“You gonna stay up there?” she asked, when she’d reached the bottom of the stairs.
“I…no, yes,” he stammered.
“Okay, then,” she replied and shut the door behind her as she left.
Chapter Thirteen
The Clown Who Falls Down
David did not return through the Green Room. He couldn’t bring himself to go back in there, so he made his way down the back hallway, pausing only a moment to gaze through the window beside the metal door. The dusty glass gave a blurry and narrow view of the small parking lot, a dumpster tipped on its side, scattered bits of paper here and there. The day was overcast, and the color seemed to have drained from everything.
He continued on down the hall and turned the corner. Another short hallway led to steps that brought him back up into the club. He stood there a minute, unseen by the others, still shaken by his discovery of the dead body in the Green Room shower, not to mention his odd exchange with Annabelle. Telly was seated on the edge of a table, tapping his chin as he looked at the stage. Karl was behind the bar, wiping out beer glasses with a dirty bit of rag and setting them under the counter. Of Annabelle and Cakey there was no sign.
Gooty, in the back of the room wiping down tables, noticed David first. He rose, tucked his rag under his belt and gestured at him. “Hey, amigo, you okay? Look like you just woke up from a bad dream or something.”
Before David could respond, Telly clapped his hands. “Ah, there you are, kid. Where you been hiding?”
“There’s a…” David pointed to the curtain at the back of the stage. “Down there.”
“What, the dead guy?” Telly said. “Yeah, Annabelle told us about it.”
“Did anyone remove it yet?”
“Are you kidding?” Telly said with a look of disgust. “Leave it be. How the old boy died or how long he’s been down there is, quite frankly, none of our business. Karl and I put the bathroom door back in place. Long as we keep it shut, we don’t even have to think about it.”
“That’s the Telly method of dealing with problems,” Karl said. “Shut the door and don’t think about it. You’ve seen how well it works.”
Telly waved off the comment. “Hey, kid, come up on the stage here. I need to see something.”
David crossed the room and stepped up on the small stage. It was a triangular space, raised about six inches from the floor and maybe eight feet across at its widest point. As David stood there, he felt the curtain behind him, saw the faint bleed of light from the Green Room reflecting on the floorboards, and he thought he could smell the decay seeping up from the stairs, overpowering the chemical stink of whatever cleaner Gooty was using.
“I’m working up a modified version of the show,” Telly said, hopping down from the table and pacing in front of the stage. “I’m thinking of a very simple rotation, one performer at a time, four acts. Annabelle comes out and does her balancing act. Then Karl does some slapstick, interacts with the audience, gets ‘em all laughing. Then you come out and do your act, and we finish up with Cakey’s juggling. What do you think, Karl? Think the kid can carry a whole act by himself?”
Karl grunted. “All I’ve seen him do is one trick. One trick does not make a whole act.”
“He’s got more than one trick,” Telly said. “Come on, kid. Show ‘em something else.”
David considered the tiny stage.
“There’s not much room up here,” he said.
“The stage is designed for stand up comedy,” Telly said. “It’s all we’ve got to work with, so we’ll make do. There’s got to be some little flip or flop or tumble you can do.”
“Well, I can do one thing, I guess.”
“Go for it,” Telly said.
David took a few deep breaths to calm himself, though it did little good. Too many eyes on him. Karl had set down his glass and leaned against the bar to watch.
“Okay,” David said. A statement of resignation. Time to go for it, whatever happened.
He stooped down, placed his hands flat on the stage, then kicked his feet up over his head. The handstand got tepid applause from Gooty and nothing from the other two, so he tried walking on his hands. He managed three steps before the tip of his shoe hit the hanging speaker, and he lost his balance. His legs came down, and he crashed to the floor, hitting the edge of the stage with the small of his back. Then he kicked a nearby chair with one of his feet and sent it flying.
The fall got enthusiastic cheers from Telly, and a great big chortle from Karl.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Karl said, imitating Telly’s high nasal whine. “We present for the very first time on stage, Disturby Dave, the Clown who Falls Down.”
