Joe Lansdale - Freezer Burn

Frost didn’t poke his head out of the motor home.

Pete didn’t show up asking for a blow job.

Double Buckwheat was nowhere in sight.

Neither midget, pumpkin, nor pinhead was stirring, not even a mouse. Bill took the can of fluid and the spoon over to the edge of the river and tossed the spoon way out for no other reason than he wanted to. He put his thumb over the opening in the Coke can and tossed it with a side arm move.

Fluid sprayed from the can, streamed out of it as it flew through the air, went into the water, churned under and was gone.

Bill watched the river for a moment, let out a breath, and went inside his trailer and sat down on the stool and used the flashlight and the dryer to look at the Ice Man.

He no longer slept with a blanket over it.

Next morning, early, before time to go, Gidget woke Frost and told him about the brakes not working right the day before.

“I meant to tell you. I’m sorry. It slipped my mind. I woke up thinking about it and knew I had to tell you now, before things got to stirring. Bill told me to tell you yesterday, but I forgot.”

Frost listened and patted Gidget on the back and went outside and lifted the hood. It was just light, but he could see well enough. He checked the brake fluid first thing. Gidget came out and stood by him in housecoat and house shoes, puffing frozen air out of her lungs.

“It’s nothing,” Frost said. “It’s just low on fluid. I got fluid.”

“You don’t know that’s all that’s wrong. It could have a leak. It could be dangerous.”

“Not at all.”

“I will not have you driving that. I don’t care what you say. Not until it’s checked by an authorized mechanic.”

“I always do my own work on the car.”

“And you’re not very good at it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Frosty, baby, if the weather weren’t so bad, maybe I’d go with it. But with all this ice, I say hitch it up.”

“It would be more dangerous pulling it in this weather than driving it, sweetie.”

“I will not have you behind the wheel of that vehicle.”

“You’re serious.”

“I’m serious. The ice isn’t any better today. It’s worse. And if you insist on driving that car, I will go back inside the motor home, and sit there. I don’t feel well anyway. In fact, I feel pretty sick.”

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“I don’t know. Nothing serious. A little bug. What would comfort me is if you would hitch the car, drive the motor home, and let me get some sleep. I could take a pill and rest.”

“I don’t like you taking pills.”

“Now how often do I do that? I’m sick, Frosty. I don’t feel good. You kind of wore me out last night.”

Frost looked happy. “I guess I did. That was good… Was it okay without the glove?”

“Sure, baby. It was fine.”

“First time you let me do that.”

“You wanted to, I said sure, what’s the deal?”

“It always bothered you before.”

“I’m not so bothered now.”

“I’m glad to hear that, honey. Really. I was beginning to wonder. I figured we had a kid, we had to get past that. I-”

“Frosty, I’d love to talk, but I’m freezing my tail off, and I don’t feel good. You do what I told you, hear? I’d like to have you near me today. I just want to take a pill now and sleep, but I get to feeling better, I can come up there and sit with you.”

Frost nodded. “That’s the way you want it. That’s how it’ll be.”

He closed the hood. He drove the car around behind the motor home, started hooking up the hitch. Bill came out of the Ice Man’s trailer and walked around close to the side of the motor home while Frost was working. Gidget opened the door and Bill, looking to see if anyone was watching, slipped inside. “I’m going in,” Gidget yelled back to Frost. “I’m cold.”

“You do that, honey. I’ll be inside in a bit.”

Gidget slipped inside. Bill stood there with his hands hanging. “What now?”

“Hide in the bathroom.”

“Give me some reason. It’s been a while.”

She kissed him hard. “Hurry.”

Bill went through the bedroom and into the bathroom, got behind the shower curtain, and settled down in the tub. He lay there thinking about all the things that made this worth it. Gidget. The Ice Man. A position. Maybe his mother wasn’t so smart after all. To hell with her and her piddling checks. To hell with that whole firecracker deal. It was Chaplin messed that up, not him. It wasn’t such a bad plan, he just hadn’t had the right people.

In the bedroom, Gidget slipped off her shoes and, still wearing her housecoat, got in bed.

Everyone was ready for Frost to lead, but he was slow about getting it together this morning. He wrestled with the trailer hitch and the car awhile. Finally, one of the midgets who had been vocal about the wait and had been known to bad-mouth Frost almost openly popped into his cab and, by means of a setup not unlike the one Conrad had used when he drove the Ice Man’s trailer, bolted. As he drove by he showed Frost a face that spoke of resolution and rebellion. Here was a man determined to make his mark on the world, even if it was a greasy spot. Pete rode up in the front seat beside him. Pete still had a black eye and wore a wool cap pulled over his pin, like a sock tight over a highway cone.

When the midget charged by in a roar of mud and ice and mounted the road that led to the bridge, the others began to grow impatient. Horns honked and lights flashed. The idea of a wagon master had lost its appeal.

Frost finally climbed inside the motor home from the back and took a peek at Gidget.

Gidget lay in bed, feigning sleep. Her face was lineless, soft and sweet-looking as a baby’s. Her hair was pushed back behind her ears, like a little girl about to play baseball.

Frost went through, slid the bedroom door closed, stopped in the bathroom. He took a leak in the commode.

Bill lay silent behind the shower curtain, listening to Frost drain himself. Frost flushed the commode, then Bill heard him washing his hands. Frost went out, closing the bathroom door.

In the bedroom, as Gidget heard Frost settle into the driver’s seat with a squeak, she got up and pulled off her robe. Underneath she had on blue jeans so tight a pubic hair would stand out under them like a cable. She wore a long-sleeved black T-shirt. She dropped her feet into stringless shoes, pulled the ball cap out from under her shirt, put it on, slipped into her coat and went out the back door, closing it gently.

Gidget saw that everyone was watching her, so she walked quickly toward one of the cabs and slipped around front, between its hood and the rear of the Ice Man’s trailer, hoping Frost had not heard her close the door or that he hadn’t yet looked in the wing mirror and caught her walking away. She had counted on the fact he liked to settle in easy, fasten his seat belt, adjust the crotch of his pants, very methodically put the key in the ignition, check his gauges, then his mirrors. He was a creature of habit. Always the same way. Even in bed, always the same way. She stroked him, he stroked her, she sucked him, he sucked her, he mounted her and flapped his hand and finished. Every stroke was the same. She figured you counted them, there wouldn’t be a difference of two or three strokes from one event to the other. He was like that. Ate a perfect amount of bran to make him shit a perfect little turd.

She slid around to the driver’s side of the cab and hung on to the wing mirror, pulling herself up, almost hanging by her breasts. The driver was Potty, of the unclean fingernails.

“Y’all be careful today,” she said.

Potty grinned his two teeth at her. Already he had beer on his breath and a look on his face like he’d like to strip Gidget and bend her over a sawhorse. Of course, every heterosexual male had that look when he saw her. Beside him sat one of the pumpkin heads. Gidget didn’t know his name and really didn’t care. The pumpkin head was playing with a defunct mosquito coil perched on the dash. The coil had been there for years, but it still had blacking on it, and the pumpkin head soon had the blacking on his face. He always did that. Potty thought it was funny. He showed Gidget his two teeth and said, “You worried about me today, sweet thang?”