"Shh!" said Rufshod, wincing.
"Oops. Oh gosh, it's a secret, ain't it?
Jamie looked from one to the other. "Who or what is this JJ?"
"It's nothing," said Rufshod.
"Yeah, there's no such thing as no JJ," said Doopy. "Besides, JJ is dead. Just like we was, hey, Ruf? JJ's all dead."
•
Jamie's sleep was not deep that night, with the face paint's stimulating effect, the odd train's racket, and his own subconscious
murmuring unsettling things. The other clowns snored on air mattresses beside him. It was still dark when Doopy's hour-long fart woke him and forced him to bite a knuckle to keep from waking the others with his laughter at the variety of sound, some of it in fact rather melodic, but the rancid stench that soon filled the tent sent him staggering out into the night. Thick clouds veiled a nearly full moon, and it was graveyard quiet in the carny camp. Muffled giggling and Deeby's voice from a tent across the way indicated he and Emerald were still an item, albeit a quieter one than before. Again, their obvious comfort here took the edge off some of his doubts.
He'd noticed without noticing that Goshy hadn't been on his mattress with the rest of them. A rustling sound came from the other side of the tent, where the flowerpots were. He crept round behind it and went still at what he saw.
Goshy's pants were down; his back was turned to Jamie. Two bulbous wrinkled flesh pads glowed white as twin moons. He stood among the flowerpots, each filled with lush black soil. Now and then Goshy's hips gyrated, causing ripples and shudders through the flabby whiteness of thigh and backside. His arms as always were locked stiff at his sides, fists bunched in white gloves. Slowly, with apparent difficulty, he bent at the waist, opening with horrible inevitability the golf ball sized chasm between the buttocks as he lowered himself down upon the flowerpot at his feet.
The movements had been so slow and careful til now that Jamie was nauseated by the sudden speed with which Goshy jerked his pelvis back and forth, pressing waves of exposed flesh together like kneaded dough. Faintly his whining breath squeezed out with interjections of surprise wedged in: "Nggh, nggh, oo! Ngh . . . oo!"
Jamie was transfixed, hardly able to guess what he watched. It may have been some odd form of masturbation, or it may have been defecation into the pot, but it seemed too removed from such normal earthly behaviors. Maybe the clown enjoyed the feel of dark moist soil on that one region of his skin, and for some reason did not think to apply it by hand.
Suddenly Goshy stood. In the motion of standing Jamie had the briefest glimpse—it was less than a second, so he could not be sure—of a thin tube-like appendage, not genitalia but something more like an aardvark's snout, sliding up from the dirt to vanish into the flabby wrinkled mass. Pants still down, the clown turned. Its flat teeth were bared, the flesh about its face pulled tight in pink rings, its eyes wide, moist, and insane. They locked onto Jamie's.
He couldn't move. In that moment all the half-hearted explanations fell away like the nonsense it all was, revealing this thing, shameless and insane and evil. This was his family now, said a gleeful cackling demon dancing victorious inside him, mocking him and rubbing in his loss. This is what stole your life and is now to use you, for a while, as its plaything.
Goshy's teeth clattered together, loud as typewriter keys. His eyes bored in, unreachable and foreign. A train rumbled across the bridge, its cars loaded with cattle. Jamie screamed and ran.
Crouching by the river til the sun came up, it was some while before he could rationalize what he'd seen, but more to the point what he'd felt in those seconds. Soon—not convincingly, but well enough—he found again the comfort of the lies, and managed in a small, half-hearted way to believe in them.
•
It was show day. The rage Gonko flew into was minor by his measure when he saw no stage had been built yet (Doopy had been ordered to see to it) nor any seating arranged. The dwarfs hurriedly got busy stealing wood from the campsite's fence and barbecue tables, then wandered across the river to the other park for more. Seats were pulled or sawed off their concrete bases and stacked in rows in the largest tent, the result being a tight squeeze for maybe fifty or sixty spectators, and standing room at the back for half as many again. Over the following hours, with much yelling, hammering, sawing, and weeping, a platform was built. It was only a meter and a half high since wood and time were scarce, with nowhere near enough stage room for Gonko's liking.
Done with his latest outburst, he grabbed Jamie by the collar and snarled, "Skits! You said you had ideas. Lay 'em on me."
"Well, okay, so Goshy gets up in a high place, maybe on a stepladder? And the crowd is told he's going to dive into a glass of water below. And they're maybe expecting some magic trick or stunt, since it's obviously impossible. But he dives and lands flat on it, crushing the glass of water with a big noise and all that. Just a kind of slapstick thing, only you'd want to use a plastic cup so as not to cut—"
"It ain't slapstick without actual blood," Gonko said. "Meh, we'll use it. Real glass, though. What else you got?"
Jamie was halfway through telling an idea about a restaurant sketch involving food that caught fire when something akin to a baby's cry turned both their heads toward Goshy's flowerpot collection.
Throughout the day Jamie had forced himself to hang around with the other clowns and put last night into the neat and tidy overreaction/misunderstanding he now almost believed it was. He'd gone out of his way to be polite to Goshy, examining the clown's strange face for any sign of malice or anger at his having witnessed . . . whatever exactly it was. There was no clue given—the boggling eyes peered at him, ever bewildered, now and then the left eye narrowing to a slit, the only indication of any displeasure. But that same look was given to Dean/Deeby, and to the gypsy women who shooed the clowns away from Emerald.
Goshy now stood among the flower pots, a smile pulling his face taut and bunching skin in flabby rings about his neck, forehead, and up under his hat. Goshy peered, bulging eyes glowing with proud delight as Gonko, Jamie, and Rufshod came over. Doopy, already there, was too worked up for words—he could only hop from foot to foot making excited attempts at speech. "Oh, gee, guh, mmbh."
In one of the pots—in fact, in three of them—were tiny clowns. Doopy reverently picked up one pot with a trembling hand and showed them. A miniature Goshy—the exact image of him, even down to its clothes—stood and swayed in the pot, knee deep in soil. Its mouth opened and made tiny wailing sounds, baby cries.
Jamie bent over and retched up the stolen Woolworths chocolate he'd had for breakfast.
"Ain't it super?" Doopy managed at last to say. Gonko poked the tiny Goshy with his finger; it attempted to suckle the end of it. Doopy promised, "I'm gonna feed 'em milk, and, and learn 'em to talk real swell. Can't we keep 'em, Gonko? You just gotta say yes—you just gotta!"
Gonko himself was struggling for words. "Freak show," he said. "Keep 'em there. Maybe we'll use one in the act."
"He's gonna make more, Gonko. Ain't it super?"
Goshy emitted a proud noise, "Gahhh." His mouth hung loose.
"How big they gonna get?" said Gonko, eyes roaming to the river more than once.
"Well, gee, we dunno Gonko, cause this ain't never, it's the first time we, we didn't never have to—"
"All right, goddammit, keep them. Don't make too many more. I don't even wanna know how or why. It's that MM, I'll bet, that scumfuck. But both of you owe me a bang-up show tonight; I wanna see some first rate clowning. You got that?"
"Sure, boss, you name it!" Doopy pawed Jamie's shirt, pushed his face so close the beads of sweat on his nose touched Jamie's skin and dripped down. "Ain't it the bestest thing in the whole wide world?" he whispered.