The Tramp Clown's Secret

The sky was clear, the moon nearly full. Fireflies rose from the gardens and drifted over manicured lawns where old timers, arm in arm with nurses or slumped forward in wheelchairs, returned from late afternoon strolls. Two male residents sat on the porch of the nursing home in flannel shirts and overalls, sipping chamomile tea in their rockers. They had spent the last few hours catching up, as they had not seen each other in sixty years.

“I really do miss her,” Sam muttered, eyes moist and red beneath his flat cap.

Virgil stopped rocking and leaned sideways over the small wicker table between them. “What’s that you say?”

Sam raised his mucus-lined voice. “Ruthie. I miss Ruthie.”

“Oh.”

Sam stared into his mug as if hypnotized by a vision there, the lines of his face deep enough to hold thin shadows. He opened his mouth to speak, then thought the better of it. Finally he put his tea down and said, “Virgil, there’s somethin’ I’ve been meanin’ to ask you for sixty years now.”

“Yea? What’s that?” Virgil’s voice was gravelly.

“Well . . . You left Rockford the day after Ruthie was killed. You didn’t tell anyone where you were going, not even me, and we were friends. That was awfully strange of you.”

Virgil, an overweight man in his early eighties, dragged a square-ended fingernail across the armrest of his rocker. “We went over this already, Sam. I told you: the circus offered me a full-time gig.”

Sam waved off a mosquito. “Mm-hmm. And why’d you wait sixty years to come back? The real reason. You don’t expect me to believe that nonsense about living out your last days in Rockford, do you?” He snickered. “No-no—I think you came back to get somethin’ off your conscience.”

“Get what off my conscience?”

Sam’s face turned red. “You didn’t even stay long enough to see Ruthie put in the ground!”

Virgil scanned the floorboards at his feet. “I told you, Sam. There just wasn’t nothin’ left for me here. We weren’t even speakin’ at the time, so what did it matter? And what choice did I have? Tramp clown’s all I was ever good at. I belonged with the circus; that was my true home.” He licked spittle from the corners of his mouth. “Sorry I didn’t say goodbye. Or keep in touch. I didn’t know how, Sam. Truly.”

Sam shook his head in disapproval. “You didn’t even come back for your brother’s funeral,” he huffed, intent on prodding the man. “Surly you knew of his murder.”

Virgil took a deep, wheezy breath and sipped his tea, the face of his twelve-year-old brother lingering inside his mind. He looked out along the darkening pathways of the property, at the nurses, the slow-moving residents in their white gowns, and imagined Miles, his younger brother, sprinting in circles around them, making fun. His eyes watered. “I guess I couldn’t face that, either. I was a coward.”

The porch light flicked on and a young nurse stuck her head out from behind the screen door, releasing a lavender fragrance into the air. “You two alright out here?” she asked.

“What?” Virgil had an ear toward the nurse. A moth shot over his puffy white hair and bounced off the light.

“We’re alright, Miss Ramsey,” Sam said, winking at her. “Don’t wait up.”

The nurse raised an eyebrow. “Be sure to stay on the porch, guys. Okay? I’ll be back later to check on you. In the meantime, be good.”

The men grinned with their fake teeth and the nurse left smiling.

Sam scrunched his forehead. “You didn’t buy that story about Thompson, did you?” he went on, turning to Virgil with crossed arms.

“The drifter? Who else? He confessed to everything.”

“But what if the police forced him to sign that confession? There wasn’t a shred of evidence linking him to the crimes. And besides, Ruthie was murdered in late June, Miles early July. Yet no one reported seeing Thompson around until mid-July. I think he died in prison an innocent man.”

Virgil belched abruptly and said, “What on earth are you getting at?”

Sam sighed. He reached for his tea, sipped it, then shakily placed it back on the wicker table. “Well, since you can’t see where I’m goin’ with all this, then I’ll just have to come right out and say it. Besides, I’ve got angina and I can’t bear the stress. No more secrets.”

“Secrets?” Virgil was taken aback.

Sam looked around to be sure no one was within earshot, then stared at Virgil with his steel blue eyes, the only part of him that retained a youthful quality. “I suspected you all along,” he said.

“What? Speak up, Sam. I can’t hear you.”

Sam smacked the armrest. “Ruthie. You murdered her!”

“What? That’s preposterous!” Virgil said.

“You were jealous she chose me over you, so you killed her. Then you took your clown act and hooked up with the circus—a traveling circus, I might add—knowing damn well you had a job waiting for you down at the mill, here, with me. But you were hiding, weren’t you? And why was that? Because you were guilty, that’s why. We both know Ruthie would never have gone into those woods with that drifter. But she trusted you, Virgil, and you killed her.”

Unsure how to reply, Virgil could only stare at his old friend.

“So maybe you’re wonderin’ why I didn’t turn you in,” Sam said, removing his flat cap and wiping sweat off his bald head. “Well, I’ll tell you.” He replaced the hat and reached around for his wallet. “Because I decided to get even, that’s why.” He pulled out a pair of thick glasses from the breast pocket of his overalls and placed them low on his nose. A tattered baseball card was taken from the wallet. After admiring it for a few moments he raised his eyebrows and said, “Great player.”

He passed the card to Virgil, whose face dropped like a cannonball.

“Your brother’s favorite player,” Sam said with a smirk, leaning in toward his old friend. “And it’s signed, too. See? Miles never went anywhere without that card.”

Virgil stared intensely at his dead brother’s baseball card, his lower lip trembling.

“Are you tellin’ me that . . . that it was you who murdered Miles?” Virgil said, eyes still on the card. “That you murdered my brother because . . . because you thought I killed Ruthie?”

