Dead Parents

    "I hope we're not too late," Codsfellow said to the stones as he sat down on the quilt and crossed his legs. "Traffic was an ab-so-lute bear, I tell you." He produced a wine bottle, three wine glasses, and a plastic-covered plate of cupcakes. As he poured the wine, he looked at me and motioned with his head for me to come sit down.

    "I would like to introduce you both to my new son, Alessandro," he said as I sat. "He's twelve-years-old, loves croquet, and his favorite subject in school is Home Economics. Isn't that so, mi hijo?"

    I looked at the stones uncertainly. Ever since my eye-opening encounter with Hobo magic, my natural skepticism had been quieter than usual. Not wanting to disturb any potential Clown spirits, I admitted that: "I am twelve, yeah. Nice to meet you."

    Cods handed me one of the wine glasses—which I was surprised about at first, until I tasted the warm fruit punch inside—and he pulled back the plastic on the plate of cupcakes and passed one out to all four of us.

    He then talked to his parents as if they were alive and sitting across from him at the dinner table, even going so far as to ask them questions and laugh at their responses. He talked about the lovely condominium he had moved into (he lived in an apartment with no air conditioning or hot water), he talked about how nice his neighborhood was (the dark side of the moon was more hospitable than West Townville), and he talked about how pleasant all of the city dwellers were (just that morning he was spit on by his Mailman). He talked about how his sister came to visit him, and how beautiful she's looking ("Takes after her father," he said), and how much she's enjoying her missionary work. The conversation went on like that until the sun had nestled into the horizon and the sky had started to turn purple. The streetlamps around the cemetery popped on, and the glow from the city blossomed in the east. A storm was brewing somewhere off to the west, and the sky flickered with silent heat lightning.

    Since I was exhausted and not feeling myself, I courteously allowed Codsfellow to talk uninterrupted for the entirety of our picnic. I sipped on the punch and ate a few cupcakes, and I ran my fingers through the grass and played with the insects to pass time. I wondered what happened to his parents, and I wondered if maybe that had anything to do with how everyone in this town treated Codsfellow like an outcast. I also wondered where we would stay for the night. It sounded like his sister didn't live here anymore, but perhaps his brother still did. I just hoped that Codsfellow didn't expect us to slide under that quilt and sleep above his parents for the night, which was looking more and more likely the longer he talked.

    There came a lull in his conversation, and I was hopeful that this little reunion might finally be coming to an end. Codsfellow was looking at nothing in particular, smiling serenely, lost in some sweet memory. Then, suddenly, he switched his focus from his parents to me: "I’m sure you’re asking yourself how my parents got their hands on such prime real estate as this,” he said, waving a hand around as if I hadn’t noticed the tree we were sitting under or the little pond at the base of the hill we were on. “Well, truth be told, my father had some weight to throw around in this town. He started his own business, you see. Built the town’s largest funeral parlor from the ground up, hearse and all." Cods snickered, and even though the chuckle was small, almost undetectable, it was real, unlike all the other times I had heard him laugh to be polite or to transition between one sentence and the next. "Tore the seats out of a station wagon, decramped the back. No one was a better decramper than my father—no one.” He smiled and winked at me. "Well...until I came along, that is. Oh, yes. Father was so good at it, he drove out fleets of his competition with just one car. I remember—!"

    He laughed and snapped his fingers. He scrunched down to me and lowered his voice, like someone about to tell a secret too good not to share. The look on his face, of him struggling to not grin and spoil what he was about to say, was even enough to make the corners of my mouth tilt upwards. "I remember this one evening! There's this beast of a fire at the hospital, you see, real fierce, lots of people burned to a crisp—" Cods laughed and smacked his thigh. "And Father comes barreling in and starts throwing bodies into the back of his hearse by the dozens, even when the families are standing right there going on about this and that, wailing about who knows what, and the policeclowns are telling him how ‘this is a crime scene!’ and whatnot. But my father wouldn't hear any of it! Ha! He cut out all the middlemen and went straight to that very mortuary right over there. Yessir. He revolutionized the industry that day, really. Brought a lot of business to this cemetery, and now my father has the best spots reserved just for him and his family. Remarkable man."

