“Oh,” Kathy said, sitting up in bed fully now. “That’s eerie as hell.” Which meant she recognized it, too.
The music grew louder, louder, until it was right outside the house in the street. In the summertime, that jocular little melody would send the neighborhood kids flooding into Columbus Court, anxious for a Rocket Pop or an Italian ice. But now, in the dead of winter and in the middle of the night—David glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and saw that it was well after midnight—the sound of that tune unnerved him.
“That’s the strangest damn thing,” he said, and climbed out of bed. He tugged on a pair of sweatpants and an undershirt, then went to one of the bedroom windows. He lifted the blinds and peered out into the night.
“What?” Kathy said.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s the freakin’ ice cream man.”
Much of his view was blocked by the Walkers’ house next door, but he was able to make out the rear bumper of the Freez-E-Friend ice cream truck with perfect clarity. It sat idling in the middle of the cul-de-sac, its tailpipe expelling clouds of vapor into the cold night air. The brake lights were on.
Kathy joined him at the window. “Is this some kind of joke?” she said, her breath fogging up the glass.
“Well, as far as jokes go, it’s the creepiest one I’ve ever seen.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Just sitting there, it looks like. I don’t know. I can’t really see.”
When he turned and headed out into the hall, Kathy said, “Where are you going?” There was a level of trepidation in his wife’s voice he found strangely endearing.
“To go check it out.”
“Outside?” She said this with incredulity, as if he’d just suggested he walk blindfolded into traffic.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s weird,” she said. “I don’t like it.”
“It’s fine. Just wait here.”
In the foyer, he shoved his feet into a pair of ratty moccasins, unlocked the front door, and, sans jacket, stepped out into the night.
It was bitterly cold, causing the sweat that still clung to his exposed flesh to freeze. From the front porch, he had a perfect view of the Freez-E-Friend truck, idling right there in the middle of Columbus Court. It was a quaint little cul-de-sac that served eight homes. The lampposts cast pale white light onto the white-paneled truck, giving it an otherworldly appearance. There were Christmas lights on all the houses, but at this hour, they had all been turned off. David hesitated for just a moment before stepping down off the porch, hearing Kathy’s words echoing in his ears: Because it’s weird. I don’t like it. But then he was crossing the lawn and stepping down off the curb into the street, his shadow stretching disproportionately out in front of him in a halo of lamplight.
It was a typical ice cream truck, done up in white panels with decals of everyone’s favorite flavors pasted onto the side. Cartoon clowns capered among the flavors, pulling cartwheels and somersaults. The truck’s engine sounded like an uncooperative lawn mower, but it was barely audible over the sound of “Yankee Doodle” emanating from the roof-mounted speakers.
A figure sat behind the wheel—a dark form whose slouched silhouette suggested some level of distress, though David could not immediately identify why. Yet the sight of this figure caused him to pause once again. Despite the cold, he found he was suddenly perspiring.
Across the street, porch lights came on. Another light blinked on in Deke Carmody’s front windows farther up the block. A second later, Deke was beneath the awning of his front porch, cinching a bulky white robe around his thick frame.
“What is it?” It was Tom Walker from next door, coming up beside David. “What’s going on?”
David shook his head. “I have no idea.” Then he proceeded to walk around to the driver’s side of the truck.
Tom Walker grabbed him by the bicep. David paused and looked at his neighbor, noting the dark, sunken, sleep-weary eyes, the stubble on Tom Walker’s chin. In the cold light of the street lamps, Tom looked like the newly risen dead.
“What?” David said.
“Nothing,” Tom said, as if changing his mind, and released David’s arm. Then he shook his head and uttered a nervous laugh. “I’m right behind you.”
Yet despite Tom’s proclamation, David walked around the front of the truck by himself. Only when he passed in front of the truck’s headlights, their startling white glow casting heat along the exposed flesh of David’s arms, did he realize that he was suddenly vulnerable—that if the figure behind the wheel decided to floor the accelerator at that moment, he’d be a goner. Thinking this, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that there was a light on in one of the front windows of his own house. Kathy’s silhouette stood behind the glass.
