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A Trip To Boone's Farm

Zippy the Clown walked hastily, with purpose, through the Topsfield Fair grounds. Laughter like rain fell all around him, ferris wheels and roller coasters raced and roared behind, ahead and to both sides of him. Zippy met every face with a happy dopey smile. He plowed through the seething crowds with a small weeping boy named Julian in tow.

Zippy hated children, hated them with as much passion as he had in his clown faced soul. This one, this one! He thought, this sniveling brat behind him, well Zippy hated him too. Any child that lost his parents didn’t deserve to have parents as far as he was concerned. And that’s what this boy had done, lost his parents in a crowd of thousands.

* * *

Julian let himself be pulled through the crowd; tears cascaded down his face, careening over his cheeks and onto his Jar Jar Binks T-shirt. He had been standing next to his sister Brenda watching the ponies when he lost the grip on his balloon. Julian chased the red balloon laughing and giggling as it played hide and seek with him. He caught up with the balloon that was still trying to get away from him. When he turned around to show his sister that he had it, she was gone, he couldn't find her anywhere. His eyes swept over the faces of strangers searching for one that he knew. He couldn’t find one person in the surrounding hundreds that he knew.

He tried to find his way back to the ponies but it seemed that the balloon had led him far away and got him turned about. Julian sat down in a corner, letting his balloon go he began to cry uncontrollably.

"Hey there, Scooter!" said a happy voice that reminded Julian of Barney. "What’s wrong pal, are ya’ lost?"

Julian looked up to see the painted face of a clown looking down at him with a big smile emblazoned across the mouth and cheeks. The smile widened and Julian stopped crying. He didn’t want to tell the clown that he was lost. He was a big boy, big boys don’t get lost, he thought to himself.

"I was lost once too" said the painted face. "Then somebody came along and said ‘Hey let’s go find your parents.’ Do you want to go find your parents?" the clown asked.

"Okay," Julian said meekly, drying his tears.

"Okay!" said the clown in what didn’t seem to Julian to be quite as nice and happy a voice as he had used before. The voice reminded Julian of the voice his Uncle John had used when Julian had broken a glass jar in the kitchen. He didn’t have much time to think about it more, in mid-thought he was jolted from his sitting position as the clown pulled him up off the ground and began moving at a quick pace through the crowd.

* * *

Zippy dragged the sniveling brat through the crowds towards the clown house on the other side of the fair grounds. He came to a stop in front of the door quickly; the boy not expecting it kept walking, slamming into Zippy. He looked down at the boy with such ferocity that only those with the amplification of a painted face could achieve. The make-up that had made Julian originally think the clown was nice, seemed to twist and distort making the face laugh with cruelty.

"GET IN THERE!" the clown yelled, the words gushing over black teeth. Zippy pushed the boy forcibly into what looked on the outside to be what you expected a clown to live in, but what was on the inside actually a tool shed. There were no lights inside where he put the boy. He slammed the door saying that he was going to look for Julian’s parents. Zippy turned his back to the shed, leaning up against the door smiling with his breath heaving through him, his make-up twisted back to that of a happy clown. Zippy the happy idiot boy was back again.

* * *

Zippy the idiot boy wasn’t a professional name. His father had thought it up for him when he was 6, long before he ever thought of earning his living as a clown. Zippy couldn’t remember his real name anymore, nobody had called him by it in over thirty years, he was Zippy the Clown to everyone that knew him, but to himself he was Zippy the idiot boy.

His father had hated him, he didn’t know why. When ever he asked his father would beat him and get drunk and beat him again. Zippy couldn’t ask his mother either. His mother was dead, he could barely remember her, his only real memory of his mother was of her slapping him and knocking him off of the table of their trailer in the Shady Homes trailer park.

Zippy’s father never worked, he just wheeled about the trailer in his wheel chair and drank cheap wine. "I'm going to Boone’s Farm tonight, Zippy," his father used to say. "So don't bother me." Although he couldn’t read the label Zippy figured that Boone’s Farm was the name of the wine his father drank. Whenever his father went to Boone’s Farm he always seemed to want to beat on Zippy.

One night after drinking six or seven bottles of the sweet tasting wine, his father had beaten him with a broom handle for a half an hour. I’m lucky he can’t kick, Zippy always thought to himself during his father’s ritual beatings. The red broom handle arced again and came crashing down on Zippy’s head. He crumpled into a pile on the floor, his body rising and falling with sobs in the trailer’s narrow hall.

"Get out of the way," his father yelled, but he couldn’t move. Zippy felt a crushing sensation as his father's wheel chair rolled over his outstretched hand. He heard the bones in his fingers snapping like thin pieces of chalk. His father burped loudly and rolled away down the hall. That night, after his father had passed out from another three bottles, Zippy lit the trailer on fire and ran away when the flames began to leap up in giant smiles to touch the sky.

