The Ice Cream Truck

RIIIING!

Lawrence growled and sat bolt upright in bed. He was covered in sweat, even though he'd been sleeping on top of the covers. The air conditioning wasn't cutting it again. A glance at his watch told him it was not even eleven in the morning, and already the outside temperature was 98 degrees.

RIIING! DING DING RIIIING!

"It's the ice cream man," said a small voice in his head. "Just an ice cream truck! You used to love it when--"

With another growl, Lawrence swung his bare feet to the floor. Last night's marathon session of paperwork had ended with him still two weeks behind. Now his nap was ruined. A desert of more paperwork loomed bleakly ahead of him.

Lawrence glanced out the window. The damn truck was blocking his driveway! And, to add insult to injury, more shrill noises were adding to the cacophany. "It's just kids, laughing," said the small voice in his head. "You used to be one of them, remember?"

"Oh, shut up," Lawrence muttered, then winced at the realization that he was talking to himself. Rubbing at the stubble on his cheeks and chin, Lawrence threw on yesterday's wrinkled shorts and sweat-stained T-shirt and stumbled toward the front door. He wondered briefly why he was bothering. It wasn't like he was going to leave the house, and would need to use his driveway; no, this Saturday would be spent continuing his futile attempt to catch up on office work. Still ... 

Outside, the pavement scorched his bare feet; he had forgotten his shoes. He lurched onward, down the steps, into his driveway. He danced from foot to foot, waiting for the flock of laughing, shrieking children lined up in front of the ice cream truck to clear. "They're so happy," said the smalll voice in his head. "Remember when you and Nikki and Dave and Danny used to ..."

Careful not to mutter under his breath this time in the presence of others--especially children, who would undoubtedly give him that ... look ... if they caught the grumpy old man talking to himself in broad daylight--he quashed that small voice. "It's like some sort of reverse schizophrenia," he thought. "Usually, the little voice in your head is the one telling you to kill them all; my little voice reminds me of ..."

His little voice reminded him of happier times. Sometimes it sang songs whose names and artists he could not now remember. Sometimes it told stories about times as a child when he had laughed and skipped everywhere instead of plodding. When he had been full of exuberance. His little voice reminded him of how wrong everything was now. It kept urging him to be happier.

Right. As if. As if his high-pressure job as a junior partner in an insurance company--which didn't amount to much more than a high-level gopher--would allow for happiness. As if finding himself living in the same house in which he'd grown up, alone after 40 years, didn't constantly remind him of how trapped he was. Barnfield had miraculously remained frozen in time, the same tiny Midwestern town it had been when he was a kid. The only substantial change was that now he slept in the master bedroom, while the rest of the house remained empty. Hollow. Full of ghosts. He supposed his old room was still the same as it had been when he was sixteen. He hadn't looked in there in years.

His swivel-chair pulled at him as he waited on burning soles. "It's not pounds that add weight," the small voice in his head commented. "It's memories."

The last of the sugar-junkie rugrats finally scampered off, blissfully oblivious of the monstrous heat. And why not? For them, this was the new normal. For Lawrence, it felt like being crushed under a giant's boot-heel. On his half-scorched, bare feet, with the sun slamming into his eyes, he shambled to the door of the ice cream truck. The renewed ringing of the bell made him cringe.

"It used to be calliope music, remember?" said the small voice. This time, Lawrence couldn't hold back the grumble.

The door slid aside with a whoosh, and a ramp whirred to the ground at Lawrence's feet. This was obviously the modern version of the ice cream truck. The one he vaguely remembered from childhood had been a rusty old panel truck with a loud engine and ... "Calliope music and an inflatable clown on the roof! ..."

"Happy Saturday to you, sir!" The voice from the relatively dim interior of the truck seemed impatient for any excuse to bubble with mirth. "Please, come in! You look like you're being burned at the stake out there!"

