Freezer Burn

Twenty

Bill drove on, thinking about Gidget. By midday it was starting to get dark. The air was heavy and the clouds looked like swollen bladders. Zippers of lightning pulled their flies above the pines, exposing hot light.

Then Bill saw a remarkable thing. In the distance, down the flat stretch of highway, there was a patch darker than anywhere else. It looked as if one of the clouds had set down on the ground, and it was smooth and round and rolling toward him, like a bowling ball.

When the cloud hit it was solid with wind and rain. The strike made the motor home slide and the steering wheel was useless. The home rattled and rocked and Bill heard Gidget yell and hit the wall in the bedroom.

The motor home went way right off the road, between two scrubby pine trees. It dipped in a ditch, came out of it because the other side was lower. It went up and out and along the grass and mounted a concrete offshoot, just missed a metal picnic table, then managed to hit something else.

By the time Bill got it together he realized he was situated under a cluster of large oak trees in a roadside park. The front of the vehicle had gone off the concrete and hit a sign with a historical marker on it.

He left the motor running and turned on the windshield wipers. The motor home was shaking violently. A bolt of lightning hit one of the oaks and knocked a limb about the size of a telephone pole loose and slammed it on the ground in front of the motor home. There was another limb sticking off the larger limb, and it brushed over the front and touched the roof, dripping leaves onto the windshield.

Gidget came stumbling from the bedroom cussing. “You sonofabitch,” she said. “Can’t you drive?”

“Not in this,” Bill said. He put the motor home in gear and eased back in his seat and watched the storm through the windshield and the gaps in the leaves draped over it. Outside, debris in the form of leaves, dirt, limbs, and rubbish was being tossed about in the manner a dryer tosses clothes.

“Good God,” Gidget said. “We in a tornado?”

“We got hit by what looked like a ball of black wind. I reckon we’re on the edge of a tornado.”

Lightning cracked its whip and the interior of the motor home was charged with electricity. Bill felt his nose hairs wiggle.

“God almighty,” Gidget said. She took the passenger’s seat, watching the storm, shivering. There was a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in the little tray on the dash, and she took them and held them in her lap, then nervously returned them.

Bill was looking out the side window, through some trees and down a dip of land toward the highway. There was a whipping sound and he saw something pop yellow light, then the light was flicking toward him. He realized it was a high-line wire that had snapped free and been thrown up high over the trees. It dropped across an oak limb and fell like a fishing line tipped with an electric eel. The end of the line popped and fizzled and writhed and danced on the cement near the motor home.

Gidget screamed and jumped out of her seat and onto Bill’s lap. She hugged him around the neck. He found his hand had come up under her pajama top and was resting on the smooth skin at the small of her back. The flesh there was warm and damp with sweat. She looked at him and swallowed. Her eyes were big, the pupils swollen. She held him tighter. She looked at the popping high-line wire.

“That scared me.”

“It didn’t do me no good neither.”

“Maybe you ought to cut off the windshield wipers. Not like we’re goin’ nowhere, and it could get hung up with some of those leaves.”

Easing forward, careful to hold Gidget on his knee, Bill shut off the windshield wipers. Without their beating sound it was quiet inside the motor home. Outside was the wind, the rain, and the sputtering high-line wire.

“We could have been killed, had that wire hit the motor home,” she said.

“I reckon.”

“We’d have been electrocuted, wouldn’t we?”

“I don’t know. Maybe this thing’s insulated enough.”

“No, we’d have been killed. We aren’t that far from death right now. That wind turned, it could throw that wire on us.”

“I’ll try to back out from under this limb.”

Gidget didn’t move so he could try it. “Death is all around us. It always is, you know?”

“I reckon.”

“Ain’t nothing to reckon. It is. Sometimes it takes a certain moment to let you know.”

Gidget’s face came close to his. Her breath was sweet. Without really thinking about it, his hand dropped and came to rest on the top of her ass, which was damp through the thin green cloth.

“Just one change in the wind and that wire moving some,” she said, “our whole life would be over.”

