The
familiar tune drifting through the evening air was a time machine,
pushing my tired brain back to June of 1986 when my friends and I ran
free along the sun-drenched streets of Summerdown Grove. Fresh from
school, the five of us had hit the road with slingshots and sneakers and
a compass in our heads that always pointed to adventure. We'd hiked the
edges of the forest and balanced on the rafters of the old rail car
factory, and once we'd even bolted screaming from the haunted house on
Medicine Row. We read comics under flashlights in tents beneath the
stars, and September loomed in the distance like a razor-fanged specter
waiting to rip the carpet out from under our feet.
And then the first day of school finally came, and Jacob didn't show.
We'd left him at the baseball diamond just a day before. Our mothers had booked our last weekend of freedom solid with trips for school supplies and doctor's visits. I was fourth to be picked up, and I remember waving sadly to Jacob while our station wagon pulled away from the park, just as the churning music of the ice cream truck emerged from the distance and I sighed as though my greatest problem that year was missing out on a strawberry shortcake bar.
That was the Saturday before school began. Though he still hadn't shown by the next Friday, a couple more weeks passed before I finally heard the word "kidnapped."
By June of 1988, I was alone. Lucas had disappeared the year between, and Brent's parents got scared and pulled up stakes. Michael's dad got a job in another state, and Travis simply drifted away from me. I hadn't thought of him until today, when a boy who vanished from my life thirty years ago grinned at me from the evening news, older and bearded and scarred.
Travis was missing. His wife had last seen him hiking out to the corner the night before to fetch a treat for his bed-ridden son... From the ice cream truck.
I stood with my eye to the peephole as the truck cruised down my street for the second time in ten minutes. It hadn't occurred to me before, but that day on the baseball diamond in 1986 was the last time I'd heard the cheery tune cranking from the speakers of that old, beat-up machine. Thirty years I'd gone without seeing or hearing it, and just tonight it came back.
A tiny hand print smudged across the truck's big, filthy window. The driver's side was tinted pitch black. The thing slowed to a crawl as it passed my house, then sped up again when it reached the neighbor's plot. It puttered along the rest of my street, all while cranking out that hideous song.
I racked the shotgun in my hands as the truck turned wide at the end of the block for a third run.
And then the first day of school finally came, and Jacob didn't show.
We'd left him at the baseball diamond just a day before. Our mothers had booked our last weekend of freedom solid with trips for school supplies and doctor's visits. I was fourth to be picked up, and I remember waving sadly to Jacob while our station wagon pulled away from the park, just as the churning music of the ice cream truck emerged from the distance and I sighed as though my greatest problem that year was missing out on a strawberry shortcake bar.
That was the Saturday before school began. Though he still hadn't shown by the next Friday, a couple more weeks passed before I finally heard the word "kidnapped."
By June of 1988, I was alone. Lucas had disappeared the year between, and Brent's parents got scared and pulled up stakes. Michael's dad got a job in another state, and Travis simply drifted away from me. I hadn't thought of him until today, when a boy who vanished from my life thirty years ago grinned at me from the evening news, older and bearded and scarred.
Travis was missing. His wife had last seen him hiking out to the corner the night before to fetch a treat for his bed-ridden son... From the ice cream truck.
I stood with my eye to the peephole as the truck cruised down my street for the second time in ten minutes. It hadn't occurred to me before, but that day on the baseball diamond in 1986 was the last time I'd heard the cheery tune cranking from the speakers of that old, beat-up machine. Thirty years I'd gone without seeing or hearing it, and just tonight it came back.
A tiny hand print smudged across the truck's big, filthy window. The driver's side was tinted pitch black. The thing slowed to a crawl as it passed my house, then sped up again when it reached the neighbor's plot. It puttered along the rest of my street, all while cranking out that hideous song.
I racked the shotgun in my hands as the truck turned wide at the end of the block for a third run.
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