Freezer Burn (8 page)

The train, as Frost called it, traveled out of there that day after breakfast with Frost driving a green Chevy station wagon with Gidget in it and all the others following. Frost left Bill to drive his motor home. Frost explained that he normally drove the home and Gidget the Chevy, but now that Bill was working for the freak show, he got to drive the motor home.

They arrived at a little town called Wellington Mills about midday. They parked the trucks and cars and trailers in a field just inside of town. Some of the trailers had sides that opened up and they opened them and propped them so that they might serve as counters for selling hot dogs and pretzels and all manner of junk. They put together little frames with curtains on them and set them about the field and stuffed them full of pins to knock down and hoops and buckets and jars to toss pennies or balls into, arranged stuffed animals all about, the cheap sort with eyes children could peel off and swallow.

They put up some large tents and a couple of fitted grandstands where you could sit, and they brought out and put together a few rides, the tiltawhirl being
prominent, but the guy who owned and operated it called it a whirligig and so everyone else did. It was old and rusty with badly painted metal bucket seats. The paint was green, but time had taken a toll on it. When the wind blew, the bolts that held it together—and it was missing a few—rattled and the whirligig buckets swung slightly and the whole thing creaked and made you think of bodies with shards of metal poking through them. The guy who ran it looked like an ex-con and was. He was the second oiliest man in the carnival. Only a fellow worked there with two teeth was nastier looking. A guy called Potty, which was what was suspected of being under his fingernails.

Phil liked to mention he was an ex-con, but he was sketchy on the crime he had committed and how much time he had done. He wore a sleeveless white T-shirt with a cigarette cocked behind his ear. He had lots of tattoos, most of them done with a pocketknife and the residue from match heads. But he had some professional tattoos. Brightly colored devil heads. Women with oversized breasts and their legs spread. A trio of blood-dripping hearts with a sword through them. He had plenty of grease in his hair. You’d have thought that much grease had to be an accident. Like some mean oversized men had held him down and rubbed it in there and made him wear it.

Phil had interesting teeth and a lot of nose. He talked about sex a lot, who he’d done and who he wanted to do. Bill didn’t know any of his list of previously screwed. Gidget was mentioned in the lineup of potential pokes. But so were a number of models and movie starlets. Phil claimed to be the best ride operator in the place, and considering the only other rides were a
merry-go-round with paint-flaked horses and a kind of slanting bucket ride that didn’t go any faster than a fat man could run in heavy boots, Bill didn’t doubt this. Mostly the carnival wasn’t about rides. It was tossing hoops and throwing baseballs and looking at weird shit and freaky people.

Phil was talkative, had a flask with some whiskey in it, and wasn’t too good to share. Bill figured this was partly because he wanted to tell his stories to someone that hadn’t heard them and might not know any better.

They sat in one of the whirligig buckets for a while and passed the flask back and forth. The flask was greasy where Phil had been running his fingers through his hair.

“I been thinking about chuckin’ this carnival shit in,” Phil said.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. I mean, in your case, that head and all, you kind of got to stick with it now that you’re here, but me, I been thinking about moving on.”

Bill told him that his head was swollen from mosquito bites.

“Say it is?”

“Yep.”

“You’re yankin’ me?”

“Nope.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Well, I’ll be goddamned. I never seen anything like that. You look naturally fucked-up to me, but then again, could be the light.”

“I think I got some kind of allergic reaction.”

“Yeah, I knowed of a guy got that way when he ate
anything made out of wheat. ’Course he wasn’t bad as you are. I’m like that with the clap.”

Bill didn’t have a lot of medical training, but he didn’t think the clap was that kind of disease, and as far as he knew it didn’t make your head swell, the big one anyway. Then again he had never had the clap, so he let it ride. Instead he focused on the wheat.

“Couldn’t eat wheat, huh?”

“Pie. Cake. Bread. Anything with wheat flour in it, made his face like a pizza and he bloated up like something dead.”

They sat and drank awhile, then Phil looked up at the whirligig buckets above them, said, “What I want to do is maybe start a little collection agency. You know, kind of buy up bad debts, then collect ’em.”

