Tumbler the Rodeo Clown & the West Texas Witch for Gretchen Wednesday March 23, 2005 Somewhere in West Texas From where Tumbler sat, why there was nothing but loveliness in the world. Tumbler sat on an old beach chair, one of those low-slung ones for hot days at the beach when you wanna sit right close to the water's edge and let the gentle surf lap underneath you and cool yer bottom. But Tumbler had no bottom to speak of on account of having been a world champion rodeo clown and always having to "tumble" and "run his butt off" to escape angry bulls, you know. So Tumbler sat on a pillow on top of the little chair, drank his morning tea, and tapped his feet upon the loose-fitting old red bricks of his floor, which made a kind of sweet music as they clanked underfoot. Now before you go thinking Tumbler was one of them closet cases who rides the bulls by day and sips tea and presses wild flowers by night, well, he wasn't. Don't worry. Tumbler was a coffee man, through and through. Tumbler liked his coffee like he liked his bulls, black, stompin' and snortin' steam out their nostrils. But something weird had befallen Tumbler the previous night, and he worried for his tummy, for, as they say in Houston Space Center, "confidence (was) not high for launch this morning" (into bitter black chicory coffee that is). What's that? You say you don't know what chicory is? Well, now I'll tell ya. Chicory, latin name cichorium intybus, is a perennial plant (a fancy way of sayin' it grows year round) with pretty blue flowers. The roots of chicory are dried, ground & roasted and used either as a substitute for coffee or to mix in with coffee, a popular custom in the American south. Tumbler learned about chicory long ago from his grandma, who said that back when they was poor during war times, they drank mostly chicory because coffee was an expensive luxury, besides which it came from Columbia and other heathen drug-mongering countries like that. Come to think of it, most anything that comes out of them jungle countries is dang expensive and addictive to boot. God Bless the U.S. of A! Oh, and China. For this morning, Tumbler drank green tea. Tumbler remembered reading once in one of them Readers Digest Condensed books that green tea had some kinda mystical healing powers. He didn't know why, but if it was good enough for Readers Digest, it was good enough for him. Now it was a windy day in the valley where Tumbler lived outside of Sierra Blanca, Texas. Tumbler lived in an old adobe house built by Mexicans way back when that area of Texas still belonged to Mexico. Adobe is a kind of sun-baked brick made of mud and straw. It holds up great against the wind and the heat of the desert sun, but unless you slather the outside with cement, well, it don't hold up too good in the rain. The wind was blowing mighty hard this day, and Tumbler was feeling a little blue. So Tumbler just stayed inside and stared out at the beautiful valley and the mountains beyond and the wild, swirly-cloud strewn pale blue sky like something right outa that painting by that poor 19th century artist van Gogh who up and died of sadness because nobody liked his paintings. "Starry starry night, that was the one," Tumbler announced proudly to himself. Tumbler wasn't the most educated man, but he knew well that this was what is known as irony, because van Gogh's paintings are now worth more than the treasures of the pyramids, and if anyone actually owns one, well, you can bet they're a millionaire for sure. Tumbler couldn't paint, but he liked to write children's stories. In the years since his rodeo days had ended, he'd written hundreds of lovely stories, but he hadn't the stamina for rejection, so his stories remained unpublished. This saddened Tumbler immensely, but he took comfort in the ironic fate of van Gogh. As Tumbler was sitting watching the creosote and other hearty desert plants blow in the wind, his eyes came to rest on the chartreuse and aqua-blue house made out of old wooden pallets and rusted tin about two football fields distant from his own. Now, because Tumbler had been a world champion rodeo clown and a tough bull in his time, he never paid much heed to all the local talk about the woman artist who lived there. Locals said she was a witch and that she painted things like brides who had died on their wedding night or dead dogs or worse. It was said that she never painted the living, only the dead, stealing faces from the newspapers and magazines and cursing them with her oils. But (if you believed all their hooey) the scariest part of all was this: it was firmly agreed upon by all the