The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories

by Sam Pink

  Corner dinging right off your knuckle.

  Dinging off the bone in a way that caused some kind of deeply cold feeling.

  Like your entire skeleton coughed.

  A zinging.

  Zingers and bone shakers.

  It reminded me that every job, even ones almost entirely unlikable, had an element that was the worst.

  The opposite of a cherry on top.

  And for me, it was the fasteners.

  I pressed both activate buttons on the fastener machine and flipped the switch and the die went down hard, CHUNG.

  A fastener flew down the chute and zinged off my knuckle and my finger went numb for a second.

  I quietly said, ‘You motherfucking piece of shit,’ through gritted teeth, my eyes bulging.

  I’d been there long enough to become less concerned about hiding my anger.

  The murderous thoughts in general, involving metal pieces.

  How I wanted to bring one down on someone’s head like an axe.

  Or drag one across my stomach and free my guts.

  Fucking fasteners.

  But then the machine stopped working.

  Shoooong.

  It moved no more.

  Its ghost already floating away.

  Yes . . .

  Fuck yeah . . .

  Praise be!

  I smiled.

  ‘Go work on 13 with Jaime,’ yelled the foreman, bad root beer breath into my face, after catching me not working for ten seconds.

  One of his jobs was to walk around and spy on the workers.

  If you stopped working for more than fifteen seconds, he popped out from behind somewhere and asked you what you were doing.

  I didn’t dislike him, though, because on one of my first shifts, I sat in the break room and watched him stare straight forward at the wall while eating pizza out of a Ziploc bag and chugging root beer.

  Sometimes he still had pizza in his mouth while chugging the root beer.

  And I knew then that, for whatever reason, I could never dislike him.

  He’d always be something to me.

  I went to Machine 13.

  There was an older man working it.

  We shook hands.

  ‘Hey,’ I said.

  He kind of explained what I had to do.

  Couldn’t really speak English and I couldn’t really speak Spanish, but there was enough overlap to understand.

  These long metal pieces were going to come down the chute and, yep, you guessed it, we had to catch and stack and box them.

  All right, sure.

  I mean why not, I’ll be here.

  He started the machine.

  Chung.

  Skingskingsking.

  These pieces were new to me.

  I had not done them.

  They were arm’s length and had a corner on each end, like a giant bottle opener.

  Like fucking swords.

  I caught the first couple and stacked them half-assedly.

  Getting them to fit together seemed like a cruel puzzle.

  The guy tried showing me how to stack them, smiling the whole time in a way that suggested he was reading my mind, which was thinking, ‘Yeah, fuck this shit.’

  So, whatever.

  We caught the skinging clinkers as they came down the chute.

  Winding down the three-ton spool of metal.

  Going pretty well until one of the metal pieces skinged the wrong way, took a hop, and went across my bicep.

  Split my meat real good.

  Took a second to bleed but then oh yeah, it bled.

  The guy said something.

  I stared at him as he mouthed things I couldn’t hear.

  Blood ran down my arm.

  I did a thumbs-up and motioned for us to keep working.

  But he stopped the machine, staring at the blood from behind his crooked safety glasses.

  Shoooong.

  ‘It hurt you?’ he said.

  ‘I’m good,’ I said, wiping some of the blood with my T-shirt.

  But it was bleeding decent then.

  He tried to explain something involving his arms.

  Looked like the motion of putting on lotion.

  ‘You gonna . . . ah, dey have de . . . ah . . .’ he said, looking around.

  Eventually he just motioned for me to follow him, motioning over his shoulder.

  We walked through the factory.

  We passed this other worker, who saw my bloody arm and threw both hands down like he’d just lost in poker and said, ‘Aw man. Now they gone have to put that shit on the calendar.’

  He was referring to our injury chart, where—if we remained without incident for a month—we got free lunch.

  I laughed and said, ‘Just don’t tell anybody.’

  He gave me an angry look and walked away.

  We walked over to a small supply area where they kept gloves and earplugs and vests and shit.

