Freezer Burn

Nineteen

Next morning it was discovered the whirligig was still in place, but the whirligig owner was not. Phil had departed in his truck and trailer without bothering to take the ride with him.

Before decamping Phil had decided on a change of career after all. He had broken into the Pickled Punk trailer, causing the fold-out wall to collapse, exposing the interior to the light of day and the population of the carnival.

Phil had departed with all the Punks, forty-eight dollars and fifty-two cents of bread and egg money, a canned ham, and two bags of M amp;Ms. With the exception of the Punks, all this belonged to Conrad, who Bill discovered lived in the Pickled Punk trailer with a small refrigerator, a hot plate, a pallet on the floor, a greasy pillow, and a wrinkled magazine picture of Jesus’s face taped to the wall.

The picture was one of those where Jesus was on the cross, but you couldn’t see the cross or his body, just the face. The face looked swollen. There was a crown of thorns on his head, tears on his cheeks, blood leaking down from his forehead. The picture looked to have been wadded up at one time and straightened out, maybe with an iron. In the harsh sunlight all the little creases made the Savior look not only in pain, but old and tired and disappointed, as well as in need of a good sunlamp. On the floor next to Conrad’s pallet were scattered playing cards. One of them, a Joker, was turned face up and had a heel print on it, presumably Phil’s.

“It ain’t much, but I call it home,” Conrad said. He sat by Bill’s side smoking a cigarette. The pinheads and Double Buckwheat were behind them, peeking into the ravaged room that had been home to Conrad and assorted fucked-up babies in alcohol.

“You ought to not have to sleep on the floor,” Bill said.

“I don’t have to,” Conrad said. “It’s what I like. Some reason, messed up like I am, a bed doesn’t work as well. I get some serious backaches, and a chiropractor doesn’t know what to do with me. I think they figure I ought to go to a vet. I sleep on the floor or on the roof of Frost’s motor home. It’s the most comfortable of the trailers and such.”

The pinheads and Double Buckwheat grew bored looking at the pallet, the picture, and the empty space where the Punks had been, so they wandered off.

“Hey, thanks for helping me last night.”

“That wasn’t anything. I just helped you up.”

“It was enough… Hell, I don’t blame her.”

“Beg pardon?”

“She couldn’t help herself. She wanted something normal. I reckon I had a normal woman would go to bed with me, I’d go. Even if she was ugly enough to have to sneak up on a glass of water. It’d make me feel like I wasn’t on the outside lookin’ in. Like I was just another fella out there doin’ what other fellas did. I was mad last night, but I forgive her. I don’t take it personal. You can’t take something like that personal.”

Bill felt he could, but he changed the subject, nodded at the picture on the wall. “I see you’re religious.”

“Just liked the picture. Kid wadded it up and tossed it at me one night. Out of curiosity, I unwadded it and it was that guy. It being up there on the wall makes me feel I got company. Play myself a game of cards now and then, I try to imagine he’s playin’ against me and the Pickled Punks are watchin’. You know, bunch of interested bystanders watching two card sharpies work. I have to take it off the wall when the Punks are on display… Were on display… Damn, I’m gonna miss them M amp;Ms. And that forty dollars or so is all I’ve been able to save. I spend too much money on those damn M amp;Ms. They’re kind of like catnip to me. And U.S. Grant likes ’em.”

Out of the corner of his eye Bill could see Conrad’s eyes had watered up. Without really knowing he was going to do it, he reached out and patted Conrad on the shoulder.

Conrad coughed and looked at the ground. To give him a semblance of privacy, Bill looked out at the whirligig. The cottony fog was rapidly being burned off by the heat of the morning sun and already deep shadows were forming around it. Wasn’t long, though, before black clouds, like skin cancers, began to appear on the face of the sky, and off in the distance was a rumbling sound like a hungry belly wanting to be filled.

Frost had to go into the nearest town to talk to the police and try and get something done about Phil. In the meantime, it became necessary to move on to the next location. The whirligig was left where it was and other things were loaded up. Bill got behind the wheel of the motor home, Gidget in the back, sleeping as usual.

Bill was the last in the caravan line. The stretch of highway the caravan took was littered with clapboard houses, black kids in yards that were mostly made of gravel, sun-burned grass, and nasty-looking chickens. Bill drove past at least six burned-out filling stations, half of them with the pumps pulled up, leaving only the concrete structures they had stood on and the steel rods they had been fastened to.

They hit a wide four-lane stretch of highway, and Bill was thinking maybe things weren’t working out so bad after all. He was sort of getting used to the carnival. All the freaks were starting to look regular to him, and he fit in here good as he fit in anywhere. Better maybe. He had discovered he could talk to Conrad in a way that was different from the way he had talked to Fat Boy and Chaplin.

