Freezer Burn (22 page)

Bill could see that ditch looming large.

“You let me in, let me take care of you the way only I can. You hear me, Bill?”

“I hear you.”

“You let me in, honey, and I’ll give you a taste like you haven’t ever had.”

“No.”

“You’re thinking about it—”

“No.”

“—aren’t you, Bill? You know what I can do—”

“Go!”

“—for you. It’s not just what I can do, it’s what you want. There’s no use pretending you’re worth something, Bill. You aren’t. You’re just like me, rotten to the core. You’re tryin’ to wear some kind of halo, like Frost wants you to. But that isn’t you. You got any halo on, it’s made of aluminum foil and a coat hanger, baby. You’re who you are. You and me, we got rotten souls, and that’s all
there is to it. And there isn’t anyone can make you and me happy, but you and me. Together.”

“Please, Gidget.”

“Bill. This is the last time I ask. I’m not one has to ask much, you know that. There are plenty out there ready and willing. Open the door.”

When Bill opened the door Gidget leaped in, swung her fist and hit him over the ear and knocked him down and tried to kick him in the balls. He rolled and she caught his side with another kick. He got up and she kicked at him again, and he grabbed her foot and pulled her to the floor and jumped astride her and slapped her across the face, back and forth, back and forth, and she said, “Yeah, baby, yeah, do it,” and he hit her again, and this time it wasn’t anger, it was pleasure, and she shared the pleasure. She used both hands to grab the sides of her white blouse and rip it open, loosing bra-less titties on the world. Bill jammed his fingers in her worn-out blue jean shorts and tugged with all his might, ripping, exposing one beautiful thigh, then he ripped again, showing the rest of her. She scratched at him and ripped through his T-shirt and tore his flesh and he bled and she ran her hands over his chest, smearing the blood, poking the red fingers in her mouth to suck. He slapped her and she groaned. He tugged at his belt and she swatted his groin. He unfastened his pants, pushed them down, got on top of her. She tried to pull her thighs together. He bit her nipple and she spread her legs with a little squeak. She was hot and wet and sticky. He went into her and she said, “Have you now, you sonofabitch!”

And have him she did. Up one side and down the other. When it was over they lay together, she in the crook of his arm and he breathing heavy, feeling satiated.

“It didn’t work out,” she said. “It happens.”

“It was terrible.”

“I know. You lost a friend. We got the wrong one. We tried too hard. We got to know he’s the one to get it, not hope he’s the one.”

“You won’t give it up, will you?”

“It’s bottom line, Billy. You either want me or you want Frost. Look here. We do this, we got the exhibit. You like the exhibit, don’t you?”

“Sure. I like Frost too.”

“Which do you like better?”

“Why have I got to choose?”

“You keep Frost, he’s got the exhibit. Not us. Not you. You could be the man. You’re dark at the middle, baby, but you do this, we get the thing, the dingus, then you and me, we’re it, and you’re the man. You’re the driving force. Bad stuff is over. For good. I promise. This is for us. It’s the best and easiest way to jump ahead in life. It’s our jump, baby.”

“He told me it’s really the body of Christ.”

“He tells people whatever they want to think about that thing, baby. He thinks he’s some kind of do-gooder. He thinks he can rouse something good in you, and he’ll do it with talk or he’ll do it with that dead body. He’s telling you it’s Christ. Some other person he might tell it’s the body of some rock singer. He feels you out, then tells you what he thinks will work. I’ll tell you what I think it is. Something made of rubber.”

“Well, I guess he didn’t really say it was Christ. He said that was the true story he had gotten.”

“He’s got lots of true stories. I tell you it’s just something rubber is all. He makes himself important with that thing.”

“Hell, that’s what I want. To be important.”

“And you can have it. Listen, honey. Even if that was Jesus and he was here to help you personal, wouldn’t work. You’re rotten, just like I been sayin’, but you want to pretend you aren’t. You want to think maybe you can get religion or something to make you better, but once an apple is rotten, hon, it stays rotten. My advice is learn to be rotten and like it. There ain’t nothing in that freezer’s gonna change who you are, who anyone is.”

They lay silent for a while. Eventually Bill spoke. “We did this . . . I don’t want to start something. You know, a trend . . . Just this one time.”

“What’s that?”

“Something like this. Rotten or not. Just this one time. Right? I mean, there ain’t no one else we want killed, is there?”

“When it’s done, we’ll just let it go. Believe me, it can be done. I just got to think about it awhile. We won’t get in a hurry.”

“Maybe if it was someone I didn’t like.”

“Listen here. He likes you, Billy. Really, he does. But he pities you. You want to be the source of pity? That’s not true respect, friendship, or love. It’s just what it is. I love you, Billy. I know how you and me are. I face the facts. But still, I love you. Do you really want me to keep lying down with a man with a hand on his chest? You really want me to give birth to a baby might have a hand on its chest, or coming out its ass or on top of
its head? You really want that? You think about it. You think about how you’ve had me, baby. Ain’t no one done the things to me you’ve done, ain’t no one likes it the way we like it. I don’t want to be shared. I want you.”

“I still don’t have anything against him.”

“Who says you have to?”

Gidget left him early, while it was still dark. She had gone out of there holding her shorts and shirt together with her hands, leaving him naked in bed. The bedclothes were torn, bloody in spots. He lay amongst their ruin thinking and seeing himself once again as the man on the stool, looking down on the Ice Man, giving the talk.

