Lisker.
The kids looked at Lisker and gave out with a collective “Ewwwww!”
“What a mopey old face,” said one of the kids, his own face pinched up at the sight.
“Hey. You know the best way to fix a sad face like his?” Lucy shouted at them.
“What?” they shouted back.
“What?” Lisker asked as well, surrounded by a pack of eager kids who looked primed and ready for some serious mayhem.
“Tickle bombs!” Lucy radiated waggle-fingers at Lisker.
Kids are always up for a game of torment-the-grouch. Especially if a bona fide clown says it’s okay. The kids flew at the sad old clown, reaching to get through the denim overalls and body fat.
Lisker burst into a dead run, showing some smooth moves for a lumpy kind of guy.
Lucy scampered in the opposite direction.
Reaching the bus stop, Lucy dropped onto a bench next to three grannies in face paint and yellow derbies. She kept glancing backward.
She sensed a presence and whipped around. The grannies were gone, leaving Buster sitting on the bench beside her. He sucked on a lollipop like he hadn’t a care in the world.
“How long do you plan on keeping this up?” she asked.
“Until I run out of tattle-tales.” Buster fanned a handful of lollipops. Kids pounced on them from everywhere. Buster sauntered off, leaving the kids sucking lollipops and watching Lucy.
Lucy, her eyes turned into smoldering slits, watched him go.
“Hey!” One of those lollipop lickers tugged on Lucy’s sleeve. “Aren’tcha supposed to be funny? Tell a joke or something.”
“You hear the one about the stupid clown they had to take away in an ambulance?” asked Lucy, watching the back of Buster’s head.
“No!” shouted the kids, primed for a great personal injury joke.
“Neither did he.” Lucy continued to watch Buster’s melon-soft head in the distance.
The kids checked with each other to make sure they were all thinking the same thing—this was one unfunny clown.
♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎
Franklin and Buster were still working the midway, roaming among the charity booths. Kids clustered around them, turning into a forest of arms stretched out for instant tattoos that Franklin drew with color markers. Buster, standing next to Franklin, tied balloon animals for the little kids, and suggestive figures for girls willing to show him a driver’s license proving they were over eighteen.
A flaming marshmallow flew past, plopping on the ground at Buster’s feet, smoldering down to a charred lump of wet goo.
Buster, twisting a long balloon into a bulging pink knot, frowned as he locked eyes with the kid sucking on one of the lollipops. The kid pointed across the midway. Buster held another balloon to his lips. With a long and mighty puff he inflated it, weaving as he blew so he could catch a quick look behind himself.
Across the way, Lucy stood with the Wilderness Girls at their fire pit. She turned to hide her face and the stick she’d been holding.
Buster tied off the balloon into a rose bud with an engorged stem, as he did a do-si-do around Franklin, swapping places with him as he handed out the balloon figure.
At the fire pit, Lucy had turned away to light more marshmallows. She didn’t see Buster make the switch.
“How about we make it two dollars a bulls-eye?” Lucy said to the Wilderness Girls gathered around.
Sticky, flaming marshmallows arched over the midway and machine-gunned Franklin’s britches with amazing accuracy.
Lucy looked around to check out their handiwork and tally up their reward.
“Oops.” Lucy handed the girls the stick and lost herself in the crowd.
Franklin sniffed, smelling something sweet, maybe a little something acrid mixed in.
“Is that you?” Franklin asked Buster.
Buster leaned back to check the seat of Franklin’s pants, now in flames licking up the back of Franklin’s costume.
“Nope. It’s you.” Buster kept twisting another biologically accurate appendage that could pass for a deformed jalapeño.
The pain finally reached through Franklin’s underwear.
“Whoa-ho-ho-ho!” he yodeled, bounding through the crowd, leaping butt-first into Goliath’s tank, the steam hissing and dying away.
Franklin’s face sagged into an ecstatic smile of relief.
Ka-SNAP !
“Yeoooow!”
Franklin launched himself off the edge of the tank, Goliath dangling from his britches, holding a good-sized chunk of Franklin’s glutes in its claw.
The kids swarmed to watch the swinging, dancing, leaping fight to the death between Franklin’s buttocks and Goliath’s claws. Franklin twisted and torqued himself trying to dislodge the beast. Franklin grabbed the shovel away from the guy scooping pony poop at the riding ring. With great, wide swings, Franklin whacked himself on the fundament, trying to bop his crustaceous attacker insensible.
What ingenuity, everyone would say later. What flexibility! What comic timing! The crowd flowed with Franklin, giving him room for this titanic battle of the species. A truly and seriously crowd-pleasing performance. Too bad Franklin was in no position to enjoy any of it.
The battle over, Franklin sat on a big, cushy pillow behind the stage, stripped down to his union suit, a red, sleeveless number. He patched the scorched and shredded bottom on his britches. Across the way, under a newly hand-lettered sign, a sour-faced Seafood Sam served up a hasty batch of lobster fritters.
