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The Highway Patrol picked her up. It wasn’t just her bloody face or agitated manner. It was the severed hand she carried.
THE ICE PALACE
The widow MacPhearson never did anything. She was just like me, she never went out at night, never talked on the hone. Nothing.
She wasn’t doing anything the night of the Fourth, the night she was shot. I wanted to know. I wanted to know exactly what kind of nothing she was doing that night. She and I are the same age, excepting now of course she is dead, actually if she were alive she would have been six months older than me, which doesn’t matter much now, but kept us in separate grades in school.
I was retired, but she kept working. I had worked the Sears catalog show room. Doublesign, Texas had had the last Sears catalog showroom in the country. It should have been closed years ago, but a clerical error kept it going. I am fascinated by errors. Maybe the people that shot her, had meant to shoot me. Maybe they just had the wrong address. A simple computer error. I hate computers. I had to stop working just as computers came in.
Velma MacPhearson also had no truck with computers. She ran the Ice Palace, which was a place to buy soft ice cream and shakes near the state park. There weren’t many places like that left. I mean not affiliated with some big chainlike Dairy Queen. When she was working there years ago, everyone called the Ice Queen, because she had no truck with men either. She wasn’t rude to us, just a little cold, just like ice cream. But as she got old no one would have wanted her anyway, so we stopped calling her the Ice Queen. I have heard her called the Ice Bitch, but I was brought up never to call a lady things like that (even if they were true).
I wish she hadn’t been so cold to men. She would have made a good neighbor. Both of us were in bad health. Hers was worse though. She was past the time in life when you should have to stand and make a living. I think she had enough money to retire, just no one to give her permission to do so.
The sheriff said the FBI came into town after her killing. She was killed by a serial killer. I don’t know what he killed or why. Maybe it was just women that worked in the ice cream industry. Maybe just people that were Ice Bitches. I want to know.
I was at the VFW hall. I had lied about my age to get into the end of WWII. That was how my legs wound up the way they are. Which is another reason I wanted a nice neighbor. My kids pulled a mean trick on me. They both died, so that I am alone a good deal.
I know she used to watch TV, because I could hear it. I could have heard the shot, except I was at the VFW hall. We were watching the fireworks show. Last Fourth of July of the century, of the millennium. I had to listen to idiots explaining Y2K to other idiots, but it was people. I have always needed people.
People will tell you who you are.
One of my big fears is that I won’t have any people around me when it is time to pull the plug. I could fall and they could put me into one of those damn life support machines, and I could live forever.
Someone came to pull Velma’s plug.
They just walked in off the street.
I can’t believe that. I can’t believe that someone could just kill you without even knowing you. There must be a mistake. Maybe it was somebody that she shorted for change. She did that. I’ve seen her cheat a tourist out of a dime or a nickel, a quarter if she was feeling bold. They lost their quarter and they came to get her. I could live with that. It puts a price tag on human life.
She was in her bedroom on the second floor. Ever since that night I have slept in my second floor bedroom. She and her runaway husband had bought their house, but I inherited mine. In the “historic” center of downtown Doublesign. That’s because it has the old library and the post office and places for people to sell junktiques to tourists. Otherwise it would be just plain old. It isn’t very likely that you’ll meet anyone that lives in the house they were born in, but I do. I will die here.
I have been sleeping in the second floor, because all I can do is think about her death.
She was shot twice. Once by a .22 at close range and once by a kid’s dart gun. That’s how they know it was this serial killer. I wonder if they shot her with the dart gun first, or second.
Imagine if it was first. You know someone has broken into your house. They had come in through a window facing the backyard. She must have heard them come up the stairs. She probably screamed, and then whup she is hit with a dart. She must have been so relieved. It was all a joke, a prank, and then blammo a real bullet into her head making a third eye.
I saw her when they took her away. I wanted it all from my upstairs window. Then the sheriff came to talk me about it. I had been down at the VFW Hall listening to a recorded version of Elvis signing “Dixie.” So mainly he told me about it, rather than me answering his questions. He called her “the Ice Bitch.”
I don’t know what is wrong with ice. Many of my friends have moved out of Texas because they can’t take the heat. They are living with their kids in some cool town. Those that live here, spend all their time inside, with their air conditioners turned up so far that if they were to die, their body wouldn’t be in any danger of rotting. It seems a safer way to die.
I bet her body was very cool, when they carried it out.
I can’t get this place very cool. It’s those damn high ceilings. You see they used to build ceilings very, very high to encourage circulation of air. This was a cool house in my grandfather’s time. But I can run my AC all the time and It doesn’t get cool. I think about cool things when I am going to sleep. I think of icy mountain springs, and snow and ice cream. I think about the soft ice cream down at the Ice Palace. Before I got diabetes, I used to dream of just sticking my mouth under the spigot and letting the thick stream of soft ice cream fill me up, make me good and cool.
I always envied her her job at the Ice Palace. I used to work in a catalog showroom. That meant mainly I helped people look things up in a catalog and then order them. That what webpages do now. Sometimes people were happy when they used my service. They were ordering swing sets for the children or luggage for a round-the-world trip. But sometimes they were unhappy. They ordered home repairs, or equipment that let them use the tub safely and so forth. But I was never there when they would get their stuff. I never got to see the real smile—the smile of ownership—of material culture. All I got was vague smiles of hope. This was something that Mrs. MacPhearson had over all of us. Everyone is happy to buy ice cream. Even the little kids she used to be mean to, were still happy to buy ice cream. I don’t think you can look at an ice cream cone and be unhappy.
I have seen many unhappy people.
Constance, my wife, was unhappy. I saw her unhappy face for many years, and everything I did, everything I tried, made her more unhappy. She died young, escaping me the way Velma’s husband did her. Of course he didn’t die. He just bought the Ice Palace and then ran off and left her to pay for it for many years. It wasn’t the Ice Palace to start with it, it was the Golden Bucket and sold chicken. It never did well, but the Ice Palace did OK. It even did OK enough for her to have one or two young girls work there with her in the summer. It didn’t do crap in the winter, but she would be down there. I have driven by when there was snow on the ground and seen the widow’s unhappy face, just staring at the snow. She would be open all day for that one cup of coffee she would sell. But she didn’t have anything else. All she had was the Ice Palace. She lived across the street from the library and didn’t go. She didn’t even allow herself cable TV. Up every morning to wash it up, and then serve the pre-lunch crowd of farmers that came in to drink coffee, and once-in-a-great-while have a single ice cream cone. Then lunch. Local people. The afternoons filled with tourists back from the state park. Small dinner trade, then the local kids out riding around. Everyday she knew what she had to do.