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It’s Sunday!

So, if you’d like a little sample of Clown to get the introduction, I’m feeling in a generous mood. Here’s a wee taster for you:

PROLOGUE

I

I was eight when an uncle tried, in his well-meaning way, to explain my name to me. Unfortunately for him, I was about two years too young to comprehend what he meant. It became a little clearer when I was ten, but at that age I thought it was almost cool. A few years later I learned to hate my own name, and the man who had given it to me. Not that I really knew him, but I could judge him by his legacy.

I spent a lot of my teenage years wondering about my father; who he was, why he would name me so, why he left, where he was. When I was seventeen, my mother felt I was old enough, and took me to his grave, and explained why she and the rest of my family had kept his death from me. Nothing sinister in it, they assured me, just embarrassment. Then she explained why once a year, on the date of his death, she took a bottle out to his grave, and emptied one of the finest brands of Scotch into the ground.

The more I thought about it, the more I resented the effort my mother went to, whilst he had chosen so lazily for me.

It wasn’t long afterwards that I decided to change my name. Nothing major. I just decided I didn’t like being known for the sins of my father. I found a surname I kind of liked, and took to calling myself J.D. My mother bore this with remarkable patience, almost as if she’d been waiting for it.

As I headed towards my twentieth birthday, my feelings of resentment towards my father faded a little. Once in a while I’d head out to his grave myself, sitting nearby the weatherworn stone that bore his name, and tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

My mother, God bless her, had always been fully supportive of everything I’d ever wanted to do. Perhaps after my father, she was afraid to upset me, lose me, whatever. We were close, sure, but not all that close. For my part, I tried to be a good son, but there was always something that stood between us. Sometimes we’d sit and talk about what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be. We’d talk for hours, about where I could study, what my calling was, how I wanted to see myself in ten years.

I drifted aimlessly. Ended up never going to college. Couldn’t rightly say I ever found myself a career to settle into. There was never going to be a pension plan in my future. Instead, I contented myself floating around doing bit jobs in our hometown. It was a pleasant enough little place, I guess. Full of small-town businesses that were happy for somebody to show an interest, delighted for an extra pair of hands around. I worked in most of them. Ran errands for the doctor; helped the vet do his rounds; wrote a few articles for the paper; helped deliver them, too. I fixed the roof of the church, painted the walls of the school, changed more tyres than I could count. In a couple of years, I learned more practical skills than I ever could at college.

I made friends everywhere I went. Sometimes I would wander out of the town, and out into the big city. Unlike most of my folk who did the same, I never really felt out of place there. Or, rather, I never felt any more out of place than I did anywhere else. Sometimes I picked up the odd piece of work whilst I was out there, too.

Time came when I was twenty-five, and I still had no idea what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be.

Until I heard about him.

I’m still not sure exactly who told me about him first. I was probably in the bar, enjoying a cold one, and shooting the breeze with some of the old-timers, when someone brought the topic around to him. To this day, I still don’t know why their story sparked my interest so, but I was hooked from the first tale. Maybe it was that they said he was an orphan. Maybe it was the name, foolish like my own.

Whatever it was, it was like someone finally flicked a switch inside of me, and I realised what I wanted to do. Some of the tales they told me where fantastic, and doubtless fuelled by the telling and retelling, but there was enough there that I wanted to know more. I needed to know more.

So I went looking.

II

I left my home, said goodbye to my mother, and hit the road. Truth to tell, I think she was a little relieved that I was finally growing up and moving on a little. Maybe I was only headed on a fool’s errand, but at least I was doing something. I promised to write her as often as I could. I showed her the stacks of paper I was taking (which in truth were there for the recording of tales along the way), kissed her on the cheek, and headed out of town.

I had only a vague idea of which way to go. I was, after all, following a man who had passed vaguely through this direction, many years before, leaving only second-hand tales and not-so-shrewd guesses as to his destination. But I had a whole lifetime ahead of me, with nothing else better to do.

As it turns out, it took me the better part of a decade to catch up with him, following a trail across continents, dangers, and near-miracles. There were times when I was convinced I had lost him for good, times when I was convinced I had lost myself, but always, always something came along to lead me again in the right direction. It was almost as if someone, something wanted us to meet, or at least, meant for me to record his story.

