His Father's Son

by Bentley Little

  “That sounds fantastic,” Bob said.

  “There’s a lot of information we’d need to get from you—” Steve began.

  “We’ve been collecting it already. Cat, the young woman who brought you in here, has put together a list of all of our graduates for the entire thirty-year period. We’re trying to find photos, addresses, whatever else we can, as well. It won’t be complete, of course—our kind of business isn’t great about keeping records—but I’m told that investigation is one of the services you offer.”

  “As long as we have correct names,” Steve told him.

  “That part’s no problem. We’ll give you everything we have by the end of the week.”

  Steve wasn’t sure what else they needed to do here; as far as he was concerned, they could leave. But Bob’s job was to work on making this an annual project and not just a onetime deal, so he kept talking, emphasizing all of the options AlumniMedia offered: videos, DVDs, CD-ROMs, Web pages. “A booklet or directory is just a starting point,” he said. “And, to be honest, those are really geared toward reunions or other events where alumni gather together. Your needs, I feel, may be better served with a more comprehensive package.”

  Herb looked at him. “A directory,” he said. “That’s what we want.”

  “Sure, sure,” Bob said, backing down. “Of course.” He smiled. “I was wondering if you could take us on a tour of your operation. Neither of us knows anything about clowning, and it would be interesting to see what you teach here. It might also help us to get a handle on the approach we should take for the layout of your book.”

  “Be glad to,” Herb said. “Just let me finish stacking these mats—”

  From the doorway right behind them, a clown jumped out, crazily honking a red-bulbed horn.

  Steve jumped and let out a startled cry.

  Bob and Herb both burst out laughing.

  “A little high-strung, are we?” the older man said, saying “high-strung” as though it were a euphemism for “gay.”

  Steve turned to face the clown, forcing himself to smile to show that he could laugh at himself and had no problem being the butt of a joke.

  The man looked like the hitchhiker Steve had seen on Gina’s street and then on McColl’s. He was wearing bib overalls and a straw hat, and was dancing crazily back down the corridor.

  The hairs prickled on the nape of Steve’s neck. It was a visceral reaction. But on a more reasoned level, his brain was wondering whether this was the same man—and if the man recognized him.

  “BoJo,” Herb said, chuckling. “One of our soon-to-be graduates. Very talented.”

  Steve looked back again toward the clown, but he was gone. A frightened, childish part of his brain thought that the man might be hiding in one of the rooms off the hallway, ready to jump out as they passed by. He didn’t even want to think about that.

  Herb and Bob were still smiling. Bob clapped a hand on the other man’s back in an expression of false bonhomie. “Why don’t you give us that tour now, Herb. Show us around.”

  The older man looked at Steve, grinning. “Sure it won’t be too much for you?”

  Steve laughed it off. “I’m fine.”

  Asshole, he thought. I could slit your fucking throat and watch you die like the animal you are.

  The image of that sustained him, and he was still smiling to himself as Herb put away the last of the mats and led the two of them out into the corridor.

  Thirty-three

  A computer disk and a folder filled with papers arrived from the clown college on the following Wednesday. The disk contained scanned photographs and up-to-date information about current enrollees and those alumni with whom the school was still in contact, while the pages were copies of records and old contact information for those whose whereabouts were unknown. The delivery was a little later than promised, but there was no timetable for completion yet, so Steve wasn’t sure whether the delay would even matter.

  Jerry had assigned specific tasks to the four of them working on the initial stage of the project, and it was Steve’s job to cross-reference the information for the known alumni, make sure it was correct, and then contact each for a preliminary interview. The thought of spending every workday for the next several weeks looking at the faces of clowns on his computer filled him with dread, but he knew that the sooner he did it, the sooner he could get it over with.

  He took a sip of coffee, popped in the disk, opened the file, and looked at the photo that appeared on his screen.

  It was a clown.

  A clown who looked familiar.

  Steve’s blood ran cold. It wasn’t one he had seen at the college, and it wasn’t the one in his dreams, but somehow he recognized it. He knew that face.

  He stared at the picture on his screen, trying to figure out where and when he had seen it before. For several moments, he didn’t know.

  Then he did.

  Flagstaff.

  As a child.

  He closed his eyes. He was breathing heavily, as though he’d just finished running several laps—

  or been chased by a monster

  —and his heart was thumping so powerfully that its rhythm was echoed in that deep inhalation and exhalation of air. His palms and fingers were suddenly sweaty, and he wiped them on his pants.

  He remembered clearly now, though seconds before he’d had no recollection of any of it. The memory was fresh and painful, like an untreated wound, unsullied by the years of examination, dissection and decon struction that would have eroded it and polished it and changed it had he often revisited the remembrance.

  He had gone to the circus with his father. Only it hadn’t been anywhere near as normal or wholesome as that superficial description made it sound. For this was not Ringling Bros. or Circus Vargas or any of the legitimate shows that traveled around the United States. This was some fly-by-night crew set up in a raggedy moth-eaten tent in a field outside of town.

