The Empire of Ice Cream

by Jeffrey Ford

  “Pink?” I asked.

  “Pinker than the pink I remembered. You’ve got to come down and check it out.”

  “What for?”

  “If it’s the same one, I’ll go up and knock on the door.”

  “Who do you think’s in there?”

  “Man, I hope it’s not that snake.” He proceeded to give me directions and told me to meet him there the next day at noon.

  When people who don’t know Jersey think of it, they usually envision the refineries in Elisabeth or the casinos in Atlantic City, maybe beleaguered Camden, but if you go far enough south, you get a clear sense as to why it is called the Garden State. Cumberland County is like something out of the Midwest—forests and swamps and acres and acres of farmland. There are long stretches of plenty of nothing in certain areas. The place that Barney led me to was one of them.

  The day was clear and cold. He was sitting in his car, pulled over to the side of the road, at the edge of a wide field that had been cut out of the surrounding forest. The minute I laid eyes on the house, I knew it was the one. He got out of his car and stood staring toward the tree line. I got out.

  “That’s it,” he said, smiling, pointing toward the house.

  “Too strange,” I said.

  There was no question we were going to go to the door, so I put my trepidation aside and followed him across the field. A dirt driveway, leading in from the road, ended about fifteen yards from the house, but there was no car in sight. As we approached the structure, I could see it more clearly, no bigger than an oversized trailer, and because of its dilapidated appearance—missing roof shingles, peeling paint, crumbling concrete steps leading to a chipped front door—I said, “There might not be anybody living here now.”

  “Maybe,” said Barney. The place was silent like a possum playing dead, though; like a snake coiled. I knew he could feel it too. Wind moved through the trees that arched above it and their barren branches clicked together.

  “It’s a tidy little ship,” I whispered as he took the three steps to the door.

  He knocked loud five times, took a precautionary step back, and then we waited.

  Nothing. Just the sound of the wind in the nearby forest. I looked off to the side, in amidst the shadowed trees at the ground covered with oak leaves, the pines swaying. Barney knocked again. We waited. Then he turned his head to the side and said, “I thought I heard something.”

  “It’s just the wind,” I said. “The place is empty.”

  “Come on,” he said, and jumped down off the steps. I followed him around the right side of the house. Just off the corner there was an oil tank sitting flush against the wall, like a small, galvanized submarine in port, and beyond that, a window. Barney stepped up to the glass and, cupping his hands around his eyes, peered inside.

  “See anything?” I asked, and stepped up next to him.

  “No,” he said, “it’s just a kid’s room …”

  It happened so suddenly, we both jumped back and Barney gave a short yelp. A face had popped up suddenly from beneath the inside sill—a young girl, with large, dark eyes and long hair, no more than six or seven years old. She stared at us, unmoving.

  “We’re busted,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “No,” he said, stepping closer to the face. He leaned toward the window and squinted his bad eye to see better. Turning to me, he said, “That’s the kid who got snatched.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s the one who was abducted from her yard.”

  We looked back at the girl and she had her hands on the glass.

  Her lips moved. “Help me,” she said, and we could very faintly hear her.

  I felt the fear start to rise in me.

  “We’ve got to get her out of there,” said Barney, who was visibly shaken.

  “Are you absolutely certain it’s her?”

  He started moving around to the back of the house. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s in Alice’s class at school. I know her.”

  When I caught up to him he was on the back steps, fidgeting with the doorknob, which was obviously locked.

  “We’ve got to do this fast,” I said. I took my sweatshirt off and wrapped it around my left hand. “What if whoever kidnapped her is in the house?”

