A Trip to the Circus

A Story in Four Parts

Based on true events.

Part One

“Are we really going to see an Italian?”

“Yes, just don’t tell your mother,” said his father.

That wasn’t a problem, as little Jimmy Oswin hated his mother. She made him go to church. Beyond that, she didn’t let him play with the Chinese kid who lived across the street. His mother never would have allowed Jimmy to go to the circus because it was Satanic. They were few and far between, but Jimmy loved the adventures he shared with just his dad. The friends Jimmy was allowed to play with also liked his dad, and Jimmy always felt a sense of superiority when his dad would swing by in his pickup truck and pick Jimmy up while he was in the middle of playing ball with his friends in the cul-de-sac. Despite sharing the same strawberry blonde hair as his mother, he did everything he could to emulate his father.

It wasn’t the clowns or midgets or lions that excited Jimmy about the circus—it was Luigi the Italian. Jimmy had never seen an Italian before, at least not in real life, and his mom didn’t let him watch many movies, so he barely had any idea of what they looked like. About two years ago, Jimmy's mom disowned his older sister for dating an Italian boy because Mom wasn't supportive of mixed-race relationships. For weeks, his sister and mother lived under the same roof, refusing to speak to one another. His sister ran away from Detroit once she was convinced their mom was responsible for getting Antonio drafted to fight in Vietnam. After Jimmy’s sister ran away from home, his mother wouldn’t even cook spaghetti for dinner anymore. Jimmy hadn’t seen his sister since.

They pulled into the parking lot, and Jimmy caught his first glimpse of the giant circus tent.

“Holy crud,” he said.

“Excited kiddo?” asked his dad.

Jimmy nodded his head voraciously.

“And when Mom asks what we did today, what do you tell her?”

“We were at the hospital visiting grandma.”

His father rustled Jimmy’s hair.

Somehow, Dad had scored seats almost dead center and only three rows from the front. The show opened with some juggling. Jimmy knew a kid in his class who could juggle, so he wasn't that impressed. The bears riding bicycles were much more impressive. He had to admit that the trapeze artists were fine and all, but he was getting impatient waiting for Luigi the Italian.

There were several close calls where Jimmy was convinced one of the trapeze artists would miss catching their partner, and the performer would fall to their doom.

“Aren’t they scared to die?” he asked his father.

"They train all their lives. I'm pretty sure they never stop being completely scared, but these routines are second nature to them.

The performance ended, and the little boy's impatience grew. After some more jugglers and animals balancing on various stools and balls, a tiny little car entered the area with silly music accompanying it. The car did several doughnuts before skidding to a stop. The doors flew open, and a clown ran out, followed by another and another. Jimmy lost count after the seventh clown exited the vehicle. Some of the clowns flopped around in giant shoes, while others started climbing the shoulders of their comrades and making human pyramids. One kept dropping things. Clowns kept getting out of the car. Suddenly, things got quiet. Jimmy couldn't quite explain what was happening but knew something was wrong. As clowns were still hopping out of the car, there was a bright flash. A violent explosion engulfed the car, sending a mushroom-like cloud of red-orange flames rising toward the top of the tent. The blast was so powerful it lifted the car up at least twenty feet. Fiery clowns fell from the car. When the car landed, it smashed several of the clowns on the floor. Several clowns ran, twisted, and fell, unable to escape the flames consuming their bodies. Only the long shoes and stubs of legs inside them remained of one clown; the rest of his body had been blown to oblivion. All the while, one of the clowns with a large flower attached to his chest was squeezing it to shoot water onto the burning clowns, but the water stream wasn't enough to have any effect. Similarly, another clown car pulled up with a firehose attached to it. A clown unraveled the hose and turned the knob, but only paper snakes shot out of the hose. None of that carnage was what caught Jimmy's attention. Among all the death and viscera, Jimmy saw something that shocked him so thoroughly he momentarily lost the ability to speak and breathe.

While clowns were dying, one stood with his arms up, and a shocked expression on his face (the clown's face makeup was painted to look shocked, but the man underneath the makeup was shocked too), and his hands held up as if surrendering. The explosive flames reached him, but instead of being burned or torn to bits, the clown turned into a skeleton. That's the only way Jimmy could describe it. His skin didn't burn off, leaving only flesh and bones. No. One second, there were clothes and flesh, and the next instant, only a skeleton remained in place, holding the same shocked look with its hands in the air. Jimmy couldn't make sense of how that was possible. How did the clown go from man to skeleton just like that?

