Clownshoes was hi-larious! Face white like a ghost, lips bright red, ’fro bright red and jiggling, he rushed round and round the ring, long shoes slapping the sawdust, raising little clouds. He backflipped and rolled and tumbled and jumped and did the splits and clowned. Hilarious!
         From behind a curtain a little VW bug drove out in front of the crowd and stopped in front of Clownshoes. He stopped cavorting and watched, along with us, with lines of perspiration streaking the makeup on his cheeks, as one, two, four, six… can it really be that twelve clowns just came out of that tiny thing? Even Clownshoes seemed impressed, then he turned and ran in the other direction.
         Except he didn’t really run. He only ran in place, kicking up the sawdust with big long steps that got him nowhere. The little boy in the front row laughed a high screechy laugh, and the audience applauded.
         The other clowns crept forward, some hopping, some dragging their feet. In their hands they carried cream pies, seltzer bottles, bowling pins, plastic flowers, lead pipes. On the one hand it seemed like it took them forever to encircle Clownshoes, on the other hand it seemed like no time at all, entertained as we were.
         When they had him in their circle they went to work. A smoke bomb went off, so all we could see through the haze and kicked-up dust was the occasional limb—or shoe—popping up here and there out of the general confusion. We heard thumps, and cracks, honks, joy buzzers and slide whistles, and yelps of pain from Clownshoes, but no pleas or screams (we knew Clownshoes couldn’t talk). Eventually the whahoo died down and when the smoke cleared we watched the twelve clowns return to their car and enter it one by one before driving away. In the center of the ring lay unmoving Clownshoes, red and wet from his head to the tips of his—ha hah ha—his clownshoes.
         On the way out I heard the little boy talking to his parents: But is he really…?
         No, they assured him, Clownshoes was just fine. He did this every night and twice on Sundays.
         But they didn’t know what I knew, which was that, behind the makeup, it was always a new Clownshoes for every performance. Ha ha! A joke within a joke!
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