It wasn't the exuberance in the voice that convinced Lawrence to walk up the ramp and onto the soft carpet within. It wasn't even the wide smile of the gnome-like man, nor his laughing, bright green eyes. It was the incredible relief offered by the draft of cool air that seemed to wrap around his waist and pull him onward. "Sorry about not having any shoes on, but, hey, you're block--"

The figure seated at the controls of the vehicle was short and plump. He swiveled in his captain's chair. "Oh, no worries, no worries! Everything here is guaranteed free of contagion or contamination." He stood and bowed, and for a moment, the dazzling array of blinking lights on the dashboard console reflected off his bald head and hairless face. His twinkling eyes captured Lawrence's own bloodshot ones. "What sort of cold confection might I offer you to beat the heat this morning?" He swept his arms open as if to embrace the contents displayed behind glass in the cooler which took up the rear.

"I didn't come here to--" But Lawrence's eyes seemed compelled to scan the brightly colored offerings behind the frosted glass. Despite himself, he marveled at the variety, and felt his stomach growling at the potential for sweetness. "WOW! you have Peace Pops? I haven't seen those in--"

And then, he saw it. "Toasted Almond bars," he whispered. The small voice in his head showed him a picture of a young boy with holes in the knees of his jeans, waving his favorite ice cream on a stick over his head like a battle flag as he ran after his friends...

"Ah! An old-school customer! Yes, a Toasted Almond bar may be just the thing for you!" The gnome reached toward the freezer, and the door opened without his quite touching it. More cold air sighed forth, which Lawrence stepped into gratefully. "That will be three dollars and fifty cents."

The mention of money snapped Lawrence back to the here-and-now. He patted his pockets futilely. "I ... I don't suppose you take CredIdent?"

"But of course, sir!" The ice cream man gestured toward the reader at the front of his truck. Lawrence spun his CredIdent ring and held it up to the reader. It vibrated against his finger to indicate a successful transaction. "I don't think I've carried cash in five years," he murmured. "Who does anymore?"

"It's the way of the world today," agreed the ice cream man. "Enjoy your ice cream while it's still cold." When had the door behind Lawrence slid silently closed, and the exit ramp folded seamlessly up?

Lawrence shrugged and ripped off the brightly colored wrapper. He looked around for a trash receptacle, and found one conveniently located toward the front. Once again, he glanced at the dancing lights and flickering images which made up the dashboard and windshield of the truck. "Look at that cockpit display," he said, drifting forward to examine it more closely. "And a CredIdent reader! Is it an ice cream truck, or a starship?"

"Would you believe, a little bit of both?" They shared a chuckle, but a spark of unease stirred in Lawrence. He turned to study the small man who ran this ice cream starship a little more closely. Utterly hairless he might be, but his wide green eyes seemed to be brimming with laughter. His clothing was a motley--it almost appeared to be a Gypsy's costume, all bright, spiraling designs. There didn't appear to be anything crazy about the little guy. "Relax," said the small voice in Lawrence's head. "Remember how good a Toasted Almond Bar is? Danny and Dave and Nikki all got boring old Fudgesickles or Vanilla Bliss bars, and then we'd run off to the lake and swim and ..." Somehow, that small voice didn't seem so small now. Somehow, the Toasted Almond bar was already half gone.

The ice cream man made an odd gesture with his hands. He held his thumbs and forefingers together in a diamond shape, and appeared to be looking through them. "I can see how that takes you back," he said. "It's not just a yummy treat. It's a gateway. Step through it, my friend."

This pronouncement also struck Lawrence as a little bit off. "I was just remembering when I was a kid. I guess I was doing that old person thing. The next step is the speech about how things aren't the way they used to be, things were better back then, and ... and ...

He couldn't go on. This line of conversation led to dragon's lairs. Alarm bells were starting to ring in Lawrence's head. After all, wasn't it true, especially in his case? He'd come full circle, only to discover that he was spiraling down the rabbit hole. And, at night, the giant rabbit at the bottom always roared one single, unanswerable question: "Why?"

"Memories are like bread crumbs," said the ice cream man softly. "My treats are specially designed to show you the path those bread crumbs keep open for you."

Lawrence took refuge, as he always did these days, in surly sarcasm. "Right. You're actually an alien invading the Earth to show us all gateways back to the past, complete with an intergalactic ice cream truck."

"Interstellar," replied the ice cream man. "Please."