    The corners of my mouth were no longer pointed up, and, as horrified as I was, there was even more to come. Codsfellow had worked up an excitement. "But that was just the beginning for Cedric Codsfellow! Never the one to be content with unused time, he took night classes at CTU, all while he was starting his own business. He took that school by storm I tell you! His doctorate was such a smash, that his theory of comedy replaced the very one that the university was built around. He was made chancellor, and then, once he grew bored of that, went on to be Mayor of Clowntown. As a matter of fact, he was also the very first laugh lawyer. No one had a grip on humor law like my old man. I can only hope to be half the lawyer he was. What a life, what a life. A legend, my father."

    A damp breeze rustled through my hair and through the trees, and a few pinpricks of rain were arriving early. The fuzzy, yellow catkins of the willow sprinkled down around us. Cods closed his eyes and his face welcomed the incoming storm with his sweet smile and a fresh sigh. “Twenty-third…” he whispered into the air.

    Then, at last, he flicked out his wrist from behind his cuff and looked at his watch. “Dear, how time flies!” he said, slapping his knee. "Welp! I suppose we should be off." He gathered the glasses and the empty plate of cupcakes back into his suitcase. He poured out the third glass wine over the grass of his parents’s graves, and he smooshed the two remaining cakes against the engravings on the stones. “Mother, Father—it was a delight catching up, as always. However, the boy resumes his schooling in a week, and he is posi-tive-ly chomping at the bit to...to resume...his...?”

    Codsfellow tilted his head like a dog who’s heard a noise in the distance. I listened but only heard the leaves brushing against each other like waves against a beach. Codsfellow remained motionless and silent for an uncomfortable length of time.

    “What’s the matt—”

    “Shh!” Codsfellow stood and faced the way we had come. He sniffed the air and looked around. “Can’t be,” he said softly. “It’s too soon.”

    “What?” The storm was getting closer, and I was ready to go. The cemetery was not as charming after dark.

    “Pineapple peppermint,” Cods said to himself, like he was doing math in his head. “Rosemary...cedar...cattle sweat...a scosh of tea tree oil...yes, it’s unmistakable!”

    The air turned cold, and my skin prickled. Everything just felt wrong all of a sudden. I stood up and yanked on Codsfellow’s shirt sleeve to make him look at me. “What the hell are you going on about?”

    “Odeur d'un Papillon,” he said, staring into my eyes, and I could see the fear in his own. Then he looked over my shoulder, and his white skin turned a deathly gray. “...Father’s favorite cologne...”

    I spun around, and at first I saw nothing, but then, as I realized that the darkness against the trunk of the willow was not the tall shadow of a gravestone, but actually a ghostly figure concealed by an unnatural shade, I could just make out the tired, sad, and haunting face of a Clownish man—a face just like that of his son.

WILLIAM LIT SOME NEWSPAPERS on fire and dropped them into an empty can to give us some light. The dumpster was mostly empty, thankfully, except for a few bags that William used as a seat. Codsfellow sat on his suitcase, and I stood next him, mad at myself.

    "What are we doing in here?" I asked.

    "William here has agreed to give us a ride. We should be there shortly."

    The man was patting around his pockets frantically. "Oh, where are they," he mumbled to himself. "Stupid, stupid! You're pitiful, Willy. A simp! Can't even—wait...a-ha!" He pulled his hand out from his coat pocket and triumphantly dangled between his fingers...nothing. He then acted as if he were inserting an invisible key into the side of the dumpster. Then, still holding the key, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Here goes."

    He turned the "key," then made his own ignition sounds, pumping his foot against a pretend accelerator. "Oh, come on, come on. WAW-WAW-WAW-WAW-WAW! Come on, dammit!"

    I looked at Cods for some clarity, but he gave me none. He was pleasantly removing trash particles from his shirt.

    "Hey," I whispered. "What's he doing?"

    "Who?"

    "What do you mean 'who'? Him! Your garbage friend."

    "Mm? Oh, I wish I could tell you. I never was much of a mechanic."

    "This-is-a-DUMP-ster, not a sedan! What is he ACTUALLY doing?"

    Codsfellow looked at me as if I was the crazy one. "Certainly you've heard of hobo magic, child? Has no one ever educated you on that?" Then he drew in a tiny gasp. "Don't tell me you don't believe in it."

