Twilight of the Clowns

"My father was a Clown, and his father was a Clown, and his father before him," Bongo exclaimed as he balanced atop a snooker table.

"Preach on brother," shouted a short Clown named lefty. "We be a dying breed."

Sure enough, we were a rare sight.

We were all there that day: Bongo, Lefty, Slappy, Stardog, Happy, Smiley, myself, Peterson, and the rest.

My name is Klinko. I had joined the circus at the age of sixteen, when I ran away from home to pursue my dream. It was a wild life; tramping around from town to town, eking out a living. Well, the last seven or eight years had been hard; but when I got into the business fifteen years ago, the Clown was still the envy of every man. A lot of guys got into Clowning back then; why, in the heyday about every fourth person was a Clown. Most everyone else was in some sort of a circus-based industry- even if it was only concessions. Why, even the corner grocer knew that it was to the glorious Clown that he owed his living. The circus was the gravy train; a bit of stability in the rough and tumble of life. And the Clown? He was the King! Long may he reign!

But, people just don't come to the circus today like they used to. Bongo says that the people just don't believe anymore. "They would rather be stockbrokers and car salesman," he would often say. "They got no soul. They just hurry, hurry, hurry- chasing after the next dollar. They got no time for fun. Why, we even have trouble keeping the few circuses that are left in carnival barkers, and you know what a glory job that used to be."

I knew it well. President? Hell, if a boy could grow up to be a carnival barker, be that he were lacking in the Clowning sciences, he would really know he had made it. Barkers got all the chicks. A fast mouth, a sense of spectacle, and a fiery spirit and you were on top of the world. You didn't make as much money as a Clown, sure; but for a guy with a poor sense of balance or an allergy to base-white it was as close as you got. And it was nothing to sneeze at, neither. Not everyone was made to be a Clown, after all. It was a gift. Hell, give a guy the smell of the greasepaint (mixed with fresh popcorn and elephant manure, of course) and any sane man is in seventh heaven.

I was a part of the Wilkinson Family Traveling Circus. I had been stationed there since I left my last job at Star Circus when that fine traditional vestige of Clowning finally went under due to bad debts. The Wilkinson outfit was a good troupe in it's own right, of course, and I had taken to the unit with great gusto. We were two dozen strong in Clowns and performed every weekend in some town or another. When I had been in the outfit for three years, the guys held a special party where they gave me a new red nose- one of the classy nouveau models.

Most of us had gone to the Clown college. When we were on our off hours we would reminisce about the good times: The Clown prep test, making the grade, 6 AM juggling classes, the cut, intro to mime. We remembered those who failed to make the final cut and had to go into industry. We lit candles for the lost Clown.

While we lived the traditional life the world was changing around us. We were becoming the victims of circumstance. Somehow we had lost touch with the audience, the little people, and then it was too late.

Stardog voiced what we were all thinking, "Man, if things keep goin' this way, there won't be a circus left in ten years."

We all knew it was true. But ten years was an optimistic figure. In a matter of months a lifestyle prouder than any other went the way of the steamship. But at this time it was all speculation, we were talking, nothing more. Then our world came swiftly to an end.

Around Midnight, Bob, the owner of the circus, came into the tent. He was pretty sullen and quiet; but then, that was his character. We didn't realize that anything was really the matter until he looked up, stammered, and asked to see Bongo alone for a few minutes. "I got news," the thin man said. "It's bad."

The rest of us Clowns left to talk to the elephant handlers. They were always the first to get the real scoop on what was going down.

We were on our way, when about a minute out the door we heard sobbing and crying and admonitions to God. Everyone heard it, and all the circus people came rushing to the Clown section.

We waited across the field from the tent; us, the elephant handlers, monkey boy, and the rest.

It was about fifteen minutes later that Bob left the tent. He slunk out without saying a word to the rest of us. It was obvious that he was heading out to his trailer to drown his sorrows in amber fluid. About five minutes after that, Bongo came out to talk to us.

I've seen sad Clowns before, but this was no greasepaint smear of a smile painted upside down, this was the end of an era. This was darkness and chaos.