On the ride home, it was already dark. The streets were quiet except for the occasional squad car and ambulance heading toward the circus. Neither father nor son spoke for about ten minutes. It was Dad who finally broke the silence.

“Your mother can never, ever know about this.”

Jimmy said nothing for a while. He couldn’t stop thinking about the skeleton.

“Dad, how did that one clown turn into a skeleton?”

“I don’t know, pal. I just don’t know.”

Jimmy’s parents divorced shortly before the boy’s eighth birthday. The clown incident was never brought up, but even from an early age, the boy could see his parents’ incessant fighting and differing worldviews were bound to reach a breaking point. Before Dad left home for the last time, the family received a postcard from his sister Tiffany in India. She had decided to become a Hindu and was training in the ways of yoga.

Something happened that Jimmy didn’t expect. His mom was being unusually nice to him.

“What would you like to do for your birthday hon?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” he said.

He was drawing a map of the solar system and later planned to color it in with his crayons. He was shocked to learn that Ganymede, a mere moon, was bigger than Mercury. He would be sure to ask his teacher about this when he went to class on Monday.

“Wouldn’t you like to invite any friends over?”

“Really?” he set his pencil down.

Was this a trap? She never let him have friends over for his birthday.

“Sure, wouldn’t you like that?”

That night, Jimmy and his mother watched a movie together on the television. It was about a foul-mouthed, alcoholic ex-professional baseball player who coaches a little league team. Even with censorship, Jimmy couldn't believe some of the rude words he was hearing. Furthermore, he couldn't believe his mom was letting him watch it.

His birthdays had always been quiet affairs. Mom would buy a cake, give him new clothes as gifts, and make him talk to Grandma on the phone. Jimmy woke up on the day of his eighth birthday to see a giant red and yellow bouncy castle in his backyard. He ran to his mom, still in his pajamas, wondering if he was breaking any kind of law by going inside. She smiled in affirmation, and he jumped for a full three hours before any party guests arrived.

Seven of his favorite school friends and two neighborhood friends arrived. Mom still wouldn’t let him invite the Chinese kid across the street. Hank next door volunteered his services to grill hamburgers and hotdogs.

The most fun part of the day was when Hank unplugged the bouncy castle while all the children were still inside, and it deflated on them. Between laughing and screaming, several of the kids must have thought they would die inside that castle.

“Boys, before we open presents, I have a surprise for you. Jimmy, close your eyes,” said Mom.

Jimmy closed his eyes. He heard the back gate creak open and shut.

“Open!”

He opened his eyes. Before him, only an inch or two from his face stood a clown. The clown had a giant, red smile. The clown tooted the giant horn that was attached to his shoulder. Jimmy’s heart stopped. All background noise ceased to exist. Once more, he felt he’d never be able to speak again.

Jimmy went to the bathroom to splash water on his face. As clear as day, he saw how the explosion turned a man into a skeleton. Jimmy had no idea how long he had spent inside the house, but when he came outside, the clown was in the middle of tying balloon animals for the other party guests. His back was to Jimmy. Jimmy had grabbed a canister of lighter fluid from inside the garage and poured it on the clown. The clown did not react; he was consumed by entertaining the children with his balloons. Once Jimmy was sure enough fluid had been poured on the clown, he struck a match and tossed it at the clown's feet. The clown lit up like a Roman candle but did not turn into a skeleton.

Jimmy spent the next eight years at the Michigan Psychiatric Center for Mentally Deranged Boys. Once given the all-clear to be discharged, he finished his high school years at an all-boys boarding school in Vermont. He graduated valedictorian and was accepted into West Point.

While at the center for the mentally deranged, he read every book he could about the history of warfare, military strategy, and famous battlefield commanders.

When the Gulf War broke out, Jimmy was twenty-three and already a captain. He was the commanding officer of Headquarters Company in the Task Force 1-41 Infantry unit. The unit notably engaged in counter-reconnaissance missions and was the first coalition force to breach Saudi Arabian borders and face Iraqi ground forces on enemy territory. Jimmy’s (known as Captain Oswin to his men) tactical mindset was instrumental in the Task Force’s destruction of the Iraqi Jihad Corps.

Due to the unit's success in Desert Storm, Captain Oswin was fast-tracked to Major and made executive officer of the battalion. While an expert marksman and brilliant tactician, combat did not excite him. Those who knew him thought his behavior odd and erratic when he put in his papers for a transfer. He was the ideal American fighting machine. But Captain Oswin was more interested in developing weapons than using them.

