Joe Lansdale - Freezer Burn

Frost produced a strip of paper with the name and paint number on it. “This is what you want. And get the number of gallons written on here.”

“All right.”

“Oh, I’m sending Gidget with you. She knows where the Wal-Mart is.”

“Sure.”

“She wants it, stop by and buy her a little something to eat afterwards.”

“Sure.”

Frost gave Bill some money. After he left, Bill dressed and put the slip of paper in his pocket. He worked his hair in the bathroom a while, trying to comb it more like the picture of James Dean. He went outside. Gidget, still dressed in the white dress with flowers on it, was leaning beside Frost’s car smoking a cigarette. She didn’t show any happiness in seeing him.

She produced the car keys and Bill took the driver’s side and she sat in her place with the window down, flicking ashes out. She looked as if she’d rather be taking a car aerial enema than going to town with him.

When they were about three miles down the road, Bill glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She smiled, slid over next to him and kissed his neck.

“I had to play it that way, baby. I couldn’t look too excited.”

“Sure. No problem.”

“Man, you look good all browned from the sun.”

“It’s more like burned.”

“Listen, hon, you know what Frost is going to do? He’s going to get up early and take the paint and finish before you get up. He thinks it’s some kind of surprise. So he’ll be up there before you get up, see. You’ll be in bed, and I’ll be in the motor home, and he’s up there in that rickety old whirligig. Everyone has tried to make him get rid of it. It’s old and it’s coming apart. It’s dangerous.”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

“I think you’ll like where it ends up. Tonight, when we get back, you wait until late, then you take a flashlight and climb up there and loosen the bolts in the bucket where he’ll start painting tomorrow. Loosen them and set it such a way a little movement will make it tip. Since where ya’ll quit today is at the top… Well, it’s quite a drop. He’s a big man.”

Bill had a good grip on the wheel. They went out of darkness and into the beginnings of light from the town.

“Turn here,” Gidget said.

They went down a long street and came to a highway and Gidget had Bill turn right. He went along there and past some houses and came to the Wal-Mart on the right. He pulled up in the huge lot way away from the store. So far out they would have to walk a distance to go inside. He cut the engine and sat.

“You’ve drugged him, made him sleep. Why not just do it that way? Too many pills. Why’s it got to be done like this?”

“It’s got to look like an accident. We can’t be around. I drugged him, they got tests will show that. They’d find out right away. This is better.”

“Something like this, it can’t be undone,” Bill said. “I know. I got some things I’d like to undo. It always seems easy, but it’s more than you see. I don’t know nothin’, but I know that.”

“Yeah. Well I know this. I want you. I like the way you look. I like that eight inches of dick you got. And I don’t want to scrape for three years or four or five or the rest of my life. I need some kind of start. We deserve it.”

“Do we?”

“You deserve what you think you deserve. You get what you get, and sometimes, you have to go get it. You understand?”

“You really think it’ll work?”

“He wants to do something nice for you. He thinks you’re swell.”

“Oh shit…”

“Just listen. You worked all day when everyone else took off. He appreciates that. He’s going to climb up there tomorrow right at sunrise and finish. He wants it done so it’s got time to dry and he can get into town to have someone fix the gearbox. He gets in that whirligig bucket, starts moving his big ass around… he’s dumped. It’ll look like an accident. No one will know.”

“How am I gonna loosen the bolt?”

“With one of his wrenches. I got it out of his toolbox. It’s hid outside the motor home now, but I haven’t been able to get it over to your trailer. We bring the paint back, I’ll give you the wrench.”

“Conrad sleeps on top of the motor home sometimes.”

“Not since he’s been sticking his dick in Synora.”

“Synora?”

“The bearded lady.”

“Oh.” Bill felt bad he didn’t even know the bearded lady’s name. Conrad was his friend, and he hadn’t even bothered to know his woman’s name.

“You got to learn to pay attention to details, baby. That little thing with Phil, it’s put Conrad in regular with her. He sleeps in her place. And the weather has been unpredictable. Think about it.”

“I’m thinking.”

“You can get up there quick and easy and undo the bolt and climb down. Take the wrench, wipe off any prints might be on it, and throw it in the river. That way, there’s paint inside it or rust from the bolt, they can’t trace it, and even if you miss a fingerprint, it isn’t going to hold underwater. And them finding it in the river there, I doubt it. Not the way it’s churning. Toss it in there and it’s gone forever. It’s just an accident.”

“But it isn’t.”

“In a day or two, far as I’m concerned, it’s an accident.”

“The cops will come around. They’ll talk to all of us, and I may be wanted for that firecracker stand thing.”

“Cops come, you don’t need to even come out unless they ask to see everyone. It’ll just be a dumb accident. Let me tell you something, a thing happens at the carnival nobody busts their ass to find out about it. No one is all that worried about a bunch of freaks. I know I’m not. Let’s get the paint.”

They bought the paint and Gidget made it a point not to stand too close to Bill or to look in any way interested in him while they got it and went through the checkout line.

They left there, and on their way home she asked him if he was supposed to buy her something.

“Frost said if you want it.”

“I don’t want it, but if I did, it’d be about ten dollars’ worth. Give me the ten dollars.”

Bill worked his wallet out and put it on the seat. She took ten, and then a five.

“Say I’m real hungry. I think I should get what you would have spent, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

They drove on and Gidget had him pull down a little clay road and onto a trail that wound up a hill into a clutch of trees overlooking the road below through pine limbs. The road and trail were muddy from all the rain and Bill feared they’d get stuck, but they forged on, sliding a bit, and finally they came to rest at the peak of the hill. Gidget lit up a cigarette and looked out the open window. She spent a few minutes doing that, neither of them talking.

“Years ago, when I was in high school, I used to park with a boyfriend up here. He was a smart, neat guy. Good-looking enough. He wanted to go to college and take care of me and he thought I had some art talent. He thought I could do something with it. I wasn’t patient enough. He went on and did well. Me, I’m still out here.”

“What about me, baby?”

“You’re something, hon. I like the way you look. You’re kind of cheap and not too smart and probably rotten to the core, just like me. We deserve one another.”

Bill tried to decide if that was a compliment. While he was contemplating, Gidget hiked up her dress with one hand while she smoked with the other, and showed him she didn’t have on panties. She lay back on the seat and threw one leg on the dash and took another hit off her smoke.

“You haven’t got time to get fancy, and you don’t need to make me come, but I figured you’d probably want a little of this. Sooie, honey! Come and get it.”