"My brother Bonker was killed the other night. As most of you know, he was a rodeo Clown on the east side. Worked for a division of this very circus. He was a proud man- he worked hard at his calling. More than anything else, he was the one who lighted the spark under my heels to get into the business. He made a man proud to be a Clown."

"How'd he go?" I asked, a lump rising in my throat.

"Gored to death by a bull," Bongo answered. "At least he died in the line of duty. He died a Clown!"

"Amen, brother," shouted a lot of the guys.

"But that's not the hell of it," continued Bongo, "The crowd went nuts. They smelled blood and they responded. People started laughing and shouting, 'Throw 'em another Clown- they're cheap, what the hell.' What the hell," Bongo tapered off into silence, his head lowered.

Bongo stayed silent for a moment; then he looked up at us, scanned over us face by face, like looking to see who would live or die, trying to divine our individual fates in this cold world. "It's over boys. Bob's packing it in. This was the last straw for the old boy. He's closing the business and retiring to Utah. He's afraid one of us may be next."

Bongo spoke the truth about the risk to our lives. Rodeo Clowns had always carried the highest risk, but we were getting ridiculous. To bring in the crowds, Clowns were doing more and more varied stunts- weird, wild, dangerous. A lot of the guys were getting hazard pay. Stardog was setting himself aflame and running through the town every night now as a kind of sick ad. It built up the crowds, but only for a while; after that we would have had to come up with something even more spectacular. It had to come to an end. And now it had.

What would we do? Most of us were middle aged. Trained as Clowns, we knew no other trade.

That was the turning point in my life. Hell, that was the turning point in a lot of lives. After all, I'm nothing if not your average circus man.

At thirty-one I was still a young Clown, one of the youngest. I still had stamina and spirit. I was still true to my calling. I would find work, I told myself. What's more, I would find work as a Clown.

The following weeks were sad, as the circus was dismantled and sold off piece by piece for whatever could be had for it. It was not a proud day when the main tent was sold as scrap cloth. The prices were low, but still, Bob gave us all a reasonable severance check and told us we could stay on in the trailers for a while as we looked for other work. He would sell our homes only when everything else was gone.

The animal handlers found work in days, leaving for all points on the globe; most to zoos or refuges- none to what few circus' remained. The circus was no longer a viable economy. It was the end of an era.

In the Clown trailers the guys got more and more bitter. A lot of guys started hitting the sauce pretty hard. There was a lot of talk about starting our own circus, but everyone knew that it wasn't feasible. We made up resumes, sent them to the four corners, and waited.

We heard nothing. We were alone. It was now every Clown for himself.

While a lot of the guys were wallowing in their depression, Slappy and myself got on doing telegrams and parties. It was demeaning work, but it allowed us to remain professional Clowns.

This was the worst time in my life. We weren't in high demand at the agency, who's specialty was really strippers, and we were sent out as gags. We were never really wanted wherever we showed up. If we were delivering a telegram we would get cursed out and have things thrown at us when we showed up at the door. More often than not we were used as process servers: delivering subpoenas, summons, and notification of lawsuit. Slappy was once severely beaten before he could sing "happy birthday." After that we were always sent out as a pair.

We were living in a dive on sixth street when the rest of the guys were finally removed from the old circus grounds. Of course we invited them to stay with us, and so were living with sixteen other Clowns in a one bedroom apartment with no hot water. We tried to get them on at the agency but were told that two Clowns were all that were needed, if that. The rest of the guys put out flyers advertising themselves as available for birthday parties.

We were all doing badly. Everyone, that is, except Peterson. He had gone back to his life as a CPA. He was unique among us, as he had come to Clowning later in life and had a previous trade to go back to. He was an odd duck, Peterson, but we had always considered him one of our own. Our attitude was that a Clown was a Clown. We didn't care about your background, only your motives.

Peterson was a site! He was a very light base-white, no red nose, and an outlined but not filled in mouth. He was never without his attache case. He always talked about getting a nose, but always seemed dissatisfied with what was available. He always said that he was the type who would never settle for anything but the best.

Naturally, we were thrilled when Peterson announced that he was running for the Senate. With one of our own in the government, we were sure to rebound!