During the war, the captain witnessed the usage of the MIM-104C Patriot missile system for the first time in history. They had been used to intercept the Scud missiles fired at Israel. Not to discredit the ground troops, but the Iraqi army (at that time one of the largest on Earth) had been defeated in no small part due to advancements in aerial weapons technology. It was also the first time stealth tech and space systems support were used against modern, integrated air defense systems. Oswin felt that this was the sector he needed to be in.

Oswin sold his talents to Boeing Defense and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, designing and improving new weapons for NATO forces. He was instrumental in the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). He took so-called dumb bombs and converted them into all-weather precision-guided munitions.

1999 was to be a monumental year for Oswin. After years of tinkering with the JDAMs, they would finally make their debut with Operation Allied Force. Oswin found himself grateful for the peoples of the former Yugoslav states for their constant propensity for bloodshed. In addition to manufacturing weapons, he found incredible success in selling them. He had accumulated a not insignificant amount of wealth during the Bosnian War (selling arms to both sides of the conflict). But Operation Allied Force would be a true testing ground of the weapons he'd been developing.

Both sides of the conflict, the KLA and Yugoslav forces, had broken the ceasefire only two months after signing the agreement. Old hatreds, whether linked to religion, old alliances based on ethnic divides, linguistic divides, or blood feuds within the same tribe, would ensure that tension and violence would consume the Balkan peninsula until the end of time.

During the NATO bombing campaign against the Yugoslav (Serb) targets, Oswin’s JDAMs would be deployed. Also making their debut appearance in this campaign were the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. During the bombing campaign, stealth bombers launched nearly 700 JDAMs with 96% reliability, resulting in 87% of intended targets struck. They were also inexpensive to make, and because of their success rate in the operation, the demand increase and profit margins made Oswin obscenely wealthy.

After signing a contract with the Japanese Self-Defense Force, Oswin was exhausted. Doing business in Japan was always a precarious affair, because prior agreements in the land of the Rising Sun didn't hold the same weight they did elsewhere, and it wasn't until pen hit paper before an audience of lawyers that one knew business was moving forward. Not wanting to spend a minute more on the island, he got on his jet and set out for France for some well-needed R&R.

He loved the French. Had he not been born American, he would have willed himself to exit his mother's womb a Frenchman. While at the psychiatric ward, he taught himself French. Upon completing high school and before entering West Point, he spent a month in the south of France, primarily in Bordeaux. He got into several heated debates about how French food was superior in every way to Italian cuisine.

Like weapons manufacturing, everything from the ingredients to the parings to the presentation was essential to French cuisine.

In Cestas, a town not far from Bordeaux, he sat in an outdoor café, sipping on a Saint-Émilion and eating olives and saucisson. A mime was performing for some tourists. Oswin was merely killing time before his date.

Oswin met his date at nine p.m. in a secluded, windowless restaurant. It was more of a tavern than a restaurant, but the food options weren’t half bad. When his date walked through the door, it was impossible to mistake the person for anyone else. They wore extremely baggy yellow parachute pants, which contrasted greatly with the incredibly tight white T-shirt on which I can’t say no was written. The shoes were bright red and thick, pushing size twenty-five in length. The person's hair was bright red and a mess of different shapes, shooting off in different directions. Lastly, their face was caked in white makeup, but fascinatingly enough, rather than bright red face paint around the mouth, it was dark black, giving the clown a bit of a sinister edge. The clown took a seat at the corner table on the opposite end of Oswin. A few patrons turned to glance at the clown before returning to their drinks. The clown introduced himself as Jacques.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” said Oswin.

“Likewise,” said Jacques. “I have to admit, I was a little nervous before meeting you. My agent said that there was a businessman who wanted to date a clown. As you can imagine, my imagination ran wild. I was expecting the worst kind of deranged pervert. You're quite handsome."

Jacques had a distinct Quebecois accent. It was hard to guess under all the makeup, but Oswin's estimates indicated he was no older than thirty-eight. Oswin was interested in how long Jaques had been a clown.

"You see," said Jacques, lighting a cigarette. "Most clowns are disgusting perverts, but that doesn't mean we go out of our way to date perverts. If I wanted that, I'd date a clown. At the end of the day, we want a sense of normalcy."

Jacques was an alumnus of Philippe Gaulier's clown school. The infamous school proudly boasted a sixty percent dropout rate. Oswin, never one to feel the need to one-up another, did not share that he was a West Pointer. Taking Jacques at face value, the training at clown school seemed rigorous and traumatic, but it produced the best clowns in the world.