Somehow, the correction seemed weird. Of all the things Lawrence had just said, to fix on this bit to object to? The alarms in Lawrence's head became more insistent. "Okay, thanks for the ice cream. I think I'd better..."

"Have a second one, please. It's on the house," the ice cream man held up another Toasted Almond bar. "Open that gate a little wider. Find a few more bread crumbs. They show you where you've been. If you've already been there, it's simpler than you might think to go back."

The barking sound that emerged from Lawrence's throat was almost a laugh. Almost. "You can't go home again," he said. Part of him marveled at the heavy freight those five words carried.

"Thomas Wolfe was a grumpy old fart," the ice cream man replied.

"Oh, and a well-read inter ... interstellar ... ice cream man, are we?" This time Lawrence's laugh was much more well-formed. The smile lingered as it had not done for... how long?

"Saving the human race, one grumpy old fart at a time."

Now the laughter was a genuine, joyful thing. Lawrence stood up straighter. The Toasted Almond bar was merely a stick in his hand. When had that happened?

The ice cream man held up that strange diamond shape between his hands again. "This is the gateway," he said again. "It's a simple thing to step through to those bread crumbs you think are only memories."

The cockpit display beeped and warbled. Flashing lights and holograms danced. Lawrence dropped the wooden stick into the trash. He found his own hands forming that diamond-shape between them. He looked through the gateway. "Hey! Let's go down to the lake and play Alien Submarine!" The voice in his head was not small at all now; now it was a gleeful shout. "Dave and Nikki and Danny..."

Lawrence felt suddenly like a trapped rabbit. He glanced around, eyes growing wide with a stab of fear. He half expected to see a small child strapped to a bed at the very back of the ice cream truck. "I think you'd better let me--"

"But of course, my friend," the gypsy gnome said. "I think you're ready. Just step through the gateway." The door behind Lawrence hissed open, and the ramp lowered smoothly to the scorching ground outside. "And have no fear. I shall leave your driveway free post haste."

As he turned and took an uncertain step toward the exit, Lawrence wondered vaguely how the ice cream man had known the reason for his initial approach. Somehow, that lurching, painful run seemed a very long time ago, even though he couldn't have been inside for more than five or ten minutes.

"The lake, hurry!" Came the impatient voice in his head. And that was right, wasn't it? He had to meet his friends at the lake. what had he been thinking, seeing some sort of ultra-modern (interstellar) vehicle, instead of this rusty old white panel van?

Larry jumped down the three steps to the ground, almost cracking his forehead on the top of the door. "Careful, young man, careful!" Came a voice behind him, chuckling even while trying to scold.

How had the pavement of the driveway cooled so much, when it wasn't even noon yet? Still, his bare feet no longer felt like he was standing on a griddle. He turned to look at the rusty old truck that still blocked the end of the driveway. It's ill-tuned engine blatting seemed to be singing the anthem of Saturday. "This is all wrong," whispered a small voice inside his head, growing fainter even as the remark trailed off.

Last month, in Larry's science class, Mr. Drummond had let them look through the microscope at budding yeast. They were supposed to learn the difference between mitosis and miosis. Yeast made baby yeast by miosis, making little buds off big yeast cells. For a moment, Larry felt like that little budding cell growing out of a bigger organism. He was growing, though, and the bigger cell was getting smaller, until they would separate and part ways. An image of melting ice cream made him catch his balance. Dropping his Toasted Almond bar on the street was just about the worst thing that could happen to a kid!

His friends waited at the lake. On Saturday nights, his parents always ordered pizza, and let him stay up late watching TV. Then, he would sleep on clean sheets in his quiet room with the Incredible Hulk nightlight on, watching his models of the Milenium Falcon and the Enterprise swing slowly in the current from the ceiling fan. 

He felt a sensation, like water swirling down a drain. He loved to watch water swirl down the drain. He could barely believe what he'd read, that in Australia, it swirled around the opposite way. That couldn't be true! Larry skipped. For an instant, it felt ... unaccustomed. He skipped again. That was better.

Behind him, growing quieter as Larry ran, the ice cream truck moved on to its next stop.

Calliope music wafted on the cool breeze of a bright Saturday morning.