Peterson ran promising to pass what he called "the Clown retraining and reeducation bill." It was supposed to get all the out of work Clowns across the country a guaranteed education and a job. It was supposed to favor jobs that were "Clownlike in nature and description." We all threw into the campaign as volunteer staff, Making flyers, phone calls, and door-to-door visits. We especially tried to rally the Clown vote and get the always apolitical Clowns to register to vote.

Everywhere there were Clowns there was jubilation the day Peterson won by the slimmest of margins. Peterson took to the job with great gusto- he was always in the papers. He was famed for his office decorations: circus artifacts and velvet paintings of Clowns, elvis, and dogs playing poker. He kept seltzer bottles in a fridge in his office "just in case." Only one thing was unsettling: he hired no Clowns. His office staff was composed entirely of buxom young women. There wasn't another Clown anywhere in sight. Could it be that our great white faced hope had forgotten his mandate?

Back home things were just as bad. We had all crammed ourselves into little cars before, but never had we actually lived all cramped up together. After the election, a lot of bitter feelings started going around. Soon it was an unusual day when a fistfight would not break out over the slightest disagreement. We were men who needed something to live for.

Eventually, Bongo got it together enough that he was able to lend some leadership to the group. He had been in a deep funk since the day our world came crashing down around us, but when he came out of it he was like a man with a renewed spirit- and he was ready to fight.

He told us he had a plan and the plan was called 'Clown Power.'

We needed to regain our Clown spirit. He told us that we needed to "push ahead always, and compromise never." Soon after, we all chipped in for a train ticket and he left to help out Peterson in the senate.

We knew from his letters that things were not going well. Peterson was a drunkard. He spent his day chasing women, was never on the senate floor during voting, and had yet to introduce a bill of any kind to alleviate our plight. Bongo was true to his plan though, and was ever pushing ahead. He wrote up the promised Clown bill and instructed Peterson to enter it into committee. He even got the guy to sober up a bit.

We were all filled with a renewed sense of hope on the homefront when the news broke. The 'Clown retraining and reeducation bill' had become, in committee, a bill to aid the Southern Avocado Growers. It had nothing to do with Clowning anymore, except in name. Worse yet, the farmers needed no aid, as they were experiencing record crops and profits! We had been sold out.

Bongo came home in shame. He was a broken Clown. He sat in front of the radiator and said nothing. We could see that his extra large shoes were worn through from his walking back and forth through the capital halls, lobbying for the Clown, and having his efforts fall on deaf ears. He brightened up somewhat, two months later, when Peterson was forced to resign his office. Seemed that he had been chasing his office help around the desk since he got there. He doused his female staffers with water from his seltzer bottles and held them against the wall, groping and fondling, as he said, "once you've had a Clown, baby, you never go back." He blamed the alcohol, but in the end it was all for nought. He was out and the new guy was in. Odd though it seemed, there were no Clowns left in the government.

"He was never a Clown. Not really. Not a real Clown," said Bongo. "We gave him too much credit. From now on, things will be different," Bongo said with a wicked smile that made my skin crawl. He had a plan.

Clown Power was back with a vengeance. This time it was a militant movement. He worked to arm the Clowns. He orchestrated robberies to fund the movement. It was all justified by the cause. After all, Clowning built this world- we were taking back what was ours.

We mostly knocked over 24 hour convenience stores. They were easy and I guess we were really kind of soft despite all our rhetoric. It brought in the cash though, and we continued to stockpile the weapons. We were also inspiring other Clown Power groups around the country. The nation was concerned, or at least we were getting a fair amount of press, but little was done to appease or stop us. We weren't hitting the big boys, so they left us alone.

Everyone was taken aback when Bongo killed the first counter person. We were doing a job on a mom & pop place on the outskirts, a mellow gig. Everything should have been cake, but for what greeted us on site. When we busted into the place we found that the late night counter guy was a moonlighting Clown. We surprised him as he sat and read the latest copy of Clownboy on a slow night. When he looked up and Bongo saw the Clown white on the clerk's guilty face, Bongo snapped and shot him. We grabbed the cash fast and got the hell out of there. We sped for home sweating bullets.

