It’s not that I didn’t like the way the clown looked. Creepy clowns provide a much-needed service to society. I tried to make him understand that, I tried to make him understand so many things.
He was in full regalia, and spinning a sign, like you see on a street corner advertising Taxes done cheap! or Sale. Today. Big. Except we weren’t around any stores, we were just at the park. I was avoiding my father by feeding dried rice to pigeons and hoping. We had gotten in a fight about emptying the dishwasher when it was clean, but it was really about how he wanted me to move out. He loved to do that, to pick fights about inconsequential things, but I always knew what we were really fighting about.
I wondered how long the clown had been there, but I guessed it had been quite a while since his eye paint was beginning to run. I didn’t hold it against him. He was working really hard. The sign practically blurred.
No one else seemed to care about the sweaty clown spinning a sign we couldn’t read. Children weren’t amused. They flicked bits of sand in the air to watch how small things fall. Mothers avoided eye contact like he was asking for money. After a while it became kind of sad, and I told him that. A sad clown is better than a creepy clown. You’re really moving up in the world.
He kept on and his red nose fell off, and then he stepped out of his floppy red shoes. One gaudy suspender broke, then the other. Soon he was just a guy twirling a sign. If you had known he was a creepy clown before, there’s no way you would now.
He was getting tired; I could see him straining. So I went, and in one smooth motion traded the spinning sign for my bag of dried rice. He looked thankful, if a bit surprised, but that could have just been the remnants of his original getup. I spun and spun, grateful for my natural dexterity.
My father, who had been pretending not to watch, came up, chuckling a bit to himself. What are you doing? he asked. I didn’t have the breath to speak really, but I managed to squeak out, trying to get the pigeons to explode. He didn’t chuckle after that. It’s almost as if he wasn’t paying attention, like he couldn’t see the trajectory of an initial action, like he didn’t know that something begun continues even if its form shifts.
My arms grew tired and the creepy clown left with my bag of dried rice. I looked around frantically for someone to take over the job, but nobody came. I stayed at it until after dark, until the park had emptied except for two lovers necking on the bench where I had first fed the pigeons. My forearms began to cramp. I set the sign down and it was too dark to read what he’d been selling.
Evan James Sheldon's work has appeared recently in the American Literary Review, the Cincinnati Review, and the Maine Review, among other journals. He is a senior editor for F(r)iction and the Editorial Director for Brink Literacy Project. You can find him online at www.evanjamessheldon.com.
