The joke was on me
Author's Note:
The picture was a
clown crying and I thought of the Bee Gees Hit. Then I wrote this piece.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'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 be 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 The French had withdrawn fully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 of 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 a stopover 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 it's
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. It's like when he
is a clown, he out on his new psyche of the clown and be one. When it's over he
goes back to be his normal self. He gave me the advice 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 has seen
enough death to last his lifetime. But he told me, the Marines is a noble
profession. Do your part as I do as a clown.
"Keep the 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 were fifty of us that day and we all landed in a
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 locals 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. It 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 running 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. It's also my radio call
sign and everyone called me Clown. No one remembers 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 a 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
is 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 did not
bring her back. I shot her in the head and dropped her into the river.
I was the clown than
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 hitman. 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 hilding my
duffel bag at the station when a long-haired dude walked to me and cursed at
me. I would have 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 wheelbarrow 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 at my
foster home.
"Those clowns
left town in a hurry. They owed most folks money and they absconded." So
even my foster families are considered 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 in the city. Everywhere I went for a work
interview, I was told you must be a clown if we were offered you a job. You are
the 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 sheltered me and also a cover for
my other job as a hitman for the highest pay. You want a job done, call 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 on 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 have 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 know
it's 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's
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 show 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 hardened 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 a nursing home. There I met Carol as she was also
an inmate there. We sat together and talk about the better days. She was a
nurse and she told of her doctors and the patients. She asked of mine and I
told her I was a clown. Half of what I told her was fake but she listened to
them all. I know I was wrong to lie but what can you tell so much about the 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 stopped since then. All
my life I have 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 for the last time 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 not 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.**
( Lyrics from the
song "I started a joke" by the Bee Gees )
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