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  Considering all that, Bill began to think of himself as the hand, and the thought of the blonde beneath (or above) Frost angered him, and he, the hand, began to turn his fingers down and thrust them deep into Frost’s chest and grab hatefully at the old man’s beating heart until it gave up its blood like juice from a mashed plum.

  Eleven

  Early morning Bill examined his face in the bathroom and was amazed at it. He washed it and went outside and moved about between the trailers, the rain splattering down on his head and spreading his hair and coating his scalp. It felt cool and good on his hot mosquito-bit face.

  He was dressed in the clothes Frost had left for him. They fit him big, especially the pants, which he had cinched up in the waist with a belt, and shortened by rolling the cuffs slightly. He began to realize that Frost was much taller than he looked, and the old man’s shoulders were wide and his chest thick. Bill wore his own shoes, and as he stood in the rain he bent his head and watched the rain clear the mud from them. When he tired of this, he watched the gray morning lighten.

  As he walked among the trailers looking at the brightly painted signs on their sides, the rain went away and the sun came out and the day immediately grew hot and sticky as the crack of a fat man’s ass.

  Bill walked aimlessly about, came to the trailer with the picture of the Ice Man on its side. He stared at the painting for a long time, at the gnarled-looking body, at the thick black hair on the head, face, chest, and crotch. The crotch had been cleverly painted so that you could see black pubic hair, but where the tallywhacker should’ve been there was a painting of a swirl of frost, thick as whipping cream. An orgasmic explosion, perhaps.

  Bill couldn’t help but wonder if you saw the Ice Man in person, you got to see his dick or not. Was he wearing Fruit of the Looms? A jock strap? A towel? Or was he in the raw with a dick the size of an anaconda? Or maybe he had a dick like an acorn. Bill remembered a boy in his PE class like that. A great big burly sonofabitch who spent his time pushing everyone else around, and one day, in the shower, Bill saw the source of the bully’s anger. He had a wart for a dick. Even hard, Bill figured that dude’s hole puncher couldn’t have been much bigger than a baby carrot. A thing like that could give you a pissed-off attitude.

  The bully saw him seeing that, and later that day the bully pushed him around. Bill smiled at him, and they both knew what the smile was about. The bully walloped him, but after that left him alone and sometimes didn’t shower, but went to class smelling like the south end of a goat, his dirty little baby pecker tucked into oversized underwear.

  Bill walked around to the door of the trailer. The metal steps beneath the door were hoisted up and bolted into place. On the door there was another painting of the Ice Man. He was supposed to be lying down in his ice, but the way the painting looked, filling the door, it seemed as if the Ice Man was standing upright in a block of ice. The hair looked different in this painting, and the art was a little weak in spots, as if the painter had been in a hurry to collect his fee and get drunk. The body was hairier, and the eyes were crossed; they seemed to look at Bill no matter where he stood. It gave him the creeps.

  Bill wondered what was inside the trailer. He wondered if the Ice Man was a freak. Or an act. Or if it was some kind of display made of chunks of rubber.

  He ambled around the trailer and put his hand on its side. It was cold. It felt good in the East Texas muggy morning, and Bill kept his hand there for a long time, as if drawing energy from it. He leaned his face against the trailer, and that felt even better.

  Finally he strolled around and came face-to-face with Rex the Wonder Dog. Or rather crotch to face. Wonder Dog was moving about on all fours.

  Rex, or Conrad, was wearing red overalls and he sat back on his haunches, looking at Bill. The dog-man’s shock of black hair was plastered to his head and his little mustache appeared to be oiled; it was shedding water. The hair in his ears was wet and dripping downward, like poisoned plants. At first Bill thought the Wonder Dog, like himself, had been out in the rain, but he soon realized the Wonder Dog’s outfit was dry and his mustache was waxed, and that he had most likely come fresh from the shower.

  Bill had a hard time envisioning that. The dog-man in the shower.

  The Wonder Dog turned his head to the left and studied Bill. Bill did not like the Wonder Dog’s eyes, which at one moment seemed gray, another blue, and another green. And that face, elongated like that, the lips dark and the chin nonexistent, it was creepy as a masturbating fat girl on a nude beach.

  “My name is Conrad,” said the Wonder Dog in his gravelly voice.

  “Mine’s Bill.”

  “Will you be staying?”

  “Well, I suppose,” Bill said. “For a while. Not long.”

  “It’s not bad here,” Conrad said. “Things change now and then, but all in all it’s the same, and the same isn’t bad.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Good,” said Conrad. He raised up his back legs and dropped his arms to the ground and wandered off. Bill watched him go, surprised he had no tail.

  A few minutes later the campground was buzzing. The pointy heads and the meat heads and the fat lady with the beard and some other folks with oddities Bill couldn’t quite categorize were moving about. They seemed to come out of their trailers all at once. A moment later, a big kerosene stove was dragged out of one trailer by folks Bill had not seen before, a couple of black twins connected at the shoulder, with one set of legs between them. The head on the left leaned to port.

  The appearance of the two made Bill think of a character on a television show he’d watched as a kid. The Little Rascals, it was called first, but later they changed it to Spanky and Our Gang. The show had been old even when he was a kid. A grown-up Buckwheat, he looked like. They looked like. Double Buckwheat.

  Out of another trailer came two long tables, carried by the pointy heads and the meat heads. The midgets, including the one he had seen the day before in the porkpie, appeared, carrying bowls, pans, and silverware. The midgets had an attitude about them that made you think they might break down and start cussing and throwing things at any moment.

  The stove was fired up by a fellow that looked to be made of coat hangers and a thin coating of flesh. When Skinny got the grease in the frying pan going, eggs were cracked by the meat heads and dumped into the pan and the pancake batter was whipped by the pointy heads and poured onto buttered griddles. The fat lady with the beard began to flip and cook the pancakes and took over the egg chores from the meat heads. Conrad made an appearance, rearing up on his hind legs to stand at the stove and talk to the fat lady.