David picked himself up, rubbing his back. “Sorry,” he said. “That wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t hit the speaker.”
“I don’t know,” Telly said. “The Clown Who Falls Down might work. Rubes of all stripes like to see clowns fall down. Something else, kid.”
There’s something in performing that we all need, that’s what Annabelle had said. David didn’t feel it, not at all. Studying gymnastics had never been about performing, only an escape from everyday misery, and he had picked that particular activity only because it was the subject of the book. If he’d come across a book on basket weaving, he probably wouldn’t be standing onstage.
But he was here now, and Vern was not, and that almost made it all worthwhile. David shook out his arms to limber himself up, felt a little bit of his confidence return, and took a step back. He bent at the knees, extended his arms out in front of him and jumped. In the air, he whipped his arms up over his head, tucked his knees against his chest and did a backflip. In the rush and blur of the room spinning around him, he thought he heard Telly gasp. As he came to the end of the flip, he extended his legs to meet the ground and let them bend to absorb the impact. His contact with the stage made a satisfying, echoing thud. A perfect landing.
“Very good,” Telly said, clapping. “We can use that.”
“What, he did a backflip,” Karl said. “Big deal. We can all do backflips.”
“I’ve never seen you do a standing backflip, bigness. Never,” Telly said.
“Well, I could if I tried,” Karl said. “Probably.”
“Less input from you,” Telly said, wagging a finger at him. He approached the stage. “It’s good, kid. It shows me you can use the limited space. Keep at it, okay?” He reached up to pat David and got as high as the middle of his chest. “See what you else can come up with.”
“Okay,” David replied. He felt good, winded, limber, ready to go. It was amazing what one perfect landing could do.
Telly turned. “We’re gonna leave the kid to practice. Gooty, it’s your lucky day. You get to come with me.”
“Where are we going?” Gooty asked, suspiciously.
“We’re making a run for supplies,” Telly said. “That kindly young Officer Mayes was a mite stingy with our stuff, so we’ll need some props. There’s gotta be a hardware store around here somewhere.”
“Are we allowed to leave the building?” Gooty asked.
Telly shrugged. “They never said one way or the other, so we’ll assume the best. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, as the old saying goes.”
Karl grunted. “That’s usually how bad stuff starts,” he said, setting down a clean glass and picking up another dirty one.
“Karl, you keep right on cleaning,” Telly said. “And don’t give the kid a hard time. Leave him alone to practice.”
“I won’t say a word,” Karl replied. “Are you gonna make Cakey and Belle help me? I got a whole lot of glasses down here.” He pointed to the shelf under the bar.
“Nope,” Telly said. His hat was hanging on the corner of a chair. He scooped it up and set it on his head. “They’re having a little talk.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Karl grumbled. “Another talk. Tell me where, so I can stay as far away as possible.”
“In the supply closet behind the kitchen,” Te
lly said. “Give it a few minutes to get really heated, and I’m sure you’ll hear.”
“She needs to accept that he’s a nut job and let it go,” Karl said.
“That’s right,” Gooty agreed. “Someone needs to talk sense into that chica.”
“None of your business,” Telly replied. “Either of you. And none of mine.” He headed for the door. “Come on, Goot.”
Gooty rose, gave David a little wave and trudged after Telly. At the door Telly paused to wait for him.
“Tap the keg while we’re gone,” Telly said. “Make sure whatever’s in it is drinkable. Who knows how long it’s been sitting in the kitchen. If it’s okay, help yourself.”
“I gotta be the guinea pig?” Karl said.
Instead of answering, Telly shouldered the front doors open and left. Gooty followed, closing the doors behind them.
“Ah, well, I could use a drink,” Karl muttered and went back to cleaning glasses.
