Ice-Cream Truck

Ice Cream Truck


William’s twin daughters rose early, with the sun.  They stood in their cribs babbling happily to one another.  Their cribs were side by side and the little girls in their pink pajamas stood upright, supporting themselves on the barred crib-railing and waving their tiny hands at the window where the sunlight was peeping through the leaves of the trees outside.  When William came into their bedroom, humid with the odor of dirty diapers, and saw the dappled light reaching across the windowsill, his twins saluted him with cries of delight.  “Da, da, da,” they said to him.

William thought he heard the children singing to him and knew that it was early morning, perhaps first light, and so he opened his eyes.  He was surprised to find himself in a shabby motel room, a grey mirror posted like a negligent sentinel across from his bed, curtains drawn across the window overlooking the parking lot.  The sound that had awakened him was not the voices of children but distant music, a calliope stranded somewhere near the motel, on one of the residential side-streets.  The calliope played “La Cucuracha’ and, then, “Home on the Range.”   William said to himself: “It’s a ice-cream truck, the Good Humor man, but why is he patroling the streets so early?”  The music continued for a couple minutes and, then, gradually faded.  That was the first time that William heard the ice-cream truck.
 
William was in the motel on account of the restraining order.  The Judge barred William from his home and any unsupervised contact with his wife and children.  Every other weekend, he was allowed to see his twin daughters at the Lutheran Church in a room where there was a bright red plastic bucket full of plastic toys and a picture of Jesus as the Good Shepherd on the wall.  A social worker sat at a desk in the Narthex.  The social worker was polite, but William knew that she despised him.  The little girls were learning to talk.  Their noses were always runny and one of them sucked her thumb and they babbled about their mama and the kitty and foods that they liked.  William said: “If your mother would allow me, I would take you out and we’d find that ice-cream truck and get some treats.”  “Can we get some treats, Da?” the more talkative of the twins asked.  “I’m not allowed to,” William said.  The less talkative child looked up at him sadly, gazing across her sloppy-wet knuckles (her thumb was in her mouth) and shook her head.  “I like ice cream,” the more talkative girl told him.

The divorce was finalized.  William’s ex-wife took the children and moved to another city, several hundred miles away. William remarried and had more children with his new wife.  As long as he was diligent in paying his child support, William’s ex-wife allowed him to see his daughters once a month.  But in the winter, travel was difficult and, when there were blizzards and ice-storms, William didn’t see the twin girls for months at a time.  As the girls grew older, they became increasingly remote and didn’t seem to like visiting William.  When they spent the weekend at his home, the twins were moody and silent and spent most of the time text-messaging their friends back home and they seemed resentful about sharing a bedroom with their stepsister.  Teenagers don’t like to spend time with their parents and, as they grew older, William didn’t see the girls very often.  He had no regrets.  He supported the twins, sending money to their mother exactly in accord with the requirements of his divorce decree.  The children that lived with him didn’t spend any time with their parents either – they were always with their friends – and so, William didn’t think it unnatural that he had little or no relationship with the twins.  “Perhaps, one day something will bring us closer together,” William thought, but he couldn’t really imagine what that would be.  The girls graduated from High School and went away to college and, according to the divorce papers, William had no further financial obligations to them or their mother.  He sent them money on their birthday.  They didn’t call him on his birthday and, at Christmas time, they were always busy with his ex-wife’s family.    

The town where William lived changed.  Dark-skinned people appeared and took jobs in the factories and food-processing plants.  The shops on main street displayed signs written in Spanish and there were Halal groceries on some of the corners.  One afternoon, when William was sitting on his porch, he heard calliope music far away.  The calliope played “La Cucuracha” again and again, an insistent sound like a bony hand rapping on his front door.  Sometimes, the music would falter and fade away, but, then, after a few minutes, he would hear the tune bubbling faintly on the wind that rustled the leaves of the trees.  William wondered where the ice-cream truck was located.  He couldn’t fix the direction from which music was originating.   The tinny notes seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere.

It was warm weather, fine and dry, and William slept with his window open.  In the twilight, he heard the ice-cream truck prowling some nearby street.  This time, the truck was playing “The Mexican Hat Dance” and a polka “Red Wing”: “the moon shines bright on pretty Red Wing.”  William dozed off. When he awoke again, it seemed very late and a half-moon was coasting through the stars above the treetops and, far away, William heard the tinkling notes of the ice-cream truck.  “Can you hear that?” William said to his wife.  She was snoring.  “That’s outrageous,” he said.  His wife groaned and rolled over.