She leaned closer and he kissed her and she bit his bottom lip, hard enough to draw blood. When she leaned back from him she was smiling and there was blood on her lips. She unbuttoned her top.

“What about everybody else?” Bill said.

“They aren’t here. They’re out there in the storm too. A little luck, and they’ll get blown away.”

“What about Frost?”

“He’s got a hand on his chest.”

She pushed at the edges of the pajama top and showed him her breasts.

“Jesus,” he said. He moved his hands up the front of her and pushed her top off and took hold of her breasts. “Excellent.”

“Hell, baby. They’re better than that.”

He put a nipple in his mouth and sucked. There was a tinge of sweat on her body, and it tasted the way she smelled. He moved from one nipple to the other, then back to her face. He kissed her, tasting his own blood. She rose up and came out of her panties and straddled his knees, leaving room to use her hand on his crotch. Soon he was out of his clothes and they were on the floor and she was on top of him. He thought: Hell, what am I doing? Frost ain’t done nothing to me and this is his wife.

Electricity crackled outside and the wind moaned and the motor home shook. In a flash of light he got a good look at Gidget’s face. In that moment it was harsh, her lips blue, her eyes the color of wet aluminum.

They rolled across the floor and he came out on top between her legs and mounted her. As he entered her he realized he was yet another man consumed by the mystery that destroyed Adam.

Eventually they finished and lay on the floor together, she in the crook of his arm with her hand on his chest. The sky had grown blacker and the rain was knocking all over the motor home. Occasionally the dark outside would brighten up from the lightning or the spitting electric wire. Bill had lost his nervousness. He felt protected by the storm now, as if it were keeping out the world and hiding them in their metal cocoon.

“I don’t see why you married Frost if you don’t like him and you don’t like the carnival and the freaks.”

“You ever been so you couldn’t get out of something?”

“I think I have.”

“Then you got to know what I mean. I wanted to be a model, but I didn’t have the right build. I have this build men like but magazines don’t.”

“I told you how I feel about it.”

“That’s how all men feel about it that don’t prefer to suck dick.”

Bill couldn’t get away from thoughts of the Old Testament. “Reckon yours is the kind of body Eve had.”

“I’m not sure you mean that as a compliment, buster. Eve always gets considered bad.”

“She fucked up the world. Brought sin into it.”

“Like Adam isn’t at fault for being stupid. If anyone fucked up the world, it was him. He didn’t think with the right head. Men don’t ever think with the right head.”

“Yeah, but the big head don’t ever get to feel as good as the little head when it’s doing its kind of thinking.”

“I fucked a preacher once. He was going to save me and he gave me special Bible lessons. I was sixteen. He showed me what Adam and Eve had done as an object lesson. It taught me some things all right. He had a big ole wart on the head of his dick. That’s really a plus, it hits the right spot. Other than that he showed me preachers don’t know any more than Adam did, and never will. God with all his goodness doesn’t know what he’s up against. Bad is good, baby.”

“You still ain’t told me why you married Frost and took up with the carnival.”

“When the modeling didn’t work out, and my Mama died, I didn’t have anything to go back to. My stepfather had come to like me better as I got older, and not because he wanted to talk about what he could do for me as a daughter. He didn’t never do anything, but I could tell he wanted to. He had the same look as that goddamn preacher, and I figured he didn’t even have a well-placed wart on his dick, and I damn sure didn’t want to find out.

“So I didn’t go home again ’cause there wasn’t any home to go to. I went out to Los Angeles, maybe thinking I’d be seen by one of those producers or directors or an actor or something, and get in the movies. I couldn’t act, but I figured I could look good. I was ready to fuck my way to the top, or even to the middle. I got fucked by a lot said they could get me in the movies, but closest I got to it was a movie date and a little feel-up while I was in the dark.

“I worked some restaurants and cafes but didn’t care for that either. I got a job working in this place with a glass you strip behind and you do things you’re asked by a customer talks to you over a microphone and puts money down. They always want you to spread your pussy. It comes to that eventually. You can dance, you can wiggle, but it’s going to turn out you got to use your fingers like a salad spoon. They’re gonna ask for that come hell or high water, like they’re gonna see a place in there better than this one. And even if they did, I don’t get it. They’re still on the outside looking in.

