Freezer Burn

Twenty-one

When the storm passed and the sun came out it grew remarkably calm. Gidget picked up her book and her clothes and went back to the bedroom and locked the door without so much as a kiss my ass. It was like it had never happened, but it had. Bill was raw and sore from what they had been doing.

Bill dressed, went outside and tried to move the big limb, but couldn’t do it. He figured if he kept trying his only reward would be a strained nut. He did pause, however, to read the historical marker. It told how this had once been the site of an unsuccessful cannonball factory.

He backed the motor home completely onto the concrete drive, and carefully backed down it, being sure to stay away from the high-line wire. The motor home was big and having to use only mirrors made it hard, but he got it out of there and finally on the highway. He drove onward, looking for other members of the carnival. He found the Ice Man’s trailer and truck cab in a ditch. The cab was centered in the ditch in about two feet of water, and the trailer was partially in and partially jackknifed to the right where the end of it had knocked a gap in a barbed wire fence and smashed a small pine tree.

Conrad was sitting in the truck behind the steering wheel smoking a cigarette. There was about a pack’s worth of butts floating in the ditch water by the truck. On the seat beside him was the rig he fastened to his leg when he was driving.

Bill pulled over, climbed in the ditch, looked in the open driver’s window. Conrad gave him a doggie grin and flicked ash into the ditch water. Bill noted that the front of Conrad’s clothes were wet, and he looked uncomfortable. “I’m glad to see you. Figured I got out of the car, some redneck liked to run over dogs would veer off the highway and get me. I wanted to lay down. After an hour or so, that’s more comfortable than trying to sit like this, but I figured I laid down, I might miss one of our group they came by in the rain. I wanted to be ready to honk my horn and flash my lights. Then the sun came out and I didn’t lay down either. I decided to smoke cigarettes. I didn’t even see you come up.”

“You just stuck?”

“I think so. Wind shoved me off the road.”

“I don’t think I can pull it out, even if I had a chain.”

“Nope. It’s a wrecker job. A big wrecker.”

“What about the Ice Man?”

“He’s all right. I checked on him first thing. Neither he nor the freezer moved an inch. That’s why I’m all wet, going back there to check. I’m built low to the ground, you know.” Conrad opened the door of the truck cab. “I hate to ask you this, but think you could lift me up? Otherwise, I’m going to have to walk through ditch water again. You go through it, it ain’t gonna wash up and lick your belly.”

“All right.”

Bill let Conrad climb on his back. The dog-man was heavier than he expected. The idea of touching Conrad just a couple weeks ago would have made him feel queasy, but now it was nothing. They climbed up the side of the ditch and Bill sat Conrad down in front of the motor home.

“Looks like you clipped the front a bit.”

“Yeah. I hit a historical marker in a roadside park. Damn near got hit by a falling high-line wire.”

“And how’s the Princess?”

“She’s all right.”

“Yeah, well anyone’s all right, you can bet it’ll be her.”

Bill and Conrad went inside the motor home and Conrad got up in the passenger chair. Bill noted that Conrad was sniffing the air. He wondered if he could smell what he and Gidget had been doing. He’d had his face in it for so long he couldn’t smell anything but that, so he didn’t know how the trailer smelled.

Bill started up the motor home, pulled onto the highway. As he drove along he tried to think of some kind of small talk to hand out to Conrad, but nothing came. If Conrad figured he’d been throwing the meat to the Princess, as he called her, and Bill sat silent, this was sure to feed the suspicion, but still, nothing came to him to say.

He thought: What if she comes out of there stark naked?

No, she wouldn’t do that. She was bound to have looked out a window and seen what he was doing out there with Conrad, so she wouldn’t come out.

But what if she hadn’t seen, and she did come out? How was he going to explain that? He thought maybe he should talk loud to Conrad so she could hear, but he still couldn’t think of anything to say.

He looked at Conrad and Conrad was reaching Gidget’s smokes off the dash and shaking one out. He used her lighter to light up. He sucked in the smoke and let some of it come out his nose and he opened his mouth and rolled his tongue in a funny way and smoke came out of there in the shape of a funnel and wreathed over his head and spread about in the motor home cabin.

“I don’t hear nothing back there. You sure she’s all right?”

“Sure. I talked to her earlier. She was all right then. She’s maybe takin’ a nap.”

“A nap.”

“Sure.”

“You look a little ill, buddy.”

“I’m tired. This storm and shit. It rattles the nerves.”

“Yeah. Mine are rattled. I went off in that ditch so fast I didn’t even know it till I was there. Sometimes, things like that happen. You’re just going along, mindin’ your own business, not expecting anything, then suddenly you’re caught in a slide and you’re off in a ditch.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“You get out of the ditch, you got to have enough sense not to get back in it.”

“Wasn’t your fault in the first place.”

“Maybe I wasn’t alert enough. Wasn’t like I didn’t have a little warning. Thunderheads. Rain.”

“It come pretty fast, that storm.”

“Yeah. But I had some warning. I could sense it. You can sense a thing like that. The atmosphere is different. It’s got a kind of electricity. A kind of smell. It’s got an after-smell too.”

“Yeah. But I didn’t know anything. Just one minute I’m driving along, next minute I hit a post.”

“Best thing to do in that case is back away from the post and drive off and keep on driving and stay away from posts in general.”

Bill turned and looked at Conrad. “Yeah. I reckon you’re right. That’s what I’m doing, drivin’ on.”

Conrad nodded and smoked Gidget’s cigarette. “That’s a good idea, man. Me and U.S. Grant, we’re tryin’ to do the same. Drive on, you know? Stay out of ditches. Away from posts.”

“And how are you doin’?”

“Well, it ain’t easy. I think about it. What was goin’ on and all with Phil, but we’re doin’ it. We got to do it. You got to look at the big picture. You look at it small, well, you’re off in that ditch again, and maybe this next time the ditch is deeper and you can’t climb out, not even with help. Savvy?”

“Sure.”

A few miles farther they came upon U.S. Grant parked along the road on the opposite side, the cab turned in the opposite direction, trailer disconnected and sitting beside the road facing toward its original destination.

U.S. Grant had brought out a lawn chair and was seated in it next to her truck and trailer. The pin- and pumpkin heads had been riding with her and they were outside now, playing, running about and splashing in ditch water. Passing traffic slowed to look at this and wonder.

Bill looped around and went back and parked and he and Conrad got out. As soon as U.S. Grant saw Conrad she started crying and came out of her chair in a leap and grabbed him as if to pick him up like a pet. Instead she bent down and dropped a big hairy knee out from under her shift and rested it in the mud and hugged him.

“We spun around and the trailer snapped loose,” she said. “I kept thinking I was gonna die and things weren’t like they ought to be between us.”

Conrad stroked her with his weird little hand. “It’s all right.”

“I didn’t want to die with us not reconciled.”

“We are. We’re fine.”

“What I done was wrong.”

“I’ve already forgiven you. It won’t happen again.”

“I don’t blame you for nothing.”

The pinheads and the pumpkin heads were throwing dirt clods at one another.

“Bill,” Conrad said, “I’m going to stay here with U.S. Grant. You go on to the next town and call in some wrecker service.”

Conrad popped a snap on a back pocket and took out his razor and then his wallet. He removed a card. “This here is our road service. You use most anyone, we get a little discount. We can always use a discount. You call and tell them where we are, and they’ll come. Tell them where my trailer is too. Any others you might see on the way in.”

Bill took the card and Conrad replaced his wallet and razor and sat back on his haunches and shook Bill’s hand. “You watch out for ditches now. There still might be some slick spots.”