* * *

Julian sat in the dark in silence; he had cried himself out long ago. He didn’t know how long he had been there; there was no light in the clown house at all. He was scared. He was scared that he would never see anyone ever again, he was also scared that if he did see another person again it would be the clown. He didn’t want to see the clown again. The clown had gone to look for his parents but he didn’t believe him. Brenda had let him watch a movie once about a clown who had lured a little boy down a sewer and eaten him. Julian was sure that this clown was one of those clowns.

The door to the shed opened suddenly letting blinding-vengeful light in to his atrophied eyes. In the bright white light Julian could see two forms one large one, that he knew was the clown and another smaller one that was slightly larger than Julian himself. He pushed himself back into a corner hoping that the clown wouldn’t see him.

"Zippy, where are my parents?" the other form, which sounded like a young girl, asked.

"SHUT UP!" Zippy said. In a mock-happy voice he added, "now stay quiet kids I’m going to get your parents, hehe" he laughed.

The door slammed shut, rainbows of color played across the blackness that was Julian’s vision. Oily circles of blue, red, and yellow swam over the nothingness inside the dark shed. He heard the girl sniffle and begin to cry, Julian began to cry too.

* * *

Zippy ran and ran with his broken hand the night he killed his father in the fire. Each bouncing step brought a complaint of pain from Zippy’s shattered hand. He ran into the night until he could no longer recognize anything and he couldn’t see the glow of the fire on the horizon. He later found out that the fire had spread and burnt the whole trailer park to the ground, he didn’t care though, they had all hated Zippy the idiot boy. His father hadn’t been the only one to beat him.

He grew up on the streets, he didn’t know how to read or write. He never once went to school and had no idea what math was except that it was supposed to explain the 1,2,3’s. Nobody ever cared to find out who he was or what had happened to him, they just let him degenerate in peace. He never found a family but lived with the people in the streets and eventually was taken into a circus and given a job as a clown because it didn’t take much skill. The job was hard for Zippy because of his extreme distrust and hatred for families, little boys and their daddies, little girls and their mommies.

* * *

It had been hours since Zippy had found Julian; he was out looking through the fair grounds for more lost kids to bring back to the shed. He was angry, no more misery today; no other children were lost. The little girl and the little boy were all for today. He was mad now; he thrived off of the fear the little tikes felt when the realized they were lost. Sometimes he would pick a child to watch and he would watch the child separate themselves from their family accidentally. Zippy would watch the whole thing so he could see the utter despair conquer the child’s face when the little shit found out that mommy and daddy weren’t a hand grasp away.

Zippy slithered through the crowd, past the cotton candy stands and game booths. He passed the Cyclotron and could hear the Ozzy Osbourne song Mr. Tinker Train pouring out from inside. "Would like some candy little girl, come a little closer" the song said, Zippy laughed. He liked Ozzy. Ozzy understood Zippy it seemed, even if Zippy didn’t understand himself. Zippy found his way back to the clown house. With a violent jerk he opened the door to the shed.

"WAKE UP KIDDIES! Uncle Zippy’s home! Are we all having fun, HEHE," Zippy giggled with glee seeing the fear in their blinded eyes. "Don’t worry Uncle Zippy’s going to find your parents, don’t you worry. How upset they’ll be when they realize you’ve been gone all day and they didn’t notice, because they don’t really care about you." With that he slammed the door shut and Zippy laughed happily to himself.

* * *

Julian was sure of it. Zippy was one of those clowns. He had black teeth, and he was mean and had thrown him in here for most of the day. The girl and he had long ago, it seemed like years to Julian, curled up together in a crying mass of sadness. They didn’t speak to each other; they both knew what was going to happen. They both knew that Zippy was one of those clowns and that he would kill them eventually. Julian was too young to know what it meant to be killed, but he knew that if he were killed he wouldn’t be the same anymore. He would be something else instead. He wasn’t sure what that something was though. Brenda had never explained that much to him.

They slept and woke intermittently crying and sleeping. Sometimes Julian would be asleep without even knowing it and he would dream of the things that Zippy would do to them. Once he saw Zippy tying him down to a table, he would hear the girl crying behind him, he never saw her in his dreams because he still didn’t know what she looked like. Zippy would bring out knives and hammers and nails and lay them down beside Julian, but before Zippy could do anything Julian would scare himself awake. He would scream loudly and wake the girl up and they would both cry, the girl never asked why Julian screamed, she must have had the dreams too, Julian thought.

