Freezer Burn Page 6

“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.

  “For someone with a big head, you talk all right. I thought maybe you’d be short on brains. A lot of big heads, they’re like that. More water than gray matter. Not that it’s their fault.”

  “I ain’t normally this way. I was mosquito-bit.”

  “What?”

  Bill told him again, this time with some explanation, but he left the firecracker stand and the dead deputy out of it. In other words, everything he told Conrad, except for being lost in the swamp and being mosquito-bit, was a downright lie.

  Conrad nodded his head, said, “Oh, you’re like one of the scams” and went away, as if Bill’s company embarrassed him.

  Bill was kind of disappointed he hadn’t turned the conversation to sex. He wanted to know if the dog was getting any, and if he had to do it doggie style. Now it was too late, Conrad was gone. Another mystery was left unanswered.

  Bill thought he might like to go back to Frost’s trailer and hang out, but the blonde, Gidget, was still in there, and he was ashamed of how he looked and he didn’t want to be brutalized further by her ambivalence.

  Glancing in the direction of the trailer, he saw her come out. She had on those great shorts and they were way unzipped, held up only by her hips. Another inch down and he would have been able to see the hole show. She was wearing flip-flops and a very tight white T-shirt that was rough cut along the midriff. Her unbridled titties bobbed under the material and poked their .45 caliber tips at the fabric. She came down the steps and trod lightly along and glided past some trailers, on across the field, down a slight rise, and out of sight.

  Bill wandered that way until he could see her again. She was sitting down on a lump of dirt smoking a cigarette, looking across the field, through a barbed wire fence, at a bunch of trees and some cows milling about.

  He decided right then wasn’t any way she had a dick. She was all woman. Bill thought about trying to make small talk, but the way he looked he didn’t want to do it. He walked back into the camp and waited for nightfall and thought about how things might be going with the law.

  He wondered if they were on to him or if he could go home. He wondered how his Mama was doing in the bedroom. If any more of her had melted down and if some kind of bugs had gotten into the house and were crawling all over her.

  He got home, and everything was all right, first thing he had to do was get rid of Mama. Maybe drag her out back on that mattress and set her on fire or something. Pick up what was left with a yard rake, bag it, and send it to the dump.

  Shit, Bill thought. I can’t do anything right. Can’t even do a simple robbery without it going bad. That goddamn string on the mask breaking, the flat tire, the deputy, Fat Boy and Chaplin biting the big one. And Mama dying and having the kind of handwriting she did and me not being able to copy it. There is the source of my entire problem. Her stinginess and her bad handwriting.

  Way things were going, he was going to end up in jail, or if that didn’t happen and he got away with things, then he might have to get a job.

  The thought of that made him weak in the knees. This damn freak show was work enough and already he didn’t like it, but it beat the alternatives.

  Whatever they were.

  Fourteen

  The night arrived and Frost came back. He called out this and he called out that. He pointed and nodded, shook his head and stood with hands on his hips. Things began to happen.

  Trailers and cars were pulled in a tight circle. Battery trailers powered up the lights and made them bright. The lights were white and yellow, red and blue, a tossing of green and gold. The whirligig in the glow of the lights became fresh and new, an alien craft waiting to take on passengers.

  The crude paintings on the sides of the trailers changed as well. They became sexual, alluring. There was cheap carnival music playing, and barkers, or talkers as they called themselves, stood in front of tents and trailers and called out as cars parked and people entered the carnival through the gap in the wall of trailers where the tickets were sold.

  Bill didn’t have his own place as a freak, as Frost had suggested, and he didn’t want one. The idea disgusted him. He was ashamed enough to walk about with his face messed up the way it was, so he pushed himself back into the shadows by the Ice Man’s trailer and waited there and watched.

  It was strange to see what the trailers and tents had become. How it all seemed so fine and rare. Children laughed and ate cotton candy from the stands, and young women in short-shorts and tight-fitting shirts walked about and laughed and seemed impressed and amused by everything. Boys with acne and greasy hair poked each other with elbows, looked at girls and grinned, then laughed one to the other.