He crossed to the driver’s side without incident. The truck’s door was higher than a regular vehicle’s, so David had to take a few steps back to see in the window. But even then, the window was rolled up, and there was nothing but glare from the streetlights at the opposite end of the court splashed across it.
“Hello?” he called to the driver. He waved his hands over his head, like someone signaling an aircraft.
Tom Walker came around the side of the truck. He looked spooked, his knobby knees poking from below a pair of lacrosse shorts, his big feet stuffed into what looked like his wife’s fuzzy pink slippers.
“He’s in there,” Tom said. “He’s watching us.”
“He’s not moving,” David said.
Deke Carmody materialized out of the darkness, his bald head gleaming in the lamplight. He was staring at the truck as if the thing were an alien spacecraft just descended from the sky. “It’s friggin’ one in the morning,” Deke said, as if this needed to be stated. “Somebody order some Rocky Road or what?”
And let’s not forget that it’s the dead of winter, David thought, but did not add. Instead, he reached out—
“Hey, now,” Tom uttered.
—and popped the handle on the door. The door eased open, exposing the darkened cab and the oddly bent figure behind the steering wheel.
David took a step back. He couldn’t make out the man’s face, but from what he could tell, he was dressed in his starched white uniform and pin-striped apron. The Freez-E-Friend hat was perched on his head, a thing that always reminded David of an old milkman’s hat. It was when the hat seemed to reposition itself in the darkness of the truck’s interior that David realized the ice cream man had turned and was looking straight at him.
“Are you all right?” David called to the man over the din of “Yankee Doodle.”
The man inside the truck said nothing. A starched white knee came into the light, ghost-white, and David could see the man wore shiny white shoes, too.
He’s in full uniform. Which means he must be a lunatic. As if driving an ice cream truck around at night in the middle of winter wasn’t enough proof of this.
The man’s hand came up and brushed against the steering wheel column. David heard the jangling of keys. A moment later, both the truck’s engine and the music died. The silence that replaced it was almost deafening.
“You okay, pal?” David said, taking a step closer to the open door.
“I don’t . . .” the man began, then stopped. David heard him clear his throat—a raw, guttural sound, wet with phlegm toward the end. “I don’t think I’m . . . doing this right,” said the man.
“Doing what right?”
The man said nothing.
“What’s your name?” David asked him.
“Uh,” said the man. “It’s Gary. My name’s Gary.”
“What are you doing out here, Gary?” He tried to put some jocularity in his voice, a bit of humor that might serve as the right amount of magic to dispel this whole uncomfortable scene. Yet his voice cracked, and David thought it had the opposite effect.
“Making the rounds,” said the man. “Isn’t that right?” He added that last part with undeniable uncertainty, as if he was h
oping David might be able to instruct him whether or not this was, in fact, what he was doing.
“Do you know where you are?” David asked.
The man said something that sounded like, “Pistachio.”
David licked his upper lip. “Why don’t you come on down, come out here with us? If you’re lost, we can help you.”
“I’ve got all this work to do,” said the man. David still could not see his face. “If I don’t do it, who’s going to . . . going to do all this work?”
“I don’t understand,” David said. “What work?”
“All this . . . all this work,” the man said, and motioned with one hand toward the back of the truck, presumably to indicate all the ice cream and frozen pops back there.
“We’ll figure it out,” David said.
“Mint chocolate chip,” said the man.
“Is he delusional?” David heard Deke whisper at his back. David shushed him, unable to pull his eyes from the ice cream man.
“Butter pecan,” the man said. “Strawberry cheesecake.”
“Come on,” David said, waving the man down from the truck. “Why don’t you come on down. I’ll give you a hand.”
