The Guild of Fallen Clowns (2 page)

The older gentleman didn’t take his visual
aim off Lyle. He simply shook his head and softly replied,
“Nothing.” Returning attention to his dog, he continued on his
walk. Lyle viewed it as a retreat and decided to let it go with a
glib chuckle. Turning back to his cheering section, Lyle said, “Who
wants another beer? I’m buying.”

Bells above the glass door rang as Alan
rushed into the shop.

“You’re late!” Joe announced without taking
his attention off the task of boxing a freshly baked pizza.

“Sorry, Joe. I would have been here on time
except—”

Before Alan could finish his excuse, Joe cut
in, “Let me guess, car trouble.”

Alan paused to consider Joe’s explanation.
“Uh, yeah, you could say that.”

Still avoiding eye contact, Joe put his hand
up, halting Alan from punching in. Alan froze as Joe grabbed a
pizza peel and slid it under a baking pizza to check the crust.
With a quick jerk, he shifted the pizza deeper in the oven and
returned the peel.

Wiping his hands in his apron, he looked
directly at Alan. He didn’t say a word, but Alan knew from his
expression that his late arrival wasn’t going to be overlooked.
After a short pause, Joe simply tilted his head and raised an
eyebrow, motioning Alan to follow him to his supply closet/office
at the rear of the shop.

As Alan followed, he tried in vain to
apologize once more. “I’m really sorry, Joe, but I’m not even five
minutes late.”

Joe ignored his plea as they walked past
three teenagers deeply focused on their tasks. After they passed,
the young employees glanced at each other in shocked disbelief.

Joe opened the door and motioned Alan to the
five-gallon sauce bucket in front of his desk. Alan slid the bucket
to a suitable location and sat on it. As soon as Joe closed the
door behind them, Jamie’s voice came over the intercom. “Joe, your
mother is on line one.”

“I got it. Thanks, Jamie.” The phone rang
once. Joe picked it up. “Hi, Mom, is everything okay?” He looked at
Alan and held up his index finger, indicating this would only take
a minute. Alan nodded and leaned against stacked cases of napkins
behind him.

Within seconds of listening to his mother,
Joe’s stern expression turned to a frustrated smirk.

“Ma, you’ll have to wait…no…no, listen—Ma. I
can’t tell you how to do it—” He looked at Alan and rolled his eyes
before trying to interject a second time. “No, Mom, hold on a
second...Wait…please stop talking…so…” Another failed attempt. Joe
lowered the handset to his desk and looked to Alan for sympathy.
Alan grinned. Joe returned the phone to his ear.

“Ma!” he snapped. This more forceful command
acted like a needle being temporarily lifted from a spinning
record. She instantly stopped chattering. Seizing the opportunity
to be heard, he continued, “You know I can’t help you with this
over the phone. I’ll be there tomorrow morning. I’ll show you then,
okay?”

The needle returned to its place on her side
of the conversation and she continued as if he said nothing. Joe
placed his free hand over his forehead as his head snapped
back.

“Look, Ma, I can’t do this now. I gotta
unload the truck. I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.” He lowered
the handset; her voice continued until he released it on the
cradle.

“Aaah!” Joe blurted out in frustration. “I
love my mother, but she just doesn’t listen. I never should have
bought her that computer. It’s my own fault. It’s my own fault. I
knew this was going to happen. So what did I do? I bought her a
freakin’ computer. I’m such an idiot. What was I thinking?”

Alan smiled. “Maybe you were thinking she
wouldn’t call as often if she had another way of keeping in touch
with you.”

Joe nodded. “You know what, Alan? You might
be right about that. Come to think of it, the first thing I showed
her was how to send email. I can get through an email much faster
than talking to her on the phone.”

“So what was her problem?” Alan asked.

“Oh, you’re gonna love this,” Joe said. “She
wanted to send pictures to her sister, but she forgot how to get
the pictures from her camera to the computer. And she forgot how to
attach pictures to an email. I showed her this stuff fifteen times
already. God love her.”

Alan chuckled and Joe smiled.