“I made some good money, but you can’t imagine how tired you get of trying to look like nothing makes you happier than to have some guy jerking his gherkin on the other side of the glass. You wouldn’t believe the nasty ole dicks I’ve seen through that glass. I gave it up. Wasn’t any future to it. I came back to East Texas and found there wasn’t any future here either. I was back to working cafes and such and not liking it much. I made a few dollars after hours in the back seats of cars, but that wasn’t any way to go.

“I got in with this guy did forgery for a while, and I learned how to duplicate handwriting and cash hot checks and money orders. It was all right, but he got caught and I almost did, so I gave that up.”

“You can write like someone else, that what you mean?”

“I can write like a lot of folks. The simpler the signature is, harder time I have with it. Easiest way to do it is turn the signature upside down and try to draw it. But it’s a crummy racket. You can only run that one for so long. I got out of it.

“I went to work at a Mexican restaurant over in Tyler and this carnival come through and Frost came to eat there and he was nice to me and tipped me good. He told me about the carnival, and you know, I thought it was some kind of circus. I didn’t know there was a difference. It wasn’t that smelling elephant shit was any more appealing, but it sounded a bit more romantic than pinheads, bearded ladies, and dog-men.

“Six months later he come through again, and I could tell he had the hots for me, you know, but he wasn’t trying nothing. Wasn’t trying to get me in the back seat of a car or in a motel room. He was nice. I hadn’t seen a lot of nice. I thought nice might be pretty good. Third time he came through he asked me to marry him. Just like that. It was kind of sweet. Pathetic, but sweet. And I’d come to hate the smell of an enchilada. I couldn’t get that smell off of me. I’d be away from work, doing something else, the wind would change, and I smelled like a Number 3 Dinner.”

“What was on that dinner?”

“Two tacos, an enchilada, a tamale, beans and rice. You got free tortillas and you had to order a drink separate. It was a hell of a deal if you wanted it. Three ninety-eight plus tax and a tip.”

“I bet you got plenty of tips.”

“If there was a man at the table I did. I knew how to work that. You serve the dinner close with your tits on their shoulders and you wear your dress just a little short and wear shoes with tall heels and walk so they notice it. I can talk real sweet too, Bill. You want to hear sweet, I’m a goddamn songbird.”

“So you married Frost to get away from Mexican dinners?”

“Pretty much. And he seemed sweet, you know. I didn’t marry him with plans of not staying married. I was going through my ‘I want a home and family’ stage. Maybe I still want that. But I didn’t know he had a hand on his chest and that I’d be living with a bunch of retarded pinheads and genetic fuck-ups. And he’s so goddamn good he gives me the creeps. I like a man with a bit more devil in him.”

“The freaks ain’t so bad, you get to know them.”

“I don’t want to know ’em. I want some little piece of the fairy tale, Bill.”

“Well, I don’t guess you’re talkin’ about me.”

“I might be.”

“ ’Cause we fucked?”

“ ’Cause you was a frog that turned into a prince. All ugly and swole up, and then you turned into James Dean, and don’t start that shit about the sausage again.”

“I ain’t got any idea about James Dean.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, and got up and went into the bedroom and came back carrying a book. She turned on a light over the sink. “Come here.”

Bill got off the floor and went over and looked at the page she had the book turned to. It was a picture of a guy stretched out on the hood of a truck.

“That’s him in Giant.”

Bill thought: Goddamn, I do look like him.

She turned pages. There were more pictures. He really did look like this guy, only with darker hair and a little longer face. Maybe more nose.

“Well,” she said.

“We favor,” he said.

“You’re taller-looking than him. I like you taller.” She closed the book and Bill looked at the cover. The Pictorial James Dean. She lay the book next to the kitchen sink and turned and kissed him. His lip was still sore where she had bit him. She sucked at the wound. Her tongue found his and they lay on the floor again and did it. Gidget on top.