Bozo: A Short Story

Bozo: A Short Story

 

[for Jacob]

 

                The steel wasn't nearly as comfortable as the wood, but he rode it the same way, flat-bottomed and staunch, the magic marker rubbing into the divot it had cut after years and years into his left buttock. Were one to touch it, they'd feel a groove in the skin and a knot on his bone where the pressure had built up calcium growth, like a Muay Thai kickboxer's shin. They hit themselves with branches and pummel tree trunks, drawing out the blood and sweat like demons, the dark bruises coalescing over the point where the skin breaks, the crusty scars healing over and over and the tibia growing thick and knotted like an oak.

                He was called "Cheeky" by the other riders, from when he used his ass to open a stubborn bottle of years-old hooch, pressure from inside holding the cap on so tight naught could free it from the container. All they saw was the crouch, though, then heard the seal break. He felt it give from the weight of his body, a slow torque that can only be applied with the aid of abdominals and gravity - he reached down, finished it with a little application of manual dexterity, and raised the bottle to his mouth to show it was clean to drink.

                "L'Chaim!" He cried, the bubbles in his throat popping with the bitter aftertaste of cheap fermentation, passing to his right and stumbling backwards when the tickle touched his brain.

                "That was cheeky." The voice called out from the several, nobody sure who said it, and yet he knew whose voice it sounded like.

                It sounded like Bozo.

______________________________

                Things were better in the seventies. Food tasted cleaner, the hookers more honest, the young kids - bad as they got - still stopped just short of cutting you over the last bone in a pack of smokes, but they'd make damn sure you split it even. Life was fair if you didn't lie, cheat or steal. That was then, though, back before Bozo left them.

                Trains cross over the land because they have to, but riders do it because they want - he paused, the magic marker burning to find the last word. He put the cap back on as the whistle blew, Stockton's 4:12 going ahead down the inland track toward its next stop, probably Bakersfield. Eight minutes of walking to the China Grove, where Theseus would hand him the joint and they'd catch up on times and lives. The last word would be written. Or it wouldn't; he smiled as he saw it out of the corner of his mind's eye, knowing the angle had just passed where he could've turned to look one last time, and he realized right then that it didn't even need one. The face was his, and everyone else's, the brim of the hat showing forever, the oval of the face framing a countenance that didn't say anything at all: this was how they'd know it was a message from Bozo.

                "How's the eye?" Theseus blew smoke at his face.

                "Fuck you too, man. How's it hanging?" Cheeky laughed, taking the spliff and suckling at it, wincing with his left eye, the world reducing down to a slit and starting to make sense again.

                "Same as it ever was," came the old reply from the Greek, his talent for killing rattlers responsible for his road-moniker. "Jane's dead."

                This shook Cheeky. He stopped mid-exhale, choking a little on the acridity of it, and then instantly accepted it as the necessary fact that it was. "Shit. I see. You alright?"

                Theseus looked down into the dirt, the grove home to a colony of gophers who left holes to dot the grass, one of which he stared into like he was about to burrow into it himself if he were only small enough. "I guess. I ain't seen her since January anyway, so..." The half-truth collapsed and his throat tightened. "I fuckin' miss her, though." He inhaled on the marijuana cigarette, fighting back the tears by way of a rictus wall through which he gritted his near-black teeth, what was left of them, the smoke billowing out through the gaps like a steam-engine. "She's in a better place that this shithole, right?"

                Cheeky nodded, his right arm reflexively drawing up to where he could rub his old wound with an extended index finger. "You betcher ass so, Thee. You bet your ass."

                "Mine ain't worth half what yours is, though." Theseus snickered. Both men chuckled, the birds overhead echoing the sound with a series of crackling caws.

                It was a knife fight, Theseus recalled, staring at the wound unapologetically. "Hey, do the trick one last time for me - cheer me up, yeah?" Cheeky frowned.

                "Really? One last time? Is that your story now?" He prepared for it by knocking a fist against where his right eye used to be, opening up the passage from his sinus and feeling the dull ache that started the endorphins, his heart racing already a little from the weed. "I'll do it 'cause you asked me, you don't gotta justify it."

