Read Online Tell My Sorrows to the Stones by Christopher Golden - Free Book Online
Authors: Christopher Golden
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coyotes shot him. He’s down by the fence, DOA,” he said.
“A tragedy,” said the grinning man. “Died in the firefight that cost the lives of a number of illegals as they attempted to enter the country carrying cartel cocaine. A hero of the border wars, this Austin. You were lucky to survive yourself.”
Weston slung his M16 across his back. One last time he glanced at Ortiz. They already had their version of tonight’s op ready to go. If he tried telling it differently, who would listen?
Slowly, Weston nodded.
“Sir, yes sir.”
PUT ON A HAPPY FACE
The blood seeping out of the midget car was Benny’s first clue that something had gone awry. The audience kept laughing—either they hadn’t seen it yet or they thought it was part of the show—so Benny didn’t slow down. He waddled on his big shoes, storming with exaggerated frustration toward Clancy the Cop, and slapped the other clown in the face with a rubber chicken.
It looked like it hurt.
The audience roared.
Back up.
The night before—a Friday—the circus had ended at quarter past nine on the dot. Appleby, the manager, was a stickler for punctuality. The last bow took place between ten and fifteen minutes past the hour every performance, and when the thunderous applause—which, honestly, wasn’t always thunderous and was sometimes barely more than a ripple—had died down, the ticket sellers became ushers . . . ushering folks out of the tent as quickly as possible. The ushers didn’t hurry people because anyone was in a rush to get their makeup off, but because once the little kids started moving, all the popcorn and cotton candy and soda and hot dogs started to churn in their bellies. Much better to hose the vomit off the ground outside than in the tent.
The clowns ran out of the tent the way NFL teams came onto the field, arms above their heads, whooping and hollering, before the last of the crowd had departed. Benny had always thought it looked stupid, but Zerbo—the boss clown and the troupe’s whiteface—wanted to leave the straggling audience members with an image of the clowns as a kind of family.
Out behind the tent, the family fell apart. The tents and trailers that made up the circus camp were a tense United Nations of performers and labourers without any real unity. Like a high school full of jocks and geeks and emo kids, the clowns and workers and animal trainers and acrobats each formed their own caste, every group thinking themselves above the others. Friendships existed outside the boundaries of those castes, but when it came to conflict, they stuck together like unions. The acrobats were effete, the animal trainers grave and sensitive, and the workers gruff and strong.
But nobody fucked with the clowns.
“You mess with the clown, you get the horns,” Zerbo was fond of misquoting, right before blasting you in the face with an air horn. His idea of a joke. Most people laughed, but Benny had never found the boss clown all that funny.
The Macintosh Traveling Circus Troupe had been playing sold-out audiences in a field in Brimfield, Massachusetts for a week. Normally, the grounds were used for the huge antique flea market the town held a couple of times a year, but the circus had been a welcome novelty, as far as Benny could tell. Not that Appleby talked to him about it. Clowns were beneath the manager’s notice, except when it came time for him to talk to Zerbo about renewing contracts. Even then, nobody bothered to ask Benny what he thought.
In the hierarchy of clowns in the Macintosh Traveling Circus Troupe, Benny Martini was on the bottom rung. The runt of the litter. The red-headed stepchild. Shit, that last one was probably offensive in these sensitive modern times. No matter. The point was that Benny was an afterthought to everyone, even the audience.
He’d often thought about how much happier he would have been if, like Tiny and Oscar—two of the other character clowns in the troupe—he’d been too stupid
“A tragedy,” said the grinning man. “Died in the firefight that cost the lives of a number of illegals as they attempted to enter the country carrying cartel cocaine. A hero of the border wars, this Austin. You were lucky to survive yourself.”
Weston slung his M16 across his back. One last time he glanced at Ortiz. They already had their version of tonight’s op ready to go. If he tried telling it differently, who would listen?
Slowly, Weston nodded.
“Sir, yes sir.”
PUT ON A HAPPY FACE
The blood seeping out of the midget car was Benny’s first clue that something had gone awry. The audience kept laughing—either they hadn’t seen it yet or they thought it was part of the show—so Benny didn’t slow down. He waddled on his big shoes, storming with exaggerated frustration toward Clancy the Cop, and slapped the other clown in the face with a rubber chicken.
It looked like it hurt.
The audience roared.
Back up.
The night before—a Friday—the circus had ended at quarter past nine on the dot. Appleby, the manager, was a stickler for punctuality. The last bow took place between ten and fifteen minutes past the hour every performance, and when the thunderous applause—which, honestly, wasn’t always thunderous and was sometimes barely more than a ripple—had died down, the ticket sellers became ushers . . . ushering folks out of the tent as quickly as possible. The ushers didn’t hurry people because anyone was in a rush to get their makeup off, but because once the little kids started moving, all the popcorn and cotton candy and soda and hot dogs started to churn in their bellies. Much better to hose the vomit off the ground outside than in the tent.
The clowns ran out of the tent the way NFL teams came onto the field, arms above their heads, whooping and hollering, before the last of the crowd had departed. Benny had always thought it looked stupid, but Zerbo—the boss clown and the troupe’s whiteface—wanted to leave the straggling audience members with an image of the clowns as a kind of family.
Out behind the tent, the family fell apart. The tents and trailers that made up the circus camp were a tense United Nations of performers and labourers without any real unity. Like a high school full of jocks and geeks and emo kids, the clowns and workers and animal trainers and acrobats each formed their own caste, every group thinking themselves above the others. Friendships existed outside the boundaries of those castes, but when it came to conflict, they stuck together like unions. The acrobats were effete, the animal trainers grave and sensitive, and the workers gruff and strong.
But nobody fucked with the clowns.
“You mess with the clown, you get the horns,” Zerbo was fond of misquoting, right before blasting you in the face with an air horn. His idea of a joke. Most people laughed, but Benny had never found the boss clown all that funny.
The Macintosh Traveling Circus Troupe had been playing sold-out audiences in a field in Brimfield, Massachusetts for a week. Normally, the grounds were used for the huge antique flea market the town held a couple of times a year, but the circus had been a welcome novelty, as far as Benny could tell. Not that Appleby talked to him about it. Clowns were beneath the manager’s notice, except when it came time for him to talk to Zerbo about renewing contracts. Even then, nobody bothered to ask Benny what he thought.
In the hierarchy of clowns in the Macintosh Traveling Circus Troupe, Benny Martini was on the bottom rung. The runt of the litter. The red-headed stepchild. Shit, that last one was probably offensive in these sensitive modern times. No matter. The point was that Benny was an afterthought to everyone, even the audience.
He’d often thought about how much happier he would have been if, like Tiny and Oscar—two of the other character clowns in the troupe—he’d been too stupid
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