Clown in the Moonlight

'What does?'

'Anything. Everything. Anything that you want, whatever you desire, it costs.'

I've paid out a lot over the years for the things I thought I wanted. I've paid in cash, blood, pain, freedom, love, hate, and time.

We follow the coven out into the pines. The loamy odor makes me think of Aztakea Woods, Gary's body, and my mother's funeral. My mother, her corpse sealed inside a casket, her great soul already cast among the stars, while I stood there in the rain shoulder to shoulder with my father's shame and anger. No priest, no other mourners, even the cemetery caretaker had run for cover in the storm. Thick streams of rainwater rushed down into the hole and filled it like a sewer. I imagined rats in there already chewing on her remains. It made me hiss and steam. My old man turned away without a word and drove home without me. I plodded home through the mud, this same smell surrounding me.

Mercy breaks from me and takes up formation with the coven around a dead tree standing in a clearing, jagged branches tilted at vicious angles. I move behind her, feeling a little too old for this crowd, looking back over my shoulder at the swaying, rustling pines. I feel eyes on me, a will at work.

I look off in the direction of Pioneer State and wonder if up on those highest floors, perched at the cube windows, madmen and tainted women stare down at us right now. I can almost see them in their pjs and loose- fitting robes, their nails thick with clay from making ashtrays during crafts hour, wicker in their hair from weaving baskets. What might they think as they watch the flashlights maneuvering through the scrub, moonlight glazing the treetops?

The White Queen stops and the members of the coven form themselves into a ring around the coven tree. I stick close to Mercy. It throws off the power of the triskaideka. The White Queen draws out a dagger from beneath her glowing muumuu and depicts symbols in the air with it. She speaks quietly but with great authority. I can't hear the words but I understand their meaning. The ocean is angry. The tide slams into the beach. We're about ten miles from the dunes where Ricky's boys tried to slash me to death. There's another graveyard nearby. This one might as well be the one hidden in the sand.

The White Queen's voice grows louder. The breeze stiffens. She turns to the east and bows, then she does the same facing the west, then the north, and the south, the athame carving words, names, and ciphers in the dark.

'With this witch's blade, my athame, I call forth Askiel, Uthrick, Pommerance, Tico-Tico, and Lafleur de Malcolm,' she says. 'I ask for my familiars Thorn-in-the-Crown and Percywinkle to come to me now and guide these blessed magicks. Where there is evil, there is righteousness set against it. Where there is mischief, there is nobility to balance it. Where there is corruption, there is salvation.'

Mercy whispers to me, 'Which do you think I am? The mischief or the nobility?'

'I'd have to go with mischief.'

'And you?'

'The same.'

'I was hoping that.'

She moves her hand across my belly, rubs me the way a person might a dog, sort of scratching. Then she digs her nails in deeper until I grunt. She leans in as if to kiss me but pulls away at the last second.

'So you're about to be purified now?' I ask.

'As much as I ever hope to be, I suppose.'

'I wonder how much that is?'

The tone in my voice hooks her, wakes her up some. Mercy's grin begins to go slack. My own smile hardens.

She steps away. Each coven member performs gestures in the air with their hands. Every so often they fall back together and carry out a series of intricate actions that make the entire thing look like a well-rehearsed ballet recital. I wonder how long they've been doing this, how many times they've stood in this field surrounding a dead tree, beneath the eyes of the moon. The night birds start to sing.

Jenks slides up beside me from out of the darkness. His breath is rancid with whiskey. He holds the flashlight up to his face and pulls faces. His eyes are wild with cocaine, almost as insane as Ricky's were on acid.

'Pretty ridiculous, eh?' he says.

'Beats sitting at home watching the news.'

'Probably right about that. I still don't like it.'

'Why not?'

He scoffs. 'If you want anything in this world, you have to earn it, fight for it, or steal it. Dancing around in the darkness and calling on spirits named fuckin' Percywinkle is just moronic.'

'Then why did you join the coven?'

'Like you said, it beats staying at home. Besides-'

'Besides,' Mercy joins in. 'We're all about to get naked.'

Jenks's laugh is guttural and obnoxious. So is Mercy's. So is mine.

Kip's voice soon becomes the loudest and clearest among the coven. 'To me now, Utheziel. To me now the north wind. To me now golden fire, the chalice, the dagger, the aspect of the heart. To me now the Nephilim, the despised, the wondrous, the gargantuan.'

The members return to their stations, except for Mercy, who leaves my side and moves alone to stand at the base of the tree, brushing herself against those fierce, angular branches. The others turn their flashlights to illuminate her. I fade back. I allow the triskaideka to reign. I wait in the weeds. I stand on lost graves.

Mercy holds her hands out to me.

She wags her eyebrows and turns on that killer smile again.

Her wreath of razors flashes with burning silver.

She throws off her leather coat and skins out of her boots, weaving and angling all around, gyrating and slithering.

And then she dances.

And in her moonlit eyes she seems to be dancing only for me.

She performs like a professional stripper working the circuit. The wetland is her stage. The coven is her audience. The birds fly against the black sky, pivoting, wheeling, rising, arching. Maybe she is offering herself to me. Maybe she waits to garrote me and offer my ashes to the dead and martyred. It doesn't matter to me. There is something about her that entices and irritates me. It is the same story for every woman I've had. I can see her teeth blaze every so often. Her black lipstick and eye shadow frame her alabaster face so that she appears to be a harlequin. She opens the top two buttons of her blouse and the curve of her breasts are heavy and exquisite. The tattoo at her neck looks like a raven.

For a moment I see other figures out there, draped in black, silhouetted in the slashes of flashlight. The girl has brought my past alive within me. I recognize faces, body language, intent. I watch dead men looming. It is easy to get distracted.

The men of the coven watch Mercy. They all want her. So do some of the women. She is desirable in the way that make lovers stupid, especially now, bathed from above. I can smell a hint of methane in the wind. It takes nothing at all to stand in the wetlands with strangers, breathing in the stink of decomposing bodies around you. Mercy's bare feet tamp out a staccato rhythm that beats louder than the pulse in my temple.

She sweeps in close to me, shakes her hair wildly in my face, and a barb catches me across the chin. She withdraws. I thumb blood away.

Jenks puts his arm around me, dips his head and draws me into a huddle of clandestine mystery as he speaks quietly in my ear.

'You ready to fuck Mercy yet?'

Of course I don't like the way he says it, half with a sneer and half with a laugh. No one else glances my way, not the White Queen, not even Mercy. My back muscles tighten and my stomach dips. Ricky urges me to tear his Jenks's eyes out. Gary Lowers loves his mother. He knows I love my mother too.

I turn to Jenks. 'When I am it'll be between her and me.'

He puts a hand to my chest and pushes hard, forcing me back a step. 'No, it's between me and you. You pay me.'

'I pay you what?'