The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories

by Sam Pink

  HUH?!!?!?

  ‘Oh shit!’ says the Hell’s Angel.

  The rat pauses, then leaps out of the dumpster and lands hard on the pavement by the Hell’s Angel’s feet.

  He screams as the rat scrambles and runs away.

  Then he’s hunched over with one hand on his knee and the other over his heart, breathing hard.

  ‘You fucking punk,’ says the sandwich maker.

  ‘Dude, he tried to bite my dick off.’

  They lift the garbage can and dump the bag into the dumpster.

  ‘Oh hey,’ says the Hell’s Angel, ‘[Chef] said something about a dead one by the back door here.’

  ‘What, where?’

  ‘Right by the back door. He wants you to clean it up. I’ll show you.’

  They look by the gangway.

  The rat is on its side in a puddle, totally bloated.

  ‘Holy fuck,’ says the sandwich maker. ‘Game over.’ He makes the sign of the cross.

  ‘Yeah,’ says the Hell’s Angel, ‘[Chef] said he wanted you to pick it up.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, he said you’re the man for the job. Something about your elegant hands.’

  ‘Ah.’

  They go back inside.

  The chef is dicing an onion on the sandwich line. ‘One a you fucks get rid of that dead rat?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m going to,’ says the sandwich maker.

  ‘Sounds good, big guy,’ says the chef, wiping onion off the knife and eating a tiny cube.

  ‘Can I use your knife to spear it and flip his ass into the dumpster?’

  ‘How about some tongs, dipshit,’ says the chef. He shrugs. ‘Tongs?’

  The sandwich maker grabs some tongs and goes toward the back door.

  Outside, a light rain has begun.

  The sandwich maker stands before the bloated rat corpse.

  ‘Heavenly Rat Father,’ he says. ‘We ask not much of you, but that you guide our brother back to your kingdom. In peace I offer him up, amen.’

  He leans over the handrail and holds on with one hand, balancing and grabbing the bloated rat corpse with the tongs.

  ‘Therrrrrrre we go,’ he says, righting himself back over the rail, groaning.

  He holds the bloated rat corpse before him, watching water drip off its tail.

  And something about it is so good.

  Something only for him.

  A moment of special joy.

  He leans back with the tongs, then arches the rat far down the alley.

  A wonderful toss.

  Next he throws the tongs.

  They land somewhere with a muted clank.

  And he goes back inside.

  Back into the mess.

  The Hell’s Angel is mixing turkey pesto ingredients in a bowl, swearing to himself.

  The ordering device rings.

  ‘Goddamnit,’ says the sandwich maker. He scrolls through the order. ‘Fries,’ he says, looking around in horror. ‘All they want is . . . fries . . . to go . . . This person ordered . . . fries to go.’

  ‘Whuhhhhhhhhhh,’ says the cook, looking stunned.

  ‘Fuck,’ whispers a server, putting her hand over her mouth.

  For a moment, there they stand.

  Stunned.

  Immobilized by the horrors of a person morally exhausted enough to do such a thing.

  Wishing that person, from their collective minds, in unison and with equal rage, a quick, brutal death at the hands of a reaper, who, raising its enormous blade, bellows, ‘Fries to go?’ before swinging downward.

  The chef says, ‘Cool, fine, fries to go. Just make them and shut the fuck up, cool?’ Then he yells to the dishwasher. ‘Hey stupid, lemme get some more ramekins.’

  FLORIDA

  Keeps You Sharp

  This guy crossed paths with me walking through downtown St. Pete.

  ‘Man, goddamnit,’ he said, stopping by me, as though we’d already been talking.

  So I stopped too.

  ‘This motherfucker . . .’ he said, gesturing out somewhere.

  He had faded tattoos and big, raw pockmarks all over his forearms.

