The Ice-cream Man (4 page)

4

Marty opened his mouth to agree with Aaron, but he was already gone. For someone who had to be ninety kilograms if he was a gram, he sure could move fast when he wanted to.

‘Geez, doesn’t take much to get him going,’ Rick said, shaking his head.

‘Aaron’s right, the ice-cream man’s up to something. I don’t know about you, but I’m not hanging around to find out what.’

Now that Marty had time to think about it, there had been something screwy about this from the start. When he’d shot past the van’s windscreen and onto the road he’d had an impression of something hulking and dark behind the glass, but the sun’s blazing reflection had prevented him seeing the driver in any detail. In fact he hadn’t got a decent look at him the whole time they’d been chasing the van from one end of Mountain View to the other. Had the ice-cream man deliberately stayed hidden from sight all along? And if he had, what did it mean?

Deciding that now wasn’t the time to think about it, Marty grabbed his wheel rims and steered himself around the back of the van and into the road. The sound of Rick’s footfalls behind him sparked an almost primal fear in his belly. The bad feeling Aaron had gone on about was now in him, too. Logic took a back seat. He spun the wheels as hard as he could, forcing every drop of strength he had into forward motion. He had to get away from the ice-cream van, had to get that creepy music out of his skull before his eardrums burst.

‘Hey, Marty, wait up,’ Rick called.

Marty didn’t slow until he’d crossed into the next street, and even then he didn’t want to. While the mind-numbing jangling music had dropped in volume, it was still loud enough to raise hairs on the back of his neck. Aaron had spooked him. He needed to calm down. He needed to think.

Rick caught up and jogged alongside. ‘So, whatta ya reckon that was all about?’ he said, noisily sucking in air.

‘He’s either passed out from a heart attack like

Aaron reckoned, or he’s hiding,’ Marty said.

‘Aaron said he definitely wasn’t in there.’

‘I guess that means he got out and hid when we weren’t looking then, doesn’t it?’

‘That’s bull, mate. If he’d been hiding then why didn’t he jump out and try to scare us, or something, eh? I mean, that’s what you’d hide for, isn’t it?’

Marty stopped and swung around. ‘How would I know? Maybe the guy’s totally whacked. Geez, maybe some spaceship beamed him up and he’s not even on the planet anymore. You feel like going back and having another look?’

Rick wiped the sweat off his forehead with an arm. ‘No way.’

Marty rolled away from Rick, letting his wheel rims slide through his fingers. Then he pulled his chair to a stop and looked over his shoulder. ‘He got out fast, right after the jump,’ he said, almost to himself.

‘Huh?’

Marty looked up at Rick. ‘He was watching us the whole time. Must think he’s real clever.’

Rick’s forehead crumpled in concentration. ‘Yeah, but where’d he go?’ Realisation dawned. Rick’s eyes widened. ‘He was hiding under the van!’

Marty nodded. ‘Exactly. But the question is, why would he do that and not show himself ? Like you said, you’d hide so you can jump out and scare someone. Since he didn’t do that it had to be because he didn’t want us to see him. But why? I didn’t get a good look at him the whole time we were chasing him round the streets. Did you?’

Rick shook his head. ‘Not really. When he was up at the lagoon I saw he had a blue cap on. He was wearing sunglasses, too. Hey, Marty, hear that?’

‘Hear what?’

‘The music. It stopped.’

Marty’s ears ached with the sudden silence. He swallowed in an effort to calm his rising panic. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t his style to get spooked like this. ‘I don’t like it. The freak’s really screwing with our heads.’ Marty took off down the road at warp speed, the bitumen whirring beneath his wheels. He revelled in the sound of it, and in the hot afternoon breeze running its fingers though his sweat-soaked hair, and in the ache in his shoulders as he urged his chair on.

