Kate stuck her thumb into the Jersey Turnpike about a half hour from New York. She wore damp rags that got soaked through at the BrandTech industrial park she’d slept in the night before. She had a bad habit and lit up a smoke. Her thumb was getting tired, and was already muddy, but the weight of a cigarette wasn’t that much more to bear.
Kate knew too well that orphans are common in New Jersey. Her tenth birthday was coming up in a few weeks, but unless she found some compassionate and, with any luck wealthy, family, she probably wouldn’t be getting the shoes with soles on the bottom she was hoping for.
Cars passed so quickly past her that they would probably have treated her like a moth attracted to their eighty mile an hour headlights if she didn’t watch her arm. There were deluges of cops on the road, but not even one of them stopped to pick up Kate for attempted hitchhiking.
Each car was more forgettable than the last, and it came to such a point that it became difficult for Kate even to see them, and their supersonic speeds only made it worse.
A tiny and colorfully painted car that could probably fit no more than two or three very skinny people barreled up the highway towards Kate. She had a good feeling about that vehicle, and so stretched her filthy thumb as much as she could as it approached. Instead of receiving a lesson in the Doppler effect as she had with the other cars, Kate’s luck finally kicked in and the coupe slowed to a halt. As Kate hopped over the guardrail and then into the car, a choir of enraged horns from passing morotists honked, including one particularly hateful version of the Mexican Hat Dance.
Kate had to squeeze into the car with all of her ten-year-old strength, since there were five clowns occupying the inside. The inside of the car was the most colorful thing Kate had seen in Jersey.
“What’s your name?” The driver, whose thick makeup made him look like a hilarious raccoon, asked.
“Caitlin Caitiff,” said Kate between the car door and a spiky red-nosed harlequin.
“My name is Wiggles, so pleased to meet you,” he said more formally than a clown should. “My passengers are Jocko,” he pointed to the fellow with plus signs for eyes and whiteface for skin sitting in the passenger seat, “Putzy,” the dotted man with a flower-shaped collar, “and there’s Blammo.” He motioned at the portly frowning woman with a bulbous ruddy nose pushing poor orphaned Kate against the window glass.
“You don’t have to do this every time,” said Jocko, who looked a little sick of this whole clown business already.
“I’m very pleased to meet you all, of course,” assured Kate, staring up at Blammo. “You entertainers aren’t headed out of Jersey by any chance, are you?”
“We’re on our way to our enclave in Phillipsburg, but we’re not going to take you over the border,” said another joker, with a swirling scarlet smile painted across his wrinkled lips. “And you can call me Horace Grimbridge, Ms. Caitiff.”
“That’s very generous of you and will do fine,” said Kate. “I’m sure since I’ve been walking all the way from Paterson that another quick jaunt into the middle of Pennsyltucky won’t be so much of a hassle.”
“So, I guess you spilled the beans about the magic of the many-clowned tiny car gag by picking me up, huh, guys?” Kate cracked the window she couldn’t help but leave her breath on and had another smoke. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” She was used to getting the usual question and answer with adults she smoked around. This time however the clowns looked relieved and released cigars from the confines of their polka-dotted, striped, frilled, flowery, and blindingly yellow garments. “Thank our Savior Christ you’re not one of those kids,” said Jocko between desperate huffs on his cigar. “You know, who cough and act pissed when you smoke around them? God…”
“It’s important that you don’t tell anyone about how we do this trick,” said Wiggles. “As they say, ‘the last thing a clown does is disappoint.’ I can’t have a million children bawl when they see that all there is to it is to force a sufficiently humorous number of clowns into a car by sheer force.”
“But how could you possibly disappoint a child?” asked Kate with a sweet note in her voice.