  ‘I’m supposed to water these motherfuckin plants,’ he said. ‘But this asshole parked his car on my hose. I work over here, yenno?’ He pointed somewhere. ‘The guy who owns that building, he pays me to water the plants and then I clean the parking lot for the cops over there, yenno? But I go to get my hose today, boss says hey you gotta water those plants and I said I’m chuh-RYin, but this fucking car is parked on the hose and I couldn’t get the hose out.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  He stood there shaking his head.

  ‘Hey, nice ink,’ he said, pointing to my arm. ‘Who did that?’

  ‘This guy in Chicago.’

  ‘Oh I’m from Chicago too!’ he said, backing up a little.

  He held out his fist.

  ‘Hell yeah,’ I said.

  We hit our fists together.

  ‘Yeah I lived in Cicero, but I’d go downtown for drum lessons when I was a kid. I’m a drummer. Remember Franki Valenti’s? That’s where I took lessons. I’d take the train to Michigan Avenue and then walk to Wabash. I still play drums sometimes, over here,’ he said, pointing somewhere.

  ‘Nice. I play the drums too,’ I said.

  He leaned back. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah man.’

  ‘So you know your paradiddles and shit then?’

  ‘Yeah, for sure.’

  ‘Okay let’s see it,’ he said, slapping a nearby concrete ledge.

  I started slapping the ledge. ‘Right-left-right-right, left-right-left-left,’ I said.

  ‘Hey, there you go,’ he said, joining me.

  We stood there doing paradiddles on the ledge.

  Right-left-right-right.

  Left-right-left-left.

  Neither of us could really do them.

  But pretty much.

  Right-left-right-right.

  Left-right-left-left.

  ‘My teacher used to always tell me to practice my flams too,’ he said. ‘Always flams. I don’t know why.’

  He did some flams and choppy sixteenth notes, slapping them out on the concrete ledge.

  ‘It keeps you sharp,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah for sure.’ He slapped my elbow a little. ‘Damn, you got some big-ass arms too.’ He held up his arms. ‘The military fucked up my arms. They shake too much now.’

  I looked at the bloody holes on his arms.

  ‘I like that tattoo,’ I said, pointing to an eagle on his forearm.

  It was an eagle with its wings spread, USA beneath.

  ‘Yeah I got this one in the military and this one’—he held out his other pocked arm—‘after Mom and Dad died.’

  It was a crest.

  He rolled up his T-shirt sleeve to show me the initials of his son in Old English font.

  On his other bicep he had a small cartoon drawing of a boxer doing the ‘dukes up’ pose.

  ‘Yeah I’m a boxer,’ he said. ‘I’m a big boxing guy.’

  ‘Man, I love boxing,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘Yeah? I still box!’ he said, pointing somewhere. ‘I go over there. I love hitting motherfuckers in the face. I love it. I like getting hit too.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I just like it. But yeah those are nice tattoos.’

  ‘Where should I go around here to get tattooed? I’ve been looking for a place.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, walking. ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you to the guys over here. Yeah I was supposed to water these fucking plants, yenno? I do it for this guy over there, he lets me water them and have a beer, he don’t care.’

  ‘That’s cool.’

  ‘I work for him and then the cops pay me to clean the parking lot. It keeps me out of trouble, yenno? But I can’t get my fucking hose out from beneath this motherfucker’s tire. This motherfucker parked his fucking car right on the hose. I’m pulling and pulling, nothing.’

  ‘Fuck
that guy,’ I said. ‘That’s what I think.’

  We walked down the block toward the tattoo place.

  ‘It’s that place right there,’ he said. ‘See the sign?’

  There was a wooden, Western-style sign that said TATTOO hanging outside.

  He led me into the shop.

  ‘Hey Keller, hey Brian,’ he said, ‘think I brought you guys a new customer.’

  The tattoo guys—one of them working on someone and the other going through a binder with someone—waved and said hi.

  ‘This is the place to go,’ said the guy who’d brought me, leaning on the counter. ‘These guys are the best.’

  I asked them for a business card.

  The guy at the counter gave me one.