                He grabbed the joint and drew a mighty breath, almost swallowing before thrusting it back into Theseus' eager fingers, his own reaching up to either side of his eye-hole, pulling them open to expose the long-dead orifice, the nerves having given up on sending signals anymore. He froze solid and quivered a little, pushing with his abdominals like he was trying to take a dump. "You see it yet?"

                "Not quite - wait, there's a wisp, keep going." Theseus's hand limply dangled as he held the lit ember behind him so as he could see the full effect, his grin a child's now.

                The smoke started to billow out of the eye-hole, rising first like a thin trail of vapor until it poured, milk-like and ropy, pluming toward heaven, and Theseus started to laugh.

                "Fuuuuuuu - that is so goddamn awesome!" Theseus bellowed as the last remainder staccato-ed out past the dead nerves, his one ace in the hole for barroom bets and boxcar wagers. They'd have surely called him Smokestack if it hadn't have happened after he already had his moniker. Besides, he didn't really draw smokestacks too well anyway, not that he had to, but his design was set in stone after the beer bottle, his dog-face always starting with the rounded humps of a gluteus maximus before adding the tongue - it was a visual joke, and he loved to tell it over and over to anyone who'd listen.

______________________________

                "First, you draw the butt - like a 'w,' but rounder and wider." The transaction had begun. Bozo was wearing a "Vote for Reagan" button through what looked like his shirt, but revealed the dried blood-stains of a fakir's wound underneath when you looked closely. He'd had it on for about a week since the election, and Cheeky found it almost hard to keep focused on showing him how to draw his moniker without being distracted by the faint smell of pus from the infection. He took a swig of jungle juice to help with the nausea - it was proportionally good.

                "Okay." That's all Bozo would say during the exchange when it was his turn to listen and learn. People seemed to know how to teach him, going in small steps and waiting for his feedback - oftentimes, they didn't even realize themselves how to draw their names on the boxcars, but almost all of them gave it up when they had the opportunity to give to the collector.

                "Now, here's the thing - you start with the tongue next. Thin enough to poke out like a shit coming through... and then you wait. Bozo chuckled, nodding slowly. "Right. Now, and only now do you put the line in the tongue and add the nose by drawing a circle that touches the crest where the two halves of the 'w' meet. Then the nostrils. Then two big loops for the eyes, making the pupils underneath. Then you add the skull with an arc, loop down for the ears, and you close it off with the whiskers." He stopped, looking over to make sure it was sinking in. Bozo was a sponge. "It's just a dog, man, what did you think?"

                Again, Bozo laughs, a deep redolent basso that bounced back off the train to bathe Cheeky, who involuntarily smiled and handed over the marker. Price paid. He was about to learn the meaning of life.

______________________________

                "You sure you can't teach me?" Theseus didn't ever whine, but this was as close as he ever got.

                "I think you know the answer already." He searched his friend's eyes with his one. He suspected everybody knew the answer already, but most people didn't really know it. He didn't know he knew it until a rusty switchblade found its way into his right ocular cavity, severing the occipital nerve and popping his eyeball like a water-balloon. He'd never forget that feeling, the juices and the smell in the back of his nose by his throat. He threw up almost immediately, the sounds coming from him pairing with the squeal of the crowd who didn't expect him to go through with it. He'd tell people later it was a knife fight, but those who were eye-witnesses would tell a different story.

                Hell, I'd give my right eye for a swig of Hennessy right now.

                No, you wouldn't.

                Bet your fuckin' life I would.

                Prove it, then.

                Alright. Do it. I dare you. But you don't got any Hennessy in that flask and I'll fuckin' kill you.

                You don't wanna do this, man.

                Don't tell me what I want to do and what I don't want to do. Do it. I dared you once, you want to make it double?

                You're too drunk.

                Bullshit - I drank myself sober three hours ago, and I need some goddamn Hennessy to get me straight again. Are you gonna do it or not?

