Dunk (24 page)

“Do you like the job?” she asked.

I thought about the backbreaking, humiliating, dangerous task of slaving away outside the Bozo tank. “It's not bad. Beats fourteen hours on a roof.”

“Just until school starts, right? School's the most important thing.”

“Right,” I said.

“Promise?”

“I promise.” That was one I could keep.

She got up from her chair and hugged me. I hugged her back, holding on to her, trying to store the moment in the vault of memories. Storing it against that time when it would no longer be the two of us.

When we stepped apart, she smiled at me and said, “I'm proud of you, Chad. Very proud. You're not a quitter. That's good.”

“Thanks.” I glanced at the couch and thought about how close I'd come to quitting everything.

“And Chad?” she said.

“What.”

“No more lies. Okay?”

I nodded. “No more lies.”

I
TRIED TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO
G
WEN
. T
HERE WAS A
small story about the raid on page three of the paper the next day, but they didn't list the names of any of the minors. Anthony's brother was mentioned. He'd been arrested for possession, resisting arrest, and allowing underage drinking. The cops had also found a couple unlicensed handguns. Between the guns and the drugs, I could see why they'd been so eager to search my place.

Gwen wasn't at the Cat-a-Pult that evening. I was afraid she'd been arrested. On top of that, I was sure Anthony blamed me for all the trouble. There'd probably be a fight the next time he saw me. But that's not what worried me. What if he'd told Gwen it was my fault? What if she thought I'd made the call? She'd never talk to me again. She'd blame me and hate me.

For all I knew, she was on her way back to Montana. Or juvenile hall.

“Hey,” the girl at the Cat-a-Pult called to me. “Try your luck? Come on. You look like a winner.”

I shook my head and walked off.

At least there were other parts of my life that weren't hopeless. Jason seemed to be slowly healing. He'd had a couple setbacks, and he was going to need an operation to repair some of the damage to his kidneys, but he was doing better than any of the doctors had expected. They mentioned the possibility of a remission. That's when a disease goes away. Remissions were rare with what Jason had, but they were known to happen. The doctors couldn't explain it. But I could.

I had to work on Malcolm for a couple days before he finally came to the hospital with me. When we got there, he mostly just stood off to the side while I clowned around. Then, when we were getting ready to leave, he found out that Jason liked
Saturday Night Live
. It was almost as if someone had pushed a button. Malcolm started doing these old routines from the early shows, and Jason cracked up. Malcolm could do the voices perfectly. I loved the one where he put the fish in the blender. We stayed so long, I was afraid Jason's mom would catch us. I finally had to drag him away.

“You both coming back tomorrow?” Jason asked as we left.

I looked at Malcolm. He nodded and said, “Hard to pass up a captive audience.”

He got that sad look again when we were walking through the corridors past all the rooms full of sick people, but he seemed all right once we got back on the street.

“It's helping,” I said as we headed home.

“Yeah, it's helping. If that kid gets any better, we might have to tie him to the bed.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the hospital.

“You okay?” I asked.

He nodded. “I'll live.”

On our second visit I threw Malcolm a line from a Marx Brothers movie and he responded right away with the answer. We did the whole routine for Jason. Then he threw me a line from a W. C. Fields routine, and we did that skit. Between the two of us, we kept Jason laughing nonstop.

Malcolm came with me to the hospital pretty often after that. The first time Jason's mom walked in on us while we were clowning around, she exploded.

“Mom,” Jason said when he managed to get her attention, “they're my friends. They make me feel better.” He sat up in bed to prove his point.

She glared at me, but then Malcolm started talking, explaining how good it was for Jason to laugh. I knew enough to stand aside and let him do that performance as a solo. Some audiences were too tough for me. But not too tough for Malcolm. I could see Jason's mom's eyes soften as Malcolm turned on the charm. By the time he was done, she'd even agreed to read
Anatomy of an Illness
. After that, we didn't have to hide anymore.

A while later I actually caught her smiling at our act, though she pretended not to. I figured it was only a matter of time before she broke down and laughed. Malcolm and I both enjoyed the challenge.