“You’re a very handsome man, sorry, is that too forward?” asked Jacques.

“Not at all,” Oswin smiled.

Jacques was incredibly open about sharing his feelings and experiences with Oswin. Whether it was due to wearing layers of makeup or being French Canadian, Oswin could not say, but the clown loved to talk.

"I just thought you should know," said Jacques before pausing. He stared solemnly at the wall for a minute before continuing. "I am a recovering addict. It's only fair that I tell you now because I don't want to lie to you."

Jaques pulled up his sleeve to reveal heroin scars covering his arms.

"I really do think this is the last time…but France is the best place to score heroin!"

He laughed and laughed and honked his red nose.

It turned out that Jacques could not hold his liquor, forcing Oswin to carry him from place to place. Sauced or not, Jacques came willingly to the warehouse where Oswin promised to provide him with the best heroin in the world.

Oswin sat Jacques down in a chair, tied the tourniquet around the clown's arm, and assisted in inserting the needle. Jacques lost consciousness.

Part Two

The faint but consistent sound of dripping water somewhere in the distance brought Jacques back to the realm of the awake. The clown couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so groggy. One thing was for sure, that wasn't heroin that had been pumped into his veins.

It was so dark wherever he was. Despite visibility being tough going for himself, he could feel eyes on the back of his neck. Tired of knowing he wasn’t alone but nobody stepping forward to reveal themselves, he shouted:

“Hellooooooo.”

There was no response.

"Hello! Show yourselves, damn you."

He stumbled backward and crashed into someone. He turned around to see a mime standing in his way. Jacques's initial reaction was to be angry. He wanted to take out his frustration on the first person he saw and hold them accountable, but the mime was just as scared as he was. Not only that, the mime was crouched down with his arms held wide open in the air, clearly protecting his mime children.

“What is this place?” asked Jacques.

The mime put his hands up in the I don’t know gesture.

Jaques eventually regained some ability to see. He ran into three more mimes. Of the four, two were there protecting their families. The surroundings stretched infinitely. He guessed he'd walked a good hundred meters and still hadn't come any closer to reaching any barriers. Emmanuel, one of the mimes, kept hitting barriers everywhere he turned and started to panic.

“Why clowns?” asked Simmons.

“Who knows,” said Parker. “Oswin says we need clowns, so we get clowns. He brings in more income than any seven men combined, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

The two watched from their vantage point on the third floor, invisible to the clowns below them. At that point, Parker had been working with Oswin for two years, and nothing the mad genius did surprised him anymore. Oswin insisted the test subjects for his experimental weapons be clowns, and because it didn't add any costs to the budget, why not indulge the man?

Oswin was working on a new type of hand grenade. How it differed from traditional hand grenades, Parker could not say, but Oswin insisted it would be a game changer. Oswin never watched the tests with the rest of the team. He had his own secluded booth. Parker guessed the man didn't want anyone to see his face if the tests resulted in failure. One problem is that because Oswin never said what results he was looking for, sometimes other team members would start cheering prematurely, only to find out later that they had greatly upset their team leader.

“Testing will commence in ninety seconds,” came the overhead announcement.

Parker and Simmons watched with great anticipation. Parker could feel his palms getting sweaty as the countdown started at ten seconds. On the count of one, a spherical grenade roughly the size of a softball was lobbed at the group of clowns. The two-second delay seemed interminably long. When it exploded, the results were…interesting.

Oswin walked to the ground floor to examine the test results. Studio lights were not just bright but overbearing (and hot). Oswin had adjusted to dark observations. Jacques, the clown nearest the explosion, had been turned into a pile of ash. Fascinating, but not the outcome Oswin had hoped for. The mimes all suffered various degrees of being blown apart, nothing all that dissimilar from ordinary explosions via bombs. After all these years, Oswin still couldn't uncover the mystery of how that one clown was turned into a skeleton. Three years of research and eighty-seven dead clowns with nothing to show for it.

Oswin took a trip to the island of Elba, where almost two hundred years earlier, Napoleon had been exiled and condemned to live out the remainder of his life. While walking along the shoreline, Oswin decided that if he couldn't crack the code to skeleton grenades there, then he would sentence himself to the same fate as the emperor. But unlike Napoleon, who eventually escaped the island, Oswin was resigned to submit to fate if he failed.

He decided to take a stroll up Mount Cappane, the highest point on the island. There were cable cars going up and down, but the weather was decent, and it was a pleasant enough walk. Never one to meditate, he would sit still regardless at the top and search for the answer to the mystery that had been plaguing him since he was a little boy.