  Skinny found a camp stool and a pack of cigarettes and began to smoke and look off thoughtfully into the bright damp morning, as if everything he might ever need to do had just been done.

  It all went like clockwork. Flipping pancakes, whipping eggs, pouring milk. Soon the table was set and Frost came out of his trailer. Everyone exchanged good mornings, then Frost saw Bill standing near the Ice Man’s trailer and waved him over.

  Frost slapped a spot on the plank table’s seat, and Bill sat there and the fat lady with the beard put plates heaped with pancakes and eggs in front of them.

  In time more people came out of trailers, and many of them appeared normal, just fat or tattooed or tired-looking.

  Soon everyone but the pretty blonde, who had not shown herself this morning, was seated at the tables. A prayer was said by one of the meat heads that sounded as if he were gargling stew, then the eating began. Everything was mannerly and neat. Forks and napkins and pass this and thank you please. Neat except for Double Buckwheat, who Bill now realized were retards. They banged heads and gnawed at the same pancake and were soon covered in syrup and had egg in their hair. Moments later, they were rolling in the dying grass slapping at each other as if attacking flies.

  They grunted and cussed and called each other nigger this and nigger that, and kept rolling and slapping. They were ignore
d by the others, and in time the fighting stopped; the retards, now not only coated in syrup and eggs but covered in grass and dirt and stray ants, returned to the table and went about fighting over a fresh pancake and a glass of milk, which ended up spilled and flowing across the table.

  Pretty soon the pair were tumbling across the grass again, cussing, grunting, and calling each other nigger.

  The fat lady with the beard produced a towel and mopped up the milk, then wrung the towel out on the ground, coiled it, and popped it at the retards, hitting one in the throat.

  “Settle down, now,” she said, and they went at it more slowly for a while, but they didn’t stop.

  “One hurts the other,” Bill asked Frost, “does it hurt both of them?”

  “Yes,” said Frost, eating a bite of pancake. “They are two but are one. They seem to like fighting. It’s something they do. Every morning. Every meal. And sometimes between meals. You get used to it.”

  Bill thought: Not goddamn likely.

  Twelve

  Bill found the freaks distracting. The two rolling around on the ground, bathed in syrup and eggs and milk and grass, did nothing for his appetite either.

  Frost grabbed Bill’s arm and smiled at him. Bill was surprised to find that Frost had a powerful grip. He looked somewhat doughy, and the white hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and occasional flush of red on his face made him seem soft and weak, but he was actually quite strong. A beardless Santa on steroids.

  Frost said, “The swelling on your face has gone down slightly.”

  Bill had forgotten about his face. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t even itch. Without thinking, he raised a hand to his face and felt the lumps and had a sudden fear they might not go away.

  “Come with me,” Frost said.

  He and Frost walked away from the breakfast table toward the trailers. Frost said, “What I need, Bill, is someone to work for me.”

  “Looks like you got plenty of help here.”

  “I do, but the truth of the matter is, except for Conrad, who is my right-hand man, these people are quite busy with running their acts. Taking care of their trailers, the like.”

  “Then what would I do?”

  “I need someone to help manage. To help organize. I do most of that myself. Conrad does the rest, but I need someone who can fit in with the general populace. Someone that isn’t special in appearance.”

  “What about the blonde?”

  “My wife, Gidget. I can’t say she cares much for my day-to-day activities. I find her a blessing, but she can be distracting too. To put it bluntly, that isn’t really any of your business.”

  “Sure,” Bill said politely, smelling money behind all this, and wondering if the blonde was some kind of freak herself. Maybe had a cock and balls.

  “What I can do is give you room and board and nothing else.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know that isn’t very promising, but that’s temporary. After a month or two we can evaluate how the two of us feel about one another, and we can decide if we’d like to continue together. If you like, next town, while your face is swollen like that, we can let you in on the freak show.”

  “As a freak?”

  “While you look like one, yes. We’ll come up with a name for you.” Frost’s face took on a disappointed look. “When your face heals, I’m afraid there won’t be much point in that. But—freaks get tips. Sometimes, they make pretty good. The Afro-American twins, Elvis and Thomas, are favorites. I think because they fight with one another . . . Wouldn’t that be terrible? To not like one another and to be tied together forever.”

  “I know I wouldn’t care for it.”

  “One believes he is lighter skinned than the other, and that is a source of friction between them.”

  “I thought they were just stupid.”

  “Retardation plays a part. But so does skin color. Actually, I believe the two of them are exactly the same shade.”

  “They both look like niggers to me. Actually, you think about it, they’re just one two-headed nigger.”

  Frost stopped walking. “Bill, if you’re going to work for me, and I know you haven’t agreed to, you’re going to have to have more respect for these people, and for other races. I can’t tolerate that kind of talk. Retards. Niggers. This is all outside of my beliefs, and this is my train, as I like to refer to it. So, if this is my train, and I’m the engineer, and you want to ride on it, there are some rules. One. Do not denigrate my freaks. The word freak itself is acceptable. In fact, they call themselves freaks.”

  “I heard the retar—the black fellas calling each other nigger.”

  “There is that. But I hope you understand what I’m saying. I’d like to have you here, but if you’re going to speak of my people that way, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  Bill studied Frost’s face. He looked stern and serious. Bill thought: Asshole. Freak lover. Freak yourself. Nigger lover. But he said, “I understand. I don’t mean nothin’ by what I say sometimes. I’ll try to be more feeling.”

  “Good. Then you’ll stay?”

  “Sure,” Bill said.

  Thirteen

  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 weir
d 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?”