Two gallons of bright green paint had exploded like a giant avocado all over the ground and Conrad. It had splattered onto the Ice Man’s trailer, splotching the side of it as if someone had chewed and spat out great wads of spinach. Some of the paint had spattered across the image of the Ice Man and had beaded up into fast-drying balls that looked like uncut emeralds.
A paintbrush, wet with paint, had flown onto the window of the Ice Man’s trailer and had stuck there as if it were an exotic bird that had smashed into it. One of Conrad’s shoes was lying upright in a puddle of paint.
Already there were others gathering. Pete, who Bill thought may have waited there all night for a blow job, and now, screaming, U.S. Grant, and a midget named Spike, spinning about on one leg uttering obscenities. Others were appearing: Double Buckwheat, pumpkin heads, some greasers, and finally Frost.
Frost and Bill moved toward Conrad at the same time. They arrived at his side at the same time. Conrad’s head was turned and he lay with one side of his face in the dirt and the eye they could see was popped out of place on the tendons. It lay on his cheek as if trying to crawl off. There was green paint running down his long nose and over his top lip, gathering in the crease where his mouth was open, bathing a handful of teeth scattered inside his mouth. Another two or three teeth lay in a puddle of paint around his head. There was more green paint than blood, but there was blood too. Conrad was breathing in a rattling sort of way, like something fragile had been crunched inside of cellophane and was continually being unwrapped or danced upon.
Bill got down on his hands and knees and looked at the eyeball that was out of the socket so Conrad could see him. Above, the eyelash winked as if it still housed its charge.
“Fugged ub,” Conrad said, spitting out teeth and paint.
“Oh shit, Conrad,” Bill said.
“It’ll be all right, Conrad,” Frost said.
“Nuwont,” Conrad said.
“God, Conrad,” Bill said. “Jesus Christ.”
“Uhtradta grubuhrailn. Dudnt mageid.”
“Sure,” Bill said.
“Uhtradto thunk rubba.”
I bet, thought Bill.
Frost gently picked up the eyeball by the tendon and turned the eye so it could see him. “I’m sorry, Conrad.”
“Yeg, bud dun’elp nun.”
Frost lay the eyeball gently on Conrad’s cheek. He turned and yelled at the spinning midget. “Call someone. Get my cell phone. Tell Gidget. Call someone. 911!”
“Uh feeg lig shid.”
Conrad coughed a little, passed some gas in a hissing manner, and quit breathing.
“I was going to climb up there,” Frost said. “I was going up there this morning. It was supposed to be me.”
U.S. Grant, who had not spoken, but had stopped screaming, eased up slowly, fell to her knees next to Conrad. She took hold of him and lowered him so that he could lie on his side without his feet sticking up in the air. His extended eyeball became bathed in green paint, and now blood ran out from him in gluts and blended with it.
“He was going to surprise you two,” U.S. Grant said. “He heard Bill say there was painting to do yet. A bucket left. He got the paint out of the car. He couldn’t sleep because he wanted to surprise you.”
“Jesus,” Bill said.
“He climbed up there when daylight came. I was fixing him breakfast. He was going to finish and eat breakfast. I heard the bucket shift, and… He was going to finish up and eat breakfast.”
“It’s my fault,” Bill said.
“No,” Frost said, tears running down his cheeks. “It’s my fault.”
“That’s right,” U.S. Grant said. “Your fault. You had to have that rattletrap. No one but Phil knew how to really fasten it together. You had to have it though. And you had to have it painted right away. You always have to have things right away. He always wanted to please you, Frost. Always. We always want to please you, but you’re not so smart. You fucked up. You and your goddamn idea.”
“I know,” Frost said. He reached out his hand and ran it through Conrad’s paint-caked smattering of hair.
A blackness went over Bill. He got up and stumbled, fell down, got up, stumbled again.
As he groped his way toward his trailer, Gidget came out of the motor home. She had stopped to comb her hair and put on lipstick. She was wearing a pair of simple blue pajamas and a pajama top with a bright bird of paradise embroidered on the left side above her heart. She wore little blue house shoes with round blue cotton balls on the toes. She looked out at Frost and Conrad and U.S. Grant, then she looked at Bill, but she looked his way for only a moment, then she sighed deep, swallowed, took a deep breath, and went running out to Frost, screaming, screaming, as if it was she who had fallen.
Twenty-nine
US. Grant carried Conrad to her trailer and wiped him clean with paint thinner and paper towels, got his eye back inside its socket with the aid of tweezers and a couple of cotton balls and strip of Scotch tape.
It looked better than the other eye, which had met the ground and was like a grape stepped on by a size twelve. She cut a strip from her dress and made a string and patch from it, and after she cleaned him off good and dressed him in his red overalls, she tied the patch over the mashed eye and combed his wad of hair. She put both his shoes on him, then she wrapped him in a quilt.
Frost and one of the pumpkin heads carried the body from her trailer to the Pickled Punk trailer and placed him behind the Pickled Punks, on the floor pallet, next to a deck of cards, under the wrinkled picture of Jesus in pain.
Frost called the police then.
Inside the Ice Man’s trailer Bill took the little stack of Westerns Conrad had given him and piled them neatly and arranged them by his bed in rows, then he restacked them on top of the Ice Man’s freezer and sat on the bed and looked at them and tried to remember what each of them was about. He sat there until tears came, and then he shook his head and rolled onto the bed and cried and fell asleep to hide from the pain.
The police came out in a while, and they asked everyone out of their trailers and got stories from everyone, and they took names, and Bill gave a false last name that no one had heard before and had no reason to doubt. Down deep he wanted to give his real name and hope it meant something. He wanted to be taken away and punished.
The cops didn’t seem to think there were any signs of foul play, even if the body had been cleaned up, and Pete didn’t tell how he sucked a pecker and had seen Bill down by the river. Most likely he had already forgotten it. They only asked Pete a couple of questions, then decided it was a little like interviewing a turnip.
The police went away and Bill went back to his trailer wearing his guilt like a second skin. He was there fifteen minutes when he heard something outside. He pulled on his pants and went out barefooted. Frost was on a little step stool and he had a bucket of soap and water. There was a can of paint thinner on the ground. He was cleaning the paint off the trailer with a brush and a rag.
“Leave it alone!” Bill said. “Leave it alone!”
“Whoa, Bill, it’s okay.”
“Ain’t nothing okay. Conrad’s dead!”
“I know how you feel.”
“You don’t know shit. He ain’t dead more than a few hours and you’re cleaning the trailer.”
“It has to be cleaned, Bill. We don’t want Conrad’s legacy to be green paint on the trailer and a brush stuck to the window. I’d rather not be reminded.”
“Well, I want to be reminded. I want out of this whole thing. I’m sick of being in this trailer. I’m sick of the Ice Man. I’m sick of you. I’m sick of this goddamn carnival. You don’t give a shit he’s dead.”