Part Three

Four child soldiers, no older than ten, guarded the club, but only a fool would sneer at them. Two guarded the outside doors, while two more were stationed inside. These four had all been abducted before reaching the age of six from different villages in Uganda.

The club was located off the beaten path, far from the prospering music scene in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, Kinshasa. Even if people never said it out loud, everyone who passed the club knew who had set up shop inside.

The L.R.A. leader’s top lieutenants waited eagerly outside the closed door. Their leader had locked himself away seven hours prior. They knew once he emerged, he would be emerging with another prophecy.

The prophet leader of the L.R.A., Mr. Kony, made an explosive entrance into Ugandan affairs in 1987 to do battle with President Yoweri Museveni. Kony wasn't just a rebel leader and a prophet but a spiritual medium. A rotation of more than a dozen multinational spirits would talk to and through him. Among these spirits was even a Chinese phantom. With God and spirits of different races on his side, he led a rebel force that succeeded in recruiting 60,000 child soldiers to his cause. He made it a point to visit each child recruit personally so he could look them in the eye and say, "A cross on your chest, young one, drawn in oil, will make you immune to bullets."

First and foremost, Kony consistently reiterated that the L.R.A. was fighting for the Ten Commandments. His Lieutenants eagerly awaited as they believed once he came out that door, he would reveal to them the long-awaited eleventh commandment.

Daudi Opiyo, himself recruited as a child, quickly rose through the ranks. At only twenty-two years of age, he had successfully led a campaign in Sudan, razing seven villages to the ground and bringing back thirty child slaves for Kony and his entourage. He grew irate when he heard a commotion at the entrance to the club.

One of the child soldiers ran up to Opiyo. Opiyo slapped the boy in the face.

“What the hell are you doing abandoning your post?”

"My apologies, Lieutenant sir! But this is important; there is a man outside who demands to speak to the prophet."

“I do not give a damn,” said Opiyo. “Tell him to go away.”

“But sir…it’s the President.”

“What is Barack Obama doing here?”

“No sir, the other president.”

No sooner had the words left the boy’s mouth when two other child guards walked in, accompanying none other than President Yoweri Museveni, wearing his trademark wide-brimmed hat. If Opiyo hadn't been stunned into silence, he would have been able to admire the foolhardy courage of the president to show his face here.

“I demand an audience with Mr. Kony,” said the president.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t blow your brains out here and now?” asked Opiyo.

“What I have to say is the utmost importance. Mr. Kony will want to hear what I have to say.”

“The prophet is indisposed at the moment. He is not to be disturbed.”

“This cannot wait,” said the president.

The children were getting nervous. They had never seen someone so imprudently making demands of their leader before. Opiyo's fingers were itching for a trigger. It's impossible to say what would have happened as the doors flung open at that moment and Kony emerged.

“God has spoken to me in Chinese and he sa—” but seeing the president before him stopped him in his tracks.

“Mr. Kony,” said the president, giving a tip of his hat.

“I should have you killed right now,” said Kony.

The president drew attention to his chest. He unbuttoned his shirt. Plain enough for all the child soldiers to see was a cross drawn in oil. Bullets would have no effect on him.

Kony and his entourage led the president to a makeshift conference room. While it may have looked like the president was a captive being put on display for all the gawk at and threaten, the man came willingly. He was surrounded by ten of Kony’s top brass, fifteen of the warlord prophet’s close friends, and forty child soldiers.

"Okay, we will let you speak, Mr. President," said Kony.

The president never broke eye contact with Kony. He removed his suit jacket in a calm manner, folded it nicely, and put it on the table next to him. Then he removed his shirt completely, baring his chest to the audience so all could see the oiled cross. Then, he did something unexpected. He rubbed the cross off his chest but said rubbing didn't just remove the mark of Jesus but also the color of his flesh. Where once had been black skin was now a spot of bright yellow.

Next, the president removed his glasses and set them on the table next to his discarded clothing. The president took a white cloth and started rubbing it on his face. His black skin began to vanish. He rubbed it on his chest, face, and neck, erasing the man he used to be and all in attendance thought he was. The transformation was complete. Underneath the person Kony and his forces thought was President Yoweri Museveni was a clown. The clown was wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit. It had a pale white face with a shocked, painted red expression. Removing the bald cap showed an afro of unruly green hair.

A million arms raised a million guns and pointed them at the clown.

"As you have guessed, I am not President Yoweri Museveni,” said the clown. “I am here to tell you my story, and you will listen.”


to be contd…

Following the link for part II