Joe Lansdale: Freezer Burn

A few days later she drove by a place in Nacogdoches where she had seen some wetbacks sitting on a curb waiting for gringos to offer them work. There was a nice-looking young Mexican there when she drove up.

“Job?” she said.

“Si.”

She motioned for the young man to get in. He did.

He rode in the passenger seat, stealing looks at her legs, which were long and brown in khaki short-shorts. Her hair was so blond he wondered how it matched the other spot.

He looked back over his shoulder and saw the freezer in the back where the rear seat used to be. He assumed she needed help unloading it. She drove him out in the country to a little house she had rented. She had the young man help her slide a piece of plywood up to the back of the van, then slide the freezer down the plywood into the yard. The young man started when he saw what was inside.

“Okay,” she said. “You understand okay?”

“Si… But not okay.”

“Sure it is.” She reached in the pocket of her shorts and took out a hundred dollar bill and gave it to him. “Okay?”

He thought maybe it was okay.

She went in the house and came out with a hammer. She broke the glass on the freezer. The smell inside was wet, but not foul. It smelled like damp straw. She pointed to the Ice Man and made some motions. The young man swallowed, thought about the hundred, looked at those long legs of hers and that big smile. He took the hammer and tapped out the rest of the glass, got hold of the Ice Man. The body was like a log. It was very heavy. He pulled it out and it didn’t flex or move.

He followed her, carried the log of a body to the falling-down garage. Inside were two sawhorses. She had him get the plywood and put it over the sawhorses for a table. She gave him an electric saw and strung some extension wire from the garage to the house.

She came back and picked up the saw and made a sound with her tongue that was worth watching her make and was meant to sound like a saw. She waved the saw at the Ice Man.

“No,” the Mexican said, and shook his head.

Gidget pulled another hundred from her pocket. The Mexican looked at the hundred hungrily, sighed, relaxed.

He took the hundred and put it with the other and took the saw and cut off the petrified man’s right foot. There was a thing in the corner with a chute on it and it was already plugged up with an extension cord. She pointed that he should put the foot in that. She turned on the switch and he put the foot inside and there was a mechanical gnawing. The foot came out in chips and dust on the ground. The woman stood back as he did it, as if she might accidentally touch the thing and somehow be poisoned.

“It was made by an artist in Cisco, Arkansas,” she said.

The Mexican, not understanding, gave her a quizzical look. She laughed and showed her nice teeth.

He smiled.

“If you spoke English,” she said, “I would give you a bit of advice. Insurance money is better than a wooden man any day. A real man for that matter. Do you hear me, handsome?”

The Mexican looked at her and smiled.

“You’re so polite. You want some pussy, don’t you?”

He grinned some more and went back to work.

When the Mexican was finished, Gidget had him shovel up the chips and dust into a black plastic bag and twist it closed with a wire tie. She invited him in the house and gave him a drink. Before the day was through she had him in the shower, then the bed. For the rest of the day the Mexican wore an expression that said he thought he had fallen into the most wonderful gold mine in existence.

Next morning they left out of there, abandoning the house, the freezer, the chipper, and sawhorses. She drove. The Mexican sat in the seat next to her, the black plastic bag with the Ice Man’s chips and dust in it behind them on the floorboard between front and middle seat.

They drove across Texas for a long full day. It was very hot and she liked to drive with the air conditioner off and the windows down. The air made him sleepy. The back of his neck was damp and his flesh stuck to the seat.

Just outside of El Paso they hit a long stretch with no traffic behind them. She made it clear to him she wanted him to open the bag and let its insides out.

He opened the bag and held his upper body out of the car window and shook the bag and let what was in it blow away. He watched the chips and sawdust take to the hot wind, swirl across the dry Texas landscape and mix with the heat waves and the dust from the van’s tires. Finished, he let go of the bag. It fluttered down the empty highway behind them, a black plastic spirit flying away.

When he turned back inside, Gidget looked over at him. She was wearing sunglasses, but he could see her eyes behind them, and at the same time he could see his face in them. She smiled and turned back to the highway.

The Mexican looked where she was looking, saw a dead animal of some kind in the road, saw a host of vultures rise up from it with a violent burst of dark wings.