Freezer Burn

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Bill climbed down and tried to work the switch, but nothing happened. He had to go get Conrad to take a look. Conrad sniffed about and worked this and worked that. He got a little box of tools and tore off the gearbox lid and eyeballed the situation. The gearbox was packed with dirt. It was surprising it had worked as long as it had. Phil had left one last little surprise for Frost.

  “It’s screwed,” Conrad yelled up. “Phil packed the gearbox with dirt.”

  Bill glanced up. He could make out Frost looking over the edge of the stranded bucket he was in. Frost let out a sigh audible all over the camp.

  “It won’t run at all?” he yelled down.

  “Nope,” Conrad said.

  “Can it be fixed?”

  “It can be replaced.”

  Another sigh from Frost. “I guess the only thing is to climb around and finish what we can reach. We’ve gone this far. Tomorrow I’ll go into town and see if I can find someone who can fix or jury-rig a new gearbox. Phil had some problems, but I wouldn’t have expected this of him.”

  “Hell, I would have expected worse,” Conrad said. “He was hoping it would jam up carnival night, kill some major revenue.”

  “Bill,” Frost yelled down. “Do you think you could climb up here and help me finish this top railing, and the last few buckets?”

  Bill didn’t much like the idea, but he nodded.

  “If you fall,” Conrad said with a smile, “tuck your chin and think rubber.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Conrad slapped Bill on the thigh and four-pawed it back to U.S. Grant’s trailer.

  Bill took off his paint-splattered shirt and started up. It took him about fifteen minutes to get up to the bucket next to Frost.

  “Thanks, Billy Boy. It’s good to see you’re true-blue.”

  “Sure,” Bill said, picked up a brush and began to paint the railing that held the buckets. The sun was hot. It felt good for a while, but after a time he began to burn and his wrists ached from working the brush. He had paint all over him and no shirt to put on to keep out the sun.

  Once he looked down, and there, with her hands over her eyes, wearing a soft cotton dress with pink and blue flowers on it, was Gidget. The dress was gathered around her and fit like a condom. You could see every outline of her there was to see. A pinhead came up behind her and lifted her dress from behind.

  Like it was nothing new, Gidget whipped out her right hand and beaned the pinhead across the nose. The pinhead wandered off holding his snout.

  Frost smiled and waved at her. She waved back.

  As it grew dark, about suppertime, the sun fell through the metal of the whirligig and filled the bucket where Bill stood with melted caramel light. Frost turned and smiled. In that moment, to Bill, he seemed of another world. The dissolving sunlight had made him golden.

  “I’m pooped,” Frost said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I think we should seal up the paint, have some supper. Finish up in the morning. Tomorrow, we can do the last bits as we climb down. It’ll be a little tricky, but we’re careful, tie the buckets to our belts, we can do it. But we’ll do it tomorrow. I’ve had it with the smell of paint.”

  “Might be easier to just get the gearbox fixed first, don’t you think?”

  “It might be, but I like to finish what I start. We can be through in an hour or two if we start early, and I’ll go into town then and see about a mechanic of some kind. You got much paint left?”

  “No. Practically out.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  They climbed down.

  About a half hour later, Bill was fresh out of the shower, having gotten all the paint off himself, and the stench of it out of his nostrils. There was a knock on the door. Bill wrapped a towel around his waist and answered it. It was Frost.

  “Look here, son. I need a favor.”

  “Come in.”

  “No. I’ll make it quick. I’m tuckered out and to be honest there’s something I want to see on the television. But I’ll give you some money for paint, and a little extra for yourself. I want you to run into town. They got a Wal-Mart there, which is about all that’s open this time a night. Fact it stays open twenty-four hours. That’s where I got the paint. I want you to get some more. I got the name of the paint written down.”

  Frost produced a strip of paper with the name and paint number on it. “This is what you want. And get the number of gallons written on here.”

  “All right.”