  They’d gone on a weekend afternoon, and his mother had stayed home for some reason, maybe to do some housework, maybe to give them some father-son bonding time. He’d wanted her to come, begged her to come—he’d been closer to her than to his father at that point—but she had refused, and he’d been mad at her for it.

  He couldn’t recall exactly where the circus had been, but he knew that it had taken them a while to get there and that they’d parked the car in a big patch of dirt with a lot of other cars. They’d shuffled through the dust to a plywood ticket booth set up in front of the tent, his father had purchased tickets, and they’d gone inside. Within, the big top was as dingy as it had appeared on the outside, and while Steve could tell that an effort had been made to make the performance area festive, that had obviously happened a long time ago, and what had once been bright, vibrant colors had faded into sad, depressing dullness.

  They’d found some seats near the middle of the stands, where his father had met up with someone he knew. The two of them had started talking about grown-up stuff, and the other man’s son, a boy a few years older than Steve, had asked if the two of them could go explore around the outside of the tent before the performance started. Both dads said it was okay, and the boys had taken off.

  Steve didn’t remember much about this part, just recalled that the two of them had been searching for the lions’ cages or an elephant wagon like the one in Dumbo. But he remembered the next part, because they had run into a man putting on his clown makeup in back of a trailer behind the big tent. He was seated on a folding chair and looking into a mirror that had been hung on the trailer’s outside metal wall. Before him on the ground was something resembling a giant shoe-shine kit filled with makeup that looked like paint. They could see his face in the mirror, and it appeared magnified, exaggerated, the lines curved and indistinct, like heat waves. He had put on only the white base and some black designs around his eyes, but already he looked more clown than man, as though in a werewolflike transformation he was turning from one into the other.

  The two
boys stopped to watch.

  The clown must have seen them in his mirror because he swiveled around. “What do you two want?” he demanded.

  One of them—Steve couldn’t remember if it was him or the other boy—answered, “Nothing. We’re just looking around.”

  “Get over here!” the clown ordered. There was something scary about his voice, something mean.

  The two boys looked at each other.

  “Now!”

  The other boy ran away.

  Steve started to run too.

  “Stop right where you are!” the clown screamed.

  And Steve stopped.

  The other boy was gone around the edge of the tent, free and safe, and Steve knew that if he could just get around that corner also, he too would be safe. But the clown had caught him, and even if the man wasn’t physically restraining him, he was a grown-up and he was ordering him not to go, and Steve did not know how to disobey an adult.

  “Come here!” the clown commanded, and Steve turned, walking slowly back toward the trailer. His mouth was dry, and his heart was slamming so hard against his chest it felt as though it would burst. Some sort of briar or sticker stabbed his ankle through his sock, but he did not even dare to stop and check. If he did, he might have been able to escape. Instead, he just kept walking forward.

  “You came to see a clown, huh?” the man said. He was grinning, and his teeth were dirty. A few in the back were missing. “You and your friend wanted to know what a clown looks like without makeup? Here’s what a clown looks like.”

  Steve saw with terror that the man’s pants were undone, his zipper down. From within that open space protruded a stiff penis. It was long and shiny, oily, and it was the most horrifying thing he had ever seen.

  He was close enough now for the clown to grab him, and grab him he did. Rough hands squeezed Steve’s upper arm, hurting his muscle. “Touch it!” the clown ordered, nodding toward his lap, and Steve did, because even though he was afraid to do so, he was more afraid not to. He pressed a single finger against the hardened organ. The skin felt sickeningly warm and spongy to his touch.

  “Rub it,” the clown said.

  Steve wasn’t sure what the clown meant by that, and for the first time he looked up into the man’s face. What he saw beneath the half-applied makeup was a cruel, snarling mouth and eyes that looked deader than a doll’s. He still wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, but he was afraid to ask, and, hesitantly, he began moving his finger back and forth, rubbing it as he would a piece of cloth with an interesting texture.

  “Grab it, you dummy!”

  He was crying, but he didn’t want the clown to see, so he kept his eyes downcast and reached out, grabbing the oily penis.

  “Not so hard!” The clown let go of his arm to hit him on the side of the head.

  This time, Steve ran.

  The clown was bellowing for him to come back, but he kept running as fast as he could, knowing that if his friend had escaped, he could too. He was sobbing so hard he could barely see. At the corner of the tent, he ran into the canvas, but he recovered instantly and sped around the side to the front, to the crowds, to safety.

  People were looking at him, people he didn’t know, and he turned away, hiding by the portable toilets and gathering his wits so he wouldn’t have a crying face when he saw his father. He didn’t want his dad to ask any questions.

  He didn’t want to talk about what had happened.

  Ever.

  He saw the clown in the show, and although he had his full makeup on, Steve recognized him instantly. He twisted a balloon into a dachshund and gave it to another little boy in the front row, smiling at the child. Other kids in the audience rushed forward. Steve felt sick to his stomach watching the act, and when his father leaned over and said to him, “Do you want a balloon too? Go up there. Ask him. He’ll give you one,” Steve thought he might vomit.