  Barney shook his head. “They would have answered the front door, right?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said, and punched in the pane. Glass shattered onto the kitchen floor. Reaching my arm carefully through the hole I’d made, I undid a deadbolt and chain lock. Seconds later, I had the door open and we were inside. The kitchen was dim with no light but that coming in from the outside where the woods cast the back of the house in shadow. Stained and peeling pink wallpaper with a design of cookie cutters and sinister gingerbread men made the small room absolutely claustrophobic. It stunk like old garbage. There were unwashed plates in the sink, pizza boxes on the table, and what looked like week-old creamed corn in a pot on the stove. I tried to ignore the god’s-eye made from yarn and sticks hanging from a nail, beneath a clock with a different type of bird at each hour.

  “What’s the girl’s name?” I asked him as we made our way down a short, dark hallway to the door of the room. There was a deadbolt with a key lock that fit through a hole in the center of the bolt, so whoever had taken her could be assured she wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Kara, something like that,” he said. “Karen or … no, Carly.”

  I stood thinking what to do. I shook my sweatshirt out and put it back on.

  “Any second, I’m expecting some Deliverance motherfucker to jump out of the woodwork and brain me with a hammer,” whispered Barney.

  “Tell her we’re gonna kick it in,” I said.

  “Carly, this is Alice’s father. You know Alice from your class? We’re here to take you home, but we have to kick this door in, so stand back. Don’t be afraid. A little noise and then we’ll have you out.”

  “Okay,” said a small voice from the other side of the door.

  We put our backs against the opposite wall and counted to three in unison. On the first kick, I hurt my knee. On the second, we heard some wood crack. Five kicks later and the frame and molding of the jamb splintered free. The door swung back, and there was the girl, standing by the window, facing us.

  Barney entered the room and approached her very calmly. He got down on his haunches in front of her and said, “Do you want us to take you home to your mom and dad?”

  “Take me home,” she said, putting her arms around his shoulders. She started to cry.

  “It’s gonna be okay, babe,” I said.

  “Everything’s good now,” said Barney, patting her shoulder.

  She let go of him and moved back, drying her eyes.

  “Ready to go?” he asked her.

  She reached up to take his hand, and as their fingers touched, I heard, from out in front, the sound of a car door slamming shut.

  She looked up at me, her eyes wide with terror. “He’s coming,” she said.

  Barney lifted her and flung her over his shoulder. I gave him just a second to get by me, and then we were running—across the broken glass of the kitchen, out the back door. Neither of us bothered with the porch steps. We hit the ground and made for the path that led into the woods.

  Adrenalin might be more amazing than ayahuasca. It carried my load at top speed about two hundred yards in beneath the trees on the first burst. Gray trunks, brown leaves, leafless bushes whipped by, and the intermittent light cutting through the tangle of bare branches above was dizzying. We finally ducked in behind a huge old tree just off the path. My beloved Marlboro ultra-lights had a tight grip on my lungs, and I was heaving like a hooked tuna. My Achilles tendons were ready to snap and both knees hurt. Barney, who was in somewhat better shape, gasped less but had to put the girl down and arch his back until it made a sound like knuckles popping. We were too scared to talk, but waited, listening.

  The girl pulled on my shirt and I look
ed down at her. “He’s got a gun,” she whispered.

  An insane bellow rose up from the head of the path. “Marta,” cried the kidnapper. “Marta.”

  “Who’s Marta?” I asked.

  “That’s what he calls me,” she said.

  Barney leaned out around the side of the tree. There came the report of a pistol from very close by followed by a voice. “Come back, please!” he yelled.

  If we didn’t start running again, I would have pissed my pants right there I was so scared. Barney had the girl by the hand, and we were dashing off the path through fallen leaves, over logs and sticks, around bushes. Stumbling in ruts, branches slapping our faces, we lurched frantically forward. I heard two more gunshots and expected any minute to feel a slug dig into my back.

  We stopped again after a good ten minutes of flight, in behind a blind of tangled sticker bushes. Kneeling down, I tried to control my breathing so as not to give us away. Barney and the girl crouched beside me. Only inches from where my hands leaned against the ground was a broken branch, three feet long and the width of a baseball bat. I grabbed hold of it, more to keep myself anchored to reality than anything else.