“But what if you don’t collect ’em?”

“You lose. But you can buy the debts for less than is owed if they’ve been owed awhile and the folks owed can’t get their money. They’re glad to get out from under ’em and sell ’em to you. Then it’s up to you to get shed of ’em.”

“How do you do that any better than they did?”

“You go see people. You try to get them to pay up on stuff. They don’t, you got to strong-arm ’em a little. Threats are enough sometimes. You know, kind of push ’em around till they come up with the dough. I knowed of a nigger used to do that and he made pretty good jack doing it. He had a good car. You’re a stout-looking fella. I bet you could do good with something like that, we went in together. We could beat the shit out of ’em if they didn’t pay.”

“I don’t think so,” Bill said.

“We wouldn’t have to do it with our fists. We could
get some blackjacks or sticks or something. Gotta tape them sticks though, or your hand’ll slip. I got that on good authority from the nigger I was telling you about. He said you got a good heavy stick and hit someone with it, every damn time your hand would slip. He solved that with a little tape.”

Bill thought: Shit, I can’t even rob a firecracker stand, let alone beat money out of deadbeats. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, you might be right. I figure running a little ring of whores might be easier. It’s mostly them that get arrested. You’re the pimp, you just get the gravy. And you get free pussy too. Now think about that.”

“Reckon that’s true,” Bill said.

“Think about it. Could be a career move. You and me could shake this place and go into business right away.”

“It’s something, I guess. But I don’t know.”

“Just think about it.”

“I will.”

“When I was sixteen I fell off a brick truck.”

“Yeah.”

“Hit my head. It did something to my dick.”

“Beg pardon.”

“Something in your brain controls your dick. I mean what makes it stand up and all. Nerves, muscles, all that. It’s connected to the brain. It made me semihard all the time. I mean, I want to do it, you know, it gets harder, but I’ve got a permanent partial hard-on right this minute.”

Bill refrained from glancing at Phil’s crotch, for fear the gentleman might produce his tool as evidence. Bill didn’t want to open any doors there.

“It’s got benefits. I strip off the skivvies, gal sees the ole hammer and it ain’t even hard and she’s looking at six inches, well, it starts you off right, you know. There are problems, pants never fit right. Always feel a little tucked in, you know.”

Phil moved from dicks to politics. He seemed to be against a lot of things and not for anything much. Bill zoned him out and nodded from time to time and took his turn at the whiskey.

The flask got finished off about the time Phil finished up a story about his days as a gigolo. Bill thanked Phil, got out of the whirligig bucket, and wandered around until he was commandeered for work again.

Bill thought this whole gig sucked, and being half drunk didn’t help either. Bill had to be told several times what to do. He was mostly told by the bearded lady who everyone called U.S. Grant, because her beard and stout appearance put one in mind of the Civil War hero and former president. She was grumpy and bossy and partial to colorful knee-length shifts that only had to have a hole for the head and arms. She had enough hair on her stout legs to make one of those Russian hats. Bill sort of wished he’d stayed in the bucket and talked whores, beating people up for money, half-hard dicks, and politics with Phil, even if all the whiskey was gone.

While the carnival was being set up, Frost drove the Chevy into town for something or another. Gidget didn’t go with him. She hung out in the motor home. Bill thought about her in there, and wondered if she might be naked, about to take a bath. Thinking like that helped him get through his work.

When Bill finished working, he walked over to Conrad, who sat on his ass like a dog by the Ice Man’s
trailer. Conrad was shaking a cigarette out of a pack and lighting a smoke, looking at the painting on the side of the trailer. He sucked smoke in and blew it out his doggie nose and put his cigarettes and lighter away.

Conrad spoke to Bill without turning to look at him, a greeting, but it kind of shook Bill. The guy not only looked like a dog, he had hearing like one too.

“Cigarette?” Conrad asked, and turned away from the painted figure on the trailer and looked at Bill.

Bill shook his head and asked Conrad how things worked in this business. It was something to say.

