Freezer Burn (19 page)

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 pretty 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.”

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.

Bill opened his eyes and gazed down at the glass. It was frosted. He slowly lifted the hair dryer between his legs and struck the button. The dryer roared and gave a burst of hot air, heated the glass, and caused the frost to dissipate.

When he stared down at the Ice Man—appearing suddenly as if rising out of a block of ice—Bill experienced a sensation of dropping inside the freezer and entering into the Ice Man and looking up and out of his eyes. Above him was the water-beaded glass, and through it he could see his face looking down with hollow eyes and through his empty sockets he could see his empty universe. No stars. No moon. No form. Just void.

It was such a disconcerting feeling Bill had to close his eyes so that he could neither see what he saw or what he thought he saw. He wondered what was going on inside him.

Until Frost, Bill had felt there was just him as he was. There were no sides to it. Good and Bad weren’t real to him. They were words. Now he felt he had seen some light and had liked it. Frost had shone the light on him. Frost had believed in him. And now he had a friend, Conrad, and the light was brighter yet.

Then along came Gidget, dragging shadow, looking like, tasting like, some calorie-filled confection, and he had tasted her, and he had felt as Adam must have felt when he bit into the apple. Light going out. Dirt giving way beneath his feet, grabbing at roots and vines that wouldn’t hold.

Bill took a deep breath. He told himself he had to
hang on, had to poke his shoes into the dirt and make toeholds. Had to climb up and out and into the light. Had to not do this thing Gidget wanted. Had to stay out of that ditch Conrad warned him about. Only Conrad was wrong, it wasn’t a ditch. It was a crevasse.

The hair dryer droned on. Bill tried to find a spot for himself behind the sound, some place to hide, but he couldn’t. His misery was larger and louder than sound. He opened his eyes again and looked at the Ice Man.

All you got to do is not do it, he thought.

All you got to do is leave it be.

You haven’t got the wrench, weren’t able to get it, so you can’t do it anyway, so you don’t have to do a thing.

You don’t have to touch that woman again. Nothing makes you do it but yourself, and you are the captain of yourself.

Let it pass and you’ll be okay.

There was a knock on the door. Bill jerked, the dryer came unplugged. The burst of heat went away and the dryer fell limp in his hand.

The night air was cool because of the river. The air tasted like the river and the damp East Texas soil. It was a fresh sweet smell that he imagined was not too unlike that of being born.

On the steps of his trailer he saw the wrench. He looked toward the motor home. There went Gidget, moving fast, her buttocks working underneath her cotton dress as if one were wrestling with the other. She went inside the motor home and quietly closed the door without so much as looking back.

Bill stared at the wrench for a full minute. Then he bent over and picked it up. It was heavy. Gidget’s smell was on it. He was the captain, but his ship was on the reef.

He had the wrench in his belt as he started his climb. He went up carefully. There was a nightsweat dampness on the metal and it was hard to get a hand or foothold, and the fresh paint had dried smooth and that made it even harder.

The sky had cleared. As he climbed, he nearly lost himself in the stars above. They were thick and beautiful. There was a crescent moon. It was like a single cat eye, partially open, waiting for a mouse. Crickets chirped and great frogs sang bass out on the river. The pines seemed to have gathered the moon’s light like a mist and they had the appearance of narrow pyramids stacked close together.

Twice the wrench in his belt clanged against the metal, and he looked over his shoulder, but saw no one. As he reached the uppermost bucket he heard a sound below. Looking down, he saw it was one of the pinheads and Double Buckwheat. They had come out of nowhere.

Bill stood still, one foot about to step into the bucket. He saw the pinhead was the one they called Peter. He could tell because Peter had a brilliant pink head with a ring of hair on it like a dirty bird’s nest. Pete and
Double Buckwheat were talking. Pete was sayin’, “No. Uh uh,” which was about a third of his vocabulary.

“Then it’s you,” said one of the Buckwheats. “Us first, then you.”

“Uh uh. No.”

“We trade,” said the other Buckwheat.

“No.”

“Two heads better than one.”

Pete paused at this. He paused for a long time. Double Buckwheat handed him what looked like a wrapped candy bar. Pete might have said something, Bill couldn’t be sure. Pete turned and went between two trailers and a moment later Double Buckwheat followed. Bill eased into the bucket, crouched down and peeked over the edge.

He watched Double Buckwheat and Pete move like ghosts through the night, one pale with a head you could toss rings on, the other a double-headed black ghost. They disappeared into a copse of woods near the river.

Bill decided they were far enough away, and he had to go on and do it, because somehow he didn’t know how not to do it. Watching Gidget’s buttocks pound one another had battered down his resistance. Those buttocks banged like cannons in his brain.

He took the wrench from his belt and felt around for the bolts. When he found one, he took a deep breath and sat still until his eyes adjusted to the interior of the bucket. Then he took the wrench and turned the nut on the bolt until it could be plucked off with the fingers. With that one done, he slid over and unfastened another. The bucket creaked a little.

Bill thought, now how do I do this and get out of this goddamn bucket without it tipping me? But he kept at it until three bolts were loose. He eased himself to
the side and climbed out carefully, leaned over and unfastened the last few bolts so that the nuts, like the others, were hardly on the bolts. A breeze could blow them off. Frost, not knowing they were loose, moving around in there, trying to work, was going to drop.