While you were out, but before you died, they took turns on your body.

Then they cut your throat.

And because they were clowns and their mouths were painted that way, they were always smiling.

Phil and I were almost at the age when we would have stopped fearing them, the age when you knew there was no Santa Claus and you probably weren’t the long-lost son of a benevolent billionaire who’d return some day to claim you.

We were on our way back from a Little League game in Savin Hill, and we’d lingered until near dark, playing war games in the woods behind the Motley School, climbing the decrepit fire escape to the roof of the school itself. By the time we climbed down, the day had grown long and chilly, the shadows lengthening against walls and spreading out hard against bare pavement as if they’d been carved there.

We began the walk down Savin Hill Avenue as the sun disappeared entirely and the sky took on the cast of polished metal, tossed the ball back and forth to keep the gathering cold at bay and ignored the rumbles in our stomachs because they meant we’d have to go home sooner or later, and home, ours, at least, sucked.

The van slid up behind us as we started down the slope of the avenue by the subway station, and I remember very distinctly noticing that the entire avenue was empty. It lay before us in that sudden emptiness that comes to a neighborhood around dinner time. Though it wasn’t yet dark, we could see orange and yellow squares of light in several homes fronting the avenue, and a lone plastic hockey puck curled against the hubcap of a car.

Everyone was in for dinner. Even the bars were quiet.

Phil rifled the ball with his shotgun arm and it rose a bit more than I first expected; I had to jump and twist myself to snag it. When I came down I’d twisted myself to the side and that’s when I saw the white face and blue hair and wide red lips staring out the passenger window at me.

“Nice catch,” the clown said.

There was only one way kids in my neighborhood responded to clowns.

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Nice mouth,” the clown said, and I didn’t like the way he smiled when he said it, his gloved hand resting on the outside of the door panel.

“Real nice,” the driver said. “Real, real nice. Your mother know you talk that way?”

I was no more than two feet from that door, frozen on the pavement, and I couldn’t move my feet. I couldn’t take my eyes off the clown’s red mouth.

Phil, I noticed, was a good ten feet down the hill, frozen too, it seemed.

“You guys need a ride?” the passenger clown said.

I shook my head, my mouth dry.

“He’s not so mouthy all of a sudden, this kid.”

“No.” The driver craned his head around his partner’s neck so that I could see his bright red hair and the bursts of yellow around his eyes. “You two look cold.”