good, God-fearing citizens of western Texas that anyone whom the witch lured to that crazy-colored house for a portrait painting, had died straight away the very next day! Never mind that there was never any evidence of such a crime. That didn't matter to the old biddies at First Baptist. What is, is. And as such, nobody ever went near that woman's house. Nobody, that is, except Tumbler. "Is he mad?" the locals asked? "He must have some kinda death wish!" they would say. And perhaps they were right about the latter. Tumbler, for all his smiles and love of life, was also a very lonesome man, a sad man convinced he'd served his purpose in this life and not quite sure what he supposed to do next. He had no children, never had married. Folks attributed this to his odd-shaped head, oversized ears and pock-marked face. He'd made a fine clown, and make-up had hidden well the scars of his youth. But none of the lady clowns would have him. And as a rodeo clown's career is rather short (you fast reach a point where you either retire or get killed), his rodeo days had ended, and with them any interest in much more than his stories. But back to the "witch," well, she was his neighbor after all! And Tumbler was a good neighborly sort. So he'd been by a few times over the years, just to look in on her. Tumbler thought that for a supposed witch, she was a comely woman (that's an old term for good-looking). But to abide local gossip and the fear, however irrational, that goes with it, Tumbler kept a Christian distance from the woman. Tumbler felt a twinge of shame over this standoffish behavior, however. He thought about how he'd never accepted her offers of cookies or tea or a mug of her special homemade grog, a mix of wine and herbs, she'd said. It was true, her paintings were quite eerie. Of the ones he'd seen, many were of sickly looking people, either dead or damn near dead. One featured a woman toasting her friends on New Year's Eve, then plummeting to her death in the sea. Pity, he thought, to live in fear of such a lovely woman. He regretted most having never sat in that lovely porch swing of hers, to swing and rest a spell. Yes, that would be nicest of all. To rest in that swing. More than anything, Tumbler just felt tired these days. As a clown, he'd had some handle on all the sadness in the world, all the war and killing and starvation. But lately he was alone with it all. They were building a wall around his country, and they were filling it with fear. Watching the news just made him cry and cry. But then that day something happened that tore Tumbler from his thoughts. Suddenly, he was stricken by the strangest sensation of dizziness, as though for just a moment his body wasn't his own. And something else happened. Tumbler burped. Now this wasn't one of those fun burps that sounds funny and you laugh about amongst friends. This was one of those nasty burps that dredge up sour stomach juices. Like the police dredging a pond for the recently drowned, this burp was not a pleasant experience. And something else. It tasted like wine. Strictly a beer man, Tumbler rarely if ever drank wine. Tumbler the rodeo clown looked out his window now and no longer saw wonderfulness all around, but an ever-darkening stormy sky and a queer shivering landscape not at all pleasant to the eye. When had the sky changed? Lost in his thoughts, he'd missed the change. Slowly, Tumbler rose from his chair and walked to the window for a better view of his artist neighbor's house. He saw nothing untoward, but in his guts he felt sure something had changed. On his way to the window, the loose-fitted old red bricks of his floor didn't sound like music anymore but like bones clacking together in a burlap sack. Maybe, thought Tumbler, this was because of what he saw next. Lowering his eyes from the horizon to the very desert dirt outside his window, he saw the bucket. And I say "the bucket" for right then the events of the previous night came flooding back on him, and he stumbled toward the door, his face white though he wore no clown paint today. Out the door Tumbler ran, out into the now mean and malignant wind. Malignant is a word usually applied to tumors, and malignant tumors kill people. It's not fair, I know. But life is like that sometimes, even to clowns. Tumbler ran and Tumbler tumbled, slipping on the small rocks that cake the desert like a million sandstone marbles tripping up the thirsty traveler. Tumbler ran toward the wild-colored pallet house, and the prickly thorns tore at his bare legs and arms as he went. And the blood flowed from the scratches and scrapes, but Tumbler