Clown Girl - Monica Drake [96]
“See you later,” I whispered, and cradled the Fabulous Fat Ass. Still crouched down, with the front door open as a barricade, I let Chance out of the back of that red flag of a cop car. The dog and I ducked and loped to the shade at the side of the road. I ran like a hunchback, with one Pendulous Breast as my hunch while the other dangled forward as a goiter. I clutched the rubber chicken and the Ass, and huddled over the bundle like I carried a stolen child.
“Sniff, your mower,” Jerrod said.
Drat! He left the car running and went to the trunk. I hid near a thin tree until he had the mower out, push bar extended and wing nuts tightened down. He moved gracefully in the sun and brought the mower to the side of the road.
“Can you get all this?”
I piled the scorched Caboosey suit on top of the mower. Nodded.
He said, “If you need help, just call.” I nodded again, and waved him off. He gave me a salute good-bye. The melted-cheese shoes did their own shuffle to the lawn mower’s music as I moved toward the house. The rubber chicken dangled.
Herman’s voice drifted down the hot street: “I don’t have the reward. I don’t know anything about these chickens. We don’t need a dog—”
Then I saw the yellow of chickens in every hand, chicken dealers milling in the burnt yard.
“What’s that about?” One-Night called over. “Police, cab service, and yard care all one deal? Some shit like that.”
I ignored him.
“And clownin’,” he said. “Clownin’ around Baloneytown. Clownin’ with the cops.”
“Get off my lawn,” Herman said, and gave his invisible sheet another shake. One woman laughed.
“Ain’t no lawn here,” a man said, slapped his thigh with a yellow chicken and kicked the blackened ground.
A girl in a polka-dot dress said, “Think we’re going to trample the grass?” She had three rubber chickens, all different colors, like an act. Herman’s yard was a circus. He swatted chicken dealers off like flies. They circled and settled back where they started.
Herman saw me and pointed. “There’s your girl. In the stripes. Nita, pay somebody and get’em out of here.” He spit on the ground. “It gets worse every day.”
But I was a kid just home from the fair. “I’ve got my chicken back,” I said. I held her up by the neck and flashed a smile. What did I think—that they’d cheer?
Somebody groaned. One chicken hit the ground and kicked up a cloud of ash. Then another fell, like an apple off a tree. A man pushed his way out of the group. Another followed, then came two teenage girls with a baby. One girl gave her chicken to the baby, tucked it into the blankets. The crowd dispersed. Chickens dropped to the street, long and yellow and lifeless.
Behind me, One-Night said, “Can I have that?” I turned to see a skinny woman throw a chicken at the open door of the ice-cream truck. But while the chicken venture capitalists wandered away, one man came fast down the road. He was big, in a stained white muscle shirt, and walked like he had some place to be.
Herman turned to go inside. He said, “OK, Nita, the chicken show’s over. You manage the stragglers.”
The new guy tapped Herman on the shoulder. Herman shook the man off like a gnat. “We don’t need a rubber chicken,” he said. “And we don’t want your stray mutt.” He hunched his shoulder, as though to shake away another shoulder tap.
“Rubber chicken, my ass.” The man pulled back his fist and swung. Herman turned into it. Fist and face, they met with a crack. Herman’s head jerked and his ponytail made a silky leap just as his knees buckled, his mouth opened. He went down. Clocked.
“Shit, man?” Herman tried to crab-walk backward in the ash and dirt. His hands were black, his clothes covered in soot. The red fist painted on his jaw started to swell and he worked his mouth, open and closed. “ What’s up?”
The man stood