David stood there for a moment, wondering if Karl would say anything, maybe pick on him or insult him, now that the boss was not around to stop it. But Karl only sniffed and kept right on cleaning, seeming to forget that David was even there. Somewhere distantly, echoing through the walls, David caught a faint snatch of heated conversation. Annabelle’s voice. He wondered if he had somehow caused the argument. Had he said something to set her off?
David practiced a few more backflips, handstands, even a cartwheel, though it took him right into the wall. He crashed hard, made a loud thud and hit the stage. Karl chuckled softly but did not look up. It was all David had in him. Standing alone onstage and practicing to no real audience was too much like all the long, lonely hours he’d spent back in Mountainburg, hiding out behind the fence, the gymnastics book open on a crate.
He considered leaving. Would Karl tell on him? He didn’t know, but he didn’t much care. What kept him practicing was the realization that he really had nowhere to go. Upstairs into the empty apartment? Down into the filthy Green Room? Into the kitchen to listen to Annabelle screaming at Cakey? No and no and no. And outside wasn’t an option either, not when the guards were walking around out there with rifles. David sighed and resumed practicing, and he kept on practicing for the next couple of hours. He hit the edge of the stage a couple dozen times, slammed into the wall twice as often, kicked the speaker again and again, and went through the curtain once and almost down the stairs. But every time, he picked himself up and tried again.
Only when he paused to catch his breath, slumped at the edge of the stage, did Karl finally speak. He had long since finished wiping the glasses and moved on to the mirror behind the bar. David caught his gaze reflected in the cracked glass.
“You got a lot of energy, kid,” Karl said. “No sense wearing yourself out. Why don’t you call it a day?”
“I’m fine,” David said, panting.
Karl turned and tossed the rag onto the bar. He regarded David for a moment, then clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and shook his head. “Kid, I’m gonna say something that ain’t easy for me to say.”
David waited, expecting another insult.
Instead, Karl leaned his massive forearms against the bar and said, “I was all wrong about you from the start.” He paused, nodded, as if to himself. “There, I said it.”
“Wrong about me?” David asked, wiping sweat from his eyes.
“Yep,” Karl said. “I know I pick on you now and again, that’s just my nature, but I had you figured for a rube, another loser rube looking to escape his miserable life. You know how many of those we’ve picked up along the way? Think they can be performers, and they don’t have it in them. They fall by the wayside, kid, let me tell you. Life on the road is brutal.”
“Yeah,” David agreed.
“Yeah, he says,” Karl laughed. “Like you ain’t been with us but a few days.” He shook his head. “Point is, you got something in you. You got that spark, that determination. Two hours you been over there, flipping and flopping and no complaint. So…heck, I thought I ought to say it before I go back to picking on you.”
“Thanks,” David said. The compliment wasn’t much, but it still embarrassed him.
Karl reached up and tweaked the ends of his mustache then retrieved the rag. “I had that spark at your age. Left home at sixteen, starry eyed and stupid. The worm sickness devastated Winnipeg. I lost a lot of family, whole neighborhoods wiped out. Sounds more tragic than it was—didn’t have much of a family to begin with. So I wandered my way east, spent some time in Ottawa, eventually crossed the border and wound up in New York, a place called Watertown. Ever heard of it?”
David shook his head.
“Of course not,” Karl said. “It’s a ghost town nowadays. But back then, they had a little theater owned by this pantomime group. Something about it drew me, you know what I mean? Honestly, nothing worse than a mime act, but it was something. They were up on stage, moving around, doing their silly routine, but people were watching it. I wanted that. I wanted that attention.” He started wiping down the bar, but the look in his eyes was distant. “That was it. That was the start. They took me in, taught me their act. I did that for a few years, worked in a crate factory to make ends meet. And then the circus came to town.”
“The circus came to town,” David echoed.
“Yep, that’s how it is,” Karl said. “People like us, we bide our time, getting by, doing what we can, but all the while, we’re waiting for the circus to come to town and take us away. And it does, sooner or later, it does.” He drifted off, gazing up at a point somewhere near the ceiling. David expected him to continue the story, but he was quiet for a long time.
