Freezer Burn (12 page)

It was on his first late night of doing this that he discovered Conrad lying on top of Frost’s trailer. He was a fair distance away, his back to Bill, and he lay still, his ear to the roof. At first Bill thought he was up there eavesdropping, trying to catch the sound of lustful breathing inside, or listen to the mousesqueak rhythm of bed springs.

But, as he became accustomed to the dark, Bill saw that Conrad lay with his head on a pillow, and there was a blanket stretched over him. He was sleeping there, like a pet near its master, waiting for tidbits, soon to be called, tucked in for the night with a dream and a razor.

Bill’s first thought was: What if it rains? Where does
he sleep then? Underneath? Does he have a basket there? A bowl?

But it never seemed to rain anymore, not since that day it had cooled his mosquito-wounded face. It was hot with a constant savage wind blowing, the air so brittle a wave of your hand might knock a crack in it.

Every night when Bill came out of his trailer unable to sleep, there was Conrad. On occasion the trailer would be rocking to the lovemaking of the two inside, and above them, on the rooftop, Conrad would be sleeping, as content as a baby in a wind-up swing.

It got so watching Conrad was a kind of diversion. Late nights, Bill would sneak out and around the side and get in a place where he could see Frost’s trailer.

On occasion Conrad would not be there, but more often than not he was. One night Conrad was there, and so was the bearded lady. She had her hefty self on all fours and her dress pushed up over her ample ass and her panties around one ankle. Conrad, naked except for his hind leg shoes, was mounting her, proving that he did indeed do it doggie style.

The bearded woman’s head was tossed back, and the way her beard stuck out she looked like those pictures Bill had seen of the Sphinx. Conrad was so eager with his work on the bearded lady’s white round ass, he looked not unlike a child wrestling a beach ball about to roll out from under him. In time Conrad settled down, got his bearings, and the motor home began to rock with a tidelike motion. Bill figured the bearded lady and Conrad were working to the rhythm of the humping of the Frost couple inside; a foursome sharing the same sexual cadence if not the same space.

Bill watched this with a kind of amazement.
Eventually the bearded lady lifted her head even more and pointed her beard at the moon and gave out a grunt he could hear, and Conrad, shaking like a convict taking his voltage in the electric chair, came to a finish. They lay down together, and Conrad pulled a blanket over them. But the motor home rocked on, Frost either taking long to finish or striving for a double.

The whole thing made Bill lonely as the last pig in a slaughterhouse line.

Bill resented Conrad got to drive the Ice Man’s trailer. This was obviously an important assignment. He, instead, had been given Frost’s motor home to drive. At first he thought this was an honor, but in time he realized the Ice Man was, at least to Frost, the most important member of the carnival, and he trusted it only to Conrad, his number one man. Dog. Whatever. Trusted it to him even if he had to pull the trailer while sitting on a cushion, working the pedals with a stick.

Bill soon lost his resentment, however, and learned to take pride in his responsibility. Gidget had taken to staying in bed while he drove instead of riding with Frost or driving the car. She liked to sleep until they came to the next town and set up. At that point she would abandon the camper for air and cigarettes, always dressed in shorts and T-shirts too small to hold her.

She never did any work that Bill could see, outside of what she did at night with Frost in their bed. Perhaps she saw this as work enough. Bill knew, had he been Gidget, he’d have certainly counted it as a fulltime job with overtime. Maybe a little hazard pay for having to deal with that extra hand.

Bill enjoyed having Gidget in the motor home while
he drove. He could smell her, even when he was behind the wheel and she slept behind the closed bedroom door. It was a smell rich and wet, like a lathered horse.

One morning he liked it even more. They were driving to a small town called Gladewater, planning to set up just outside near what Frost called “a row of honkeytonks.”