We mellowed out a bit after that. We understood Bongo's gut impulse, his rage, but knew that we needed to slow things down and think things through. Traitor or not, a Clown killing another Clown was not something that had ever been in the cards.

A few of the guys talked mutiny after the shooting, but we stuck it out behind Bongo. After a while we were pulling more robberies than ever, and starting to get into the lucrative protection racket. That was probably our mistake, as we targeted higher class establishments for protection. We were starting to get more notice from the cops and had to rely more on our wits and tactical skills. We moved without pattern.

We were getting a lot of publicity, and Bongo was eating it up as he watched it on the TV. He'd laugh at the screen and mock the newscasters as they feigned concern for the common man. Sometimes he'd shoot out the screen when an Elvis movie was on and someone would have to go procure him another one. We started keeping a few in the back, just in case.

We all watched one afternoon, on tv, as a Clown in the midwest sat atop a building shooting people on the street below. He took out nearly two dozen non-Clowns before he was taken out himself by a postal worker on break from across town.

It was shaping up to be an average Friday night. We pulled up to the store at 11 PM, and left the engine running. The clerks were tipped off to what was happening when they saw us pour out, dozens of Clowns, out of our small import car. It once had flowers painted on the sides and looked very much like a Clown car, but I had lobbied hard to get it repainted a solid color for the sake of keeping things low key.

They must have hit a silent alarm as we rushed in.

After we were in we wrecked the joint, like we always did. Bongo strutted around barking orders at the clerks, having them fill bags and keep their hands in view. The rest of us wreaked havoc, knocking over stock and smiling for the cameras. Smiley pulled the old 'flower in the lapel' trick on one of the clerks. Not a standard fare for our robberies, but very Clownish.

Bongo was angered.

"Boys, remember this always- there is a time and a place for frivolity," Bongo said. Then he turned, pointed his gun, and shot Smiley in the back of the head. Smiley dropped to the floor, his smile gone forever.

Red and white streaks, greasepaint mixed with blood, ran down the walls forming grotesque imagery. Clerk and Clown alike screamed.

I'm told I had a blank look on my face, like I'd checked out before the third act. One word came from my mouth softly, "Why?"

"Klinko, Klinko, Klinko... Your mistake is believing that things must always happen for a reason. But that's not the way of the world. Sometimes, sometimes, things just happen." Having said this, Bongo turned and shot one of the clerks, splattering the wall with more red and less white.

With this, everyone bolted for the car, we could hear sirens in the distance. Bongo was at the wheel, and he shot out of the lot like a rocket. It was surprising the speed you could get with a car loaded down with Clowns. We made it several miles down the road before being forced over.

We exited the car slowly, as ordered. We circled around the car and the cops advanced on us. At this point Bongo reached under his jacket and pulled out two seltzer bottles. He aimed them at the cops, but never got a chance to douse them. He was shot 57 times. Water and blood sprayed everywhere as the rest of us hit the ground with our hands over our heads. It was all over but the telling.

We had our court appointed lawyers. They split us up in jail so as not to allow us to plot a group escape or riot. The press were on us like vultures; Bongo would have been in Clown heaven.

When we appeared in court we were a group of defeated Clowns. We were poster children of all that was held vile in the Clown, a reason for our own demise. Some of the guys turned states evidence. We held little hope. We sat in the courtroom dirty and unkempt. We sat and listened to witness after witness. We saw the surveillance cam footage from that night and others, over and over again. Our lawyer never even said a word. He told us he had a plan.

When it was time for the defence to take the floor, he grilled the witnesses fast and hard. He asked how they could be so positive about our ID. He established that most of them believed that all Clowns look alike. He played the Clown card for all it was worth. And it was working. The press started to speculate on the doubt our defence was instilling in the nation. They talked about the economic plight of the Clown and our station in life. We were getting the kind of attention that Bongo had worked for so long ago.

It all came down to the arresting officers. "And can you tell me why you pulled over that car, officer, of all the cars on the road that night, why that car- a car full of Clowns ?" asked our lawyer.

"Because... The car was... Overloaded," he barked out in reply.

The case was dismissed for lack of evidence.

We were out on the street again, Clowns for hire.