And I heard so many. Some were merely snippets of conversation. Some took days in the telling. I heard his name, his deeds from so many different sources, it defied belief. It was following his trail that I learnt that there is far more to this life, this world than I had ever suspected. There were moments I felt would freeze the very blood in my veins, others when I felt I would laugh fit to burst.

There was an ancient and venerable shaman, who told his tale of the man atop a mountain, in the midst of a raging blizzard. A child who hadn’t aged in a century whispered in a cave, in pitch darkness. In the depths of a forest, a chorus of birds sang a song in turns. In a graveyard visited only by the dead, the ghost of a cat showed me a miracle.

Much of what I heard was nothing more than hearsay, and rumour. Second and third-hand tales. There were those who claimed to have been best of friends with him, to have walked the roads with him, but had never even met the man. Some were addled by age, or by drink, or any of a hundred vices, and their tales were distorted. Most who claimed to have met him never had. Their tales differed greatly.

And there were a thousand tales of his life, a thousand more of my hearing them. I was shot in several places, spending weeks, months in hospital. I worked in shops, carnivals, garages, fields. I was chased out of one town, welcomed with open arms to another. I spent nights in open fields, the rain pouring down upon me, as I huddled in misery. I laid in the sun, on beaches deserted and pure. I dined on haute cuisine, ate in the streets with the homeless. Someday, I may put pen to paper and write them all down.

Someday. But not today. This is not my tale.

This is his tale. This is the tale that began with a discovery, which ends here tonight.

III

For, after years of searching, of asking, of listening, I’ve finally made it here, journey‘s end. I have notebooks filled with writing, mostly my own. Most nights, sitting beneath the moon, insomnia keeping my eyes from staying closed, I tried working the mammoth task of sorting through them. There’s a lot of repetition. A lot of those I spoke to had a flair for story-telling, and would fill a whole pad with what they could have said in a sentence. And, naturally, there’s a hell of a lot that’s just plain hogwash.

And, for the tale that I‘m coming to, a lot that will turn out to be irrelevant. Perhaps I can save them for another day. I’m sure I won’t be the kindest, or cleanest of editors in the telling of the tale which sits before me.

I’d always figured I should return home to do it. It’s been far too long since I went back there. My mother must be worried – my last letter was several months back. And there’s my father, of course. I never said goodbye to him when I left, so it’s only fair that I at least drop by on my way. And I was always best able to do my thinking when I was at his grave.

That was the plan. Funny how things can turn out.

I found my way to a graveyard. Not quite the one my father was buried in, but close enough. And here I sit. Stacks of paper, piles of notebooks around me. Sitting, thinking, staring.

At him.

I followed him here, after all. And now, having finally caught up with him, with the man I’ve spent so many years chasing, with the man who lived a life filled with the miraculous, I can only sit and stare at him. I’m still not quite sure what it is that caught my imagination so, nor why others speak so fondly of him. In truth, he seems a little disappointing. And yet, I can’t take my eyes away from him.

For his part, he sits there in silence, a strange little smile on his painted lips. He seemed to know me before I even introduced myself, as though word of me had already reached him. He wasn’t upset, though. I think, perhaps, his path led him here to cross mine. Perhaps.

We’ve been sitting here for an hour already, barely a couple of minutes of actual conversation between us. I can’t think how to begin; he seems in no great hurry. My mouth is dry. The wind plays with the pages around us, lifting up the cover to one notebook above the others, and I know where to start. Such an obvious place, really.

I tell him that I’ve heard so much about him, so many stories, ask if they can possibly all be true. He smiles, that strange smile of his, and looks at the paper. He asks if it’s all about him.

I nod.

“Is it true?”

He shrugs. How can he say what’s true or not, if he doesn’t know what’s there?

I blink, the question surprising me. Somehow, for some strange reason, I’d assumed he would know all the stories about himself; know everything I’d written down, could make one blanket statement confirming them all, or denying them. I tried not to think of him denying them – it would mean a waste of the last few years of my life.

In the distance, the sky rumbles. I pick up the first booklet, ask him if I could read him the story of his life, and he nods. I lick my lips; look at the scrawled writing, then at him.

The man named Clown.