    "On the list of things that I believe in," I said, pretending to unravel a tall scroll between my hands, " 'HOBO MAGIC' is waaaaay down here at the bottom, just beneath 'flower power' and 'school spirit'. If you expect—"

    "—AW-WAW-WAW-VROOM-VROOOOM!"

    William clapped his hands together in prayer. "Oh, thank you thank you thank you. VROOM! Okay, guys, buckle up. We're heading out. Shulick, cluck-click." He feigned pulling the gearshift down into drive, then he babbled his lips like an exhaust pipe, babbling harder as we increased "speed." The dumpster remained motionless.

    "This is the guy you were telling me about? The one who started his own college?" I asked.

    "The one and only," Codsfellow said proudly, then he leaned in close to me, grinning. "Do you think your classmates will believe that you actually rode in the same dumpster as William W. Wearily III?"    

    I re-examined the man. He had both hands on the "steering wheel" and was babbling steadily, occasionally giving a rude gesture to one of the dumpster walls. "Yeah," I responded. "They probably would."

    "William!" Codsfellow said. "Why don't you impress upon us the basics of your Superiority Theory. My young friend here has never—"

    "Shh!" William threw up a hand. "Bubadabubada. I'm merging. Bubadabubadabubada..."

    "That's it," I said, grabbing a nearby box and placing it down like a step stool. "I'm heading back to the apartment. I'll see you when I see you Clown. And, Billy—no offense, but you're batspit cra—wwWHAAAA!"

    When I opened up the lid of the dumpster, my hair blew around as if there was a tornado outside. I peeked out through my squinted eyes and saw an endless, three-dimensional ocean of purple lightning and garbage. Flying dumpsters whooshed past, one of them nearly clipping our lid as it zoomed over.

    "Shut the door!" yelled William. "I've got the air conditioner running!"

    I fell off the box, and the lid clapped shut. I scooted backwards against a wall, terrified. "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod," I was saying. "Hobomagic'sreal, hobomagic'sreal!" My shaking hands scoured my pockets searching for my cigarettes.

    "Welp. We're on the highway now," I heard our driver say. He pressed a finger against the wall and eased back. "Now that the cruise control's on, did I hear one of you fellas ask about my theory?"

FOR SUCH A SPIRITLESS MAN, I wouldn't have guessed William could be passionate about anything—really, he didn't even seem to be all that passionate for continuing to breathe—but it turns out that there was one thing that brought a sparkle to his tired eye, and that thing was humor. That's not to say that he liked to be humorous, though—he just liked to talk about humor in general. What the word meant, how do we identify it, what's its purpose. Things like that.

    "I spent the best years of my life trying to make others see how important humor is," he said, staring off through what I can only assume was the windshield. "And once I finally convinced'm, once I finally made'm see it how I see it, I found myself having to convince'm how important I was. No matter what I did, they laughed at me. They laughed at me before, and they laughed at me after." Codsfellow chuckled at that.

    "Hey kid," he said to me, and I think he was somehow looking at me through the rearview mirror. "Why do you think it is we laugh?"

    "...what do you mean?"

    "So we frown when we're sad, right? And we smile when we're happy...so what are we when we're laughing?"

    I found a cigarette in a wadded up box in the bottom of my backpack. I tried to press it back together, then I stuck it in my mouth and held it in place with my tongue. "I don't know," I said. "We're just...more happy, I guess? Sorry, but I don't really do roadtrip games."

    The man turned around slowly and stared at me with grim hopelessness. "I know," he said. "I know what it is." Then he crept his face back around to the front and flipped down his blinker.

    The dumpster grew quiet. I could almost hear the asphalt under our tires, the clicking of our turn signal. William's question hung in the air, What are we when we're laughing?, and I thought about it a little harder. Codsfellow was looking off to the side, and I wonder if he could see some vast landscape rolling by.

    "...so?" I eventually asked. "What is it? What's going on when we laugh?"

    The man seemed reluctant to answer, even after all that buildup. He scratched behind one of his ears, then he asked: "When's the last time you've laughed, kid?"

