Sparks hiss and fizz behind the Funhouse door whenever Gonko prowls by. Word spreads that something weird is afoot in there, weirder than normal even, for very few carny rats come near in those hours. Not real keen on the décor in there himself, Gonko waits outside as much as he can, but when he hears from within "Breathe! Breathe!" he dashes in.
The floor is a repulsive mess of off-cuts in discarded piles, bone pieces leaking marrow. Lumps of flesh and organs sit in buckets. There's a zap in the air which stands hairs on end, more richness of graveyard and garbage can stink than surely have ever existed in just one room before. But there in the chair, with a blank expression behind newly applied face paint, is Doopy. His head is big and round as a basketball, with black bristles sticking out here and there. He is short, pot-bellied, glancing apologetically at the entire world. Blinking, breathing. Alive.
The Matter Manipulator wheels about, hands rubbing together. "The first attempt succeeds! Most pleasing. He lives, in his way."
"G-G-Gonko?" Doopy stammers, whispers. He lurches from the chair, falls in a heap. A banana peel has felled him. Gonko yanks him upright. Doopy paws his shirt. "It's cold over there, Gonko. It's real cold, and, and they make you do stuff."
"There, there," says Gonko, keeping his relief and joy in check because the Matter Manipulator is peering at him. But another clown tear betrays him, bounces off Doopy's shoulder as he thinks to hell with it and embraces his fellow clown. "Get busy," Gonko snarls at the Matter Manipulator, whose smile is ugly. He hauls up on his medical stretcher a squarish slab of flesh, sharpens his cleaver, holds back a tear of his own. The truth of it is, he's not felt so moved in many long years.
•
It takes just a day and a half longer before the rest of the crew are back around the same old card table, passing around the same old cards. Gonko watches them closely to see how they've pulled up. Aside from the occasional staring-into-space silence, Doopy's screaming nightmares about something he calls "Mr. Bigbad," and in Goshy's case an errant limb coming half off when he moves too fast, he is satisfied they are the same clowns they were before.
Although he hasn't got the whole crew yet. "Lean close," he says when Doopy and Rufshod finally finish their battle for who gets the last pretzel. They lean close, and he tells them the grand plan. They don't seem to hear a word of it and go right back to fighting over the now eaten pretzel. Goshy stares about, baffled by everything in sight. All systems normal.
•
"Tonight," Gonko tells his crew after a day or two of letting them settle into life, "we go up. Ruf, I'm avoiding George ‘cause of some acrobat drama. Go get us some pass-outs. Might take a while to find JJ, but we'll hit up the old haunts first. We'll split up but keep track of each other. If you spot him, find out where he's staying. Then it's beat-down time and we scare him real bad."
"Gonko, is, can I, is it," Doopy stammers.
"You may use the restroom, Doopy. And if you ask me again I'll bury you back in the sludge where I found you."
Doopy cringes. "Aw shucks, Gonko. It's bad over there, real bad, I just can't go back there, it hurts your eyes and they make you do stuff."
"I liked it over there," says Rufshod. "Made some friends."
Doopy takes off his already soiled pants and dumps them in the latrine, putting on a new pair but not before giving everyone along the way an eyeful of the poetic license the Matter Manipulator has taken with his remolding job. "Oh Christ," Gonko mutters in disgust. "Doopy, I want the extra dick gone by morning. Don't even want to know what that other thing is, but cut it off too."
"It's tingle itchy, Gonko. But when I rub it, it goes tingle ouchy."
"Oh, Gonkoooo," George coos from the tent doorway. From atop his ride-on goon—which evidently scares the bejesus out of Goshy, who runs stiff-legged from the room and squeals like a kettle—George beckons. Behind him stands the acrobat recently assailed, and so the clowns are delayed an hour and a half as, with George in the corner eating popcorn and now and then braying out a one-man laugh track, Gonko and Claudius (the acrobat) discuss their feelings with George's new toy, the therapist.
She is forty-something, dressed in soothing earthy browns and greens with frizzy hair, spectacles, and a long neck on which her head constantly bobs in perfect understanding. Gonko's hands throttle the arms of his chair throughout. Claudius at least seems to find it all of value. "I guess what I feel—when a clown attacks me?—is a sense of rejection."
The therapist nods understandingly. "And maybe Gonko when he threw the mud, or feces, whatever it was—was protesting against some rejection he has felt in the past?"
George in the corner almost dies laughing.
"It's great your proprietor cares enough to sit in on our session," says the therapist.
"I feel a little validated by that," says Claudius, "though also the frequent laughing? Gives me feelings of confusion."
The time crawls by slower than it ever has. At the end Gonko cannot remember his name or occupation for the rage has conquered all. He manages somehow to hug the acrobat when ordered to and to say something resembling "sorry." When the angry mist clears, he is standing ankle deep in the rubble of a wagon, with various aches indicating his own hands and feet destroyed it.
The other clowns gaze on respectfully, clapping. (Goshy claps by puffing out his cheeks and slapping them against his gums, which he will do on and off for the remainder of the night.) The gypsy wagon owners stand by, less impressed, and Gonko remembers the grand plan. "All of you, grab a piece of this wagon," he tells the gypsies. "We're taking it up. Fix it up there. You're coming with us. Secret mission. There shall be pay and perks aplenty."
"Up where?" says one of the gypsies. These are more Kurt survivors; some of them have been here so long the world above has become almost mythical.
"Come and Uncle Gonko will show you." Few who'd watched his display would disobey him so the gypsies reluctantly pick up the larger pieces of the wagon while the clowns gather up some of the rest of it. There isn't room in the lift for all of them plus the wagon parts so the clowns go up first. "Here is the grand secret plan," Gonko says, "and this time, listen." Already stuffed close, the clowns lean closer, the contact provoking a range of comic sounds from chiming bells, popping toast, to flatulence. "Our own show. Up above, in the place tricks come from. That caravan I trashed is the first part. We sneak out more bits and pieces, stash 'em somewhere til we're ready. Then we take a real long time to deal with this." He holds up the list of names George has given him. "We farm us some powder, see? We pay more than George is paying and bribe anyone we want to be part of the new show."
"But what if George wants us to be in his show?" says Rufshod.
"He don't. We'll be lower than gypsies down there—he said it with his own gob. And these orders come from higher than George." He rattles the list for emphasis. "So unless one of the big-bosses wants to crawl up that tunnel to tell it different, we make the rules up here, we do what we want. Which is whatever Gonko says. Got it?"
"Just clowns though?" says Rufshod. "I mean we're just clowns. What about a freak show and acrobats and lion tamers and shit?"
"In time," says Gonko.
"Gosh," says Doopy.
"And it gets better, my lovelies. In time we starve out George's show altogether. How? Ticket collectors. Geddit? We get our own people on that job. We make 'em send down to George only tricks we already entertained. Tricks who been sucked dry. No dust for George. And in time, no circus for George, when no one's getting paid down below, and the boss-bosses ain't getting their cut neither. Think they'll put up with George for long?" Doopy, frantic, raises his hand. "Speak."