  “Oh, I’m sending Gidget with you. She knows where the Wal-Mart is.”

  “Sure.”

  “She wants it, stop by and buy her a little something to eat afterwards.”

  “Sure.”

  Frost gave Bill some money. After he left, Bill dressed and put the slip of paper in his pocket. He worked his hair in the bathroom a while, trying to comb it more like the picture of James Dean. He went outside. Gidget, still dressed in the white dress with flowers on it, was leaning beside Frost’s car smoking a cigarette. She didn’t show any happiness in seeing him.

  She produced the car keys and Bill took the driver’s side and she sat in her place with the window down, flicking ashes out. She looked as if she’d rather be taking a car aerial enema than going to town with him.

  When they were about three miles down the road, Bill glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She smiled, slid over next to him and kissed his neck.

  “I had to play it that way, baby. I couldn’t look too excited.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  “Man, you look good all browned from the sun.”

  “It’s more like burned.”

  “Listen, hon, you know what Frost is going to do? He’s going to get up early and take the paint and finish before you get up. He thinks it’s some kind of surprise. So he’ll be up there before you get up, see. You’ll be in bed, and I’ll be in the motor home, and he’s up there in that rickety old whirligig. Everyone has tried to make him get rid of it. It’s old and it’s coming apart. It’s dangerous.”

  “I don’t like where this is going.”

  “I think you’ll like where it ends up. Tonight, when we get back, you wait until late, then you take a flashlight and climb up there and loosen the bolts in the bucket where he’ll start painting tomorrow. Loosen them and set it such a way a little movement will make it tip. Since where ya’ll quit today is at the top . . . Well, it’s quite a drop. He’s a big man.”

  Bill had a good grip on the wheel. They went out of darkness and into the beginnings of light from the town.

  “Turn here,” Gidget said.

  They went down a long street and came to a highway and Gidget had Bill turn right. He went along there and past some houses and came to the Wal-Mart on the right. He pulled up in the huge lot way away from the store. So far out they would have to walk a distance to go inside. He cut the engine and sat.

  “You’ve drugged him, made him sleep. Why not just do it that way? Too many pills. Why’s it got to be done like this?”

  “It’s got to look like an accident. We can’t be around. I drugged him, they got tests will show that. They’d find out right away. This is better.”

  “Something like this, it can’t be undone,” Bill said. “I know. I got some things I’d like to undo. It always seems easy, but it’s more than you see. I don’t know nothin’, but I know that.”

  “Yeah. Well I know this. I want you. I like the way you look. I like that eight inches of dick you got. And I don’t want to scrape for three years or four or five or the rest of my life. I need some kind of start. We deserve it.”

  “Do we?”

  “You deserve what you think you deserve. You get what you get, and sometimes, you have to go get it. You understand?”

  “You really think it’ll work?”

  “He wants to do something nice for you. He thinks you’re swell.”

  “Oh shit . . .”

  “Just listen. You worked all day when everyone else took off. He appreciat
es that. He’s going to climb up there tomorrow right at sunrise and finish. He wants it done so it’s got time to dry and he can get into town to have someone fix the gearbox. He gets in that whirligig bucket, starts moving his big ass around . . . he’s dumped. It’ll look like an accident. No one will know.”

  “How am I gonna loosen the bolt?”

  “With one of his wrenches. I got it out of his toolbox. It’s hid outside the motor home now, but I haven’t been able to get it over to your trailer. We bring the paint back, I’ll give you the wrench.”

  “Conrad sleeps on top of the motor home sometimes.”

  “Not since he’s been sticking his dick in Synora.”

  “Synora?”

  “The bearded lady.”

  “Oh.” Bill felt bad he didn’t even know the bearded lady’s name. Conrad was his friend, and he hadn’t even bothered to know his woman’s name.