  He handed me two arm sleeves made of some kind of strong, interlocking fiber.

  Like powerful socks for my arms.

  I cleaned my bloody arm off in the drinking fountain, covered the wound with a wad of paper towel, and put the arm sleeves over my arms.

  The arm sleeves—they were very powerful.

  Yes, they strengthened me.

  Quite frankly, I felt invincible with them on.

  I could see why the guy working the machine already had them on.

  DeMontero, keep me safe.

  I strutted back out into the workplace looking for the nearest skinging clinker I could find.

  Where you at, lil clinkers?

  I returned to the machine.

  Chung.

  Skingskingsking.

  The clanging skingers.

  I caught them and stacked them.

  No problem.

  Stacked the fuck out of them actually.

  Boxed the fuck out of them too.

  I finished off a pallet.

  No fucking problem.

  DeMontero, protect me.

  ‘Good?’ said the other guy with his thumb up.

  ‘Yeah man, thank you,’ I said, smiling in what seemed like an insane way, my thumb up as well.

  We worked for a couple more hours.

  Sweating.

  My back moaned.

  It seemed, I thought, more or less, time for the workers to gather in the middle of the factory to begin fighting in front of rich people for money.

  Something.

  Anything.

  But instead, just more metal pieces.

  Chung . . . fwoosh . . . skingskingsking . . . clank.

  Contractor packs.

  Metal pieces.

  Sometimes I wondered about all the great decks/houses/projects that would come from the metal pieces.

  The towns, cities, backyards, schools, playgrounds, and whatever elses these parts would build.

  But mostly I didn’t.

  Reverting to that age-old—nearly invincible—philosophical question of, ‘Who the fuck gives a shit?’

  What a janitor do.

  DeMontero, get me there.

  *

  On break, I had a cigarette with everyone.

  We sat around the drainage ditch.

  Mato sat on the sheet metal drainage pipe, positioning himself on the pipe with a leg on either side.

  ‘Notice I ain be puttin my shit in front of this bitch,’ he said. ‘You ain never know the fuck gone come outta that bitch. We in Florida.’

  People laughed.

  Mato said, ‘You ain never know the fuck gone be comin out this shit, I’m talmbout.’ He stood up and walked away in a comical fashion, pumping his elbows and knees as he walked.

  People laughed.

  This was the key to Mato’s material.

  Walking away in a comical fashion after repeating what he’d just said.

  Someone said, ‘Shit, Mato. You stupid.’

  ‘You heard me?’ Mato said, walking back to the group, laughing. H
e sat back down on the pipe, legs on either side. ‘You ain never know the fuck comin out this bitch.’

  One guy gestured to his friend and said, ‘This guy from Cuba, he don’t give a fuck, he eat that shit. We got fish with legs in Cuba.’

  The guy next to him laughed and said something in Spanish.

  People laughed.

  ‘Where you from, homey?’ Mato said. ‘You Messican?’

  ‘Nah, he’s from Cuba, man, I just said that. We all are.’

  Mato asked about Cuba.

  What was it like there.

  Should he go there.

  Castro had just died.

  Someone said that all the things you owned aren’t really yours there, and you’re not really free.

  Mato said, ‘Whatchoo mean? Like my TV? I ain own that bitch? That bitch ain’t mine?!’

  ‘Hell no, bro,’ said a younger guy, doing something on his phone. ‘That bitch is not yours, bro. And there ain’t shit you can do about it.’

  Another said, ‘He worry bout TV . . .’

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘Hell no, I fight them bitches,’ said Mato.

  ‘They’ll just put you in jail or shoot you. They don’t give a fuck there, bro. What are you talking about.’

  Someone said something in Spanish and a bunch of people laughed.

  ‘Man, how you goan shoot a brotha?’ said Mato. ‘They’ont be likin the brothas down in Cuba? Heh heh.’

