Joe Lansdale - Freezer Burn

Gidget came stumbling from the bedroom cussing. “You sonofabitch,” she said. “Can’t you drive?”

“Not in this,” Bill said. He put the motor home in gear and eased back in his seat and watched the storm through the windshield and the gaps in the leaves draped over it. Outside, debris in the form of leaves, dirt, limbs, and rubbish was being tossed about in the manner a dryer tosses clothes.

“Good God,” Gidget said. “We in a tornado?”

“We got hit by what looked like a ball of black wind. I reckon we’re on the edge of a tornado.”

Lightning cracked its whip and the interior of the motor home was charged with electricity. Bill felt his nose hairs wiggle.

“God almighty,” Gidget said. She took the passenger’s seat, watching the storm, shivering. There was a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in the little tray on the dash, and she took them and held them in her lap, then nervously returned them.

Bill was looking out the side window, through some trees and down a dip of land toward the highway. There was a whipping sound and he saw something pop yellow light, then the light was flicking toward him. He realized it was a high-line wire that had snapped free and been thrown up high over the trees. It dropped across an oak limb and fell like a fishing line tipped with an electric eel. The end of the line popped and fizzled and writhed and danced on the cement near the motor home.

Gidget screamed and jumped out of her seat and onto Bill’s lap. She hugged him around the neck. He found his hand had come up under her pajama top and was resting on the smooth skin at the small of her back. The flesh there was warm and damp with sweat. She looked at him and swallowed. Her eyes were big, the pupils swollen. She held him tighter. She looked at the popping high-line wire.

“That scared me.”

“It didn’t do me no good neither.”

“Maybe you ought to cut off the windshield wipers. Not like we’re goin’ nowhere, and it could get hung up with some of those leaves.”

Easing forward, careful to hold Gidget on his knee, Bill shut off the windshield wipers. Without their beating sound it was quiet inside the motor home. Outside was the wind, the rain, and the sputtering high-line wire.

“We could have been killed, had that wire hit the motor home,” she said.

“I reckon.”

“We’d have been electrocuted, wouldn’t we?”

“I don’t know. Maybe this thing’s insulated enough.”

“No, we’d have been killed. We aren’t that far from death right now. That wind turned, it could throw that wire on us.”

“I’ll try to back out from under this limb.”

Gidget didn’t move so he could try it. “Death is all around us. It always is, you know?”

“I reckon.”

“Ain’t nothing to reckon. It is. Sometimes it takes a certain moment to let you know.”

Gidget’s face came close to his. Her breath was sweet. Without really thinking about it, his hand dropped and came to rest on the top of her ass, which was damp through the thin green cloth.

“Just one change in the wind and that wire moving some,” she said, “our whole life would be over.”

She leaned closer and he kissed her and she bit his bottom lip, hard enough to draw blood. When she leaned back from him she was smiling and there was blood on her lips. She unbuttoned her top.

“What about everybody else?” Bill said.

“They aren’t here. They’re out there in the storm too. A little luck, and they’ll get blown away.”

“What about Frost?”

“He’s got a hand on his chest.”

She pushed at the edges of the pajama top and showed him her breasts.

“Jesus,” he said. He moved his hands up the front of her and pushed her top off and took hold of her breasts. “Excellent.”

“Hell, baby. They’re better than that.”

He put a nipple in his mouth and sucked. There was a tinge of sweat on her body, and it tasted the way she smelled. He moved from one nipple to the other, then back to her face. He kissed her, tasting his own blood. She rose up and came out of her panties and straddled his knees, leaving room to use her hand on his crotch. Soon he was out of his clothes and they were on the floor and she was on top of him. He thought: Hell, what am I doing? Frost ain’t done nothing to me and this is his wife.

Electricity crackled outside and the wind moaned and the motor home shook. In a flash of light he got a good look at Gidget’s face. In that moment it was harsh, her lips blue, her eyes the color of wet aluminum.

They rolled across the floor and he came out on top between her legs and mounted her. As he entered her he realized he was yet another man consumed by the mystery that destroyed Adam.

Eventually they finished and lay on the floor together, she in the crook of his arm with her hand on his chest. The sky had grown blacker and the rain was knocking all over the motor home. Occasionally the dark outside would brighten up from the lightning or the spitting electric wire. Bill had lost his nervousness. He felt protected by the storm now, as if it were keeping out the world and hiding them in their metal cocoon.

“I don’t see why you married Frost if you don’t like him and you don’t like the carnival and the freaks.”

“You ever been so you couldn’t get out of something?”

“I think I have.”

“Then you got to know what I mean. I wanted to be a model, but I didn’t have the right build. I have this build men like but magazines don’t.”

“I told you how I feel about it.”

“That’s how all men feel about it that don’t prefer to suck dick.”

Bill couldn’t get away from thoughts of the Old Testament. “Reckon yours is the kind of body Eve had.”

“I’m not sure you mean that as a compliment, buster. Eve always gets considered bad.”

“She fucked up the world. Brought sin into it.”

“Like Adam isn’t at fault for being stupid. If anyone fucked up the world, it was him. He didn’t think with the right head. Men don’t ever think with the right head.”

“Yeah, but the big head don’t ever get to feel as good as the little head when it’s doing its kind of thinking.”

“I fucked a preacher once. He was going to save me and he gave me special Bible lessons. I was sixteen. He showed me what Adam and Eve had done as an object lesson. It taught me some things all right. He had a big ole wart on the head of his dick. That’s really a plus, it hits the right spot. Other than that he showed me preachers don’t know any more than Adam did, and never will. God with all his goodness doesn’t know what he’s up against. Bad is good, baby.”

“You still ain’t told me why you married Frost and took up with the carnival.”

“When the modeling didn’t work out, and my Mama died, I didn’t have anything to go back to. My stepfather had come to like me better as I got older, and not because he wanted to talk about what he could do for me as a daughter. He didn’t never do anything, but I could tell he wanted to. He had the same look as that goddamn preacher, and I figured he didn’t even have a well-placed wart on his dick, and I damn sure didn’t want to find out.

“So I didn’t go home again ’cause there wasn’t any home to go to. I went out to Los Angeles, maybe thinking I’d be seen by one of those producers or directors or an actor or something, and get in the movies. I couldn’t act, but I figured I could look good. I was ready to fuck my way to the top, or even to the middle. I got fucked by a lot said they could get me in the movies, but closest I got to it was a movie date and a little feel-up while I was in the dark.

“I worked some restaurants and cafes but didn’t care for that either. I got a job working in this place with a glass you strip behind and you do things you’re asked by a customer talks to you over a microphone and puts money down. They always want you to spread your pussy. It comes to that eventually. You can dance, you can wiggle, but it’s going to turn out you got to use your fingers like a salad spoon. They’re gonna ask for that come hell or high water, like they’re gonna see a place in there better than this one. And even if they did, I don’t get it. They’re still on the outside looking in.