  “You got to learn to pay attention to details, baby. That little thing with Phil, it’s put Conrad in regular with her. He sleeps in her place. And the weather has been unpredictable. Think about it.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “You can get up there quick and easy and undo the bolt and climb down. Take the wrench, wipe off any prints might be on it, and throw it in the river. That way, there’s paint inside it or rust from the bolt, they can’t trace it, and even if you miss a fingerprint, it isn’t going to hold underwater. And them finding it in the river there, I doubt it. Not the way it’s churning. Toss it in there and it’s gone forever. It’s just an accident.”

  “But it isn’t.”

  “In a day or two, far as I’m concerned, it’s an accident.”

  “The cops will come around. They’ll talk to all of us, and I may be wanted for that firecracker stand thing.”

  “Cops come, you don’t need to even come out unless they ask to see everyone. It’ll just be a dumb accident. Let me tell you something, a thing happens at the carnival nobody busts their ass to find out about it. No one is all that worried about a bunch of freaks. I know I’m not. Let’s get the paint.”

  Twenty-five

  They bought the paint and Gidget made it a point not to stand too close to Bill or to look in any way interested in him while they got it and went through the checkout line.

  They left there, and on their way home she asked him if he was supposed to buy her something.

  “Frost said if you want it.”

  “I don’t want it, but if I did, it’d be about ten dollars’ worth. Give me the ten dollars.”

  Bill worked his wallet out and put it on the seat. She took ten, and then a five.

  “Say I’m real hungry. I think I should get what you would have spent, don’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  They drove on and Gidget had him pull down a little clay road and onto a trail that wound up a hill into a clutch of trees overlooking the road below through pine limbs. The road and trail were muddy from all the rain and Bill feared they’d get stuck, but they forged on, sliding a bit, and finally they came to rest at the peak of the hill. Gidget lit up a cigarette and looked out the open window. She spent a few minutes doing that, neither of them talking.

  “Years ago, when I was in high school, I used to park with a boyfriend up here. He was a smart, neat guy. Good-looking enough. He wanted to go to college and take care of me and he thought I had some art talent. He thought I could do something with it. I wasn’t patient enough. He went on and did well. Me, I’m still out here.”

  “What about me, baby?”

  “You’re something, hon. I like the way you look. You’re kind of cheap and not too smart and probably rotten to the core, just like me. We deserve one another.”

  Bill tried to decide if that was a compliment. While he was contemplating, Gidget hiked up her dress with one hand while she smoked with the other, and showed him she didn’t have on panties. She lay back on the seat and threw one leg on the dash and took another hit off her smoke.

  “You haven’t got time to get fancy, and you don’t need to make me come, but I figured you’d probably want a little of this. Sooie, honey! Come and get it.”

  Bill unbuckled his pants and pushed them and his underwear down to his knees and showed her that he did indeed want a little of it. He felt a little ashamed to just jump on her, but not so proud he didn’t do it. She smoked with one hand and stroked the back of his head with the other. Once when he looked up, her eyes were half closed and smoke was rolling out of her nostrils, and he assumed, somewhat painfully, that she was thinking of the college boy she didn’t marry. He made sure that with every stroke he hurt her a little.

  Five minutes later he finished and she lit up a fresh cigarette. Five minutes after that the car was churning through sticky mud, but they made it, got back on the road and slid around there until they reached the highway.

  Bill said, “I feel kinda guilty, just knocking off a piece like that. Not doing anything for you.”

  “Hey, it felt all right. We didn’t have time for nothing else. I wanted you to remember what it is you’re gonna be gettin’ regular-like when Frost is dead.”

  Bill sighed.

  “It’ll be all right. Listen here. You love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than anything?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then there isn’t any holdup, is there?”

  Bill didn’t answer.

  When they got back to the carnival Conrad was outside, smoking a cigarette, looking at the stars. He watched Bill and Gidget carefully. Gidget got out of the car and nodded at Conrad and went inside the motor home. Bill thought about the wrench a moment, then went over and stood by Conrad, bummed a smoke. Conrad lit him up.