“Blueberry Surprise,” said the man, a ball of phlegm clotting up the final syllable. Then he leaned forward so that the lower half of his face—the part not obscured by the shadow of the hat’s brim—glowed white and garish in the moonlight.
Something dark was trickling from the man’s left nostril. It appeared to lengthen, albeit almost imperceptibly, as David watched. For a moment, it almost looked like the man’s face was splitting down the middle, a crack forming at the center of his skull.
He’s had a stroke. It was the first thought to come into David’s mind. This put him somewhat at ease, since strokes, while awful, were comprehensible. It stripped some of the mystery, the lunacy, from this whole thing and made him feel somewhat more at ease.
“That’s it,” David said, aware that he was talking to the man like he would to a child. “Come on down.”
The man didn’t so much climb down from the cab as slide down in a disjointed and ungainly fashion. When his white shoes hit the pavement, David thought the man’s legs would buckle and give out, so he rushed to the man’s side and quickly gripped him about the shoulders for support. That was when David caught a whiff of him—the stench of fresh feces clinging to him like a shroud. It was enough to nearly make him gag, and he quickly recoiled from the man.
It was then that he heard a police siren coming up the street. Relief washed over him. He found his feet and took several steps away from the man. As if sensing David’s apprehension, the man turned and faced him with his whole body—a disconcertingly robotic adjustment of shoulders, torso, head—and that was when David noticed the dark splotches running down the front of the man’s white uniform toward the hem of the pin-striped apron. More blood.
“Sweet Jesus,” Deke muttered.
“It’s important things get done!” the man roared, flecks of spittle launching from his lips. He balled up one hand and slammed it against the side of the truck, creating a resounding gonglike crash that caused David to jump. “None of you have any idea! You don’t have any clue! Marybeth.”
David took another step back from the man. He wasn’t sure if he’d heard the man correctly until the name was uttered again.
“Marybeth?” It came out as a query this time, the man’s voice laced with a terrible combination of grief and fear. How quickly his demeanor had changed.
David saw the lights of the police cars against the houses at the far end of the street before he saw the actual vehicles. Someone—Deke again?—said, “It’s the police,” and there was a grave finality to the voice.
The ice cream man whipped his head around and stared toward the opposite end of Columbus Court as two police cars appeared. The cars slowed down and came to a stop in front of the Fosters’ house, their rack lights dousing the night in strobes of blue and red.
“Who’s this?” the ice cream man muttered. The confusion was back in his voice. He turned and stared at David again, a crease forming between his eyebrows. The man’s jowls quivered. He looked like a trapped animal. “Why would you do this to me?”
“Me?” David said. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You need help, pal,” said Deke Carmody.
The man did not turn and look at Deke; his eyes remained locked on David. A hand came up and David flinched. “Marybeth, why would you do this to me?”
David shook his head.
The ice cream man removed his hat, revealing a mat of close-cropped dark hair that looked spongy with perspiration. His cheeks continued to quiver, and when he next spoke, he did so through clenched teeth with a voice drenched in fury.
“Why would you do this to me?”
“Hey, now,” David said, holding up both his hands.
The police approached. There were two of them, young-faced and distrustful. One of them looked at the ice cream truck in utter disbelief before turning his attention to the man in the apron.
“Sir,” said the officer. “Hello?”
“He’s bleeding from his nose,” David said, pointing. “I think he’s hurt. And he doesn’t seem to know where he—”
The man lunged at David, so quick that David didn’t have time to react. He was driven backward and lost his balance, falling to the pavement. The ice cream man came down on top of him, the force of a meteor crashing to earth, and David felt the wind punched out of him.
The man made a hissing sound and David felt wetness speckle his face. He wanted to shriek but thought better of opening his mouth for fear that whatever—
(blood)
—was dripping off the man might spill into his own throat.
David bucked his hips, then reached out to clutch the man’s head, seeking leverage to shove him off. But before he could, the man was yanked from him by the police officers. Deke and Tom Walker appeared beside David, each gripping him under an armpit and hoisting him to his feet.