  ‘Nah man, they don’t give a fuck about you there. Prison here is like a fucking resort compared to Cuba bro. You end up in prison in Cuba, you’re fucked worse than death, bro.’

  A bunch of people laughed.

  ‘Feed you water and shoogar,’ said another guy. ‘Beat you ass every fucking day until you die.’

  Someone said something in Spanish again, and everyone laughed.

  Mato did his own nonsense Spanish, which he did anytime too many people were speaking Spanish around him.

  ‘Bassa la cassa de la pasta, PUTA!’ he said.

  Some people laughed.

  ‘Mato, you should move to Cuba, man, you’d love it,’ someone said.

  ‘What about my house?’ said Mato. ‘That nigga own that shit too?’

  ‘Yup,’ someone said.

  ‘What?’ Mato said. He stood up again, cigarette in mouth while holding up both fists in the classic fisticuffs pose. ‘Man, fuck that. I be figh’in a bitch. Wussuh, Caysh-dro. I whoop yo ass, bitch, heh heh.’

  He lowered his head laughing, still holding up his fists.

  I was laughing.

  The Cubans were laughing.

  Anything that would’ve come out of that drainage pipe would’ve been laughing.

  ‘I whup yo comniss ass, muthafucka, talkin bout hassa la bassa de pasta. Gimme my rights!’

  He was doing insane punches and keeping his head leaned back, closing his eye to the smoke of the cigarette.

  ‘Bro,’ said a Cuban. ‘You ain’t shit there. They’d just shoot you. Why the fuck would anyone care about your rights? Seriously man, I want you to tell me why anyone would give a fuck.’

  The Cubans were laughing.

  ‘Whatchoo mean?’ said Mato.

  ‘Bro,’ one of them said.

  And they explained how they were all basically slaves.

  It wasn’t like here.

  They had no control.

  And that’s why they left.

  Building boats in the middle of the night.

  They talked about how people celebrated in Little Havana when Castro died.

  One guy got real serious and talked about how the government took most of his family, for being religious, and he never saw them again.

  They talked about being ‘disappeared.’

  Mato said, ‘How they gone disappear me? I’m fat as hell.’ He laughed, cigarette down to the filter. ‘Ayuh, how many underage bitches you thank Fidel be fuckin? Might as well. Shit, you the boss. Who gon suck my dick tonight? Shit, get in line f’that shit. Bitches with no teeth to the front of the line heh heh! You suck my dick I give you extra veshtables or some shit,’ he said, laughing harder.

  It was hard not to laugh at everything he said, because he laughed at everything he said, and his laugh was hilarious.

  Other people were either laughing or shaking their head or doing both.

  The warning bell rang.

  Boop, boop, boop.

  Finishing cigarettes.

  Pocketing phones.

  One guy said goodbye to his daughter, who he’d videochat with every night right before she went to bed. ‘Bye sweetie,’ he said, doing a kiss to the screen.

  A small voice said, ‘Night, Daddy.’

  We all got up, groaning and swearing.

  I limped, trying to force the toenail on my pinky toe back into place.

  My machine partner walked next to me.

  He carefully said, ‘Know why you don’t have ah, de communism here?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He held up both hands as if holding a gun and said, ‘De ryfo.’

  ‘The rifle,’ I said, smiling.

  He nodded, smiling behind crooked safety glasses.

  The rifle.

  What a janitor do.

  DeMontero, protect us all.

  The factory welcomed us back with heat.

  *

  Supervisor had me work the remainder of the shift on a riveter.

  Sitting in a chair riveting pieces of metal together.

  You grab one piece, set it on the riveter, set another piece on top so they overlap a certain way, then put the pointer finger of each hand into the sensors on either side.

  Shuggunk.

  Riveted.

  I sat there for a couple hours, stacking metal parts, pressing buttons and fastening shit together, chucking them into boxes.

  Line up the pieces.

  Press the buttons.

  Shuggunk.

  If the riveter misses, do it again.

  Throw the new piece into a box.

  It seemed, overall, better than any other job there because at least you could sit.

