I thought of the Bee Gees Hit and I wrote this piece.
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'I started a joke, which started the whole world crying, but I didn't see that the joke was on me, oh no...' **
That was the Bee Gees song which I like to play on my stereo in the truck. I liked the song as I was a clown in the circus until I was retired for not being funny anymore. How can a clown not be funny you may asked me but let me tell you the story of myself first.
It was September 1959 when I left my home in South Dakota for the road. That was also the day of my birthday and I was nineteen then and six months after the declaration of the Vietnam War with the US of A getting involved. The French had withdrawn fully since their defeat Dien Bien Phu in 1954. I remembered leaving my hometown that morning on the Greyhound bound for San Diego. I have no living relatives in that town and I am fed up with my foster home. What can a young lad do then without a real formal education except to join the Marines then. Or I thought so then.
It was in San Diego when I first came across the circus. I had some money and time, so I bought a ticket for the show. It was fun and I enjoyed the clown most. I had never seen one before; they never did stop over at our town then. I remembered walking over to the Clown's tent to get his autograph. He was there and in the process of removing his red nose. He invited me and we spoke for a while His name was Charles Barthom and he been a clown for over twenty years now. He told me its a respectable profession and he makes kids and adults laugh. They are silly on the ring but outside of it, they are like us in every sense. Its like when he is clown, he out on his new psyche of the clown and be one. When its over he goes back to be his normal self. He gave me the advise that in our profession, we excel to the best and we will stay at the best. I told him I am joining the Marines and fighting the war for the country. He laughed at me and said his fighting days are over. He was a paratrooper in the last World War and he seen enough death to last his lifetime. But he told me, the Marines is a noble profession. Do your part like I do as a clown.
"Keep faith, son and do your best." I did and I was enlisted into the Corp. It was not another two years before I got shipped out as military advisers to the Vietnam Forces. It was my first trip outside of the US of A, and I am going in First Class; Military style. There was fifty of us that day and we all landed in the foreign country that was soon to be our new home for the next ten years. I was assigned to train some local troops in the use of our guns. It was fine for a while with the new place as the beer and ladies were there. Then one day, I was sent to the jungle with a contingent of local and Marines. That was when I changed.
Initially we were doing recon and intelligence gathering. But the patrols also mean sometimes we get into firefights. I was in my first; firing indiscriminately at the jungle foliage on an enemy I could not see. Its was fine then as you are shooting at possibly trees and bushes, but not a live target. But I forgot live targets can move. Mine came and attacked me with a bayonet. I rolled aside as his bayonet sink into the ground I was on. I raised my rifle and I pulled the trigger. The shot took off half his face and he was dead before he fell to the ground. It was my first personal kill and my whole hand shook while holding the rifle. I wanted to discard the rifle then and ran but I could not move. I just laid there looking up to the sky. That sky was soon to changed as it showed my Sargeant's face.
"Clown, you lie there one more second and I would personally shoot you myself. Move it, you clown."
Clown? That what we are. Clowns.
I killed three more enemies that day. In my stint before I was to complete my tour, I killed twenty one more of them. My nickname was called Clown. Its also my radio call sign and everyone called me Clown. No one remember my name and where I came from. I rejoined on my completion as I felt my services were needed and more to it, I found a family here. I was good at my profession and became sniper for the black ops. My name then was the Smiling Clown. When I am not fighting, I was on the stage as a clown with some others to cheered the troops. But the smile gone when I am in the jungle.There I am the Killer Clown. I killed my first non-combatant not in a game of cards but over love. Her name is Minh Ti and she was my lover. During the monsoon season that year, she told me she is pregnant with our child. I was confused between fatherhood and a fragging commitment. We quarrel that night and she left in the rain. I followed her soon but I was not bring her back. I shot her in the head and dropped her into the river.
I was the clown then to think that I could be a good father. I am not sure if I would live tomorrow or the day after,
She was my first, and she was my last in the war as a non-combatant. But she was not my last in my next career as a hit man. I came back in 74, with a chestful of medals and lots of hatred by the people I served to protect. I was all alone holding my duffel bag at the station when a long haired dude walked to me and cursed at me. I would had killed him had there been no MP's who restrained me. But I was soon on the bus back to my hometown. It was a quiet trip as I was sitting all alone at the back. No one spoke to me nor asked where I was going. I reached my town and I got off there at the station which I left some years back.
"Hey, clown. Step off my path." It was an old man pushing his wheel barrow loaded with his garden produce. I moved away for him to pass. The old man called me a clown. Maybe I am as I am dressed still in my uniform. I inquired at the Station on my foster home.
"Those clown's left town in a hurry. They owed most folks money and they absconded." So even my foster families are considered as clowns. I asked the man back when is the bus due to town. He told me the schedule and I asked for a ticker back to San Diego. The man sold me one and then asked me; "Are you them clown's son?"
I shook my head and said I am just clowning when I asked about them. He did not get the joke and neither did I.
Six months later I was the clown in the circus at the city. Everywhere I went for work interview, I was told you must be a clown if we were offered you a job. You are fragging hero and you ought to rejoin back. But I had enough of the military life. I needed my freedom to run and walk when I want. So the next best offer was as the clown in the circus. It gave me shelter and also a cover for my other job as a hit man for the highest pay. You want a job done, called in the Clown. I leave them clients of mine laughing last.
But I find myself living a life as a clown; happy on the outside and lonely in the inside. There is no one to talk to me at the night and I walked alone back to my cabin. Even my rifle don't talk to me but it still served me well in taking down the targets. I could had spoken to the victims but I am too far away on the rooftop or in the trees. Even my contractors called me 'clown' on the phone. The police knows its me who was doing the killing but how do you persecute a clown for murder.
It was the 80's when I quit and became a businessman. I supplied clowns to the children parties. I watched my clowns do their antics on the garden yard or the shipping malls. It was fine for a while until some syndicate came in and tried to muscle into my business. The two young clowns came to my office to how me their tricks with the guns. I delivered them back in the courier box with the body in pieces. That stop the clowning and they came in with the harden looks. That caused me pain as I lost two good clowns and a client. I pulled no stops in my act to end those new clowns,and in the end they left town with more than a red nose.
But the toll of my lifestyle is taking its chunk off my body. I told the doctor to stop clowning and tell me the truth. He finally did and it was bad; cancer of the bone. I sold everything and retire to an nursing home. There I met Carol as she was also an inmate there. We sat together and talk of the better days. She was a nurse and she told me of her doctors and the patients. She asked of mine and I told her I was a clown. Half of what I told was fake but she listened to them all. I know I was wrong to lie but what can you tell so much about a life of a clown when all he ever did was clowning.
Carol died last year but before she left me, she gave me a CD. It was the compilation of the Bee Gees. But I listened to only one song. I have not stop since then. All my life I been a clown trying to make everybody smile but in the end I was to know the joke was on me. I ended up with none of them knowing who I was and when they did, they cried. Today, I am playing the last time the CD as the doctor tells me I got days to live on only. He asked me whom shall they contact. I told him this; 'tell it to the clowns around me."
He did not understand and I do no blame him for it. I laid back and hear my song's ending one more time.
'Til I finally died, which started the whole world living, oh, if I'd only seen that the joke was one me.**
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