Freezer Burn (23 page)

Eventually the carnival, wounded from loss of personnel and morale, wound up at the spot where they had camped so many months previous. The spot where Conrad had fallen from the whirligig and the old Sabine roared by and the willows that hadn’t washed away waved in the gale, clattering now with icy wind chimes. The sky was full of pearly clouds glazed with what looked like soap scum. Hail banged the cabs, motor homes, cars, and trailers like it meant business.

And while they waited here for the bad weather to pass, there were rumbles throughout the carnival.

“The Old Days are gone.”

“Frost ain’t what he used to be.”

“I could make more money running a side show.”

“I could do better with a shell game.”

“I got some land, I can put up a sign. People would stop to look at me. And I could build a snake farm, get some Russian rats. Sew a fifth leg to a calf. Start my own business, stay in one place.”

“Blow me?”

“Uh uh.”

“Two heads better than one.”

Pause.

“Okay.”

Later.

“Now me?”

“Uh uh.”

“Pull me?”

Whack!

Some rumbles different, some the same.

Bill and Gidget were still playing it careful, and Bill dreamed about Gidget and wondered if she dreamed about him.

The Ice Man, as always, lay silent.

The carnival no longer buzzed. Frost paid money to the pasture owner so they could lay low by the Sabine for a while, and one day when it warmed a little and the ice melted, he became possessed with the idea it would be grand to perk spirits and order pizza from town for everyone. But when he called on the cell phone to order, no one would come out. He decided to send Bill and Gidget in for it.

Gidget, wearing her usual pissed-off look, the one that made you want to flatten her face, got in the car on the passenger side, and Frost, wearing only a T-shirt and light pants and slippers, stood on the ice next to Bill as if this were in fact his kind of weather.

“Get plenty pizza,” Frost told Bill. “Morale is low. Mine included. A little thing like this can lift it. Don’t get any of that stuff with little fishes on it. There’s maybe one midget and some pinheads will eat it. It’ll go to waste.”

“All right,” Bill said.

“Gidget’s got the money. She’s acting foul, but she always acts that way when you want her to do
something. Don’t pay her no mind. Thing is, I don’t just want pizza, I want some time from her.”

“All right.”

“You doing okay, son?”

“I guess.”

“Still think about Conrad?”

“Not much.”

“I guess that’s good. Not that we want to forget him, do we?”

“No.”

“Well, you go on now, and be careful. Ice is starting to thin. I think today is going to be a hell of a nice day. Tomorrow, we move out.”

“We got gigs lined up?”

“One a couple weeks from now. But we got to leave here tomorrow. That’s all I’m paid up for, and the old man owns this land isn’t generous or worried about iced-in freak shows. He doesn’t care if we have to swim the river. He wants his money.”

“Frost. That story you told me, about the Ice Man. It true?”

“I never said it was true. I said it was a story I got. Sometimes I believe it, and there are days I don’t believe anything. But finally, in the end, you got to believe in something.”

Bill nodded, unconvinced. He had wanted Frost to come out and say the story was true, that he believed it, that there was something miraculous going on that could change everyone’s life. But he didn’t. And there wasn’t.

Bill took the keys and got behind the wheel. He backed out easy. As he turned the car around and made for the little road, he could hear ice crunching under his tires. Double Buckwheat, dressed in several shirts and a heavy
coat and the bottoms to thermal underwear, wearing laced-up boots, was out by his trailer listening to rock and roll, dancing about.

“I wish that nigger would fall under the car,” Gidget said.

“You’re in a mood today,” Bill said. They moved out of the field and onto the slippery road. The ice wasn’t as melted as Frost had thought. It was hard, slow going.

“I’m just in a hurry, is all.”

“A hurry for what?”

“You know.”

“I figured that was done forgotten.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Maybe I was kind of hoping it was forgotten.”

“I don’t believe that neither. We got our time now, Bill.”

“How’s that?”

“You heard Frost. Tomorrow we move out. Way we do it, is tonight you mess this car up. Nothing too weird, just undo a brake line.”

“Cops will know right away.”

“You haven’t heard it all yet. You undo that brake line. You know how, don’t you?”

“Sort of.”

“Tomorrow, before we leave out, I’ll say: ‘Oh yeah, Bill says the brakes are going on the car. You ought not to drive it.’ I’ll throw a bit of a fit, like I’m trying to keep him from being hurt, you see. He’ll like that. I’ll get him to hook it up to the back of the motor home.”

“What does that do?”

“He’ll have to drive the motor home. I’ll sleep in the back like usual, only I won’t. He’ll go up front to drive, and I’ll tell him I’m taking a sleeping pill to get some
rest, that I don’t feel good. Whatever. I’ll make up something. Before we leave I’ll get out of the motor home and you slip in the back. I’ll drive the Ice Man’s cab behind him.”

“You better make it farther back. He’ll see you behind him in the mirror.”

“I got a baseball hat, some sunglasses. I’ll put my hair up and wear them. Unless he’s looking for me, he won’t know. What we’re going to do is going to happen fast anyway and I got to be up front to do it.”

“Sunglasses in winter?”