I visited Jason every day. And I continued to study the fine art of being a Bozo. Malcolm taught me other things about acting, too. I even started to understand the hard stuff in some of his acting books.

Finally, in early August, Malcolm told me, “Bob's giving you a tryout tomorrow. Six o'clock. You ready?”

Was I ready to be a Bozo? When I first saw Malcolm in the tank, I thought I could step right in and take his place. I didn't think that now. I realized how tough it was to do a good job.

“You're ready,” Malcolm said, answering his own question. He handed me a paper bag. “I got you a present.”

I opened the bag and found five tubes of greasepaint and a jar of makeup remover. “Waterproof?” I asked.

“You bet.”

I took the greasepaint with me to the hospital the next day. With some help and suggestions from Jason, I worked out my own patented Bozo face. It was pretty cool. I did the usual big red mouth, but instead of stars around the eyes, I made the lids black. And I spiked my hair with gel. Jason said I looked like a punk-goth vampire, but I thought it worked.

I found out that greasepaint was a lot easier to put on than take off. “I wish you could be there,” I told Jason as I scrubbed at my face with a wad of tissues.

“Me, too. Don't worry. I'll make it before summer's over.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You will.” I tossed the tissues, gave Jason a light punch on the shoulder, then headed home and killed some time watching movies.

I went to the Bozo tank at five thirty. Malcolm came with me. “Want help?” he asked when I reached the door of the dressing room.

“I'll be fine.” I went inside. It was a dingy little hole—just a closet with a stool, a wobbly card table, and a large trash basket. A mirror hung on the wall. A light bulb from a fixture in the low ceiling threw a harsh glare on the room. The table, covered with blobs and stripes of smeared makeup, looked like an abstract painting. I sat on the stool and unscrewed the caps of my greasepaint, trying to ignore the fact that my hands were shaking.

I jumped when the door opened, but it was only Malcolm sticking his head in. “So how do you like show business so far?”

“Great,” I answered, but he'd already ducked back out. I started spreading the greasepaint. Despite the practice, I kept messing up. Finally, after redoing parts of it several times, I got my face looking the way I wanted.

“Ready?” I asked myself.

I looked in the mirror and let out a Bozo laugh. Crap, I sounded like a chicken. I tried again and did a bit better.

“Ready now?” I asked my reflection.

I nodded. Ready as I'd ever be. There was no longer any excuse for me to sit there. I slid off the stool and left the room. Outside, I looked around for Mike or Corey. I'd told them about my tryout, but there was no sign of them yet. I hoped they'd show up before I finished.

Waldo, who was working the tank, climbed out when he saw me. “Knock 'em dead, kid,” he said, patting me on the back with a wet hand as he passed. “You get stuck, just say, ‘Wow. You're ugly.' Works every time. It's my best line, but I don't mind if you use it.”

“Thanks.”

Malcolm joined me behind the tank. “Just remember one thing.”

“What?”

“It's only a stupid boardwalk attraction. It's not life and death. Nothing you do in there will matter tomorrow, so relax and have fun. Don't worry about anything.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, one more thing,” he said as I opened the gate.

“What?”

“If you mess up, Bob will kill you.” He grinned to show me he was kidding. I guess it was his way of getting me to relax. It didn't work.

I climbed into the tank. This was it. Stupid attraction or not, it was a real dunk tank on the best boardwalk in the world, and I was the Bozo. When you run a wheel or a hoop toss, you're just part of the background. Not here. In the tank, the Bozo was the attraction. I could hardly believe I was finally getting my chance. Now I just had to keep from blowing it.

Malcolm stepped over beside Bob and folded his arms against his chest like he was waiting for a show to start. Bob grinned at me, waved with his cotton candy, and said, “Show me what you got.”

I scanned the crowd. Wow. There were plenty of people walking past. I realized my problem wouldn't be finding a mark, but narrowing down the choices.

Pick someone
.

This was nothing like practicing from the porch. There was a whole mob out there. Hundreds of people were passing by.
Pick someone
.

Who? I spotted a guy with a long beard. What was funny about beards? Maybe I could say there's something hiding in it? No. That wasn't any good.
You look like you're chewing on a chipmunk
. No, too gross. As I struggled to find the perfect line, he cut over to his right and was swallowed by the crowd.