On the dash of the motor home was a mirror Gidget used to apply makeup to her eyes and lips and brush her hair. He looked at it to examine his face, and liked what he saw. A face clear of swelling and strangeness. Not a bad-looking face, a good-looking face actually, the one thing about himself of which he could be proud, yet had nothing to do with. Nature had given it to him, not out of design he figured, but in the manner a blackjack dealer might turn over a card and find a King.

Still, accident or heavenly design, it was his face, and it was almost back to normal, just tired and a little splotched.

But what interested Bill even more than his face was that the mirror showed him the reflection of the now open bedroom door behind him. In the doorway, sleepyheaded, hair tangled, was Gidget. She was naked as the day she was born, but certainly a lot better looking than at that earlier moment, and she was struggling into a pair of blue jean shorts, wrestling the denim with the fervor of a rodeo rider trying to bulldog a steer, throwing her soft butt back and forth like a pendulum, giving him a wiggling peek at other charms, wobbling boobs, legs long and soft and brown and popped with muscle, a dark V of fuzz coating what Eve used to destroy Adam. Apple, hell. Everyone knew what it was Adam wanted and why he did what he did. A woman
like that, like Eve, like Gidget, she could make you set fire to an old folks home and beat the survivors over the head with a shovel as they ran out. A woman like that damn sure wouldn’t have to do much to get some guy to steal an apple.

Much to Bill’s disappointment, Gidget eventually slid into the shorts and straightened up. She turned and looked toward the front of the motor home where he manned the wheel. He could tell from the set of her face that she knew he was looking at her in the mirror. The shorts were unzipped all the way down, and he could see the crease of the beast itself. Her breasts were revealed, and she made no effort to cover herself. Slowly, she leaned forward and took hold of the sliding bedroom door. Her breasts fell forward, as if about to dive-bomb from her chest and bounce his way. Then she pulled the door closed.

Bill caught his breath and brought the motor home back between the lines.

About fifteen minutes later, for the first time in over a month, it began to rain. Gently at first, then a real gully-washer.

Couple days later, one night after the suckers had left, Bill, unable to sleep, as usual, was outside the Ice Man’s trailer pissing in the dirt. He could have pissed inside in the toilet, but here he was out in the night with an urge to go. It was a cool night, still damp from all the rain they had been getting, and there was a low fog over everything. Bill felt as if he were in a bottle with a cotton stopper, like those killing bottles they used for bugs, where you put the bug in and soaked the cotton in alcohol or something and stuck it in the bottle top and the bug died from the fumes.

There were still some lights left on from the carnival and there were a couple porch lights burning on trailers, and everything looked hot out there, even if it wasn’t. The whirligig had not been dismantled, and wouldn’t be until tomorrow. It looked like a wheel that had come off one of God’s toys and been forgotten.

Bill could hear the two-headed nigger playing juke and soul music tapes in their trailer. They did that a lot and sometimes turned it up too loud and had to be gotten on to, but tonight he could hear it and it was just loud enough and he liked the song. “Soul Man.”

He listened while he drained his lizard, then packed up and was about to step inside and crack open a J.D. Hardin Western book with fucking in it, when the tune changed and the music cranked up with the Isley Brothers singing “Shout.” He listened to that a few seconds, then the two-headed nigger’s trailer door burst open and the two-headed nigger danced out.

Or sort of danced. Bill couldn’t rightly decide if it was dancing. He, or they, were falling all over the pasture, dipping here, jerking there. Two pea brains caught up in rhythms that a single body couldn’t define.

They tried to go different ways and the heads were singing and weren’t very good at it. Eventually they fell down in the pasture and ended up doing what they did at meals, writhing in the wet grass, screaming and yelling, slapping at each other with their hands, causing as much damage to themselves by striking as by getting hit. They sounded drunk.

The yelling and the music popped heads out of trailers, and Bill saw one of the heads was U.S. Grant. She was in a short nightie, and she was standing in a crack in the door, looking out to see what was going on. Bill could see a face behind her, lit up by the little porch light on her trailer. It was Phil of the Constant Half-Hard Dick. His head seemed to be floating just behind her shoulder, like a helium-filled balloon on a string. Phil’s arm was visible too, around U.S. Grant’s ample waist. He probably thought he couldn’t be seen, but Bill could see him.