“This ice is uncomfortable to look at, has a glare.”

“Yeah, all right. It does, don’t it?”

“You’re in the motor home, in the back. Frost will lead off. He likes to lead. I’ll be behind you. That stretch of road back there, by the bridge. You know which part I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Before you get to the bridge there, there’s a gap, land slopes off toward the river.”

“I’m beginning to not like this.”

“Just listen. What did you do as you came up on the bridge there?”

“I slowed.”

“Why?”

“Because they’ve put in a bump there so you won’t go jettin’ across the bridge. I guess because it’s narrow. They want you to stop and consider, watch for cars.”

“Right. When he stops, you come out of the back and take him from behind.”

“I prefer taking you from behind.”

“Just shut up and listen. You put your arm around his throat, and you lock your hand in the crook of your other
arm, and you use the arm that isn’t choking like a lever behind his head. Like this.”

She showed him.

“If you drop your elbow so it points out, you can choke the sides of his neck, cutting off the blood. He’ll go out, but it won’t strangle him. You start the motor home off the edge and into the water. Just ease it over there and go out the side door and I’ll be behind you in the cab. No one behind us will be able to see what’s going on, and I’ll ease forward and nudge the motor home into the river. You come crawling up like you’re exhausted.”

“They’ll see you nudge him.”

“I’ll stay back from you a ways, but when I see you’re getting near the stop, I’ll speed up, and soon as I see you go out the side there, I’ll put on the speed. I’ll be sure to be good and ahead of the others. All they’ll know is I lost control, Frost did too, I bumped him, and he went under. No one will be expecting murder. That choke hold will put him out, but he could come around from it, see. Only thing is, he won’t. The water will finish him. They look him over, they’re not really looking for anything. There’s no marks, you do it right. It’ll just be a sad drowning.”

“How do you know about a choke like that?”

“I’ve picked things up here and there. I had a boyfriend for a couple months was a judo instructor. They use that choke.”

“You sure no one will see me get out of the motor home?”

“Say they do. It won’t matter. It was going over the edge, you bailed out of fear.”

“So I got to look like a coward?”

“You thought Frost was coming right behind you, then I hit the motor home from behind and he didn’t have time.”

“But I’m supposed to be driving the Ice Man’s trailer. How do we explain that?”

“What’s to explain? We’re the only ones know about the switch-up. All we got to do is tell the cops you were sick and Frost and I invited you to lay down in the back, and I chose to drive the cab. I’ve driven every damn thing, have a license for it all, so nothing’s suspicious about that. They won’t think anything about me wearing sunglasses and a hat. That won’t mean anything to them other than it’s some kind of fashion statement.”

“I’m so sick, how do I manage to get from the back and out the front door?”

“Tell it different then. He asked you ride with him. He’d been thinking about giving you more responsibility with the carnival. He wanted to talk.”

They were nearing town now. The ice was more melted there. They drove over to the pizza parlor and went inside and made their order and sat at a table in the back on opposite sides sipping soft drinks through straws.

“And when he’s dead,” Bill said. “What then?”

“That’s easy. You and me, baby. And we got the Ice Man. You like the Ice Man, I can tell that for sure.”

“It’s interesting.”

“You’ll look better giving that talk than Frost. And me, I won’t have to deal with that hand anymore.”

When Bill paid for the pizza it cost much more than he expected, and all he got back of Frost’s money was a handful of silver.

It was very cold that night under the car, and the wrench was small and Bill had to hold the little flashlight in his teeth. He didn’t know if he should throw the wrench away afterwards or what, and he couldn’t figure out the brake line anyway. He was lying there freezing, the wrench in his hand, the light in his teeth, trying to remember how this stuff worked. He finally realized it wasn’t going to come to him.

A pale head poked itself under the car.

“What you doin’?”

It was Pete. He was bent down, looking under the car. It looked as if he were wearing his head upside down.

“Nothing. I’m working on the car.”

“What wrong with?”

“I don’t know.”

“How fix it?”

“I don’t know.”

Bill slid out from under the car on the other side. He could feel the dampness soaking through his jacket, into his back.

“I’m supposed to get blow job,” Pete said. He had
risen up and was looking over the top of the car at Bill. He had on a thin coat.

“Yeah.”

“I like it blowed.”

“Good. Good for you.”

“You blow me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then I blow you.”

“No. I don’t like it.”

“No?”

“No.”

Bill was uncertain what to do. He slipped the wrench in his coat pocket, held the flashlight and looked around. No one.

“I noticed the brakes weren’t working right today. I thought I’d check them.”

“You blow me?”

“I said no.”

Bill went around, poked the flashlight at Pete for a better look, saw he had a big blue knot on the side of his face. His dick was hanging out of his pants.

Apparently, Pete had already tried to get his blow job tonight, but, as was the custom, he had failed. Only he’d forgotten. Probably, tomorrow, he wouldn’t remember a thing about any of this. Then again, he might.

“I got to look under the hood,” Bill said.

Bill popped the hood and poked around in there. He opened the brake fluid box and saw that it was full. He fastened the box up and closed the hood. “Looks low on fluid to me. I think it’s leakin’.”