“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?”
The cops laughed themselves away from him and pushed ahead in the line to the Ice Man’s trailer. When they came out of the trailer a few minutes later they were quiet.
They walked on through the carnival and out of sight behind the whirligig, probably on their way to demanding free hot dogs and drinks and cotton candy, ready to peek at adolescent girl asses bending over counters as the girls tossed coins or baseballs.
Bill said softly: “Dumb shits.”
Fifteen
Bill passed the Ice Man’s trailer and went in the direction Gidget had gone. She had slipped through the circle of trailers and was at her earlier spot, sitting on the ground smoking a cigarette in the dark. Her gold hair held the moonlight and it fell butter smooth over her skin, delighted to be there. The white smoke from her cigarette was rising up into the night and floating over her like a venomous cloud. Somewhere off in the distant dark a cow bellowed sadly, as if it had just figured out its true purpose in life.
Bill walked up behind Gidget. “Nice night, huh.” She didn’t turn to look at him. “Get lost, shithead. You ain’t gettin’ nothin’.”
“I’m just being friendly.”
“Howdy. Now fuck off, pencil dick.”
“You ain’t very nice.”
“No, I ain’t, and there ain’t no reason for you to be out here hustlin’ my ass. I don’t fuck freaks. Let me smoke my cigarette. It’s about all the fun I get.”
“I just want to talk.”
“Sure you do. Now fuck off, or I’ll tell Frost you were bothering me.”
“You’re his woman, I wouldn’t try to hustle you none.”
“Bad enough I got to be in this freak show. I don’t want to buddy up to a pomegranate head. Screw off. Now!”
Bill turned and trudged back through the gap in the trailers, throwing up little heaps of pasture as he went. He thought: Hell, I ain’t no pomegranate head. I’m just bug-bit and allergic. Ain’t Frost told her that?
For want of anything better to do, and to help nurse his trampled feelings, he went over to the Ice Man’s trailer and got in line. Conrad, on break, came strolling by on all fours. He saw Bill in line.
“You ain’t got to stand in line you want to see somethin’,” Conrad said. “Go on in. You’re privileged.”
“Hey, Fido,” said a guy in line dressed in a red and white barber pole jacket and rust-colored slacks. He had less grease on his hair than Phil, but he certainly had enough up there to do him and still deep-fry a chicken. “Everyone ought to wait in line, even pimple head here.”
“He works for the carnival,” Conrad said.
“It’s all right,” Bill said. “I don’t mind waitin’.”
“You don’t have to wait,” Conrad said.
“I say he does,” said Barber Pole.
“Say what you want,” Conrad said.
Barber Pole mentally flipped over a series of insults and finally arrived at: “Hey, Fido. You do it doggie style?”
A man standing with Barber Pole, a jar-headed redneck with a tavern tumor and white shoes that were brand-new about 1968, snickered. “A face like that, he don’t do it any kinda style.”
Conrad, accustomed to insults, sat back on his haunches and fished for a cigarette. He gave Barber Pole and his pal a contemptuous look, like a cantankerous dog who won’t do a trick in front of his master’s friends. “Who the fuck dresses you, Ronald McDonald?” Conrad put the smoke between his lips. “I had a coat like that, I’d shit on it before I wore it.” He lit the cigarette. “It’d make it look about three times better.”
“Why you freaky piece of trash,” said Barber Pole, moving toward Conrad.
Conrad held up one leather-wrapped hand. “You’re gonna lose your place in line, you step out. And worse, you might get your funky redneck ass whipped.”
Now everyone in the Ice Man line glanced apprehensively at Conrad and Barber Pole, tried to appear as if they weren’t really looking. Curious, but not wanting to be sucked into things.
“I ought to kick you,” said Barber Pole, but he hadn’t come any nearer.
Conrad plucked the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it away. “What you ought to do is get you a decent haircut and a better run of clothes from the Goodwill and maybe scrape a layer off your teeth and drain your hairdo, is what you ought to do. And if you folded some paper or cardboard thick enough in them shoes, they might give you a half inch of needed height.”
The man came out of the line then, and Conrad, not really making any effort about it, reached into his red overalls and produced a razor and flicked it open with his left hand and brought out another pack of cigarettes with his right and used the razor to slice the top. He used his rubbery lips to pull a smoke from the pack and he put the pack away and continued to hold the open razor. He got his lighter with his free hand and flicked it and put the flame to the cigarette. He looked at Barber Pole out of the corner of his eye and put the lighter away, said, “You do what you’re thinkin’, I’m gonna do what you think I’m thinking.”
Barber Pole turned to look at his companion, who appeared to be no longer interested. He was in line, staring straight ahead. You would have thought he’d have never been aware of anything but the Ice Man. He craned his neck forward as if he were examining the movement of the line, maybe hoping to see the Ice Man make an appearance at the doorway of the trailer.
Barber Pole huffed and puffed a bit, and after a moment he left the line and wandered off. “I’m gonna talk to the cops about you.”
“Give ’em my best wishes,” Conrad said.
Conrad put the razor away, blew smoke, said to Bill, “Go on in.”
“Ain’t you goin’?”
“No. I think about it now and then, but I don’t go see it anymore.”
Bill broke line and pushed past an old couple in the doorway who started at his appearance. The old woman grabbed the old man and nearly knocked him off the steps, sent his Panama hat flying. A boy of twelve in a Cub Scout suit leaned out of line and picked up the hat and took off his scout cap and put the Panama on his head and said, “Look, I’m a bird feeder.”
The old man snatched the hat off the Cub Scout’s head and put it on and glared at the twelve-year-old, who didn’t seem intimidated in the least. He had an air about him that said, I’ve taken better beatin’s than you can give. The little Cub Scout put on his hat and cocked it at a rakish angle and stared the old man down, then looked at the old woman as if he might ask her for a date and make her buy the rubbers.