Joe’s expression instantly shifted to guilty
embarrassment. “I’m not complaining, Alan. I really do love my
mother and I appreciate the fact that she’s still around to give me
agida
. I don’t mean to disrespect your situation. I mean,
I’m sure you must think—well, you know—if—”

Alan quickly realized where Joe was going
with this and cut in. “Oh— god no, Joe! No offense taken.”

“Oh good,” Joe said. “I wasn’t thinking.
Here I am hanging up on my mother with you sitting there wishing
you could talk to yours again, rest her soul.”

“Forget about it, Joe. I’m fine—really.”

Joe put his hand over his chest and leaned
back in his chair. “Oh, thank god, because I didn’t want to be mean
to you twice in one day.”

“Mean?” Alan asked.

“Well, Alan, here’s the thing. You were late
today.”

“I was only a few minutes late.”

“True as that may be, those few minutes
happen a lot. Now, personally, I don’t really care about a few
minutes here and there because you’re a good worker, but the
problem isn’t about that. The problem is that the kids see you
doing it, and then they start doing it. Only, for them, it’s ten or
twenty minutes late. If I say anything to them, they ask why I
never say anything to you. They think I’m showing favoritism—and I
gotta say, they might be right.”

Alan nodded. “I totally understand,
Joe.”

“Good! Because then you’ll also understand
that I need to set an example. I need to tighten things up around
here. So, I hate to say this because you know I love you like I
wish I could love my real brother, but I’m gonna have to write you
up. And if you’re late again, it’s going to escalate. You
understand what I’m saying, Alan?”

“Yes, I get it, and I’m sorry I put you in
this position.”

“All right, then, let’s get to work,” Joe
said as he stood from his chair. They exited the office and Joe
stopped. He put his hand on Alan’s shoulder, stopping him as well.
“I almost forgot. Mrs. Henderson called in her order. Must have
been twenty minutes ago. Better hurry or she’ll get
Mr
.
Henderson after ya.”

“No problem,” Alan replied. He punched in on
his way to the front of the shop.

“And there’s another one, should be about
ready,” Joe said

“Ready,” Jamie said as he removed a pizza
from the oven.

Alan found the Henderson pizza on the rack,
slid it into a warming bag, and waited for Jamie to box the second
pizza.

In an effort to lighten the tension, Jamie
looked at Alan and said, “Hey,
Boogy
, when are we gonna see
you at the carnival?”

Alan glared back at him. “You can call me
Boogy
at
the carnival. I start tomorrow morning.”

“Sorry, Alan, just trying to get in the
carnival mode. Speaking of which, what’s it like being a
carny?”

Sensing that Jamie was toying with him, he
answered, “I don’t know, Jamie. I’ve never done it before. If you
really want to know, ask me again next week.”

“I hear carny chicks are sexual freaks. They
might even get off on doing a clown. You shouldn’t have any trouble
getting laid there,” Jamie said.

Jamie’s statement got the attention of
Natalia, working at the toppings station a few feet away.

“Watch it Jamie. Mixed company,” she
warned.

“Oh, sorry, Nat. Just trying to help ol’
Alan out. It’d be nice to see him arrive late for a better reason
than car trouble.”

“If I need your help, I’ll ask for it. Just
give me the pizza, Jamie,” Alan said.

Jamie closed the lid and handed him the
boxed pizza. “Good! Maybe I’ll see you there tomorrow night and
give you some pointers.”

“I don’t want your help, and I’ll be
here
tomorrow night,” Alan said.

From across the shop, Joe chimed in. “So
will you, Jamie! You’re on the schedule.”

Alan grabbed his deliveries and headed out
the door. At the passenger side of his car, he pressed the remote
and pulled the handle. The door remained locked. He remembered that
the remote control was broken on the passenger door so he unlocked
it manually and placed the pizzas on the seat. From the floor, he
pulled out the magnetic sign with the words “
Vince’s Pizza”
and stuck it to his roof before heading out on his first
delivery.

*****

Hidden Valley was the oldest townhouse
community in Riverside. Many of the original residents still lived
there, but their numbers were in decline. Alan and the other
delivery drivers irreverently referred to the neighborhood as Death
Valley.