The Mexican immigrants had taco trucks and William had seen them downtown, pulled up to the curb during festivals and on the Fourth of July.  In the newspaper, he sometimes read about stabbings and brawls that occurred in front of the taco trucks after the bars had closed.  He supposed that the ice-cream truck was also owned by Mexicans and that it rolled through the downtown streets late at night, offering frozen novelties to people staggering out of the taverns at closing time.  But the far-away music bothered him and, on some nights, he stayed awake, insomniac, waiting for the The Mexican Hat Dance and La Cucharacha and Red Wing to start their ceaseless round and, when it remained silent, he was almost disappointed since there was no object for his anger.

One afternoon, William heard the calliope’s tune beckoning across the roof tops and so he set off on foot, hustling along the sidewalk to search for the ice-cream truck.  The melody lingered for a moment, paused, and, then, began again this time from a different direction.  William changed course to follow the music.  He walked for eight or nine blocks with the ice-cream truck apparently hiding from him on parallel streets or concealed in alleyways.  It seemed curious to him that William never seemed to come any closer to the truck.  The music lingered a few blocks away but he wasn’t able to close that distance to come upon the vendor.

The next afternoon, the ice-cream truck was abroad once more, broadcasting its infuriating calliope notes to the bright, hot sky.  William went to his car and drove through the quiet, empty streets, windows rolled down listening for the music.  The truck must have sped away into another quadrant of the city because he wasn’t able to hear the music.  Then, the sound commenced again, this time from an unexpected direction, Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” rag, then, “Home on the Range” and, at last, the Mexican songs, the Hat Dance and the Cockroach.  William swung his car around, braked, and stuck his head out the window.  The music was very close, demanding, it seemed, and the high-pitched tones were shrill and piercing.  William sped in the direction of the calliope, rounding a corner at a stop sign without slowing, and, then, thought that he saw, six or seven blocks away, the white rump of the ice-cream truck vanishing as it turned away from him.  William accelerated.  The intersections were uncontrolled and he didn’t see a car marked with a pizza delivery sign on its roof approaching on his right.  There was a crash and William’s car spun around, smacking its left quarter panel into a utility pole.  Glass sprayed across the concrete and a squirrel in a nearby tree scolded the two vehicles that had collided.  Someone called the police and an ambulance arrived, but, fortunately, no one was hurt.

William woke the next morning so sore and stiff that he wondered whether he should have his wife drive him to Acute Care or the Emergency Room.  From another part of the town, the unseen ice-cream truck sounded its notes.  The air was heavy and the calliope music sounded ancient and remote, an aggravating nagging presence that seemed to remind William of something that he had forgotten.  Instead of going to see a doctor, William asked his wife to drive him to City Hall.  “I can’t stand that music,” William told his wife.  “What music?” she asked.  “The ice-cream truck, the ice-cream truck,” William told her.  “Have you ever seen an ice-cream truck?” William’s wife asked.  “That’s the thing,”William replied, “I can hear it.  But I’ve never seen it.”

He limped into the City Hall and went into an office where there were several women peering into computer screens in a brightly lit room.  The younger of the two women grimaced and left her desk to stand at the counter where William was waiting.  William asked the woman about the ice-cream truck.  “It must be a Good Humor truck,” William said.  “Doesn’t it require some sort of a license to roll around town disturbing everyone with that music?”  “Have you seen the truck?” the woman said.  “No,” William told her, “that’s the problem.”

The woman went back and spoke briefly with her colleague.  Then, she took a book from the shelf and stood over a xerox machine to make a photocopy.  She returned to the counter and handed the copy to William.  “This is a city ordinance,” the clerk told him.  “It prohibits street vendors and ice-cream trucks in particular from operating in this municipality.”  “Is that right?” William said.  “Yes,” the woman told him. “It’s a matter of public safety.  I remember when the City Council passed this ordinance.”  She paused and looked at something distant, perhaps, a pedestrian or a vehicle passing outside.  “The Council acted after that accident.”  “What accident?” William asked.  “One of those trucks was playing music to attract people, little kids, and there was a crash.  Two little girls were hit and killed when they darted across the street to buy ice cream treats.”  William said: “So it’s illegal.”  “It’s illegal,” the clerk told him.  “When were the girls hit by the truck?” William asked.  “They weren’t hit by the ice-cream truck,” the woman said.  “They were hit by a passing motorists when they darted out to flag down the ice cream vendor.”  “My god,” William said.  “It was awful,” the clerk told him.

The clerk called dispatch at law enforcement and asked that a squad car search the city streets for the illegal ice-cream truck.  A patrol car drove around town for a couple of hours but couldn’t find the ice-cream vendor.   No one else could remember seeing the truck or hearing the music from its calliope.

After that day, William didn’t hear the ice-cream truck except late at night or at dawn.  And, then, he supposed that it was possible that he was merely dreaming that music.