It hadn’t been long ago that Marty had been forced to use a walker, one of those clunky metal- framed horrors old people use. He wouldn’t have stood a chance outrunning the ice-cream man with that. He’d learnt at an early age that physiotherapists would do almost anything to get kids with cerebral palsy to walk, no matter how much it hurt, or how long it took. Marty hated physios more than anything

– even more than the bone doctors who would cut you open as soon as look at you. Physiotherapists never let you forget how ‘special’ you were. They were a constant reminder of just how much you couldn’t do. Marty knew his assessment of these people was unfair, but right or wrong it was how he felt.

Marty headed for the one place that always made him feel better when his head was so crammed with stuff he couldn’t think straight – the basketball court at the Police Citizen’s Youth Club.

Rick turned up a short while later cursing Marty for abandoning him and bitching about a pulled muscle in his calf. Marty challenged him to a game of one on one and proceeded to wipe the floor with him. Marty had been a pretty good player until his mother had put a stop to his regular games with the Sporting Wheelies. She’d said there was enough stress in her life without having to worry about her only son splitting his head open on a basketball court.

It was getting on for five o’clock when Marty farewelled Rick and headed home. He was thoroughly exhausted and in no mood for aggravation.

‘Martin, where have you been? You know how much I worry.’

Marty closed the front door. He studied his mother blocking the hallway in standard attack mode: arms folded, chin raised, eyes loaded. Man, he so didn’t need this.

‘Good lord! Come here and show me that knee. And look at the state of your arms. You’re covered in scratches.’

Marty winced as she prodded his skinned knee.

‘It’s nothing, Mum. Really.’

She gave him the hairy eyeball. ‘It is certainly not nothing, Martin. What if it gets infected? What if you’ve damaged it inside? You know how easily they dislocate. If you’ve dislocated it, Doctor Stephenson will want to operate and then . . .’

Marty tuned out, as he always did when she started going on about all the surgical procedures he was inflicting on himself by daring to go out and have fun. If he didn’t tune out he’d end up as paranoid as she was. She always imagined the worst, expected

it; had always treated him like one of her crystal ornaments, safely locked away in glass cabinets in the family room. If she could find a cabinet big enough she’d lock Marty up too, he was sure of it.

As soon as his mother moved towards the bathroom to fetch antiseptic and bandages, Marty escaped through the lounge room.

‘Mum’s not going to let you out on weekends anymore,’ Marty’s sister said.

Marty stopped and gave Michelle a cold stare.

‘Why don’t you mind your own frigging business?’ Michelle craned her neck to see the TV, which

Marty had deliberately blocked. ‘I’m just telling you what she said. And she said you shouldn’t be roaming the streets in your condition, said you don’t understand how many bad things can happen, and that Dad’ll have to go with you if –’

‘Shut up!’ Marty yelled in her face.

‘That will do,’ his mother said, walking into the room with the first aid kit wedged under her arm.

A band tightened around Marty’s chest. His fingers closed around his wheel rims so tightly they ached.

‘What’s Michelle on about?’

‘What have I told you about raising your voice, Martin? We’ll discuss it later, when your father gets home.’

Marty hated that tone. It always made him feel like an idiot. His mother removed antiseptic, cotton balls and bandaids from the kit and put them on the couch.

‘So, it’s true. You’re going to lock me in the house like some prisoner?’

Tight-lipped, his mother tipped antiseptic onto a clump of cotton wool and dabbed at his knee. Marty rolled away from her.

‘You know how I feel about you leaving the house without supervision, Martin. The last time we had this discussion you promised me you’d be careful and here you are covered in cuts and grazes.’ She lifted her chin, eyes spitting blue fire. ‘What if you’d broken a bone? Or, God forbid, something worse?’

Marty noted the nerve jumping under his mother’s left eye, a sure sign she was annoyed. He didn’t care.

‘I got a skinned knee, Mother. Big deal! And so what if I had broken something? I would’ve been fine. Rick and Aaron were with me.’

‘And that’s another thing,’ she went on, one hand clutching the wad of cotton wool, the other raised, index finger poking holes in the air, ‘that Langton boy is too rough for my liking. Why don’t you play with that nice Peter Murphy? He’s a chess champion. I’m sure you would learn a lot from him.’

