The Clown That Cried
Let's call him Jim. I cowboyed with Jim
for 14 years but I can't remember his real name. I'm
sure it wasn't James though, and his name wasn't Jimmy
either. No, Jim is just right for him because he was a
mature man with knots in his arms stronger than steel
springs. At sixty when he grabbed hold of one end of a
steer it was on the ground where we could work on it in
a matter of seconds. Now that I've thought on it for a
few hours I remember Jim's name was Jerry.
Jerry was a great clown. He
set up with a bright red shirt tucked inside a pair of
baggy blue pants ripped off at the knee. On his head was
a set of horns that Jerry had with one horn up and the
other one down.
When a bull set his mind on mopping the floor with a
cowboy that had been riding high Jerry just hot footed
it out there and gave that bull another target to play
with.
Jerry lived in the batch house, putting out special
rations where the boss said they belonged. Every cowboy
on the ranch thought the batch house was their feeding
station. Jerry kept it stocked with chocolate chip
cookies and quart-sized containers of chocolate milk.
Many a time when my belly was growling fit to be tied I
would swoop in there and scoop up a life-saving number
of cookies to take with me, and chug a lug of chocolate
milk down. Every cowboy
on the place thought Jerry was a bank too. They'd borrow
cookies from him and they'd borrow money, then they
would default on their loans. I don't think Jerry's mind
was feeble; I think Jerry was just lonely, lonely as he
could be.
I was lonely too. But, I had a cousin that came looking
for me when he needed help at his filling station in
town. Sure enough, in no time Elmer had talked me into
buying the place. One day Jerry came walking by. When he
saw me he wheeled in his tracks and come straight in and
sat down. I had ate his cookies and I had drank his milk
so we were friends. I didn't love the guy or nothing
like that, but Jerry was the kind of man you could count
on when there weren't any more chips in the cookie and
everybody else had went home. All I had ever had to say
was “Jerry, can you .. ?” and Jerry would be right
there, grinning. It's easy to get to liking a man like
that, you know.”
We sat for hours, between customers, and talked over old
times, me mostly just listening because his stories were
a lot more interesting than mine were. I didn't mind a
bit when Jerry took up the habit of coming by my place
just about every day, to stay and talk with me for
hours. I didn't even mind when customers came into the
office and Jerry started talking to them. No sir. I
didn't even mind when one of Jerry's friends stopped in
to see him there and I got to listen in to some of their
stories too. No sir. I didn't mind none of that. Fact
is, I kind of enjoyed it as the days passed into weeks
and the weeks turned into months. As I sit here today,
tired, old and lonely myself, I wish with all my heart
I'd taken out a tape recorder and got all those golden
stories down. I wouldn't be so lonely now, hearing them
voices again from so long ago.
But there came a day when Jerry decided to come out on
the islands where customers were sitting in their cars
while I filled up their tanks, and he would start
talking to them, telling them stories that weren't even
family oriented. He would grab hold of the driver's door
and he would not let go until he got tired of talking.
“You know how I fix chicken? Let me tell you how I do
it..”
Customers would look at me like it was my fault Jerry
would not turn them loose and I'd have to say, “Jerry
come on back inside.” But Jerry expanded under the heady
influence of having a new audience and soon he was
saying, “I'm not through talking yet.”
I pondered for days on how to tell Jerry to let my
customers alone, and I still done it all wrong. “Do you
mean you don't want me here, Lin?” and I stood there
stricken dumb by my stupidity until Jerry turned around
and shuffled off with his head down.
“Jerry, Jerry, come back.”
Jerry did come back, maybe a week later, but his heart
was still broken and nothing I could say would put it
back together again. Then one day Jerry glanced my way
and he said, “Lin, I'm going to hire a taxi to take me
around to all the ranches so's I can say good bye to all
my friends. I'm moving to Oklahoma City where there's
more people to talk to. Maybe I won't wear out my
welcome so fast up there.”
“Jerry, that taxi will cost you a fortune. What you
really want to do is put an ad in the paper to tell
people you are leaving, and let them come see you!”
“How much will that ad cost?” he asked.
“About $5 is all.'
“Okay,” he said. “I'll do that.” and off he went.
When the little weekly paper came out I saw his ad right
off. “Jerry the Clown is moving up to Oklahoma City
where the lights are brighter and he will have more
people to talk to. Anybody that wants to say Good Bye
will find Jerry walking the streets of town.”
But there was more. The editor of the paper had rolled
out the stops and did a full scale history of Jerry the
Clown. He reminded his readers how long Jerry had been a
clown and how many lives and limbs he had officially
saved by diverting angry bulls from their paths of
boiling glory.
People that hadn't talked to him in thirty years
responded exuberantly to the opportunity of telling
Jerry good bye before he left the country. Sometimes
we'd have five or six of them in the office at one time
and there'd be times I was driving uptown and there he
would be, mobbed by well wishers, glad to see him go,
but knowing they owed him too, owed him big time. Thus
it was that Jerry was thronged for several weeks,
everywhere he went. Boy, what a send off he was getting.
Jerry was easily more popular than the mayor.
Then another ad came out in the paper. It said: “Jerry
the Clown has decided to stay in town. If he had known
he had this many friends here he never would have
thought about leaving in the first place!”
I shut down my little service station and moved to
California.
the end
Lin Stone is a professional author living in Noble
Oklahoma. He has had 38 books published and
hundreds of articles are
available for your free reading pleasure. |