  But then that hurt too.

  Toward the end of the shift, my riveter started failing, spitting out bent rivets all over.

  It pissed me off way more than it should.

  Because it shouldn’t have pissed me off at all.

  Mato was sitting next to me at a riveter, looking at his phone.

  ‘Man, [athlete] a beast this year,’ he said to a guy across the table at a different riveter.

  ‘For real,’ said the other guy.

  Then they had a conversation around whether or not you should bring your woman to the beach.

  There was so much ass there anyway, one posited, bringing your woman just ruined everything.

  One man in particular seemed troubled by the abundance of ass at the beach.

  He was so utterly confused why anyone would—given the amount of ass already at the beach—bring more ass to it, especially when that one ass prevented you from enjoying all of the others.

  I had to admit that he danced with truths.

  I started sweeping around my area.

  I swept the bent rivets into a dustpan and dropped them into the trash.

  I kept a handful of the rivets, and some other small metal pieces I found, because they looked like valuable gems or coins or something.

  I’d started a collection at home.

  It felt nice to have them.

  I didn’t ask myself why or ridicule myself for wanting the magical coins.

  I just took them.

  Because why not.

  I tied off the trash and took it out and enjoyed the breeze and the dark night sky.

  Largo, Florida.

  Humid darkness and the highway whirring, not far off.

  The fifteen-minute ‘end of shift’ warning alarm rang.

  Boop boop boop.

  The siren of love.

  We observed fifteen minutes of mock-cleaning, as well
as throwing big balled-up rolls of plastic into far-off garbage cans.

  Mato hid off to the side of a machine, leaning on a control panel and staring out.

  It looked like he was contemplating the beginning of time.

  ‘I’m done, bruh,’ he said to me, shaking free of his stare.

  Then we all got in line for the punch clock, one minute remaining.

  No one ever worked the last minute.

  It was a tiny rebellion that would one day lead to all the minutes.

  But you had to start with one.

  Never ever ever work the last minute.

  What a janitor do.

  Sweating, shirts off, undershirts steaming, lunchboxes in hand, smelling awful, lube wrinkled but elated.

  All looking forward to the future: a single wide door propped open and leading to the parking lot.

  Nobody had anything to say anymore.

  Mato was in front of me, quietly singing.

  I stared at the safety rules on the corkboard, featuring the same featureless man receiving injuries of all kinds.

  Electrocution.

  Puncture wound.

  Cuts.

  Broken bone.

  Mato started singing louder.

  ‘Fuck up, Mato,’ someone said.

  Others laughed.

  Mato smiled and laughed, a hoarse heh heh. Then he said, ‘Iss all good, I’m jess playin.’

  An older man, very small and hunched and skinny, stood off to the side of the line holding some scrap metal, chewing his toothless gums.

  His eyeglasses made his eyes look huge.

  He was the guy who worked the forklift all day.

  I’d never heard him speak.

  He wore a baseball hat for a towing company, blued tattoos on his forearms.

  He adjusted the scrap pieces in his arms.

  ‘Why you takin that shit, Elton?’ Mato said.

  Elton said, ‘Fixin ta make uh pin. Got me a puppy.’ He pushed his glasses up.

  ‘Oh shit, you got a puppy, Elton?’ Mato said, turning his hat from backward to backward/sideways, swaying in place as the final bell rang and the line began moving.

  ‘Yizzir,’ said Elton. ‘He a bastard doe. Needa learn himself sum’n fore I killem.’

  Mato laughed and said, ‘Oooooh you gotta grab that sumbitch by the neck and’—he motioned with his other hand—‘Wuhhhhap! Right on at ass. Thass how I’m brangin it. Whapppp, right on at ass!’

  Elton said, ‘I believe thass right,’ and nodded, smiling a little, his huge eyes blinking.

  ‘Whap!’ yelled Mato again.

  ‘Mato shut the fuck up!’ somebody yelled.

  The line had stalled.

  Faulty punches.