Joe Lansdale: Freezer Burn

A few days later after all this considering, Bill drove into town on the last of his gas and found Chaplin and Fat Boy working on a car in Fat Boy’s garage. Chaplin was under it and having Fat Boy pass down wrenches.

“How’s the boy?” Fat Boy asked Bill.

“I’m fine. That Chaplin under there?”

“Naw, I’m Raquel Welch,” Chaplin called from beneath the car, “and I’m givin’ the car a blow job. How you doin’?”

“Okay.”

“How’s your mom, Bill?”

“Fine. Who’s Raquel Welch?”

“One of the big-tittie actresses. She’s a little long in the tooth now, I reckon. Hell, she might be dead.”

“That don’t matter none to Chaplin,” Fat Boy said. “Long as her titties ain’t rotted off and there’s some kind of hole in her.”

They laughed. Bill said, “You boys want to do a little somethin’? You know, a little job.”

“You don’t mean illegal, do you?” Fat Boy said. “I mean, I don’t do nothing illegal.”

All three laughed, and Chaplin, who had been lying on a wheeled board, a creeper he called it, slid out from under the car and got a rag and wiped his hands.

“Well,” Chaplin said, “it illegal?”

“Yeah,” Bill said, “it’s some illegal.”

“Long as it ain’t killin’ nobody,” Fat Boy said.

“We’re gonna have to have guns, but that’s just for show.”

“Man, I don’t know,” Fat Boy said. “I did that filling station over in Center with you, and you’re kind of nervous when there’s guns. Chaplin, he likes guns too much. I thought we might end up shootin’ someone. I don’t want to shoot no one. I mean, they’re gonna shoot me, I might shoot ’em, but I don’t want to shoot nobody I don’t have to.”

“You don’t got to shoot anybody,” Bill said. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. It’s just for show.”

“I might shoot somebody, it’s worth the money,” Chaplin said.

“It’s a firecracker stand,” Bill said. “I figure they take in several thousand a day. I’m sayin’ we split it three ways.”

“How many guys run the stand?” Fat Boy asked.

“One most of the time. Sometimes two. We hit it at closing time, take the money and run. Piece of cake. We’ll need to heist a car to do the job, ditch it somewhere, have our own waitin’. We wear masks. We don’t say much. We wave a pistol around. We get the money and we’re gone.”

“Them firecracker stands,” Fat Boy said, “they’re out of the city, easy targets.”

“It’d be a whole lot easier than a convenience store,” Chaplin said.

“That’s right,” Bill said. “This one is across from my house. Easy pickin’s.”

And so it came to pass that on the Fourth of July, minutes before ten o’clock at night, which was when the stand closed, Fat Boy at the wheel of a stolen white Chevy, Bill to his right, and Chaplin in the back seat, arrived at the firecracker stand.

Fat Boy stayed in the car. Bill and Chaplin got out and went over to the stand wearing Lone Ranger style masks. A fat woman in a muumuu big enough to make a bedspread for most of Bangladesh to lie down on and wrestle a little bit, was buying some Roman candles, some punks, and some matches.

“I just love these here Roman candles,” she said. “You get out where it’s real dark and set ’em off, they’re just as pretty as stars.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the stand worker. The stand worker was a skinny fellow with an Adam’s apple that moved a lot and made him look like a snake trying to swallow a live gopher. When he spoke to the fat lady he seemed about as sincere as a hooker swearing she’d never let anyone come in her mouth before.

The fat lady looked at Bill and Chaplin in their masks. She said, “Boys, it’s the Fourth, not Halloween.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bill said. “We just think we look good in ’em.”

“Well, you don’t.”

“Yeah, and you’re fat as a fuckin’ whale too,” Chaplin said.

“Well, I never,” she said, and got her bag of goods and waddled off to her car and wedged herself inside with a grunt and drove off. Now only Bill and his comrades and the firecracker stand worker were on the site.

The stand worker said, “I ever got that fat, I’d want someone to shoot me, skin me, and tack me on the side of a barn for target practice.”

“Uh huh,” Bill said. “Give me some of them Roman candles there. And a bunch of them Black Cats.”

“How many’s a bunch?” asked the stand worker.

“Two of them long packs,” Bill said.

“Y’all come from some kind of party?” asked the stand worker.

“Somethin’ like that,” Bill said.

The stand worker went at gathering Bill’s order. When he finished, he placed them on the counter. Bill pulled out a pistol and pointed it at him. “While you’re at it, why don’t you just put all your money on the counter too. I’d prefer it in a bag.”

“Why you piece of shit,” said the stand worker.

“Watch your mouth,” said Chaplin, taking out his revolver, “or you’ll find it on the other side of your head.”

“Easy,” Bill said.

“This here is my firecracker stand. What I make here is all I get, ’cept for some little farm jobs I take now and then. I ain’t got a steady job. And you didn’t come from no party neither.”

“We crawled out of that fat lady’s ass when she wasn’t looking,” Chaplin said.

“Pieces of shit,” the stand worker said. “Pieces of shit. That’s what y’all are. You’re robbin’ a man needs all he can get and you don’t even care. There’s niggers wouldn’t do this to me.”

“You’re breakin’ my goddamn heart,” Chaplin said.

“Put the money on the counter,” Bill said.

The stand worker gave Bill a defiant look, reached under the counter and came up with a metal box and opened it and took out the money and put it on the counter. “Get your own sack,” he said.

“You give us a sack,” Bill said, “and put them candles and ’crackers in there too, and if you got any of them little teepee things that spew colors and blow up, put some of them in there, or I’m gonna shoot your dick off.”

At that moment, the elastic on Bill’s mask gave out. The mask sprang forward and floated down and landed on the counter in front of the stand worker. But the stand worker didn’t look at the mask. He looked at Bill’s face.

“Hell, I’ve seen you before,” said the stand worker, proud of himself. “You live across the road there? Yeah. You do. I know you.”

Bill looked at Chaplin. Chaplin and Bill looked at the stand owner, who suddenly grew pale.

“You fucked up,” said Chaplin.

“Don’t,” Bill said, but Chaplin shot the stand owner between the eyes. The stand owner did a short hop backwards, coiled down over his legs as if they were boneless, and lay behind the counter with his head on his knee, one hand reaching up and pulling down a box of firecrackers. Then he was still as the dirt beneath him.

“Oh my God,” Bill said. “You shot him.”

“He knew who you were.”

“I didn’t want nobody killed.”

“Pray over him a bit, maybe he’ll come around.”

Bumfuzzled, Bill stood still as a post.

“Climb over there and get the money,” Chaplin said.

Bill climbed over the counter, got a bag and shoved the money into it, got another bag and put the candles and the ’crackers in it, picked him out a few cherry bombs and the teepee things, put those in the sack. He looked through the dead man’s pockets and found a quarter. He climbed over the counter, tossed the firecracker bag to Chaplin, and they darted out to the car, got in the back seat.

“I heard you shoot,” Fat Boy said. “You shot him, didn’t you?”