A dead clown lay on the smooth metal surface. He had been stripped naked and dissected with some care. Skin flapped open, a ribcage exposed.

“What . . . have you done?” the Stranger said.

“Oh, this? My research, man! My life’s work. I will title it, On the Nature of Clowns. You see,” Professor Federico said earnestly, “we must try to understand clowns! Are they alone a species native to the Escapement? What is the taxonomy of clowns? What is the role of the Big Boss Clown in the social hierarchy of their society? Why is it that they so rarely speak? How come they slip on banana skins so often? And why aren’t they funny?”

“Nobody likes clowns,” Temperanza said. “The Bank has a standard bounty on them. But this . . . You are insane.”

“Why aren’t they funny!” the professor said, ignoring her. “I cut, and cut, trying to find the answer. This one’s a Whiteface. Note the large red nose, the elongated feet bones. The genus, of course, is Homo farceur. The large feet may suggest an evolutionary need to run from predators. I have so much work to do, still. So much work. You see,” he said, peering keenly into the Stranger’s face as though sensing in him somehow a fellow aficionado, “we know they’re clowns, but what kind of clowns?”

Which was when Temperanza shot him.

In the back of the old mill the Stranger found a cage with iron bars, and behind the bars he found a shudder of clowns.

The prisoners stared at him as he opened the door of their cage.

They emerged one by one out of that tiny enclosed space, too many of them than seemed possible. They tripped and slipped and collided and fell. They never spoke.

The last, an elderly Hobo, carried a small red flower on his breast. He motioned for the Stranger to smell it.

The Stranger leaned over, and the flower squirted him with water in the face.

The Stranger laughed.

The Stranger and Temperanza rode away together. They torched the mill on their way out. They made sure it burned, that it burned well, so that the horrors inside would never be found. There were some questions one should never ask, the Stranger felt. Some people wanted an answer to everything, every detail of the world explained, every corner mapped and named. The Stranger had been travelling for a long time, searching for the Flower of Heartbeat, and he was destined to travel for a long time more. He knew that some mysteries just were.

And that one should never be unkind to clowns.

Tinkerers

TWO:

TINKERERS

The man walked on. At a corner store he bought a fifth of bourbon. He drank it furtively, his walk aimless, through streets and neighbourhoods teeming with unsaid words. The very nature of the light was furtive, he thought.