  ‘All right thanks a lot, I’ll come in sometime,’ I said, waving to them.

  Then I said thanks to the guy who’d brought me there.

  ‘Have a good day, brother,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  We shook hands.

  I went back outside into the heat and started walking.

  Forgot which way was home.

  So I just walked.

  I tapped right-left-right-right, left-right-left-left on my thighs.

  Right-left-right-right, left-right-left-left.

  Then another one.

  Then it got messed up and I started again.

  Right-left-right-right.

  Left-right-left-left.

  I could still kind of do them.

  The Ice Cream Man

  I saw the ad in the jobs section of the newspaper while waiting to get my tires fixed.

  WANTED: Ice Cream Truck Driver.

  My calling had called.

  And I—I called it back.

  Somebody named Nicky answered and we set up an interview for the next day.

  *

  The office was in Clearwater.

  I pulled off the highway and went down a road lined on either side by industrial buildings.

  Tile places.

  Paint places.

  Pool cover places.

  Motorcycles.

  Et cetera.

  Florida shit.

  Everything broken, breaking, or being repaired.

  The office was a squat, square concrete building next to a gravel lot, with a dozen or so ice cream trucks surrounded by a barbed wire fence.

  Inside was one open room with coolers humming in rows under fluorescent lights.

  Cold tombs.

  I sat at a folding table with a sticky tablecloth, staring at the plastic flaps that led out back.

  ‘Hi hullo, I’m Jerry,’ said the old, overweight, bald man who let me in.

  Nicky was more of the day-to-day boss, he explained.

  Then he asked me a bunch of questions, the last of which was if I had any questions for him.

  In my experience, that was a bad sign.

  Like somebody coming out of a door, leaning back against the door and saying, ‘Is there anything you’d like to know about what’s behind the door?’

  He took my driver’s license to make a copy for a background check.

  I sat there staring at the plastic flaps while he processed it.

  The gravel lot.

  The trucks.

  The sun.

  You work Wednesday through Sunday, twelve-hour days, Jerry said, handing me back my stuff.

  The amount of money you make is up to you.

  If you work hard, he said, holding up both hands, eyebrows raised, then you make more money.

  He kept stressing how it’d be up to me.

  I didn’t like how that sounded either.

  My whole life had been up to me and I was still only being considered for the position of ice cream man.

  Fuck.

  Jerry told me they don’t pay until you’ve made three hundred dollars (like for your cut, which was 60 percent of daily sales) or two weeks went by.

  So you got paid the amount up to three hundred dollars after two weeks, or three hundred dollars, whichever happened first.

  Okay cool.

  I mean, fuck, but fine.

  ‘I’ll coal you when the background check goes through,’ Jerry said. ‘Should be some time tamarra.’

  Okay good.

  Great.

  Check my background, goddamnit.

  See if I care.

  We shook hands and I left.

  *

  My first day as an ice cream man I had to go in early for training, and the office was already busy.

  Hoppin.

  Movin.

  The whole roster of ice cream men and one ice cream woman, all fifty to sixty plus years old, gathering ice cream sandwiches, popsicles, bomb pops, et cetera from various coolers, and tossing them into empty banana boxes.

  Jerry had to do some final paperwork and then Nicky was going to train me on the truck and then, why then, I’d officially be an ice cream man.

  I was already worried about running over a child.

  Which was, basically, the remainder of Jerry’s training.

  How to not run over kids.

  How to deal with people who might want to shoot you.

  Things like that.

  What it means to solicit in the state of Flarada.

  My rights.

  The rights of an ice cream man.

  I even had to sign a three-year no-compete clause, guaranteeing I wouldn’t work for another ice cream company in any of the same counties as them.

  Jerry assured me that it wouldn’t be lucrative to go into business on my own, either, since they bought ‘three quartas of a million dollas a year’ in ice cream.

  Nicky arrived.

  He wore basketball shorts, a black T-shirt like club security, and an all-black baseball hat, gold chain with crucifix on it.

