Freezer Burn by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online Page B

painting of a swirl of frost, thick as whipping cream. An orgasmic explosion, perhaps.
    Bill couldn’t help but wonder if you saw the Ice Man in person, you got to see his dick or not. Was he wearing Fruit of the Looms? A jock strap? A towel? Or was he in the raw with a dick the size of an anaconda? Or maybe he had a dick like an acorn. Bill remembered a boy in his PE class like that. A great big burly sonofabitch who spent his time pushing everyone else around, and one day, in the shower, Bill saw the source of the bully’s anger. He had a wart for a dick. Even hard, Bill figured that dude’s hole puncher couldn’t have been much bigger than a baby carrot. A thing like that could give you a pissed-off attitude.
    The bully saw him seeing that, and later that day the bully pushed him around. Bill smiled at him, and they both knew what the smile was about. The bully walloped him, but after that left him alone and sometimes didn’t shower, but went to class smelling like the south end of a goat, his dirty little baby pecker tucked into oversized underwear.
    Bill walked around to the door of the trailer. The metal steps beneath the door were hoisted up and bolted into place. On the door there was another painting of the Ice Man. He was supposed to be lying down in his ice, but the way the painting looked, filling the door, it seemed as if the Ice Man was standing upright in a block of ice. The hair looked different in this painting, and the art was a little weak in spots, as if the painter hadbeen in a hurry to collect his fee and get drunk. The body was hairier, and the eyes were crossed; they seemed to look at Bill no matter where he stood. It gave him the creeps.
    Bill wondered what was inside the trailer. He wondered if the Ice Man was a freak. Or an act. Or if it was some kind of display made of chunks of rubber.
    He ambled around the trailer and put his hand on its side. It was cold. It felt good in the East Texas muggy morning, and Bill kept his hand there for a long time, as if drawing energy from it. He leaned his face against the trailer, and that felt even better.
    Finally he strolled around and came face-to-face with Rex the Wonder Dog. Or rather crotch to face. Wonder Dog was moving about on all fours.
    Rex, or Conrad, was wearing red overalls and he sat back on his haunches, looking at Bill. The dog-man’s shock of black hair was plastered to his head and his little mustache appeared to be oiled; it was shedding water. The hair in his ears was wet and dripping downward, like poisoned plants. At first Bill thought the Wonder Dog, like himself, had been out in the rain, but he soon realized the Wonder Dog’s outfit was dry and his mustache was waxed, and that he had most likely come fresh from the shower.
    Bill had a hard time envisioning that. The dog-man in the shower.
    The Wonder Dog turned his head to the left and studied Bill. Bill did not like the Wonder Dog’s eyes, which at one moment seemed gray, another blue, and another green. And that face, elongated like that, the lips dark and the chin nonexistent, it was creepy as a masturbating fat girl on a nude beach.
    “My name is Conrad,” said the Wonder Dog in his gravelly voice.
    “Mine’s Bill.”
    “Will you be staying?”
    “Well, I suppose,” Bill said. “For a while. Not long.”
    “It’s not bad here,” Conrad said. “Things change now and then, but all in all it’s the same, and the same isn’t bad.”
    “Yeah, well, I’ll keep that in mind.”
    “Good,” said Conrad. He raised up his back legs and dropped his arms to the ground and wandered off. Bill watched him go, surprised he had no tail.
    A few minutes later the campground was buzzing. The pointy heads and the meat heads and the fat lady with the beard and some other folks with oddities Bill couldn’t quite categorize were moving about. They seemed to come out of their trailers all at once. A moment later, a big kerosene stove was dragged out of one trailer by folks Bill had