Marty gaped at her. ‘Babies play. And there’s no way I’d do anything with Peter Murphy. He’s a try- hard retard!’

‘Martin!’

‘Well, he is.’

His mother clenched the cotton wool in her fist and straightened up. ‘That’s it. I refuse to talk to you when you’re like this.’ She turned and began packing everything, except the cotton wool, back into the first aid kit.

‘Fine with me ’cause it’s all rubbish anyway.’ Marty propelled his chair through the doorway and went to his room.

At least Marty’s dad was on his side. When he got home the three of them talked it out. He said he’d buy Marty a mobile phone so he’d be able to call

– and be called – if anything should go wrong when he was away from home. After all it was impossible for one of Marty’s parents to be with him twenty- four/seven. His mother eventually saw the logic in this and reluctantly agreed. Even though it was a small win, Marty knew she’d be watching his every move, just waiting for him to stuff up.

The next morning Rick rang. ‘Hey Marty. Wanna see a dead dog?’

Marty rubbed sleep from his eyes and yawned. He’d slept badly, thanks to dreams of being chased by empty ice-cream vans. ‘Wha’?’

‘I found a dead dog in a drain. It’s got maggots.’

‘You’re seriously sick, you know that?’

‘Your loss, mate.’

Marty glanced towards the kitchen where his mother was bashing around in the pot cupboard, sending out a clear signal that she was still in a mood.

‘Hey,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘want to hang out, maybe track down Aaron and do something?’

‘Yeah, okay. Meet you at your place in ten.’

‘No. I’ll meet you at the BP servo. And better make it twenty.’

‘Martin, you promised you would stay at home until your father gets you a phone,’ Marty’s mother yelled as he rolled down the driveway and out the front gate. He raised a hand in a half wave and kept going. Let her send his father after him if she wanted. It wouldn’t be the first time.

It was only nine o’clock and already it was hot enough to fry rubber. By the time Marty reached the service station his T-shirt was dark with sweat and a dull ache had started behind his eyes.

Rick stood in the shade near the petrol pumps, sucking on a can of Coke. He drained the last mouthful as Marty skidded to a stop in front of him and tossed the can into a nearby bin. ‘Hey, see that? Went right in.’

Marty dragged his arm across his dripping face.

‘Could’ve saved me some.’

A metallic blue Commodore boasting every piece of illegal hardware ever invented roared into the servo and screeched to a stop beside the boys. Rap music blared from the car’s interior, drowning out whatever Rick said next. Marty pointed towards the driveway and started moving. Rick, who couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from the car, blindly followed.

‘What did you say?’ Marty said, his ears still thumping.

‘I said, Aaron’s olds own a shop, so you can get a drink there.’ Rick threw a parting glance at the Commodore then headed up the footpath.

Marty grabbed his arm. ‘Hey, hear that?’

‘Yeah, how could I miss it. It’s Eminem.’

‘No, not that music. Listen.’ Marty turned and scanned the road. A second later a pink and white ice-cream van cruised around the corner, its piercing chimes bleeding into the rap music.

‘Geez, it’s him,’ Rick said. ‘You reckon he’ll have a go at us about yesterday?’

Marty tightened his grip on Rick’s arm. ‘Dunno, but he’s coming this way and I want to get a good look at the guy.’

‘What good’s that gonna do?’

‘I want to see exactly who we’re dealing with.’ Marty’s scalp prickled. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes and stared at the approaching van. Its windscreen was silvered with sunlight, preventing him from seeing inside; if he hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn the glass was covered in some sort of reflective material. He bit his lip, fingernails digging into Rick’s skin.

‘Didn’t you see enough of him yesterday?’ Rick said, shaking his hand off.

‘He was wearing a hat and sunglasses, you said. Besides, maybe he hid from us ’cause we know him.’

Marty squinted, but all he could see was the ice- cream van’s split windscreen shimmering like twin mirrors as it crawled along the road towards them. As they watched, a meaty fist was thrust out of the driver’s side window with the middle finger sticking up.