He pulled up the driveway, put the car in
park, and tugged twice on his high beams. The house was completely
dark, but Alan’s trained eye spotted a flash of light as Mrs.
Henderson peered through a carefully peeled back section of
aluminum foil from a corner of the window to the right of the front
door. He waited for the signal. “One, two, three,” he whispered. On
three, the porch lights came on. This was his cue to exit the car
and proceed to the porch. Making his way through the fine mist of
rain, Alan laughed to himself as he prepared for the remaining
sequence of this ten-year ritual.

“
Mr
. Henderson. Pizza delivery,” he
said as he stood at a mark exactly three feet in front of the
garlic-clad door.

The metal mail slot creaked as it pivoted
half open, fluttering from the rickety finger supporting it. From
the gap, the voice of an elderly woman scolded him. “You’re late,
Alan. Mr. Henderson won’t give you a tip.”

Alan grinned. “I understand, Mrs. Henderson.
I apologize for being late.” The standard tip from the Henderson
residence was only fifty cents.

An envelope slipped through the slot and
fell. Eighty-seven cents in change jingled as the envelope settled
on the welcome mat. Alan retrieved the envelope, placed the boxed
pizza on the mat, and returned to his car. His earlier amusement
turned to sadness as he wondered if Mrs. Henderson would ever get
over her fear of the world since Mr. Henderson’s passing nearly a
decade earlier.

*****

One Krauss Drive. A medium pizza with
everything. A few dozen houses lined Krauss Drive, but this address
was unfamiliar to him. Before Alan was born, a developer bought the
front parcel of land from a farmer named Krauss. He built a small
neighborhood of mostly ranch-style homes. The farmer’s driveway was
at the end of the suburban street. To Alan’s knowledge, the old
farmhouse had been abandoned since the horse barn burned down when
he was eight years old. Parents claimed a boy playing with matches
started the fire. However, since none of the kids in the area
confessed, the younger generation was skeptical. They thought it
was another clever tactic devised by adults to scare children from
playing with matches.

Nobody knew what happened to farmer Krauss
and his wife after the fire. The adults of Krauss Drive assumed
that the loss of income from renting horse stalls was the tipping
point that forced the old couple to move. The house sat, abandoned
and boarded up. The barn and grazing land were subsequently sold
off, but the farmhouse remained untouched as it decayed from years
of neglect.

The children of Riverside had a different
story for the old place. The Krauss farmhouse became known as
Krauss House
. In their active minds, it was the most haunted
place on earth. Its seclusion, age, and decaying condition made it
the quintessential haunted house. Every campfire story told since
the unfortunate demise of the horses and disappearance of the old
Krauss couple involved some variation of this tragedy.

*****

At the age of fourteen, the closest Alan
came to Krauss House was fifty feet from the porch, partially
hidden from view in the thicket of growth which, in an earlier
time, was the front yard of the old farmhouse. His younger brother,
Dale, and three other boys dared each other to get closer. Fifty
feet was Alan’s chicken point. It was early afternoon that day, but
the boys trembled as if it were midnight, and in the darkness, they
could hear wolves howling in the distance as the front door creaked
open, exposing a disembodied ghostly arm motioning them to come
closer.

Another boy found his chicken point five
paces ahead of Alan. Over the next five minutes, Dale stood between
the remaining two kids. Always known as the leader of any group he
participated in, Dale and his fearless nature drew the boys tight
to his sides with each half step closer to the foreboding
structure. As they stood shoulder to shoulder, with no earth
remaining, the steps to the old porch were the only things
separating the trio from the weather-battered mouth of the beast,
the front door.

Frozen in place, Dale glanced back at Alan
as the two boys glued to his sides waited to be guided by his next
move. Dale smirked and shot Alan a wink. Then, from behind his
back, his clutched right hand opened, revealing to Alan a golf
ball-sized stone. Alan returned a grin and a supportive nod. He
knew that Dale was about to demonstrate one of his most practiced
and skilled tricks.

Dale returned his attention to the house.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered to the boys pressed against his
sides.

“No, hear what?” one replied nervously.

“Inside. I thought I heard the ghosts coming
to the door,” Dale said.

“No, you didn’t. You’re just trying to scare
us,” the other boy chimed in.