And so could Conrad.

Due to the rain, Conrad had not been at his post on top of Frost’s trailer. Where he had been Bill was uncertain, but Conrad suddenly crossed the gap between
the Pickled Punk trailer and U.S. Grant’s trailer; the music and the yelling had stirred him the way it had everyone else.

Conrad loped on all fours up the steps to U.S. Grant’s trailer and between her legs, knocking her backwards inside. In the next instant there was a bloodcurdling scream and Phil came leaping out of the trailer butt naked, a gash in his buttock, his greasy hair rolling all over his head. Blood flew out of the wound as he hopped and the drops seemed to rise up in slow motion and hang in place and become like jewels in the odd cotton-covered night and the carnival lights, then the drops fell and exploded in the damp grass.

Bill couldn’t help but note Phil’s pecker wasn’t half hard. He could tell that even from a distance. You couldn’t even see it, it was such a peanut. The cool air, the fact that a dog with a razor was flying out of an open trailer door after him wasn’t something to give it much size either.

“You sonofabitch,” Conrad said, “I’m gonna make you look like a highway map.”

Phil nimbly leaped and hopped and avoided the slashing razor. “We weren’t doin’ nothin’! Jest watchin’ TV.”

“Naked!”

Conrad flashed the razor again and Phil screamed and jumped back and Conrad jumped with him and the razor went out and then Phil was trying to fight back by kicking. Next thing they were both down in the dirt and Conrad was on top with the razor raised.

Bill thought it was just as good Phil hadn’t gone into the money collection racket. He wasn’t worth a shit at intimidation. In a moment they’d have to get someone fresh to run the whirligig and Conrad would be on his
way to doing about three hundred years in prison, or maybe, like a dog nobody wanted, he might get put to sleep by law enforcement.

Out of nowhere Frost appeared. He was in his white silk shorts, and his skin was white in the light and his head was whiter yet. Bill could see the hand on his chest, flopping about as Frost moved, as if it were signaling directions. It was a dark hand now, like it had been dipped in black paint.

Frost had hold of Conrad’s neck. To Bill’s amazement, he picked Conrad up, jerked him up so hard the razor flew from his hand. Conrad flailed about. Phil jumped up, and seeing an opening, he kicked Conrad in one of his dangling legs.

Frost’s free hand shot out and caught Phil by the back of the neck as well. He pulled him forward, slammed Phil and Conrad together and dropped them unconscious to the ground. Frost took a deep breath, stood over them like a stern god. Bill, who had eased forward, saw the hand on Frost’s chest was dark because it wore a thin black glove.

U.S. Grant was out of her trailer in a flash. She sat down on the wet grass, took hold of Conrad’s head, put it in her lap, and stroked his snout. Phil moaned a little. Bill, and most everyone else in the carnival, stood over him and looked at his nakedness. Even Double Buckwheat was there, their music still playing in the background. “A Lover’s Question” now.

Yep, a peanut, Bill thought. Everyone from the pinheads to the pumpkin heads to the assorted freaks were nodding and mumbling about the same thing. They had all heard the story.

Frost bent down and looked at Conrad. Conrad’s eyes
blinked. Frost said, “Sorry, boy. I can’t let you kill someone.” Then to Phil: “Phil, get something around you and come to my trailer. I’ll patch up those cuts. If it’s bad, we’ll take you to the emergency room.”

“Cuts ain’t bad,” Phil said, pushing his hair back with his hand, flicking his wrist to remove grease from his fingers. “Not that fuckin’ Butch the Show Dog here didn’t try.”

Conrad jerked as if to get up, but Frost pushed a palm in his chest and Conrad fell back into U.S. Grant’s lap. She stroked his head and said, “Sorry, Conrad. I’m so, so, so sorry.”