“Where do you get the cream? The last true cow died twenty years ago.”
“I have good freezers.”
Laird laughed. “See you next Thursday.” He walked away, waving as he went.
The last couple both wanted raspberry, but Keegan didn’t have any. They settled for a scoop each of chocolate macadamia nut. He placed the set of four sundae glasses they’d brought on the floor. The woman looked suspiciously at her cone.
“Just ice cream in that one, ma’am,” he said.
When he drove away, he flicked the music back on, “Little Brown Jug.” A couple blocks later, a new crowd gathered. By 1:00 he was sold out.
Driving the ice cream truck had been Keegan’s first job out of high school. In the dispatch office, Old Josh Granger had handed him the route and an inventory sheet along with the keys to the truck. “Drive slow in the neighborhoods,” he said. “Nothing sadder than a little kid who can’t catch the ice cream truck.”
Keegan nodded.
“Not that there’s kids anymore.” Granger sat heavily on a stool, cupping his hands over his knees. “God, I remember when the five-year-olds would chase me down. Scads of them. Couldn’t even get their change up to the counter. Little hands holding money. Do you remember kids?” Granger looked out the window onto the lot where the trucks were parked. Canvas covered six of them. “You’re what, eighteen? No, you wouldn’t. You’re one of the last batch.”
Keegan ground the toe of his sneaker into the cement. “They’ll find out what’s causing it. I heard the news the other night. They’re making headway.”
Granger sighed. “Do you have a girl?”
Keegan blushed. “They don’t seem to take to me.” He scratched his nose, covering his mouth.
“Humph! Sorry, son. Maybe it’s for the better. Save you the heartache. No ultrasound horror show. No little bundled buried in the back yard for you…” He trailed off. A muscle in his arm twitched, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Nobody gives you guff about it, do they?”
“No, sir. They’re all real nice.” Keegan thought about the whispers in the school hallway. Once he’d heard an entire conversation. “Do you think he’s a mutation?” someone had said. “Nah,” said someone else. “Cleft palate. It’s just a birth defect.”
Granger said, “Don’t they have operations to fix that?”
“I had it. You should have seen it before.”
For the rest of the summer, Keegan drove the truck. Kids his own age and older waited for him. In the shadows, they hardly noticed his face. “I want a bomb pop,” one would say. “Ice cream sandwich,” said another. For a summer he drove the town, music filling his ears: “Home on the Range” and “London Bridge” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” calling, calling, and the folks came out, remembering in the music what it must have been like to be five. He imagined them as children, running after him, their eyes on fire, laughter in their throats. It was the best summer of his life. Then, in August, the company went under, and he had to turn in his keys.
When he left his last inventory in the dispatch office, Old Man Granger sat unmoving on his stool, staring off into an unfocused middle distance.
“Here’s my paperwork, sir. I filled everything out.”
Granger didn’t speak.
“I rinsed out the freezer wells too. The truck’s clean.” Keegan resisted an urge to pass his hand in front of the old man’s eyes. “Well, I got to go.”
When Keegan turned back to close the door, Granger finally spoke. “Don’t ever drive too fast.” He could have been talking to himself. “You don’t want to leave the kids behind.”
It was thirty years before Keegan would drive an ice cream truck again.
The University Blvd. and Colfax Avenue enclave ended south of Cherry Creek, about fifteen blocks from Colfax. Keegan drove through the empty neighborhoods, his music turned off, the ice cream gone, and the boxes of traded goods packed securely behind him. He rested his wrists loosely over the top of the wheel, avoiding road debris with long, sweeping curves. Here the remains of homes sat back from the sidewalk on top of short, weeded slopes. The frame houses that weren’t burned to the ground sagged forlornly, holes gaping in their roofs, an occasional glass shard still clinging to a window, catching the sun. The brick homes fared better, though their roofs swooped to black holes too. Nothing worth scavenging in them now, unless there were secrets buried in their basements. Too close to University. Inside, all the drawers would be pulled out, the sheet rock rotted, wallpaper hanging in ragged folds, their owners either dead or moved to the country to raise crops.
Keegan sighed, checked the fuel gauge, and turned north. A slinky, black form, ten feet long, flowed across the road on short, powerful legs, before vanishing behind some bushes. The sun was still high in the sky. Keegan whistled. Most of the mutoids were nocturnal. He hadn’t got a good look at it, but it moved like a predator. Either it had broken through the Colfax fence, or it came out of the Platte River wastes a couple miles west. Keegan slowed the truck.
It appeared again, beside a house, placed a foot high on the worn wood, then pulled itself up. When its front paws reached the gutter, its hind feet were still on the ground. Then, without a break in rhythm, it poured onto the roof, defying gravity in its sinuous path. Before it disappeared over the peak, it looked at Keegan, small eyes buried in a broad, black skull, like a bear’s. That high, poised in the sun, it no longer appeared black, but a deep, regal purple.
Back on University, two fence men pushed the barrier aside to let him through.
“Saw something big on the road back there,” said Keegan.
“Like a low-riding black panther?” asked the fellow hoisting a scoped rifle.
Keegan nodded.
The man shaded his eyes to look up into the truck. “I got a shot at him yesterday, walking bold as brass in front of those shops on 6th Street. Nothing to eat in the enclave except us, so we’ve organized a hunting party for tomorrow. Find him and then go north for a bit. Clean out the worst of them.”
“About time we went north,” said the man’s partner, wearing thick glasses and a cowboy hat. “The leave-them-alone and they’ll-leave-us-alone policy sucks.” He hefted his rifle, a military issue weapon with a curved magazine. “We need as much replacement ammo as you can get us when you come next week. If we’re going to clean the area out, we’ll be jacking quite a few rounds.”
“Tomorrow, you’re hunting?” Keegan wondered if they heard the quiver in his voice.
“Couple hours before sunrise. We’ve got forty rifles. Figure we can make a sweep as far north as 30th Avenue. Some hotheads on the committee wanted to burn everything in that direction, but we figure a lot of the best stuff is up there.”
Keegan tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. University Blvd. stretched in front of him. The tops of trees in City Park a couple blocks ahead waved in a breeze that didn’t touch them on the street. “No need to go beyond the fence, is there? The majority aren’t dangerous.”
Rifle-scope man looked at him curiously. “Us or them, buddy.”
Keegan nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The afternoon routine was the same as always. First he unloaded the truck in the converted bank building’s garage, putting the consumables in the steel-doored storage room, then placing the rest on the shelves except for the glasses he took into his living quarters to add to his display, two rooms of ice cream art under the lights. His favorites were ruby glass banana-split plates, casting red shadows beneath them. Then there were the tall sundae glasses, fluted sides and pouty lipped tops. Fine ice cream bowls of delicate china. Scoops by the dozens, some mechanical (one with a heating element for ease in carving hard-frozen treats), another of ivory, another with knuckle protectors, another with mother of pearl inlay in the handle. In the next room he had the pictures: ice cream trucks from all over the world. Psychedelic ones, and plain ones, and ones that looked like motorized tricycles, and ones shaped like cones or ice cream men or hot dogs or popsicles. Today, though, he didn’t pause to admire the collection. The men were coming!