Sam pinched a mosquito off his liver-spotted arm and rolled it between his fingers, popping out the blood. “Well—you did, didn’t you?” He looked out across the deserted lawn, crinkling his forehead. Katydids sang from a nearby patch of woods. “I mean . . . you hated us for dating. You can’t deny that.” His eyes narrowed as he searched the dusty shelves of his memory for additional evidence. “I’ll never forget that day at the circus,” he went on, “your first show here in Rockford, the day Ruthie died. We came to congratulate you after the performance, but you turned away. Ruthie grabbed you by the sleeve and you spun around with the most hateful look I’d ever seen on a man. It showed right through your makeup. I knew right then what you were capable of.”

Virgil continued to stare at the baseball card. His face began to go pale and his pot belly heaved. “I need to lie down,” he said, rising from his rocker. “I don’t feel well.” He slid the card into the hip pocket of his overalls and shuffled past Sam to the screen door.

“You ain’t gonna call the cops, are you?”

“No, Sam,” Virgil said in a low voice, “I’m not gonna call the cops.” He shut the door behind him.

Chest pain overtook Sam before he had a chance to reply. He wanted to take it all back, to right the situation by telling Virgil he was only testing him to see what he’d say. Instead he closed his eyes and let the angina run its course. In his mind, he and Ruthie walked down Main Street together, laughing and kissing and getting to know each other. She had a freshly picked daisy over her left ear and a green ribbon at the end of her braided ponytail . . . .

Overhead, the moon arced its way across the darkening sky. Somewhere in the distance a whip-poor-will began its nocturnal lament. The screen door creaked open and a disheveled, overweight man shambled onto the porch. His gray suit, covered in patches, and which he’d obviously outgrown in every direction, fell in tatters, its pockets attached with safety pins. The man wore a brown derby, red clown nose, and had white makeup around his mouth where sloppy greasepaint mimicked a five o'clock shadow. An oversized polka-dot tie hung loosely at the collar of a grimy white shirt, and coarse chest hair squiggled out from openings where buttons were missing. He sat down in Virgil’s chair and began to rock, his demeanor theatrically downtrodden.

Sam woke with a start and rushed his hands across his face, sending off mosquitoes. He looked over and saw a green ribbon lying on the wicker table. It was tied to a braid of brown hair.

A thick hand popped into the space over the braid. The hand, covered by a wool glove with the fingers cut out, flicked open and rotated above the hair as if presenting a crystal ball. Sam looked up to see a tramp clown sitting in Virgil’s rocker.

“Virgil!” Sam exclaimed, propping himself up. His eyes darted numerous times between the clown and the braid of hair. “W-what is this? Is that—? Why are you dressed as Garbo? Tell me this instant! Why—?”

Realization suddenly flashed across his eyes, and he scowled furiously. “O-o-h, I get it,” he fumed, shaking a crooked finger at the clown. “It was you all along, wasn’t it? Garbo’s the one killed Ruthie.” He lifted his chest. “I suppose that makes you innocent, is that right? Well guess what, you deaf old fool—you can pin your murder on Garbo, but it won’t clear you in the eyes of the Lord. Or me!”

Garbo, his face expressing deep sadness, nodded in agreement.

Sam clenched his arthritic fists and set a marble-hard gaze on the clown. “You’re gonna burn in hell, Virgil,” he coughed, his chest pain returning.

Garbo turned an ear toward Sam and cupped his hand around it.

“I said, ‘You’re gonna burn in hell’! And guess who’ll be right there beside you? That’s right—me.” His eyes were filled with angry tears. “Why? Because we’re child killers, Virgil. The worst there is. You and I, we’re gonna burn—”

The clown stuck his fingers into his ears and clacked his tongue. Sam reached over and yanked one of his arms. “Now you stop that!”

Garbo sighed dramatically, then reached into his tattered suit and pulled out a long carving knife, turning it from side to side as if trying to read its future. He placed it gently on the wicker table beside Ruthie’s hair. Sam looked down at it, then at the braid, then at the knife again. When Garbo turned his head, Sam snatched the knife off the table and aimed it at the clown, his left arm now throbbing with intense pain.

“I should’ve done this a long time ago, you . . . you cocksucker!”

He lunged forward, but the knife slipped out of his hands and he toppled to the ground, clutching at his heart. Garbo tilted his head like a dog and watched it all go down: the convulsions, the bugged-out eyes, the mouth sucking at the air like a landed fish. When it was all over he giggled like a little boy.

By now the moon was shining onto the porch like a lion tamer’s spotlight. Garbo squinted, and in the glare found that everything around him—including the nursing home, its grounds, and Sam’s motionless body—had been replaced by an old-time circus: a crowded arena of elephants, clowns, jugglers, and trapeze artists. In response, Garbo jumped to his feet and fell into the old act. He danced, rolled over, walked on his hands; he flirted with the girls, threw gag gifts to the boys, his broad grins and heavy frowns evoking laughter and sympathy from the audience. And he didn’t forget the important people. No sir. He made sure to wink at Ruthie and Sam, his best friends, and Miles, his little brother, who sat in the front row of the bleachers, cheering him on.

But as quickly as it came, the joy was torn out of his heart, for the performance had come to its scheduled end. The music stopped, the applause faded; lights were shut down, one by one. As the crowd dispersed, taking Miles, Sam, and Ruthie with it, Garbo reached for his push broom and began to sweep at everything around him: the debris, the dust, the fading spotlight beneath his tired bones. With heavy shoulders and a face of perpetual sadness, Garbo sighed as he swept it all away—swept and swept until only he and the knife remained.

(From the book The Hunchback's Captive and Others)