Franklin, making a virtue of necessity, stitched two enormous band-aids across the seat of his costume, hiding the burn holes and claw gashes.
When he’d finished, he and Buster went back out to do more of their walkaround gags, filtering through the crowd still milling along the midway.
From out of the crowd, Buster felt a tug at his jacket. He looked down to find a little girl rubbing her eye and pointing to a large Mylar balloon snagged on the mall entrance marquee high above them. A ladder leaned, oh so conveniently, against the marquee. The rope wrapped around the bottom rung, a tad too obvious.
Buster slid a glance at another of the kids sucking on one of his lollipop bribes. The kid pointed back through the parking lot.
Lucy, hunkered down, peered over the hood of a car.
Buster looked up the ladder, shook his head at the crowd gathered round and called out, “Is there a fireman in the house?”
“Come on,” shouted the crowd, ready for him to get on with the show.
The little girl twisted her fists in her eyes, boo-hooing for all she was worth.
Buster whistled for Franklin and pointed to the balloon at the top of the ladder. Franklin took one look at the height and shook his head. He didn’t want any part of it.
Buster stretched his face into the biggest frown his cheeks could achieve as he pointed at the little girl and clutched his heart, wringing it for sympathy, circling inside the crowd.
“Come on!” they shouted again. “Be a hero!”
“Hee-ro. Hee-ro,” they chanted as Buster circled again, whipping them up.
Buster called for a vote. Who did they want to see go up the ladder? Frowning and shaking his head, Buster pointed to himself, squeezed his flabby arms and showed off his wobbly knees. The crowd booed.
Buster pointed to Franklin, holding his costume by the shoulders, faking some mighty impressive brawn on the skinny clown. The crowd cheered long and hard.
Franklin looked at the little girl who beamed a grateful smile at him, hands clasped under her chin. He looked at the smiling crowd eager for the payoff.
Franklin tested the bottom rung of the ladder and looked up. The top rung looked miniscule, vanishing into the clouds. But the crowd was keen, and an audience is an audience. Unable to resist being the hero, Franklin started up the ladder, a rickety, wobbly climb.
Halfway up, the ladder began bucking under Franklin’s heavy steps. He clamped on until it stopped. He started up again, inch-worming toward the top. Almost there, Franklin missed a rung, putting his foot through. He pulled his leg back out and slipped off the other side. Panicked and dangling underneath, Franklin bicycled his legs, desperate to get a toehold on the rung again. He managed to get a foot through and swung his leg, hooking the side to work his way back around onto the ladder. Counting how many rungs he had left to go, he was convinced there were vultures waiting for him. But the crowd, little matchstick heads way down below, seemed so happy, looking up at him. He kept climbing.
Holding onto the other end of the rope, the Wilderness Girls followed a big, bearded guy in boots and ball cap, who climbed into the cab of a pickup truck. The girls scrambled to knot the rope around the truck’s bumper as Lucy huddled with them.
Back on the ladder, Franklin had reached the top and grabbed the balloon string.
“Ta da!” crowed Franklin.
The audience cheered as Buster took the bows down below.
The truck’s taillights went on, scattering the Wilderness girls. The truck backed into the lane, turned, and headed for the exit, the rope going taut with a thrum. Lucy looked back toward the marquee and saw Franklin at the top of the ladder.
“Oops.” Lucy winced, clapping her hand over her eyes.
A moment later, the ladder clanged by, dragged by the pickup, as Lucy peeked between her fingers to where Franklin had been perched.
Franklin clung to the canvas banner hung on the marquee. With a slow, agonizing rip, it tore free of its grommets and swung Franklin cement-ward. Franklin clinched his eyes shut against the coming impact.
Morbid curiosity got the better of Franklin. He had to peek at his certain doom. He wished he hadn’t. Vehicles bore down on him as he whipped between them, brushing bumpers, then swung back up into the air. At the top of the arc, the rope stretched taut and whip-snapped, propelling him into a slow, rag-doll tumble over the parking lot.
Franklin landed in a lady’s shopping cart. The cart broke away from her and started rolling downhill, faster and faster.
Stuck backward, Franklin rocketed down through the parking lot. Unable to see the horrific danger waiting, he raced for the mall’s busiest entrance. He zipped through the intersection, against the light, horns honking, and tires screeching as cars slid to a stop.
The shopping cart carrying Franklin raced toward the parking lot opposite the mall, on the other side of the intersection. It threaded through the slicing traffic, bounced up over the curb, and slammed into the retaining wall opposite. Franklin, thrown from the basket, went flying, hard-stopped against the back-end of a delivery van.
He slid down until his belt caught on the door handle, leaving him hung up, swaying.
The delivery van door swung open, slamming Franklin against the truck body. The delivery guy peeked out, looking around for the source of the big noise against the side of his van. Not seeing Franklin, he pulled the door closed. The van drove off, Franklin still hanging, upside down, from the handle.