“Mr. Frost goes into town and spreads flyers around. We already have the permits for here and every place we’re going. He gets them in advance. We have a regular line of little towns we make across Texas, some in Louisiana.”

Bill tried not to watch Conrad talk. It was too weird watching a dog’s lips move and words come out. Especially a dog with a mustache and a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“He’ll also have to pay some kickbacks so we can stay parked here, ’cause you see, in lots of places showing freaks is against the law. ’Course we do it anyway ’cause people want to see it and pay to see it. We’ll get things ready here, tonight we’ll do our job, which is mostly sitting around, yelling a few things at the crowd.”

“How’s that?”

“Folks like a few things said, but you got to not go too far. If you do, you could get in trouble. Way we look, you can only push so far, then people want to hurt you. They think it’s okay to hurt you if you look different, ’cause they don’t think you’re human like them.”

Bill thought: Correctamundo.

“They like me to bark and be a little scary so they can feel better than me, like I ain’t the kind of guy wants the same things they do, but you can push it too much. I’ve seen it happen. The coloreds, they get it the worst. Even though they aren’t that bright, they know when to shut up. They don’t, some of these goobers might take two ropes to them and string ’em up.”

Bill tried to envision that. A Siamese twin hanging.

“How’d Frost come by all these people?”

“They’re more of us than some folks think. You ought to know that. Frost is like flypaper. Freaks find and stick to him. Or the people who manage the freaks, like the parents of the two-headed colored, they sell ’em to Frost. Most of ’em are better off actually. Frost treats people good. He’s done you all right, hasn’t he?”

“Reckon he has.”

“Then we got folks here that are scams.”

“Scams?”

“They ain’t real freaks. They just doctor themselves up. Have you seen our half and half?”

Bill shook his head.

“She’s around. Kind of snooty. Sticks to herself. Shaves one side of her head, does a bit of makeup to give a beard to one cheek and jaw, talks out of the side of her mouth on that side like a man. On the other side she has long hair, no whiskers, and talks like a woman. She’s a woman though.”

“She got tits on both sides, don’t she?”

“Yeah, but she ain’t got big ones, so she pads the one on the woman side and wraps the other one down. Even wears a sock stuffed with more socks in her pants, on her right side, like she’s hangin’, you know. Claims she’s got both the hammer and the split. There’s real folks got
both kinds of equipment, you know, but they ain’t split down the middle, and she ain’t one of them. There’s some others like that here; scams, I mean. Claiming they’re one thing or another but they ain’t none of it. And there’s the Pickled Punks. It’s the trailer ain’t open yet. The long one.”

“Pickled Punks?”

“You’ll see them tonight. Babies died at birth, or early on. Ones with tails and too many legs, heads, eyeballs, or what have you. Babies had they lived would have grown up to look like some of us. They’re in jars of preservative—pickled, you see. Folks like to look at them.”

“What about the Ice Man?”

Conrad the Wonder Dog was silent for a moment. “That’s special.”

“Is it a fake?”

“Frost came by it years ago, you see. It don’t sound like much, but once you see it . . . Well, there ain’t nothing like it. It’s special. I don’t look at it anymore. Damn thing bothers me.”

Bill thought: You ain’t got no mirrors in your trailer.

“Is it fake?” he asked again.

“All these paintings on the sides of trailers, they make all of us more than we are. You should see my trailer. Way it’s painted, I look exactly like a dog with some human features.”

Yes, thought Bill, and . . .

“But you look at us, you don’t see what you see on the side of the trailer. Same with the others. The paintings make us something we aren’t. They work on the mind. The Ice Man, his painting, it ain’t nothing to what’s inside. They can’t paint what’s inside, and they can’t
make it any more than what it is, and yet, it ain’t nothing but this body layin’ there in a freezer. It’s nothing much and everything there is.”

“Is it fake?”

“It is what it is,” Conrad said.

Bill didn’t quite get what Conrad was saying, but he didn’t know how to ask him to explain himself. Conrad had finished his cigarette and had returned his attention to the painting of the Ice Man.