Freezer Burn by Joe R. Lansdale

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 flickedit 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, thenlooked at the old woman as if he might ask her for a date and make her buy the rubbers.
    Bill slipped inside. It was very cool in there. Goose bumps broke out on his arms and the backs of his hands. Frost was dressed in a white suit with pale blue shoes and a pale blue shirt and dark blue tie. His socks were thin and his pants were short and you could see the socks were held up with black silk garters. He was sitting in a chair on a raised platform at the back of the trailer and he had his feet cocked back and hung behind one of the chair rungs, which was what allowed his pants to hike up and his socks and garters to be seen. He was bathed in a bright light from a bare overhead bulb. It gave him a kind of glow, like a skid row angel. In front of him was a deep freezer and over the freezer where a lid should have been was a glass plate beaded up like a cold beer mug. Frost had a hair dryer plugged in and lying in his lap, and when there were enough people to surround the freezer, he turned on the hair dryer and waved it over the glass a bit. The cloud on the glass faded and people looked down and changed their expressions. They craned their necks and turned their heads and leaned forward and tilted back and looked at what was in the freezer from all angles. One man, holding his little boy in his arms, said, “My almighty.”
    The little boy, possibly four years old, leaned forward for a look and said, “Daddy, don’t he get cold?”
    The man laughed, said, “Reckon he don’t get much of anything.”
    “Let me tell you about him,” Frost said suddenly over the roar of the dryer. He cut the device and leaned back in his chair. He had already given this spiel a hundred times tonight, but now his face looked as fresh as ayoung woman’s tittie. Now that Frost was about to tell his story, something about his body changed. He still slumped in his chair, but it was as if he were a jack-in-the-box and someone had pressed a heavy weight on his head to keep him from springing up.
    He lowered his eyes to the glass plate over the freezer, which was once again clouded with cold. Frost’s beautiful blue eyes were soft as a summer cloud.
    “There are all