* * *

Somehow through it all Zippy managed to never feel sorry for himself. With all the shit that happened to him since he was born he never once said "Boo hoo why me." Zippy felt that he must have deserved everything he got for some transgression that he had long since forgotten. Parts of Zippy’s memory were gone all together, he could remember nothing between the ages of 14 and 23. It was just a dark black hole in his memory. All he knew was that one day he was 14 and cleaning up after the elephants in the circus and the next day he was 23 and drinking his daddy’s favorite, Boone’s Farm Apple Wine, in his trailer still wearing his make-up from his day of being the happy go lucky clown.

Through all of this he never felt sorry. He didn’t care; he looked down on people who pitied themselves. Zippy pitied no one, he didn’t fret and cry when one of the circus animals were sick, he would take a firm hold on their necks and twist until her heard the satisfying crack that said that they no longer needed pity anyway. He didn’t feel sorry for the acrobat girls that the ringmaster raped at night when all the daddies, mommies, and kiddies had gone home. Zippy especially didn’t pity the little kiddies that always seemed to get lost, no he didn’t pity them at all, he hated them most of all of God’s creatures. Children that would lose their families didn’t deserve their families, that was Zippy’s favorite saying although the wording of it often changed as Zippy got older and drunker.

The people in the circus left Zippy alone, once the day of entertaining was done they didn’t deal with him. To them, he was just a retard, just Zippy the idiot boy. That was just fine with him, after all he was. He knew it, and he didn’t care. Sometimes he would think about throwing one of the snakes into the snake charmers bed when he was asleep, not because he hated the man or anything but because he often got feelings that would tell him to do things. Zippy was afraid though, he never went through with what the voice would tell him, the voice was his father. The only time he obeyed his father’s voice was when it involved the little brats he would throw in his shed. The circus would move around from town to town, state to state, region to region, but Zippy always had a shed to throw kids in. Zippy always had kids to throw into the shed too. It was easy; maybe that’s why he listened to his father, because it was easier than not listening.

* * *

Julian and the little girl lay in a pile on the dirty floor, no longer crying. The two of them were now truly out of tears. They hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in over seven hours. They both thought separately that their parents must have really been mad at them to have not found them yet. They shouldn’t have wondered off. Neither child spoke but they both knew what the other child felt, it was a fear and hurt that they could taste and smell in the stuffy air of the shed. The fear dripped out of their small pores effusing itself in the small room.

The door creaked open slowly and softly. There in front of the blinking slowly adjusting eyes was Zippy the Clown. He peered down at them with hatred and anger in his eyes, seeing their discomfiture and fear, he smiled. He smiled a big happy, make-up modified, clown smile.

"See folks, here they are, safe and sound." Zippy stepped to the side and behind him was a group of people. Julian immediately recognized his family; his mom and dad were standing with Brenda. His mother’s cheeks were puffy and red from crying, his father had a worried look in his eyes that Julian didn’t recognize, Brenda too looked different, her hair was disheveled and one of her cheeks had an angry red hand print emblazoned upon it. "When I couldn’t find you right away." Zippy continued. "I brought them in here so that I could find you and I would know right where they were."

There were other people with Julian’s parents. There was a black man, woman, and two twin boys a little older then Julian’s big sister Brenda. The woman ran right in a picked up the little girl, who was also black. Julian hadn’t thought she was black, true Julian was young but he thought that he would know the difference between the sound of a white girl and black girl, but he obviously didn’t, he stored that away in his brain for later childhood musings because right now he was concentrating on his crying mother.

Julian’s daddy came into the shed and picked him up and hugged him close and tight. He carried Julian out into the night air. The air was fresh and he could no longer taste the little girls fear in the air, but he could still taste the remnants of it upon his tongue. His father put him down and he hugged his mother and sister. Both families thanked Zippy profusely and tried to give him money as more thanks but Zippy the idiot boy wouldn’t hear of it, after all he couldn’t count anyway, what was more money to him.

* * *

"You should have killed them Zippy!" the voice said. Zippy didn’t listen though. He leaned back in his chair in the trailer and turned on the TV. It was almost time for Jay Leno to come on. Zippy didn’t understand the joke’s that the man made but he knew that adults were supposed to watch the Tonight Show. Zippy had been a loyal, if ignorant, fan for years; he had liked Johnny Carson and the guy named Ed who had the deep voice.

Zippy the idiot boy lifted the bottle of Country Quencher Boone’s Farm Apple Wine to his lips. A long sweet sip slipped down his throat as the skunk haired man on the Tonight Show came on the screen. Zippy laughed with the studio audience even though he didn’t know why. He lifted the bottle and sipped again. The wine and the laughter began to drown out his father’s voice that was still complaining of its disappointment in the day’s event. After five bottles Zippy passed out and dreamt of fires and sad little kiddies, his make-up off for the day, Zippy’s sleeping form smiled.