  He had the kind of physique that suggested lifting weights, but still very soft.

  ‘Heyyyyy what’s up,’ he said, coming up and shaking my hand.

  He walked me around the office.

  They had maps all over.

  Maps.

  All of Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg.

  With lines/areas drawn on them, names in the borders.

  Highlighted.

  Penned on.

  Divided.

  Strategized upon.

  Scoured.

  Seized and controlled.

  Nicky showed me the general area I should stick to, citing not only our other drivers, but—as he explained with complete seriousness—another outfit, a private outfit, ‘this Asian lady’ who would ‘literally run you off the road.’

  I appreciated that type of commitment, and looked forward to my eventual test with her.

  I would not disrespect or diminish her as an enemy, or laugh her off; I would embrace, confront, and destroy her.

  We walked through the plastic flaps to the back lot.

  I pictured myself accidentally running over kids, unable to stop.

  Police trailing me, firing.

  Bullets piercing the truck and killing me but I’m still running kids over until I hit a tree.

  Blood all over the ice cream truck.

  Fuck.

  Nicky showed me the truck.

  The sun was up and dumping its whitest light.

  I sweated—squinting, feeling like shit.

  Florida shit.

  You take the cooler off the generator, hang the cord over here, plug the cooler into the inside battery, and you’re good ta gaow.

  He hung the extension cord over a particularly strong weed.

  The job seemed easy.

  The ice cream was in the cooler.

  The cooler kept the ice cream cold.

  Keep the ice cream cold.

  Sell the ice cream.

  Bring back the money.

  Oh, and don’t use the A/C because it’ll drain the gas.

  Fuuuhhhuuuuck.

  Nicky pointed to a black box on the ceiling of the truck, just above the windshield.

  There were two dial
s on it, one for the songs, and one for volume, and a switch in the middle.

  ‘Flip this on, you’re live. This one’s fah volume. This one’s the soangs. There’s nine soangs, but you’re gonna wanna keep it on Soang 7 the whole time. Other than that,’ he said, turning the steering wheel side to side mindlessly, ‘you’re good ta gaow.’

  Song 7 was a sine-wave instrumental of “Do Your Ears Hang Low?”

  ‘Soang 7, volume up, just cruise, good ta gaow.’

  I nodded.

  Knowing that, though there were eight other songs, I would not listen to any of them—not a one, not for a second.

  Many might be tempted to sample the other songs.

  But not I.

  If Song 7 it is, then Song 7 it is, and would be.

  Nicky was saying something else but, really, I thought, who gives a fuck.

  Take money, hand out ice cream.

  Good ta gaow.

  He hopped out of the back of the truck and said, ‘Oh yeah, and watch your head coming out the back of this thing I sliced my head real bad one time,’ then slammed the double doors.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat and buckled in.

  I carefully backed up and swung the truck around as Nicky held the gate open with one hand, chain and lock in other.

  If you need anything, you got my number, he said.

  I pulled the truck out, hitting the fence a little.

  ‘Sounds good,’ I said.

  The truck creaked and clanked.

  Banged around like a motherfucker.

  It was concussive.

  Couldn’t see shit behind me either.

  I got onto a main road.

  They told me not to go above fifty miles per hour but I got it to sixty right away, easy, no problem.

  Everyone was checking me out.

  Yeah, all right.

  Who is this man hauling ass in a truck with KREEMY KROOZIN written on the side?

  I looked ahead, out into the day—not just the stretch of it before me, but all of it.

  The day.

  The whole damn day before me.

  From Clearwater down to Pinellas Park.

  When I started seeing WATERFALL this and OAK GLEN that signs, I pulled off.

  Slowed the truck down to a near stop.

  Switched on Song 7.

  Do your ears hang low / do they wobble to and fro / can you tie em in a knot / can you tie em in a bow / can you throw em over your shoulder, like a continental soldier / do your ears . . . hang . . . low . . . bing, BONG.

  Barely anyone was out, though.