                It was that quick, and the conversation burned behind his right eye-hole. It would never leave him. It would form the foundation for everything else he ever had to say, in truth. Anything worth saying, at least. He only realized it after swallowing the last bit of bile, that he could see now. It took one eye to find the other, and it took both to see the truth. But you don't know what the truth is until you lose it, and then you know you had it all along. That was the secret that Bozo reminded him of, and what he couldn't ever tell anyone. He'd just have to write it on a boxcar and hope they got the message. The ones who were listening to it instead of looking at it - they did.

                "Why do you always say that? You know I don't know it, or else I wouldn't be asking." Theseus sat against the tree, staring at China Grove. That's what they called it anyway, the story going something like an old Chinese miner died here a long time ago. It sounded like bullshit anyway, so nobody ever told much of the story except that part. The trees were different, though - each one had a strange mark on it, and for a while they even had some arbologist come out to study what it was that made it happen - some ergot or tree-aids or something, he had suspected, but nothing ever came of it. Just the way they grow in Hyena Falls.

                "You do know, though - you just forgot." He felt the heaviness start - it came on him like a ton of rocks whenever he started talking too much, and stopped him.

                "You always say that too. Man, I don't know what you get out of that stupid old tradition anyway." Theseus narrowed his eyes to two slits. "I ought to take that other fuckin' eye out."

                "Don't say that. This tradition is all we got, Thee - and I know you haven't forgotten that at least." Cheeky cleared up, the anger starting to boil. People got frustrated when they realized you know who Bozo is, and that you've met him and traded names. It drives some to rage. Some to despair. Some to murder. He'd seen it before, men getting caught drawing Bozo's sign on a side-car and just getting killed right then and there - it wasn't just a cucuy story they told to keep people in line, he'd literally seen it with his two eyes one night, the man just came up behind and strangled him to death. Scared him into sobriety for three days straight, and made his soul cry out. He figured that's why he met Bozo so many years later, because he saw what could happen if you tell the truth to the wrong person, and after he remembered what the truth was, he could have it explained to him. Life's funny like that.

                "I know. I know. I'm sorry, Cheek, I just don't understand." Theseus handed over the bottle, taking in return the jungle stew. There was half left. Perfect.

                "Okay." He quashed Thee's hopes by continuing. "That's just it. There ain't nothing to understand." Then the heaviness collapsed him and he woke up the next morning, Theseus long gone and a magic marker in his hand, dry as bone. That's when he knew he was finished.

______________________________

                "You sure you're ready?" Bozo smiled, taking the marker, his eyes soft. This part was always hard because he never knew how people would react. So far, he hadn't gotten murdered - at least he hoped he hadn't - but there was always that random chance after they realized that they knew it the whole time and it was just that no one ever gave them an explanation. It was stupid-easy to draw, after all, and it wasn't until they knew how to draw it from him that they realized why they could tell the reals from the fakes. It made him nervous, the doubt that one day he'd draw a fake, but then he reminded himself how impossible that was, and he smiled, continuing once more to teach the truth.

                "Please." Cheeky said the magic word. They all did, it seemed, even if it was a different one for each student.

                "Okay. Here goes. You start with the hat." He drew it. "You know what that is?" He couldn't tell him, and he stopped and waited.

                "I... that's an infinity sign, right? That means everything." Cheeky felt a little dizzy.

                "You got it. Now, the head." He made a circle through the middle. "What did I just draw?" Again, he waited. This was the test. It sure felt real.

                Cheeky swallowed hard, a tear starting to form. Some men cried when they realized it, and some laughed. "It's a zero. That's nothing." The tear dropped down and hit the top of his shoe. He saw it for the first time again. "Nothing. Over everything."

                Bozo nodded. "Yes. That's right. It's okay, Cheeky. You got it."

                Cheeky laughed, and Bozo laughed with him. They stood there by the boxcar, the moon above also laughing, and the Earth trembled, a great guffaw echoing throughout the land and the sky, and the whole goddamn universe. Bozo walked away, knowing that someone else knew, and that was all he needed to keep going. Cheeky kept laughing, softer and softer until it was just a persistent wavelength radiating in the background of his brain.

                He would never stop laughing.