Finally, David stood up, intending to resume practice, but then Karl cleared his throat.
“One little bit of advice though, kid,” he said.
“What’s that?”
Karl smiled. “Watch out for Belle.”
David felt the flush in his cheeks, the flutter in his belly. Did Karl know about the strange moment in the apartment? Had she told him? Had she told everyone? Hey, boys, I almost kissed David, and the kid looked like he might faint. The thought was mortifying.
“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” David said.
“Give it time,” Karl said. “You will. The girl craves affection, but she gives little in return. She’s bored of us. But you…you’re fresh meat. Just don’t get too attached, that’s all I’m saying.” He came around the bar, wiping his hands on the rag.
“I’ll be careful,” David said. His face felt like it was burning.
“You do that,” Karl said and tossed the rag over his shoulder onto a table. “We’ve lost a lot of people along the way. It’d be nice if you were around for a while.”
He smiled, twirled his mustache again and strode across the room, disappearing down the stairs.
David waited until the sound of his footfalls faded into the downstairs corridor, then he resumed practice, but all that Karl had said weighed on him. Later, Cakey passed through, heading outside, acknowledging David with a hint of a smile and nod. And eventually Annabelle came into the room and sat at a table in the corner, resting her head in her hands. David, winded and sore all over, stopped practicing and sank back into the shadows. She did not seem to notice him, so he stayed there, huddled beside the curtain, trying to breathe quietly, until she finally rose, cursing under her breath, and headed back into the kitchen.
* * *
Dinner was an awkward affair. Cakey scrounged up some old cans of food from a cabinet in the kitchen and warmed them up on the stove. Baked beans and corned beef hash. David had had his share of rotten food over the years. This didn’t taste rotten, but there was definitely something wrong with it. The consistency of the beans was gritty, and the corned beef was a too-soft mush of pink slop. Still, some food was better than no food, so he choked it all down and chased it with a glass of bitter ale. Karl had found a keg with crude stenciling on it that read Brown Ale. None of them trusted the water
from the tap, so the mystery ale was all they had to drink.
People scattered all over the room to eat. Telly and Karl at one table, Gooty and Annabelle at another, Cakey hunched over the bar by himself. David considered getting his own table, but Telly waved him over and made him sit down.
“See what I made here?” Telly said. He had fashioned a makeshift shillelagh out of a bit of an old broom handle and a large lead weight he’d acquired at a local shop. The lead was fixed to the end of the broom handle with a generous heap of duct tape. “It’s not quite the same, but it’ll do for now.”
“You expect another fight after the show tomorrow?” David asked through a mouthful of crumbly beans.
“I expect wild applause,” Telly said, tapping his spoon on the edge of his plate. “I expect to ride out of this town in two days like kings.”
“You didn’t get the right kind of knives,” Cakey said. He sounded remarkably subdued for once.
“They didn’t have juggling knives,” Telly said. “What do you want me to do?”
Cakey reached under the bar and produced a hunting knife, a long curved blade, serrated on the back edge, with a plastic handle. He stabbed the tip into the bar. “Too heavy,” he said. “Not balanced. I won’t be able to do any real tricks, just a basic cascade, and there’s still the risk that someone might get hurt. Plus, my shoulder still kills.” He reached up and patted his injured shoulder.
“Be glad I found any knives at all,” Telly said. “Be glad anyone was willing to do business with us. People in this town look at us like we’re animals escaped from the zoo.”
“They look at you that way, jefe,” Gooty corrected.
Telly ignored the comment. “The knives came from a pawn shop this guy had in his garage. Not even sure it was legal.”
“Well, you should’ve looked around in a few more garages,” Cakey said.
“You know, this stupid nightclub is built on the side of a hill,” Telly said. “It wasn’t easy dragging all of this stuff up here. Show a little appreciation and make do.”
Shadows of Tockland Page 16