Great. Just wonderful. Here I was, the world's first silent Bozo. Step right up, folks, and dunk the mime.

People flowed past. Some of them glanced at me. But they kept walking. There was no reason for them to stop when there were dozens of more interesting attractions all around. I wasn't interesting. I was mute. Sweat rolled down my forehead from above the edge of the greasepaint. I hadn't even been dunked and my hair was already damp. I looked over at Malcolm.

“You're not Chad,” he called. “Stop being Chad.”

Yeah. Stop being Chad. I was in a play. A one-man play. Maybe it was called
Lunatic Bozo in a Dunk Tank
. It was a part. Like all the other plays and roles that made up life.
Good Son of a Hardworking Mother. Friend of the Sick Kid. The Errand Boy. The Bad Student
. I had to act. That was all. But I had to make sure that the name of this play wasn't
The Loser
.

Pick someone
.

A dorky-looking kid in plaid shorts walked into sight from the left. This was a gift I couldn't refuse. My eyes locked on him like a missile launcher finding a target. “Hey, great shorts!” I shouted as I leaned toward the microphone.

Ouch. Bad move. My amplified voice blasted at me through the speakers. People in the passing crowd flinched.

“Great shorts,” I said again, this time speaking at a normal volume that wouldn't rupture any eardrums. “Your mommy know you cut up your couch?” Loud or soft, it was weird to hear myself through the sound system.

Time froze as I waited to see if the mark would take the bait.

A couple people in the crowd laughed. The kid turned toward me. The hook was set. Whoa! It wasn't a nameless mark. It was Corey. Besides the shorts, he was also wearing his extranerdy glasses with the thick black frames. I hadn't seen them since he got contacts last year. I smiled as I realized what was going on.

“Where'd you get the glasses from, Dork Vision Center?”

Good old reliable Corey bought a round of balls from Bob and let loose. Knowing him, I figured I was safe and dry for a while. But he managed to nail the target with the third throw. The clang of the ball hitting home caught me by surprise. The lever shot out from the seat and I plunged into the water.

For a moment, all was silence as the water surrounded me. It was eerie, but also beautiful in a way. Here, in the middle of the loudest, craziest place on the planet, I was sheltered from everything. Too bad I didn't have gills so I could stay longer. But I wasn't in the tank to enjoy the peace. I was there to hook the marks. I popped out of the water and put the ledge in place, then crawled back up. I couldn't wipe my face without smearing my makeup, so I jerked my head hard to fling off the drops.

The act of climbing back on the ledge made me feel more like a Bozo. I was into the role now. As I swiveled toward the crowd, I found my next target.

“What are you laughing at?” I said to a woman who was wearing a huge straw hat. She was at the front of a group of five people, and obviously the leader. “Someone just sold you a doormat for your head. You buy
all
your clothes at the hardware store?”

She stepped up to Bob. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Mike, wearing his goofiest Hawaiian shirt with pink flamingos and blue parrots on it. I guess he and Corey had decided to give me targets if I needed them. Holy cow—Ellie was there, too, wearing a T-shirt that said,
I LOVE TO POLKA
, in big red letters. It must have been her dad's. Wow, what great friends. All three were willing to humiliate themselves to help me out. I was a lucky guy. If Jason had been here, he'd have done the same thing. I wondered what—

Whooooooooooaaa! I was sitting on air as the clang of the struck target echoed in my ears. For a billionth of a second, I hung in space like a cartoon character. Then I dropped like a cartoon anvil. I hit the water hard. The lady had nailed the target while I wasn't paying attention. I let out a shout as I fell. Bad mistake. My mouth filled with water. Oh, lord, I was probably going to need antibiotics. As I stood up, I struggled to smother my coughing. The Bozo doesn't cough. You can't drown a Bozo.

I scampered back up and picked out my next mark. And, as Jason would say, I got into the zone. I developed a rhythm. No doubt, I wasn't as good as Malcolm. I was honest enough to admit that to myself. But I felt I was doing okay, especially for my first time. I hooked a fairly steady stream of vics and lost count of how often I hit the water.