The bedroom door slid open and Gidget, wearing green silk shorts and a matching pajama top that had only one button near the center, came barefoot up to the front and sat in the passenger’s seat. The seat swiveled and she turned it toward Bill and crossed her legs way over and looked at him with that pouty look of hers that made Bill want to slap her one moment and fuck her the next.

“They find Phil?”

“Not yet. Frost went to town to see about it.”

“What town?”

“One near where we was.”

“You mean the other direction?”

“Yeah.”

“He ain’t in the caravan?”

“No.”

Gidget took a quiet moment to consider this. She looked at herself in the mirror on the dash, seemed to like what she was looking at. She flicked her hair and turned her attention back to Bill.

“You know, you look like James Dean some. Only with darker hair.”

“The sausage guy?”

“Who?”

“Sells sausage. He used to be a country singer.”

“I don’t know who that is… James Dean, the movie star.”

“Never heard of him.”

“ East of Eden. Giant. He got killed in a car wreck.”

“Jimmy Dean is who I know of. He sells sausage. They ain’t bad. I don’t know if he got killed in a car wreck or not.”

“I don’t care about any sausages.”

“You brought it up.”

“I said you looked like James Dean the movie star, I didn’t say anything about any sausages. I can’t believe you don’t know who James Dean is.”

“Yeah, well I can’t believe you don’t know who Jimmy Dean is. He’s on TV all the time and he sells sausage.”

“James Dean’s on the TV too. In old movies.”

“I don’t watch movies much.”

“Well, you’re missin’ out. I grew up on the TV set. I might as well, wasn’t nothing else to do. My Mama and I used to watch it together, late at night. She’d come stay in my room and we’d watch TV. That was when my stepdaddy was drunk and wanted to hit her. She said I was named after a movie she liked about a girl named Gidget. You know it?”

Bill shook his head.

“Reckon you don’t know who James Dean is, there’s a damn good chance you aren’t gonna know about a movie called Gidget. Anyway, she said she and my Daddy saw it on TV once, and she said something about it made her feel romantic, and they made love and I was conceived. They had to get married on account of me. Daddy said my Mama was a bitch from hell and I was her little bitch. He always said that, like we weren’t human.”

“What happened to him? Your Daddy?”

“He stuck his head out a car window and got hit by a signpost. Mama was drivin’. She said she didn’t even know he’d gotten hit. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out and she said she heard a whack, and he just sat back down in the car with his head turned, and she didn’t think nothing of it. Talked to him for five miles she said, before she realized he wasn’t answering any of her questions and he smelled like shit. See, when he got hit he crapped himself. It wasn’t his fault, it’s just your muscles and your bowels let go when you get killed sudden like.”

“Why in hell was he stickin’ his head out of a car window?”

“Mama said he always did that. Like a dog. He thought it was funny. But she was drivin’ too close to the side that day and that sign got him. I finally ended up seeing that movie.”

“What movie?”

“ Gidget. I finally saw it, and it sucked. Wasn’t nothin’ in there would make me want to fuck anybody. Not just seein’ the movie, anyway. I figure what Mom did was fuck through the movie and she just noticed it was on and remembered the name of it. Had to be like that, ’cause there isn’t anything hot about that movie. Not to me anyway. Some people can get turned on by all manner of things. But I was named after the girl in there. Her movie name anyway. Gidget.”

Bill thought he ought to leave well enough alone, but he couldn’t help himself. “You wasn’t talkin’ to me before, why are you friendly now?”

“You aren’t as scary-lookin’. I see enough freaks in this carnival, I don’t want to have to make friends with ’em. I set out to be a model, not a freak show owner’s wife.”

“What happened to the modelin’?”

“Too much tits and ass and not enough legs and neck.”

“I don’t know that’s so bad.”

“Yeah?”

“Looks all right.”

“All right. Hell, you’d cut off one of your feet if you thought you was gonna get your thang in me. I may not know much, but I know men.”

“You know so much, you don’t like freaks so much, how come you’re married to one?”

“You’re not nice. I thought maybe you was nice ’cause you looked nice, but you aren’t. And now that I can see better in the light, you don’t look that much like James Dean anyway.”

She tried to appear mad but Bill didn’t think she was all that upset. She went back to the bedroom and shut the door.

Bill felt as if he’d been run over by a truck. He sucked in the air. It was full of her perfume, and she hadn’t been wearing any. She was right, he’d cut off his goddamn foot.