He wanted them too, and would give each their turn, and the men would not care, because they knew, absolutely knew, he deserved it and that for him to have their women was an honor.
Bill opened his eyes and gazed down at the glass. It was frosted. He slowly lifted the hair dryer between his legs and struck the button. The dryer roared and gave a burst of hot air, heated the glass, and caused the frost to dissipate.
When he stared down at the Ice Man – appearing suddenly as if rising out of a block of ice – Bill experienced a sensation of dropping inside the freezer and entering into the Ice Man and looking up and out of his eyes. Above him was the water-beaded glass, and through it he could see his face looking down with hollow eyes and through his empty sockets he could see his empty universe. No stars. No moon. No form. Just void.
It was such a disconcerting feeling Bill had to close his eyes so that he could neither see what he saw or what he thought he saw. He wondered what was going on inside him.
Until Frost, Bill had felt there was just him as he was. There were no sides to it. Good and Bad weren’t real to him. They were words. Now he felt he had seen some light and had liked it. Frost had shone the light on him. Frost had believed in him. And now he had a friend, Conrad, and the light was brighter yet.
Then along came Gidget, dragging shadow, looking like, tasting like, some calorie-filled confection, and he had tasted her, and he had felt as Adam must have felt when he bit into the apple. Light going out. Dirt giving way beneath his feet, grabbing at roots and vines that wouldn’t hold.
Bill took a deep breath. He told himself he had to hang on, had to poke his shoes into the dirt and make toeholds. Had to climb up and out and into the light. Had to not do this thing Gidget wanted. Had to stay out of that ditch Conrad warned him about. Only Conrad was wrong, it wasn’t a ditch. It was a crevasse.
The hair dryer droned on. Bill tried to find a spot for himself behind the sound, some place to hide, but he couldn’t. His misery was larger and louder than sound. He opened his eyes again and looked at the Ice Man.
All you got to do is not do it, he thought.
All you got to do is leave it be.
You haven’t got the wrench, weren’t able to get it, so you can’t do it anyway, so you don’t have to do a thing.
You don’t have to touch that woman again. Nothing makes you do it but yourself, and you are the captain of yourself.
Let it pass and you’ll be okay.
There was a knock on the door. Bill jerked, the dryer came unplugged. The burst of heat went away and the dryer fell limp in his hand.
The night air was cool because of the river. The air tasted like the river and the damp East Texas soil. It was a fresh sweet smell that he imagined was not too unlike that of being born.
On the steps of his trailer he saw the wrench. He looked toward the motor home. There went Gidget, moving fast, her buttocks working underneath her cotton dress as if one were wrestling with the other. She went inside the motor home and quietly closed the door without so much as looking back.
Bill stared at the wrench for a full minute. Then he bent over and picked it up. It was heavy. Gidget’s smell was on it. He was the captain, but his ship was on the reef.
Twenty-seven
He had the wrench in his belt as he started his climb. He went up carefully. There was a nightsweat dampness on the metal and it was hard to get a hand or foothold, and the fresh paint had dried smooth and that made it even harder.
The sky had cleared. As he climbed, he nearly lost himself in the stars above. They were thick and beautiful. There was a crescent moon. It was like a single cat eye, partially open, waiting for a mouse. Crickets chirped and great frogs sang bass out on the river. The pines seemed to have gathered the moon’s light like a mist and they had the appearance of narrow pyramids stacked close together.
Twice the wrench in his belt clanged against the metal, and he looked over his shoulder, but saw no one. As he reached the uppermost bucket he heard a sound below. Looking down, he saw it was one of the pinheads and Double Buckwheat. They had come out of nowhere.
Bill stood still, one foot about to step into the bucket. He saw the pinhead was the one they called Peter. He could tell because Peter had a brilliant pink head with a ring of hair on it like a dirty bird’s nest. Pete and Double Buckwheat were talking. Pete was sayin’, “No. Uh uh,” which was about a third of his vocabulary.
“Then it’s you,” said one of the Buckwheats. “Us first, then you.”
“Uh uh. No.”
“We trade,” said the other Buckwheat.
“No.”
“Two heads better than one.”
Pete paused at this. He paused for a long time. Double Buckwheat handed him what looked like a wrapped candy bar. Pete might have said something, Bill couldn’t be sure. Pete turned and went between two trailers and a moment later Double Buckwheat followed. Bill eased into the bucket, crouched down and peeked over the edge.
He watched Double Buckwheat and Pete move like ghosts through the night, one pale with a head you could toss rings on, the other a double-headed black ghost. They disappeared into a copse of woods near the river.
Bill decided they were far enough away, and he had to go on and do it, because somehow he didn’t know how not to do it. Watching Gidget’s buttocks pound one another had battered down his resistance. Those buttocks banged like cannons in his brain.
He took the wrench from his belt and felt around for the bolts. When he found one, he took a deep breath and sat still until his eyes adjusted to the interior of the bucket. Then he took the wrench and turned the nut on the bolt until it could be plucked off with the fingers. With that one done, he slid over and unfastened another. The bucket creaked a little.
Bill thought, now how do I do this and get out of this goddamn bucket without it tipping me? But he kept at it until three bolts were loose. He eased himself to the side and climbed out carefully, leaned over and unfastened the last few bolts so that the nuts, like the others, were hardly on the bolts. A breeze could blow them off. Frost, not knowing they were loose, moving around in there, trying to work, was going to drop.
Bill looked down and saw the fall was a formidable one. If Frost hit the ground he might live, but if he tumbled and dove on his head, or maybe landed hard on his heels or back, he was going to be either dead or severely fucked up. Maybe that was what would happen. He would be paralyzed, but alive, then Gidget would have him to nurse. That would be fitting. But no, that wouldn’t do either. One way or another, Gidget would get him. And realizing that, knowing that it was inevitable no matter what he did, Bill slipped the wrench in his belt and climbed down.
He went between trailers and on out to the river’s edge trying to find a place that looked deep so he could toss the wrench, and as he walked through a patch of pecan trees, he heard a Double Buckwheat head say, “Yes sir, that’s what we need.”
Bill dropped to his stomach, lay still and listened. Shit, he had stupidly forgotten about Pete and Double Buckwheat. They had come out of the copse of trees while he was busy and had moved over to stand beneath the handful of old pecan trees on the edge of the river. There was so much on his mind he hadn’t remembered they were out here. He had been thinking of throwing the wrench away, and had come all the way out here to do it. He would have been better off tossing it in the river near his trailer. Of all the stupid goddamn things to do. Now here were two, or rather three, witnesses who could say they saw him wandering around at night.