The cops had the ice cream man pressed against the side of his truck while they cuffed his hands behind his back. But it seemed that the fight had left the man now, the anger and rage fleeing just as quickly as it had come. There was a perceptible slump to his shoulders, and his feet, clad in those ridiculous white patent-leather shoes, were positioned at odd angles.
“He said his name’s Gary,” David offered, smearing the splotches of blood along his undershirt in an effort to rid himself of them.
“Did someone hit him?” asked one of the officers.
“No,” said David. “He came out of the truck like that.”
“He came out of the truck like that!” Deke echoed, jabbing a finger in the ice cream man’s direction.
The officer cocked an eyebrow at David. “How come he attacked you?”
“Beats me,” David said.
“Gary,” the cop said, pulling the cuffed man off the side of the truck. “That your name?”
The ice cream man craned his neck so that he could look at the officer. His eyes blazed with some lunatic fever.
“Do you need to go to the hospital?” the other cop asked.
“Mocha almond pecan,” said the ice cream man.
6
The clock on the motel nightstand read 8:49 A.M. and there was a frame of silver light around the drapes. David rolled over, wincing at the stiffness of his body but careful not to make a sound. He couldn’t remember his dreams, but he found both his pillow and the stuffed elephant damp and his eyelids puffy. Ellie was still asleep beside him, her back to him, her legs tucked up beneath her so that the heels of her feet nearly rested against her buttocks. She still hugged the shoe box against her. David wondered what dreams were currently shuttling through his daughter’s head.
In the bathroom he hid the stuffed elephant back inside the duffel bag, washed his face and hands, changed into a pair of jeans, then carefully tucked the Glock into his rear waistband. His Pearl Jam T-shirt was long en
ough to cover the handgun, but he still felt conspicuous. If someone happened to see the bulge, it might draw unwelcome attention. It was safer to leave the gun behind, so he stowed it back inside the duffel bag. Lastly, he removed the wad of cash from the bag and stashed it in his pocket.
Before leaving, he wrote Ellie a note on the back of an old receipt he found in his wallet and stuck it to the door with a gob of chewing gum; she would see it if she went for the door. Then he slipped out into the harsh daylight, wincing.
In the car, he drove not in the direction of the highway, but down a narrow whip of unnamed blacktop that wound behind the motel and ultimately ran through a rural downtown area. Most of the shops here were closed—permanently, it seemed, given their state of disrepair, the blackened shop windows, the fans of unruly blond weeds bursting from cracks in the sidewalks—and even the scant few cars flanking the curb looked like they had been deserted a long time ago. The only living soul was a homeless man in tattered clothing huddled in the doorway of an abandoned building. There was a sandwich board propped up beside him, the words on it printed in accusatory black capitals—THIS TERRIBLE FATE IS YOURS ALONE.
Just when he considered turning around and heading back to the motel, David discovered a convenience store on the corner of an otherwise empty intersection. There were lights on inside, and the door was propped halfway open with a brick.
As he negotiated the Olds into one of several empty parking spaces along the curb, a lone dog, ruinous with mange, trotted across the intersection. It paused in the middle of the street as David climbed out of the car, perhaps alerted to the movement, and stared at him, its tongue unfurled from its mouth, its wolfish ears twitching. The thing did not have a tail, so David couldn’t tell if it was simply curious or meant him harm. Judging by the look of the thing, it didn’t seem like it would have very much to wag about.
David entered the convenience store, dodging between curling strips of flypaper that hummed audibly. His arrival triggered an electronic chime that sounded like a doorbell. The place was empty, without even a clerk behind the counter. Despite the chill in the air, large black flies thumped lazily against the light fixtures. The aisles looked like they hadn’t been restocked in a decade, and indeed, there was the distinct aroma of spoiled meat hanging thickly in the air. He wondered if the place had been abandoned.