Joe Lansdale - Freezer Burn

Frost had to go into the nearest town to talk to the police and try and get something done about Phil. In the meantime, it became necessary to move on to the next location. The whirligig was left where it was and other things were loaded up. Bill got behind the wheel of the motor home, Gidget in the back, sleeping as usual.

Bill was the last in the caravan line. The stretch of highway the caravan took was littered with clapboard houses, black kids in yards that were mostly made of gravel, sun-burned grass, and nasty-looking chickens. Bill drove past at least six burned-out filling stations, half of them with the pumps pulled up, leaving only the concrete structures they had stood on and the steel rods they had been fastened to.

They hit a wide four-lane stretch of highway, and Bill was thinking maybe things weren’t working out so bad after all. He was sort of getting used to the carnival. All the freaks were starting to look regular to him, and he fit in here good as he fit in anywhere. Better maybe. He had discovered he could talk to Conrad in a way that was different from the way he had talked to Fat Boy and Chaplin.

The bedroom door slid open and Gidget, wearing green silk shorts and a matching pajama top that had only one button near the center, came barefoot up to the front and sat in the passenger’s seat. The seat swiveled and she turned it toward Bill and crossed her legs way over and looked at him with that pouty look of hers that made Bill want to slap her one moment and fuck her the next.

“They find Phil?”

“Not yet. Frost went to town to see about it.”

“What town?”

“One near where we was.”

“You mean the other direction?”

“Yeah.”

“He ain’t in the caravan?”

“No.”

Gidget took a quiet moment to consider this. She looked at herself in the mirror on the dash, seemed to like what she was looking at. She flicked her hair and turned her attention back to Bill.

“You know, you look like James Dean some. Only with darker hair.”

“The sausage guy?”

“Who?”

“Sells sausage. He used to be a country singer.”

“I don’t know who that is… James Dean, the movie star.”

“Never heard of him.”

“ East of Eden. Giant. He got killed in a car wreck.”

“Jimmy Dean is who I know of. He sells sausage. They ain’t bad. I don’t know if he got killed in a car wreck or not.”

“I don’t care about any sausages.”

“You brought it up.”

“I said you looked like James Dean the movie star, I didn’t say anything about any sausages. I can’t believe you don’t know who James Dean is.”

“Yeah, well I can’t believe you don’t know who Jimmy Dean is. He’s on TV all the time and he sells sausage.”

“James Dean’s on the TV too. In old movies.”

“I don’t watch movies much.”

“Well, you’re missin’ out. I grew up on the TV set. I might as well, wasn’t nothing else to do. My Mama and I used to watch it together, late at night. She’d come stay in my room and we’d watch TV. That was when my stepdaddy was drunk and wanted to hit her. She said I was named after a movie she liked about a girl named Gidget. You know it?”

Bill shook his head.

“Reckon you don’t know who James Dean is, there’s a damn good chance you aren’t gonna know about a movie called Gidget. Anyway, she said she and my Daddy saw it on TV once, and she said something about it made her feel romantic, and they made love and I was conceived. They had to get married on account of me. Daddy said my Mama was a bitch from hell and I was her little bitch. He always said that, like we weren’t human.”

“What happened to him? Your Daddy?”

“He stuck his head out a car window and got hit by a signpost. Mama was drivin’. She said she didn’t even know he’d gotten hit. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out and she said she heard a whack, and he just sat back down in the car with his head turned, and she didn’t think nothing of it. Talked to him for five miles she said, before she realized he wasn’t answering any of her questions and he smelled like shit. See, when he got hit he crapped himself. It wasn’t his fault, it’s just your muscles and your bowels let go when you get killed sudden like.”

“Why in hell was he stickin’ his head out of a car window?”

“Mama said he always did that. Like a dog. He thought it was funny. But she was drivin’ too close to the side that day and that sign got him. I finally ended up seeing that movie.”

“What movie?”

“ Gidget. I finally saw it, and it sucked. Wasn’t nothin’ in there would make me want to fuck anybody. Not just seein’ the movie, anyway. I figure what Mom did was fuck through the movie and she just noticed it was on and remembered the name of it. Had to be like that, ’cause there isn’t anything hot about that movie. Not to me anyway. Some people can get turned on by all manner of things. But I was named after the girl in there. Her movie name anyway. Gidget.”

Bill thought he ought to leave well enough alone, but he couldn’t help himself. “You wasn’t talkin’ to me before, why are you friendly now?”

“You aren’t as scary-lookin’. I see enough freaks in this carnival, I don’t want to have to make friends with ’em. I set out to be a model, not a freak show owner’s wife.”

“What happened to the modelin’?”

“Too much tits and ass and not enough legs and neck.”

“I don’t know that’s so bad.”

“Yeah?”

“Looks all right.”

“All right. Hell, you’d cut off one of your feet if you thought you was gonna get your thang in me. I may not know much, but I know men.”

“You know so much, you don’t like freaks so much, how come you’re married to one?”

“You’re not nice. I thought maybe you was nice ’cause you looked nice, but you aren’t. And now that I can see better in the light, you don’t look that much like James Dean anyway.”

She tried to appear mad but Bill didn’t think she was all that upset. She went back to the bedroom and shut the door.

Bill felt as if he’d been run over by a truck. He sucked in the air. It was full of her perfume, and she hadn’t been wearing any. She was right, he’d cut off his goddamn foot.

Bill drove on, thinking about Gidget. By midday it was starting to get dark. The air was heavy and the clouds looked like swollen bladders. Zippers of lightning pulled their flies above the pines, exposing hot light.

Then Bill saw a remarkable thing. In the distance, down the flat stretch of highway, there was a patch darker than anywhere else. It looked as if one of the clouds had set down on the ground, and it was smooth and round and rolling toward him, like a bowling ball.

When the cloud hit it was solid with wind and rain. The strike made the motor home slide and the steering wheel was useless. The home rattled and rocked and Bill heard Gidget yell and hit the wall in the bedroom.

The motor home went way right off the road, between two scrubby pine trees. It dipped in a ditch, came out of it because the other side was lower. It went up and out and along the grass and mounted a concrete offshoot, just missed a metal picnic table, then managed to hit something else.

By the time Bill got it together he realized he was situated under a cluster of large oak trees in a roadside park. The front of the vehicle had gone off the concrete and hit a sign with a historical marker on it.

He left the motor running and turned on the windshield wipers. The motor home was shaking violently. A bolt of lightning hit one of the oaks and knocked a limb about the size of a telephone pole loose and slammed it on the ground in front of the motor home. There was another limb sticking off the larger limb, and it brushed over the front and touched the roof, dripping leaves onto the windshield.