  The freak tents and trailers were busy, but the Ice Man’s business was slow. However, as people came and left the Ice Man’s trailer, the word spread, and the same people who had been came back, and new ones came, and as the night went on the line grew and stayed long.

  Two middle-aged policemen, one slim and one fat, came strolling through. On duty, probably, sent to see that all was well and the freaks weren’t planning a hostile takeover of the town. The cops seemed to be enjoying the women in shorts as much as the acne-faced boys. They had the same grins and elbow motions.

  From time to time men and women stopped and watched Bill in the shadows, his face looking all the more strange there, holding darkness behind knots and grooves of mosquito injury. But no one spoke to him, until the cops.

  One of the cops, the slim one, saw him in the shadows and said, “What’re you supposed to be?”

  Bill wondered if his photograph was on bulletins. He wondered if his face could be recognized beneath the mosquito bites. He stepped out of the shadows, into the light.

  “I’m the Blowed Up Man,” he said.

  “What?” said the skinny cop.

  “The Blowed Up Man. My face blowed up.”

  The thin cop laughed. “Well, that ain’t any kind of name. You need to come up with something better for a name.”

  “Yeah,” said the fat cop. “That sucks. You could call yourself Mr. Ugly or Knot Head or something like that. That’d work better . . . You fucked up like that at birth?”

  “Industrial accident.”

  “What kind of industrial accident?”

  “Chicken plant blowed up and I was in it.”

  “What the hell blows up in a chicken plant?”

  “Chickens.”

  The slim cop studied on that, then burst out laughing. “You’re pulling my leg, ain’t you?”

  “I was hit in the face by flyin’ chickens. They ate too much and one of ’em farted, and there was a foreman lighting a cigarette, and the rest of it’s history. It’s called the Great Owentown Chicken Disaster. Loo
k it up, it’s in the records.”

  “Now I know you’re pullin’ my leg,” said the slim cop, and he laughed some more, just like this was the best thing he’d ever heard.

  “Come on now,” said the fat cop. “It wasn’t at birth, how’d it happen?”

  “A fire.”

  “Well, you look it,” said the fat cop. “I got a question. It’s somethin’ I’d like to know. Somethin’ I’ve always wondered about people like you.”

  “All right.”

  “A face like that, you get much pussy?”

  Bill found himself irritated by this, but realized it was the same question he had asked Frost about Conrad.

  “I do all right.”

  “You get any good pussy—I mean, anyone ain’t messed up or got a disease? I can see you gettin’ the bearded lady, or the one says she’s got a dick and a hole, ’cause, I mean, what are their prospects? But what about good pussy?”

  The cops looked up as Gidget appeared, butting her way through the crowd, her face sullen, her lips puffed out as if they had just been punched. She had on her open front shorts and the same tight top. A couple of boys stood nearby in all their pus-pocked grandeur, watching Gidget float by, showing her all the open-mouthed reverence of two monks approaching a religious shrine.

  “Like that?” said the fat cop.

  “Not that,” Bill said. “Not yet anyway.”

  The cops laughed. The fat one said, “Yeah, right, brother, not yet. Somethin’ like that, and somethin’ like you, well, you ain’t even got money she’d want if she was sellin’ it.”

  “A fire, huh?” said the skinny one.

  Bill nodded.

  “Yeah,” said the skinny one. “I can see that, like your face caught on fire and someone put it out with a back hoe.”

  Both cops laughed.

  “One thing’s for sure,” said the fat one, “whatever happened it happened bad, and you are one ugly dude. Come to think of it, I don’t know that bearded woman would want you after all.”

  “Well, now,” the skinny one said, “you have a good night, Blowed Up Man or Burned Up Man, or Chicken Hit Man, whatever you are, and don’t bring that face into town. You might make a pregnant nigger woman throw a child, you hear?”