  “Here he comes,” whispered Barney.

  I looked up through the bush and saw him approaching about sixty yards away, walking slowly, looking side to side. Every so often he’d stop for a moment or two, turn, and then continue directly for us. I tracked him as he passed behind trees, and even at that distance, I could see he was a big guy. He wore a red plaid hunting jacket and a black wool cap. What struck me most was that his face was too large, overly prominent cheekbones and a shelf of a forehead.

  “When he gets close enough, I’m going to rush him with the stick and see if I can catch him off guard,” I said. “Don’t start running until I hit him. Then take off, stay low, and zigzag.”

  “No, we’ve gotta keep going” said Barney. “He’ll blow your friggin’ head off.”

  “I have a better chance of staying alive against that guy. If I run five more steps, I’m gonna drop over.”

  “Okay,” he said, shaking his head and looking doubtful.

  The girl patted my back. I turned, smiled, and put my finger to my lips. She did the same.

  I got quietly to my feet, making sure to stay hunched down beneath the top of the blind. Grasping the stick tightly with both hands, I lifted it back over my shoulder.

  “Break his fucking skull,” whispered Barney, and then we could say no more because the kidnapper was right in front of us, less than ten yards away. That big, ugly face was twisted with a look of anguish, and I noticed tears in his eyes. He stepped closer. “Marta!” he screamed. When he turned to look behind him, I bolted out from behind the bushes with nothing on my mind but swinging for the fence. As I moved, I heard Barney and the girl take off. I could smell the cigarettes and whiskey on the guy and brought the stick around. I had his head directly in my sights when I slipped on the leaves and went down like a 280-pound sack of shit at his feet. I lost my wind and the stick fell out of my hands.

  I laid there, eyes closed, working to get my breath back, waiting for the gun to go off. Seconds passed, and then a minute, then two, and there was nothing, just the sound of the wind in the trees. When I finally got up enough courage to open my eyes, there was Barney and the girl looking down at me.

  “Where’s the guy?” said Barney.

  “His name is Gerry,” said the girl.

  I staggered to my feet and looked around in a daze. “I took a fall on the leaves. I thought I was a dead man,” I said.

  “I didn’t hear a gun shot, so we came back.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “If he didn’t shoot me by now, he’s not going to … I hope.”

  We saw no trace of Gerry on the way back to the house, but we were jumpy as hell, turning with every falling twig, always ready to bolt. Barney asked Carly what more she knew about him, so we could tell the police. She told us he drove a black van and also provided part of the license plate number. “The policeman in school told us to remember the numbers,” she said.

  The instant our cars came into view up by the road, we took off toward them. There was no sign of the black van. Barney and the girl ran and I hobbled as best I could. He opened the back door of his car and she climbed in on the seat.

  “Put the belt on,” said Barney.

  She did as she was told and then said to us, “I’m tired,” and lay down on the seat, closed her eyes. My heart went out to the poor kid; she was brave as hell.

  He closed the door. “Follow me,” he said. “I’m going to head into town to the police station.”

  I agreed, got into my car, and we drove off. Finally at rest behind the wheel, I began to feel every ache and pain from our adventure in the woods. The sky had, at some point, grown overcast. It seemed later than it should have been. I didn’t think the whole ordeal at the pink house could have taken more than an hour and a half at the most, but from the look of things it seemed night was now only an hour or so away.

  The fact that we had rescued the girl had begun to sink in, and I felt good about it. With all my bruises, my creaking knees, instead of feeling my age, I felt like I was sixteen again and had just finished high school football practice. Then, on Bascomb Road, heading east toward town, I saw Barney turn into the lot of a closed farm market/gas station and park next to a pay phone. I pulled in behind him.

  I thought he was going to get out, but he stayed seated in the car. I got out of mine and walked up next to his window.

  He rolled the window down but didn’t turn to look at me.

  “What’s the deal?” I said.

  “Look in the back seat,” he said.