    I shrugged and searched around my pockets and my backpack trying to find my lighter. "I dunno. It's been awhile since I've seen anything funny. Except this of course. Riding around in a magic garbage can with a couple of literal Clowns...that's about as funny as it gets, I think."

    "But you ain't laughing. If this is so funny, why ain't you laughing then?" William leaned forward, then pressed something into the wall. After holding it there for a few seconds, he pulled it back out and handed it backwards to me. "Careful. It's hot."

    He wasn't holding anything, of course, but I took it anyway and held it up the end of my cigarette and puffed. Nothing happened, and I felt so stupid for even trying...but I still tossed the imaginary thing away over my shoulder instead of just stopping to pretend. Codsfellow hissed in pain, then grabbed around the floor and handed the lighter back to William once he found it.

    "How old are you, kid?" asked William. "Eleven? Twelve?"

    "Twelve."

    "So you're familiar with the playground then?"

    My eyes narrowed. I had flashbacks to the schoolyard. I could almost hear the screaming and feel the Indian rug burns. "I've heard of it."

    "Next time you're there, take a look around. Everything you need to know about humor is right there. Children being pushed off of monkey bars. Pigtails getting pulled. Faces being made fun of. All done with laughter."

    William took one hand off the "steering wheel" and turned around completely in his seat. "Can you guess why it is we laugh, son? Why the ones laughing are always standing above those crying? Why every laugh points a finger? Why laughter surrounds and suffocates those who are alone? Why it attaches itself to the miserable and the pathetic?" His saggy eyes looked right into mine, blinking as slow as he breathed. His face was darkening and twitching, as if he was holding down some acidic cough. I was overcome with discomfort.

    "Don't tell anybody I said this," I did indeed say, "but maybe you should keep your eyes on the—"

    "We LAUGH," he bellowed, his face trembling, "because we love to be CRUEL. We love the feeling of knowing we are better than others. We love expressing that feeling, and we love showing it off. Whenever we laugh, we are becoming better than something else, and we love that! Wanna know why you're not laughing now, even though you'll be hooting and hollering about it with your friends soon as you get out of here? Because when you're with your friends, you're better than us—but right now you are us, and there ain't much funny about that. Oh, I know! I know...people laugh at me now, but it's true! Don't ever let them try to tell you that laughter is all hopscotch and ticklefights. There is ALWAYS something getting put dow—"

    "William!" Codsfellow said. "Look out for that—"

    William spun forward and slammed his foot against the floor. Codsfellow flung his arm across my chest. William's body flew against the front wall, and Codsfellow somersaulted into his back. They both groaned for a minute, crumpled together on the dumpster floor.

    "S-Sebastian!" yelped Cods, once he regained his bearings. "Where are you, child?"

    "Still over here. Still not Sebastian."

    "Are you hurt?"

    "Nope."

    "Oh, thank Doug!" Codsfellow leaned himself up and grabbed William by the armpit. "How about you, William? You unscathed?"

    "...still alive."

    "Splendid! Oh what reflexes you had there, old sport. I say, that bindlebat appeared out of nowhere!"

    William crept himself back into his seat. He looked at me in shame. "Sorry, fellas. I'm done driving. This is as close as I want to come anyway. We're here." He pushed the stick into park, then he stood up and pushed back the dumpster lid. Sunlight and fresh air spread throughout the space. Codsfellow stood up and stepped out, then he offered me his hand to pull on. With William's help, I scaled the dumpster wall and jumped over. Outside, there was no longer a dirty alley, but instead an empty parking lot behind a train station.

    "Thanks for lift, old bean! This is plenty close," said Codsfellow, lifting his hat. "Look me up next time you're in West Townville. There's this Turkish deli I know of that has some of the most delectable leftover Naan you've ever tasted, and if you go at just the right hour, it'll still be as warm and as fresh as when they first served it."

    "Sure thing, Arthur. Give your mother my love, and tell your father I'll see him in hell."

    "I will! She'll be glad to hear how well you're doing. Alright, come on, child. Let's see if we can catch ourselves a train."

    Before I could say goodbye or thank you, William lowered  himself back into the dumpster and closed the lid. I wanted to peek inside to see if he was still there, but the dumpster was too tall, and I didn't know what it mattered anyway. So I hitched up my backpack onto my shoulders and followed Cods into his hometown.