He had some random thoughts: Jesus. There ain’t no Jesus. And if there was, this ain’t it. He wouldn’t end up in no freezer. And if he did, and this is him, what’s that got to do with me? Frost pities me, like I’m another freak. He’s the fuckin’ freak. Telling me that bullshit about the Ice Man. Conrad, he was all right. I liked him. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did, even if I didn’t mean it. I didn’t set out to hurt Conrad. It’s not my fault. It’s me and Gidget and that’s all. Fuck Frost for telling me that story. Fuck me for ever thinking there was anything about that thing in the freezer. It ain’t nothing but an exhibit I want.

Bill showered, cleaned up the bed, and dressed. There really wasn’t anything to do that day, in spite of what Frost had said. They were locked in until word came from Frost. Gidget was supposed to keep things in order,
but there was already an established order and she wasn’t part of it, and he had no need to be part of it. Not until he had the Ice Man. Then he would for the first time in his life be important. Someone to reckon with. It might not be president of the United States, but it beat living off the leavings of your mother’s checks. When she was alive to cash them anyway.

Around noon there was a knock on the trailer door and Bill answered it, hoping it was Gidget, but it wasn’t. It was a dark-haired woman in blue jeans and a loose shirt. She was an attractive, somewhat large woman. She had a plastic trash bag in her hand.

“Conrad would have wanted you to have these,” she said.

“U.S. Grant?”

“Formerly. I’ve lost the beard. I’m through with carnival life. I’m bringing all of Conrad’s goods to you. This bag, that’s the whole of it. Mostly cowboy books. He loved to read cowboy books.”

“Where will you go?”

“Anywhere. I’m driving my rig out of here within the hour. I’m through. No beard. No work.”

“It’ll grow back.”

“For now I’ll shave it. Soon I’ll get something done to it. I’ll find work somewhere, even if it’s banging oil field workers. I’ve had it up to here with this shit. I was thinking of leaving anyway. Now I’ve got nothing to keep me here. The whole thing’s falling apart. Frost, he’s losing control and I think it’s that blond bitch’s fault.”

Bill took the bag.

“Well, good luck, Bill.”

Synora, U.S. Grant, drove her cab and trailer out of there a half hour later and Bill never saw her again.

A week went by and Gidget got a call on her cell phone that Frost had stopped in Oklahoma and had scoped out some new routes for the carnival and wouldn’t be back for another week. It was a pleasant surprise. It gave Bill and Gidget more time together. They used it well. After that extra week, Frost came home.

The carnival packed up and things went back to the way they were, except they lost the half and half to a transvestite lover from Denton, and the midgets had grown surly in the extreme. Gidget did not knock on Bill’s door, and at night Bill sat on his trailer stoop and watched the motor home, and some nights when the moon hit right, he almost thought he saw Conrad up there, lying down, riding out the rhythm of the couple below. But when he squinted, it was only shadows.

As for the rhythm, the rocking, there was plenty of that, and Bill hated to know what was going on in there, Frost touching her with that dead leather hand in a black silk glove. He hated it, but he came out each night and watched for the rocking, and more often than not he saw it. He began to grit his teeth a lot and smoke cigarettes. He quit reading the books Synora had left, and on one
fateful day when they were parked outside of Tyler, Texas, he took them all out and stacked them and set them on fire. From that point on, he no longer thought he saw Conrad on top of the motor home.

Some days he saw Gidget, but she never really looked at him. They had agreed on this. Agreed they had to not show any more than common courtesy between them. They were waiting for a moment. The exact right moment. But Bill thought sometimes she was too good at it, like maybe she had given up on him and was going to do what she planned by herself, leaving him out. The thought of this drove him crazy.

The summer rocked on and went away and fall came. The carnival made its new Oklahoma route, then dipped back to East Texas. A thing called El Niño, a kind of weather current, had, according to the meteorologists, messed things up. The weather was all haywire. There were floods and high tides on the West Coast of the U.S., hurricanes on the East. Water churned in the Gulf and washed the shores of Galveston with great violence. Wads of thunderstorms fell out of the sky at all times. Tornados tore across Texas. Near Corrigan, one even took away the whirligig, which Frost had never given up on, erecting it at each stop. The tornado carried the whirligig and one of the midgets around for a while, spat out the midget unharmed near a trailer park it didn’t spare, knotted up trailers and whirligig together, and deposited them just off Highway 59 next to a car dealership, as if the tornado had created and was displaying a modern work of weather art.

Winter eased in and so did ice. Hail flailed the land and the trees cracked and bent. No one was really that interested in a winter carnival. Not now. In the old days
when the weather was just cold they got business. But now everything was canceled. People were nervous and a little scared. They had never seen it like this.

Many things changed.

The whirligig was long gone and the other rides had slowly fallen into disrepair.

The midget who had ridden the tornado had finally given it up and left them to work at a filling station in Mineola, Texas. The remaining midgets had turned to shoving people about and using bad language freely.

No one ate breakfast at the table outside anymore. Too damn cold.

One of the pumpkin heads, a fella called Bim, just up and died one morning on the Texas side of the Red River, and had been buried in a pauper’s grave in Paris, Texas, with nothing but his name on a cheap metal marker. Nobody wanted to stuff him, nobody claimed him. What he got was some dirt and a coffin so cheap it was pretty much a cardboard box, an appetizer for the worms.