  I stepped back and peered in the window. She was gone. I opened the door and leaned down to touch the seat where she had been.

  Barney got out of the car as I slammed the back door. He dropped some money into the pay phone and put through an anonymous call to the police. While I stood there listening as he told them what we thought we knew about the girl’s abduction, snow started to fall. By the time he hung up it was really coming down.

  I lit up and he bummed a cigarette off me. “We’ve been played,” he said.

  “What’d the cop say?” I asked.

  “He warned me of the penalty of interfering in a police investigation. ‘Get a life, buddy,’ he said just before he hung up on me.”

  Three days later, the news reported that, due to the efforts of law enforcement and a nationwide Amber alert, Gerry Gilfoil had been arrested and the girl he had abducted had been rescued. The black van, the plate number, all of it was on the money. The cops caught up with them in Ohio. The girl, Carly, was fine. He hadn’t hurt her. He said he was taking her to Disneyland. The reason he’d grabbed her was because his wife had left him and taken their daughter. She was about the same age as Carly and he missed her terribly. It seems he had grown despondent and depressed of late, uncommunicative, and his wife couldn’t take it anymore.

  Along with the story, there was a photo of the girl being reunited with her family, and beneath that a photo of poor Gerry, his eyes as empty as Carly’s were luminous. I carried that image of her abductor around in my mind for weeks, and every morning, in the bathroom mirror, I’d compare my own to it and contemplate his loss. Sometime soon after that story ran, the kitchen sink busted again, and I can’t readily describe what a pleasure it actually was to fix it.

  The next time I saw Barney was about two months later, the night before New Year’s Eve. We sat out in the frozen studio, dressed in coats and gloves, sipping from a bottle of Four Roses. Because of the bitter cold in recent weeks, the paint on some of the Coffins on the River series had cracked and fallen off onto the floor in big, bright chips.

  “That’s a shame,” I said, eyeing Biscuit Boy’s leprosy.

  “What are we gonna do?” he said.

  “I know what you mean,” I told him. “I found out the other day that my publisher doesn’t want to take a chance on
another Deluge. They’re dropping me.” I took a taste from the bottle and passed it to him.

  “Jeez,” was all he could muster. He shook his head and then drank until he grimaced.

  I hadn’t mentioned our adventure at the pink house since we had parted in the snow that day, but there were a lot of times I had almost called him. “So,” I said, “what did you make of that rescue?”

  He reached down and lifted a large paint chip off the floor that held Qua Num’s chest emblem: a beautifully rendered alarm clock. Spinning it slowly in his hands, he studied it while he spoke. “Life and Art,” he said, “are the same thing; one illusion standing in for the other and vice versa. Even if no one is watching, the only happiness is to try to do your best.” He dropped the chip and it broke in two.

  “Maybe something’s always watching,” I said.

  “Maybe not,” he said. Then he pulled a fat joint out of his coat pocket, lit up, took a drag, and passed it over. “Hold those hits,” he said, and I did, my head soon growing light. In the silence that followed the last toke, I heard the boards of the studio creak in the cold, and the wind coming in through the window was like the sound of water rushing by. I pictured that old, tired year, climbing into its coffin and pushing off into the flow, leaving the two of us behind to manage as best we could.

  Coffins on the River

  Story Notes

  The central idea of this story was inspired by an amazing book I read by Jeremy Narby called The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. Since its premise is explained in the story, I won’t bother to reiterate it here. Whether Narby’s concept is close to truth or mere folly, I really don’t care. This kind of imaginative speculative science is The Breakfast of Champions for writers like me.

  The character of Barney in the story is based on my painter friend (see the afterword for “A Man of Light”) who actually created a series of pictures whose theme was coffins on the river. In the coffins were famous dead people, and they were moving along downstream as seen from above. He also did another series of paintings of super heroes of his own invention, basically as I describe them in the story, and so, in my narrative, I switched the super heroes with the famous dead people in the coffins.