WHAT DO YOU IMAGINE a town full of Clowns might look like? Suburbs made out of circus tents? Rainbow-colored idiots cartwheeling down the sidewalks? Parades and marching bands strolling down every street? Don't be ashamed if that's what you imagine—you're not that different from most, and you're not that different from me when I first visited Clowntown. I expected chaotic insanity, when really it was more like...heavily controlled insanity.

    We started off in what I assumed was downtown—crosswalks, window displays, buses, lofts, things like that—and if it wasn't for a few small things, it would almost pass as any other downtown in any town not run by Clowns. The buildings were well-taken care of and freshly painted...but almost too well taken care of, and too freshly painted. There wasn't a shred of litter to be found, all the plants in the window boxes and urns were so green and shiny that they might as well have been fake, and the buildings were so colorful I had an urge to adjust the settings on the TV. 

    But the strangest thing about the town was the inhabitants themselves. Yes, they were Clowns—colorful, poofy hair, white skin, red noses, blank stares—but what made them so weird was not that they were Clownish, but that they all seemed to be trying their hardest to be un-Clownish. When we were in downtown, I saw Clownmen dressed like Barbers, even going so far as to wear fake, curly mustaches, and I saw Clownladies acting like Bakers, with their white toques and aprons and flour-covered cheeks. None of them seemed to be particularly skilled at whatever caste they were trying to imitate (the ceilings in the bakeries had been stained black with smoke, and the tile floors of the barbershops were more pink than pearl), but they were all trying to be something...normal all the same.

    Codsfellow fit right in here...almost. He certainly didn't stick out as much here as he did back in Westie—but still, the residents here didn't treat him much differently than the ones back in the city. They stared at him as he walked by. They stayed quiet when he greeted them. They stepped into the street so as to not share the same sidewalk. And, just like in the city, Codsfellow didn't seem to notice or mind at all. "It's good to be back," he told me after a cafe owner flipped her sign from OPEN to CLOSED when she saw us approach. "Shoot," he said at that. "Always a minute late and a penny short."

    Once we departed from the downtown area, we entered a suburb, which, like the rest of the town, was vibrant and pristine. It smelled like fresh cut grass and gasoline, and the birds chirped and sang like a well-practiced choir. When Codsfellow saw someone mowing their grass or pulling weeds in their garden, he would lift his hat to them, and they would stop and stare and do nothing more.

    "Are we there yet?" I complained once we walked out of the suburbs. We were in a park now, climbing up hills and strolling down windy paths. I had thrown out my school books almost as soon as I first saw a trash can, but my puny, smoke-ridden lungs still did not approve of all the exercise.

    "Nearly," Codsfellow said. He was starting to sweat, and the perspiration was gathering around the neck of his shirt. He had loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves about a mile back. "Just a little further now."

    Nearly. That's all I had been hearing since we left the dumpster. I wasn't convinced that he knew where he was going, or if he was even from here. Even though he acted like he knew everyone, making sure to tell me the life story of each person we saw, no one acted like they knew him. He did the same thing back in the city, but at least back there the people had the guts to tell him to his face that they had no idea who he was. Here they just...stared.

    "Fwhew!" he said and stopped walking. "Let's take a breather, shall we? Give our dogs a chance to catch up." There was a nearby bench under a sycamore, and we went over to it and sat down. As much as I wanted this walk to be over, I was grateful for the seat and the shade. Codsfellow dug into his pocket and pulled out a package of peanut-butter crackers. He took one for himself, then handed me another. I took it without saying thank you.

    "Can you just call someone to pick us up?" I begged, spraying crumbs as I talked. It had been a long day, and I didn't know how many more nearlys I could handle.

    "No, I'd rather not disturb anyone," Codsfellow said, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief. "It's bad manners to call during the hours of dinnertime, wouldn't you agree?"

    I groaned and yanked on my hair. "I'll do it then! I don't have a problem being rude. We passed a payphone not too long ago; I can just use that. Who should I call? Your parents? How about siblings, you have any of them?"

    "I am afraid my family doesn't believe in phone numbers," he said. "Bit old fashioned that way."