  “So,” said Conrad, “you’ve taken up smoking?”

  “I used to smoke my Mom’s cigarettes. But just when I was nervous.”

  “You’re nervous?”

  “Not really. I don’t know. I guess.”

  “About what?”

  “Life.”

  “You stayin’ out of ditches?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean little ditches with hair round the edges.”

  “Sure. Old man just sent us into town for paint, that’s all. How’s it with Synora?”

  “U.S. Grant? Hell, no one really calls her Synora. She’s talking about shaving her beard, though. Then maybe that’s what she ought to be called. She’s lost some pounds lately, thinking about going straight and looking good. Me, I guess I’m stuck this way or no way.”

  “She not going to stay with the carnival?”

  “I don’t know. I seen this special on TV the other night. It was on carny folks, about how all of ’em really love the life. Let me tell you, from my viewpoint the life sucks. If she can leave the carnival, go straight, I was her, I’d do it. She could maybe even get that electrolysis, or whatever it is that removes hair permanently.”

  “That’d be all right, I reckon.”

  “What I figure, she leaves, well, that’s it for me. Unless she wants to keep a dog in the suburbs. You know, buy me a little doggie bowl, take me for walks. She leaves here, she’s got some kind of degree she earned by correspondence. She don’t have to do this. Me, I not only don’t have a degree, I look like a goddamn dog.”

  “But a very nice dog.”

  Conrad laughed.

  “It’ll work out.”

  “Yeah,” Conrad said, dropping his cigarette butt on the ground, grinding it with the leather band on his hand. “It’ll work out all right, but I may not like how it works.”

  Conrad looked up at the whirligig. The starlight made the paint shine, though you couldn’t really tell anything about the color.

  “I got to give it to Frost,” Conrad said. “Damn thing does look better. Least in the dark.”

  “We didn’t finish,” Bill said. “We got to do that tomorrow. Up there at the top we got places to paint.”

  “Yeah, well, I should have got up there and helped him, I guess. I was p
retty hard-ass. Actually, I’m quite a climber, I just don’t want him to know it. So I lied.”

  “It don’t matter. Tomorrow morning we’ll finish. I’m dreading the shit out of it, but we’ll get it done.”

  Conrad pulled back his rubbery lips and showed his teeth. There were bits of tobacco in them.

  “Bill, you know, you’re all right.”

  “Thanks. You ain’t so bad yourself.”

  “You fish much?”

  “Used to, some.”

  “That river out there calms down tomorrow, we ought to drop a line in there. Whatdaya say?”

  “It’s something to think about.”

  “I got the tackle.”

  “Well, all right.”

  “Good. Me, I’m going to see if I can catch a program on the television, then see if I can get lucky with Synora.”

  “Yeah, well be careful doing that. You’ll get stinky on your dinky.”

  “One can hope.”

  Twenty-six

  In the Ice Man’s trailer, late at night, early morning actually, Bill sat on the stool where Frost sat when he lectured about the Ice Man. With eyes closed, the hair dryer in his hand, held between his legs limply, Bill went over the spiel Frost gave, imagined himself giving the talk while wearing a suit the color of vanilla ice cream, a peach-colored shirt, and a dark blue tie. He imagined two-tone shoes, white and brown, polished to the point of being blinding.

  He imagined a crowd around the freezer, hanging on his every word. All the women in the crowd were as pretty as Gidget, but not so fire-kissed. The women were looking down at the Ice Man, sneaking looks at the old man’s privates, glancing now and then at Bill as he talked with authority. All of the women wanted him. Bill was certain of that much. It was in their eyes. They wanted Bill because the Ice Man, a dead messenger from the past, had heated them up, sending out sensuality from beyond death, frost, and petrification.

  He wanted them too, and would give each their turn, and the men would not care, because they knew, absolutely knew, he deserved it and that for him to have their women was an honor.