didn't notice. Tumbler's mind was remembering. Tumbler remembered how yesterday had been a difficult day, how he'd try so hard to sew that little clown outfit for his nephew for his 5th birthday present, and how he'd kept messin' it up and having to start over. And then Tumbler remembered seeing the witch, er, his neighbor arrive home in her equally wildly-painted car and thinking to himself, "Dangit!" And so, half to reward himself for trying so hard to create something that day and half to calm his frustration at failing miserably and half again to gather courage for what he knew he was about to do, he cracked first one beer and then another until soon he was his namesake through and through. "The bucket!" he thought to himself. "My gawd what happened to me?" The bucket, he quite clearly remembered now, had gone to bed with him last night. For climbing the stairs to bed, he'd felt real bad all of a sudden. He thought it odd that he'd gone to sleep despite feeling so bad, and that it hadn't been until about two in the morning that the contents of his guts had rebelled with torrential force and filled the bucket full. A somewhat fastidious man, Tumbler had emptied the bucket right away, so as not to have to wake up to face his folly. Result: he'd returned to bed, slept long and forgotten the whole affair. As Tumbler reached the witch's house, he spotted the swing and swooned. Nearly blown over by the wind, he grabbed one of the chains from which the swing hung from the porch and dropped himself into place. Right where he'd sat last night. Right where he'd sat with her. In his mind, he saw the lovely witch beside him, gap-toothed and smiling wide and with kind eyes handing him a mug of grog. Tumbler took the mug of grog and drank. After a six-pack of cheep beer, the sweet wine smelled of raindrops after a ten-year drought. To the tongue, it tasted like late-season Rhein grapes picked for their desert wine quality, and going down, like the pinks and oranges of the divine desert sunset unfolding before them. Tumbler decided that the sunset was God's (or Gaia's as the woman explained to him) private performance for the two of them alone. It was Heaven on that swing, and relief poured over Tumbler like a cascade of angel feathers, the relief of knowing at last that all is well with the world, that the fear of old biddies squawking in town was all so much bull, as was every goddamn false panic on the television news. It was the relief of knowing, the relief of resignation, the relief of love.   Tumbler snapped out of his revery at the strong sensation of being watched. He leapt up from the swing and stared hard into the wind. It was a cold wind, and he shivered. To the south and west there was Mexico. Behind him, America, or what was left of it anyway since the dark dawn of the 21st Century. He looked at the door to the witch's house: locked from the outside. He went to the old wood framed window: curtained. Pulling back, he noticed a broken pane, triangular in shape. Gingerly, he removed the pane and peeked inside: darkness. But into that darkness Tumbler stared hard. She had to be in there! Someone was watching him, of that he was sure. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw only faint vestiges, the pale faces of a hundred portraits. "Could it be true?" he thought aloud to himself. "Dead? All of them?" Tumbler replaced the small triangle of glass and thought himself lucky to have been so close to the woman and come away with nothing but an upset stomach. Tumbler laughed half-heartedly and shook his head as he turned to go home. But the sense of being watched remained. And then he saw it. There, drying on a shelf right where he wouldn't have seen it from the porch swing, was Tumbler's portrait. Abstract, stunning, dashed off in oils undoubtedly in just a matter of minutes by a painter of impeccable skill, it was he. Unmistakable. The eyes stared back at him and seemed almost to be smiling. Like a man shot point blank without warning by his closest friend, Tumbler crumpled to the porch, his face a portrait of undiluted surprise. And the wind blew and blew. And Tumbler the Rodeo Clown shed a tear, his very last. For suddenly his skin turned a desert shade of brown, and his limbs shrank and hardened, becoming prickly, skeletal, weed-like. And with the next big gust, Tumbler the tumbleweed bounded off the porch as light as air and rolled off across the desert without a face, feet or hair, but most importantly, without a care in the world. -RSM   Copyright 2005 Richard McKinney All Rights Reserved (Just ask & I'll likely let you reprint anything!)