    " 'Old fashioned'? " I nearly scoffed up my crackers. "At what point in history—between now and the invention of the telephone—did anyone not 'believe' in the existence or usefulness of phone numbers?"

    Codsfellow adjusted his legs and moved the food around in his mouth thoughtfully. "Do you have a phone number?"

    "Well, no, but...that's 'cause I don't own a phone."

    "Fair enough. How many phone numbers do you know, then?"

    "Well, none...but who needs to memorize phone numbers any more? C'mon..."

    Cods smiled and pointed at me. "I believe that you and my parents will get along swimmingly!" Then he looked struck by an idea, and he held up a finger as if to say, One moment.

    He pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and scooted closer to me. When he opened it up, an accordion of pictures unfolded all the way to the bench seat. Every photograph was nearly the same.

    "What the muck?" I snatched the wallet from his hands and looked closer. "When did you take all these pictures of me sleeping?!"

    Codsfellow chuckled. "On your first night in my home. You were so cute at that age. Oh how quickly you've grown!"

    "I've only known you for, like, two weeks, man!" 

    He nodded and smiled as if he completely understood why I was troubled so much—which he obviously did not, because if he did, he would have kept those pictures in a safe, not his pants. "Here," he said, and he retrieved the wallet and folded all the pictures back into the middle, then he pulled out a different photo, a larger one that was stashed in one of the coin pockets. "Take a look-see at this."

     He handed over a ragged, sepia-tinted photograph of five Clowns staring into the camera, all of them appearing shocked and confused. Codsfellow pointed to the two adults standing in the back of the group. "There's mother and father," he said, then he lowered his finger to the three Clownish children in the front, moving from shortest to tallest. "And there's my younger brother C.J....my sister Genevieve...and then Yours Truly, right over here." He handed me the picture so I could look it over more, and he leaned back with a proud look on his face. "Yes. It will do my heart good to see everyone again."

    The father in the picture looked more like Codsfellow than the boy who would eventually become him. The father had the tired face and the wrinkled brow that was present even when Codsfellow smiled. The boy in the photograph looked so fresh and so happy, even in the bewildered state that the cameraman seemed to have caught them in—the flash even made his eyes sparkle.

    And then something occurred to me. "That Farmer guy said it's been years since the buses came out this way," I said, tossing the photograph into Cods's lap. "So how long has it been since you last saw'm?" It was an odd thing for me to ask, something that was actually courteous and curious, but I was tired and not feeling myself.

    Codsfellow's smile faded, but it never left his face. "Genevieve visited me for my birthday last year. But my parents...well, let's just say that it's been some time since I've last seen them." I wanted to question him further, but he suddenly looked so tired that I thought against it.

    After a minute of peaceful silence, Codsfellow slapped his knee and stood up. "Welp! I feel refreshed! Off we go, if we hope for there to be any food left!" He didn't even wait for me. He just grabbed his suitcase and started walking. 

    I groaned and slid off the bench. When I turned around to grab my backpack from the seat, I noticed a piece of metal that had been riveted to the back of the bench. "In Honor of William W. Wearily III," it said. "May His Contribution to Comedy and Clowns, No Matter How Misguided, Never Be Forgotten."

    I stared at it for some time before Codsfellow yelled back: "Come now, child! No time for dilly dally!" And I hitched up my empty backpack and continued down the path.

    THE SUN WAS GROWING FAT and beginning its descent when we reached our destination. The end of the park was lined with a black, wrought-iron fence that had been taken over by ivy. Codsfellow walked alongside it until he found a gate, and he creaked it open, and we walked inside.

    It was a cemetery, quite lovely, quite clean, and I had figured that it was just another detour on this endless journey we were on. But we walked deeper into the graveyard until we came to a big willow by a pond. Codsfellow ducked underneath the branches that hung like flowery ribbons, and I followed him in. Underneath the canopy of this tree were two gravestones, side by side: CEDRIC CORNELIUS CODSFELLOW, 1946—2010 and GLORIA VANDERPLOP CODSFELLOW, 1948—2011.

    "Mother! Father!" Codsfellow said, putting down his suitcase and removing his hat. "How well you both look!" And after a few seconds of confusion, I grew nauseous with clarity and fatigue.