Swallowing and dumping.

Bub’s jaw still hurt like hell from the pie-pasting he’d taken only a few minutes earlier. Sure, crouching in that hedge made a difference, but not enough that there wouldn’t be a bloopy, misshapen swelling distorting Bub’s pasty mug for at least a couple of days.

“Great,” Bub thought. “What am I going to do, some temp work in Slipknot’s road crew? I think not.” Bub meant he would endeavor not to think. It hurt too much, and his noggin throbbed horribly. Besides, Slipknot wasn’t Bub’s “bag,” as it were. He was more classically inclined for one thing. Second, he thought their clowning skills were sub-par. “That heavy metal headbanging? That’s it? Call that an act? Where are the tiny cars? Where are the seltzer bottles? The buckets full of confetti? Where are the cotton-candy goats and the other trappings of clowndom? Why, they profane the legacy of Emmett Kelly and Ellsworth Kelly and Kelly Girls everywhere . . . not to mention the work of every happy-sad joey ever to compress the sawdust and elephant manure under the big top. I’m amazed either of the Ringlings, Barnum or Bailey lets them get away with it.”

“Pie!” yelped a steward from somewhere near the clubhouse. Here came another one. The trajectory must’ve changed or this was a heavier pie than the others. It came low over the sycamores, stopping at the end of a deepening trench it dug in the rough in front of Bub’s caddy-shack porch.

Bub stared at the pie for a long moment. He scanned the horizon, looked left and right, then quickly fell off the porch, rolled over the pie and dropped it down the front of his baggy clown pants. Back on his feet, he hurried inside, putting the pie in the freezer with the Freshie-pops, black-and-white film and ham-hocks. Those pies were a menace — a delicious menace that had kept Bub’s capacious lower extremities widening on a pretty consistent basis when nothing else would.

“A clown with a spoon will always catch eyes, and there’s none can compare with my skeet-shooting pie,” Bub sang softly as he trudged out to the ball-swallower parked on the cracked concrete slab next to the shack.

He turned the crank on the front, silently urging the swallower to chug to life . . . which it did after some coughing hesitation.

“Sweet sphere-gulping behemoth, how I love your hunger,” Bub said, grinning and running an oversize foam finger along the lumpy outlines of the pilot’s cage. Easing his bulk onto the wobbly tractor seat, he ground the swallower into reverse and backed out onto the edge of the fairway. He’d start slow, combing for outliers at the edge of the woods, then work his way onto the course as the golfers drifted back to the clubhouse for the half-price Hot Fuzz Moment, lingering over a couple more of the rank concoctions as Lavender Scarface went into his second set, getting drunker and bitchier as he did every afternoon, until finally they had to sedate him before the dinner hour.

Bub’s ball-gobbling had barely begun when he noticed Danny and Dexter Divot, skulking along near the 13^th fairway in their father’s gold-plated golf cart. The ball-swallower’s pilot’s cage obscured Bub enough so that it was impossible for people outside to tell where he was looking — or, in fact if he was looking at anything, or where he was going. Bub started at the Divots. He could see them cutting the occasionally nervous glance at him. They were either about to perpetrate one of their assaults on the protocols, sensibilities or members of the Cinderbag Club, or they’d already done whatever nasty little “action” they’d concocted and were now trying to be nonchalant about fleeing the scene.

“Hey, isn’t that that clown swallowing balls?” Danny said. Dexter stared at him. “The clown,” Danny said again. “He’s following us. First that thing with the yeast and now this. Do you think he knows something?”

Dexter shrugged. “What could he know? And who’d care if he did? Is he going to stop us? We could do whatever we wanted right in front of that bozo and there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do about it. Face it, man, here at the Cinderbag Club, we are princes . . . princes of darkness, perhaps, but princes just the same. Clowns? I care not for clowns. And I’d advise you to follow my lead.” He pronounced it “led,” which confused Danny further.

“Balloon?” Danny ventured.

“What balloon?” snapped Dexter. “Are you having another one of your episodes, Danny, is that what this is? Why does that clown get on top of you so badly?”

The idea of Bub even getting near him was enough to make Danny moan and quaver. The thought of Bub actually climbing on top of him was abhorrent. “No, no, no, no, no, no . . .” he muttered. “Not the clown.”

“Jeee-eeez,” Dexter moaned too dramatically. “It’s just a clown. Don’t you get it?”

“But all those chimps . . . and before, me and one of the Sapersteins, we were . . .” Danny stopped.

“You and a Sap were what,” Dexter demanded, his eyes narrowing. How dare Danny, damn it?

The Divots stared at each other, neither one daring to look away, each determined to hold his ground. Danny was thinking that Dexter’s pushing him around was going to stop now. Dexter was equally committed to finding out which one of the Sapersteins Danny was talking about. And so help him, if it was Murdstone, he’d—

There was a jerk, a grinding, and a splorp as the golf cart fell into a bunker. Both Divots were thrown out of the seat as it suddenly stopped. If the mayor was mad before, he’d throw a rod about this. They needed some way to haul or wobble or dislodge the vehicle and hoist it back onto the green.