Joe Lansdale - Freezer Burn

“I made some good money, but you can’t imagine how tired you get of trying to look like nothing makes you happier than to have some guy jerking his gherkin on the other side of the glass. You wouldn’t believe the nasty ole dicks I’ve seen through that glass. I gave it up. Wasn’t any future to it. I came back to East Texas and found there wasn’t any future here either. I was back to working cafes and such and not liking it much. I made a few dollars after hours in the back seats of cars, but that wasn’t any way to go.

“I got in with this guy did forgery for a while, and I learned how to duplicate handwriting and cash hot checks and money orders. It was all right, but he got caught and I almost did, so I gave that up.”

“You can write like someone else, that what you mean?”

“I can write like a lot of folks. The simpler the signature is, harder time I have with it. Easiest way to do it is turn the signature upside down and try to draw it. But it’s a crummy racket. You can only run that one for so long. I got out of it.

“I went to work at a Mexican restaurant over in Tyler and this carnival come through and Frost came to eat there and he was nice to me and tipped me good. He told me about the carnival, and you know, I thought it was some kind of circus. I didn’t know there was a difference. It wasn’t that smelling elephant shit was any more appealing, but it sounded a bit more romantic than pinheads, bearded ladies, and dog-men.

“Six months later he come through again, and I could tell he had the hots for me, you know, but he wasn’t trying nothing. Wasn’t trying to get me in the back seat of a car or in a motel room. He was nice. I hadn’t seen a lot of nice. I thought nice might be pretty good. Third time he came through he asked me to marry him. Just like that. It was kind of sweet. Pathetic, but sweet. And I’d come to hate the smell of an enchilada. I couldn’t get that smell off of me. I’d be away from work, doing something else, the wind would change, and I smelled like a Number 3 Dinner.”

“What was on that dinner?”

“Two tacos, an enchilada, a tamale, beans and rice. You got free tortillas and you had to order a drink separate. It was a hell of a deal if you wanted it. Three ninety-eight plus tax and a tip.”

“I bet you got plenty of tips.”

“If there was a man at the table I did. I knew how to work that. You serve the dinner close with your tits on their shoulders and you wear your dress just a little short and wear shoes with tall heels and walk so they notice it. I can talk real sweet too, Bill. You want to hear sweet, I’m a goddamn songbird.”

“So you married Frost to get away from Mexican dinners?”

“Pretty much. And he seemed sweet, you know. I didn’t marry him with plans of not staying married. I was going through my ‘I want a home and family’ stage. Maybe I still want that. But I didn’t know he had a hand on his chest and that I’d be living with a bunch of retarded pinheads and genetic fuck-ups. And he’s so goddamn good he gives me the creeps. I like a man with a bit more devil in him.”

“The freaks ain’t so bad, you get to know them.”

“I don’t want to know ’em. I want some little piece of the fairy tale, Bill.”

“Well, I don’t guess you’re talkin’ about me.”

“I might be.”

“ ’Cause we fucked?”

“ ’Cause you was a frog that turned into a prince. All ugly and swole up, and then you turned into James Dean, and don’t start that shit about the sausage again.”

“I ain’t got any idea about James Dean.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, and got up and went into the bedroom and came back carrying a book. She turned on a light over the sink. “Come here.”

Bill got off the floor and went over and looked at the page she had the book turned to. It was a picture of a guy stretched out on the hood of a truck.

“That’s him in Giant.”

Bill thought: Goddamn, I do look like him.

She turned pages. There were more pictures. He really did look like this guy, only with darker hair and a little longer face. Maybe more nose.

“Well,” she said.

“We favor,” he said.

“You’re taller-looking than him. I like you taller.” She closed the book and Bill looked at the cover. The Pictorial James Dean. She lay the book next to the kitchen sink and turned and kissed him. His lip was still sore where she had bit him. She sucked at the wound. Her tongue found his and they lay on the floor again and did it. Gidget on top.

When the storm passed and the sun came out it grew remarkably calm. Gidget picked up her book and her clothes and went back to the bedroom and locked the door without so much as a kiss my ass. It was like it had never happened, but it had. Bill was raw and sore from what they had been doing.

Bill dressed, went outside and tried to move the big limb, but couldn’t do it. He figured if he kept trying his only reward would be a strained nut. He did pause, however, to read the historical marker. It told how this had once been the site of an unsuccessful cannonball factory.

He backed the motor home completely onto the concrete drive, and carefully backed down it, being sure to stay away from the high-line wire. The motor home was big and having to use only mirrors made it hard, but he got it out of there and finally on the highway. He drove onward, looking for other members of the carnival. He found the Ice Man’s trailer and truck cab in a ditch. The cab was centered in the ditch in about two feet of water, and the trailer was partially in and partially jackknifed to the right where the end of it had knocked a gap in a barbed wire fence and smashed a small pine tree.

Conrad was sitting in the truck behind the steering wheel smoking a cigarette. There was about a pack’s worth of butts floating in the ditch water by the truck. On the seat beside him was the rig he fastened to his leg when he was driving.

Bill pulled over, climbed in the ditch, looked in the open driver’s window. Conrad gave him a doggie grin and flicked ash into the ditch water. Bill noted that the front of Conrad’s clothes were wet, and he looked uncomfortable. “I’m glad to see you. Figured I got out of the car, some redneck liked to run over dogs would veer off the highway and get me. I wanted to lay down. After an hour or so, that’s more comfortable than trying to sit like this, but I figured I laid down, I might miss one of our group they came by in the rain. I wanted to be ready to honk my horn and flash my lights. Then the sun came out and I didn’t lay down either. I decided to smoke cigarettes. I didn’t even see you come up.”

“You just stuck?”

“I think so. Wind shoved me off the road.”

“I don’t think I can pull it out, even if I had a chain.”

“Nope. It’s a wrecker job. A big wrecker.”

“What about the Ice Man?”

“He’s all right. I checked on him first thing. Neither he nor the freezer moved an inch. That’s why I’m all wet, going back there to check. I’m built low to the ground, you know.” Conrad opened the door of the truck cab. “I hate to ask you this, but think you could lift me up? Otherwise, I’m going to have to walk through ditch water again. You go through it, it ain’t gonna wash up and lick your belly.”

“All right.”

Bill let Conrad climb on his back. The dog-man was heavier than he expected. The idea of touching Conrad just a couple weeks ago would have made him feel queasy, but now it was nothing. They climbed up the side of the ditch and Bill sat Conrad down in front of the motor home.

“Looks like you clipped the front a bit.”

“Yeah. I hit a historical marker in a roadside park. Damn near got hit by a falling high-line wire.”