  They’d gone home immediately after the show, and he had never seen the clown again. He was not sure he had ever thought about the clown again.

  Until now.

  It was no wonder that he had not been able to remember anything about Flagstaff when he and Sherry were there. His mind had not only blocked out that incident, it had blocked almost everything leading up to it and everything that had come after it. The entire time his family had lived in Flagstaff was little more than a blank spot on his life’s résumé.

  He wondered if the incident with the clown would even have happened if his mother had come with them to the circus. She’d always been overprotective of him as a child, and he doubted that she would have allowed him and the other little boy to run around outside unattended. Either she would have told him to stay in his seat or she would have gone out with him to supervise. Either way, what had occurred in back of that tent would probably not have taken place.

  Maybe that was what had been his mother’s fault.

  It’s your fault! It’s your fault!

  Steve stared at the face on his screen. A ring of curly red hair encircled the back and sides of a bald white head. The face was white too, of course, and the nose red. A soft oval of purple and green surrounded the smiling mouth, and black designs resembling curlicue triangles were painted above, below and to either side of each eye. Even through the filters of time, photograph and computer screen, it seemed to Steve that a malevolent anger shone through those eyes, and he scrolled forward to the page containing the clown’s personal information.

  Jim Adams was his name, and, surprisingly, he lived in Flagstaff. Steve copied down his address, not wanting to print it out in case the computer kept an e-trail of everything it did. He folded the piece of paper and put it in his pocket, wondering why the man was still in Flagstaff. He knew that circuses traveled all around the country and figured that he’d seen one stop on the show’s perpetual tour, had encountered the clown on the one unlucky day when he’d been in northern Arizona. But maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe the circus was a local annual event, put on by the Moose Lodge or the Elks or some other service club. It would explain the shabby tent and faded equipment; they could have been purchased secondhand from a real circus and stored somewhere, to be taken out only for this one event each year. And maybe the circus had been staffed by local businessmen, one of whom had happened to attend clown school in his younger, more idealistic days.

  Steve scrolled back up to the photo of the clown.

  Or maybe the guy had simply liked Flagstaff and decided to stay.

  And prey upon other little kids like himself.

  Whatever the reason, his days were at an end.

  Steve was going to kill him.

  The knowledge gave him not only an emotional charge, the sort of energizing boost that he’d experienced after deciding to take out Gina and Will, his two most premeditated kills, but it filled him with a deeper, more profound realization that this was not a random occurrence. It was part of a pattern, the culmination of a series of escalating interconnected events. He was part of something bigger than himself, and if he had glimpsed hints of that before, its full meaning was apparent to him only now.

  Everything had been leading up to this. Everything he’d been thinking, everything he’d been doing, everything he’d been learning. This was what he had been training for; this was why he had been following in his father’s footsteps, mastering the skills needed to hunt and slay his prey. His father might have been given a different task—most of his kills had been slutty women or pimps of one sort or another—but Steve had been chosen to take down this clown.

  And maybe other clowns.

  Maybe priests and rabbis, teachers and scout leaders.

  His role was as protector of children, and while he himself had suffered, he would make sure that other kids did not share that fate.

  And if they had?

  He would kill them, too, in order to put them out of their misery.

  He was filled with a glorious sense of purpose and a spirit of determination that carried him through the re
st of the day, enabling him to work harder and accomplish more than he otherwise would have, causing him to be friendlier and more sociable with his coworkers than he usually was. Even viewing the clown photos was not that difficult. Indeed, he found that while a vestigial uneasiness remained, he was not really afraid of those painted faces anymore.

  After work, he returned to his parents’ house to get the machete. Since picking it up and holding it in his hands on his mother’s last day, it had never been very far from his mind, and though its weight was significant, he had been unconsciously preparing himself to use it by lifting grocery bags and stacks of books and heavy objects with one hand whenever possible. He’d liked the way it had felt, and whether he wanted to admit it or not, there’d been an itch to use it.

  He parked his car in the driveway, got out his keys and walked up to the front door. The grass was overgrown, his mother’s flowers were all dead, and someone had graffitied nonsensical letters on the wall. His parents’ house was no longer an anomaly. It fit into the decaying neighborhood perfectly, although he would have to fix it up if he ever hoped to sell the place.

  And it was his parents’ house again, not just his mother’s. It had reverted back to both of them.

  The interior of the house was dark and smelled of death. He stood there for a moment, holding the door open, looking carefully around, afraid he might see his father.

  Or his mother.

  His fingers reached around the wall to his right, found the light switch and flipped it on. Everything was as it had been: the clothes piled on the couch, the packed boxes, the array of weapons on the floor. He stepped slowly forward, trying to breathe through his mouth. The air was heavy and still. Beneath the chemical scent of disinfectant used by the investigators and paramedics—a scent that reminded him of the morgue in the VA hospital—Steve smelled dried vomit, old blood and excrement.

  He walked into the middle of the living room, bent down in front of the machete and picked it up. It wasn’t as heavy as he remembered. In fact, it felt pretty good in his hand. It felt right.