by Tope Folarin
“Good job,” he said. Then he reached into the freezer and pulled a box from the middle. We gathered around him as he opened it, and we saw the tidy packages of ice cream stacked in perfect rows. Dad selected a package from the top, and we read the label aloud.
“Choco Taco,” we said, in awed unison.
Dad smiled at us. Then he lifted the package to the ceiling and blessed it. He passed a package to each of us, and we sat down, in the middle of the garage, to consume our treats.
* * *
Tayo and I learned early on that all junkyards are basically the same. Dad had been taking us to junkyards all over Utah since we were toddlers, and we’d grown accustomed to the sights. At the front of the entire mess is a shack that’s supposed to serve as an entryway, checkout counter, and, depending on the whims of the owner, a bar as well. Inside the shack there are car parts strewn all over the place: exhaust pipes on the counter, alternators and radiators spread across the floor, license plates everywhere. At the back of the shack there’s a door that leads to the junkyard, a gate to another land.
For each junkyard is like an unexplored planet. The terrain is always unfamiliar; the air barely breathable. There are craters everywhere, and my father moves forward carefully, scouting the path ahead before calling back and telling us it’s okay to follow. Every junkyard looks like the site of a massive industrial explosion, the secret innards of various contraptions laid out for us to see, while we roam about like postapocalyptic scavengers searching for the parts that will make our dying car go.
There wasn’t much scavenging on this visit, though. Dad woke Tayo and me before dawn on the first day of our summer vacation and we drove to the Hartville Junkyard in our new ice cream truck. He asked the man behind the desk to follow us, and we walked through the industrial rubble until we came upon a long, sleek-looking freezer. Dad pointed at it.
“This is the one I want. How much?”
The man wheezed in response.
“For this? This is top of the line, yes, sir. This’ll probably run you about . . . oh, I’d say about two-hundred fifty dollars.”
“But it doesn’t work,” my father replied flatly.
“Don’t matter. She’s a looker. I could get someone to come out here and pay three hundred for her.”
Back and forth they went until they settled on a price. One hundred eighty-five dollars, and the man threw in a carburetor for free. Dad laughed long and hard after the man left to draw up our receipt.
“See? What did I tell you? I drive the best bargains in all of Utah!”
We returned home with the freezer in the back of the truck, and Femi joined us in cleaning it. Femi still had a thick Nigerian accent then, and I couldn’t decide if I liked him or not. This was the era when Tayo and I were basically the same person—same speech patterns (a solid middle-American accent spackled with the occasional Nigerian-accented phrase), same walk (a loping, confident gait that we’d adapted from our father’s), and we each possessed a similar propensity for attracting occasional trouble (for various things, but we both excelled at watching television when there were dishes that needed washing). Femi’s younger than Tayo and me, but he was our stepmother’s oldest, and back then he carried himself like a kid with responsibility. I couldn’t tell if he was acting perfect on purpose.
When we finished Dad told us to transfer a few boxes of ice cream from the freezer in the garage to the freezer in the truck. We did as we were told, and then Femi asked him how the ice cream would stay cold since the freezer didn’t work. Dad turned around in his seat.
“Why don’t you guys trust me? I have everything covered. Are you finished?”
We nodded and Dad immediately put the truck into reverse. We drove only a few minutes, to a small house across the street from Hartville High School. Yellow paint was peeling from the exterior, and the wooden steps leading up to the porch were cracked, but the house still had a solid, dependable aura about it.
“Femi and Tunde, follow me.”
Dad knocked on the door and an older man with shoulder-length gray hair opened it. He was wearing a thin, plaid shirt and the top two buttons were undone. His gray chest hairs peeked out at us. Dad smiled and the man smiled back.
“You’re . . .”
“Mr. Akinola,” Dad said.
“Ah! Nice to meet you. So just one block, then?”
“Yes, sah.”
“Okay, then, follow me.”
“Can my children watch?”
“Of course they can. Come on down here, guys!”
We followed Dad and the old man to the basement. It was dim in there, but I could see a small freezer against the far wall, and an ancient-looking upright saw with rust on the blades resting beside it. The room was otherwise bare, save for a few movie posters on the wall. I didn’t recognize any of the titles. The old man put on a pair of gloves that were resting on top of the freezer and pulled a steaming block of clouded ice from inside. He placed the ice on a tray that was attached to the saw and pressed a button at the base of it. Then he slid the ice back and forth before the screeching blade; solid slices separated themselves from the block until the block disappeared. The old man deftly wrapped each slice of clouded ice in brown paper, and he placed each slice in a large cardboard box.
“Here you go, sir,” he said, handing the box over to Dad. “Remember what I said on the phone. This’ll last you a couple days. Gotta treat it carefully. It’ll burn you.”
Dad turned to us.
“Are you listening to him? Did you hear what he said? I know you guys sometimes like to learn with your hands instead of your ears. If you don’t listen, it will be a very painful lesson!”
I had no idea why we were being reprimanded in front of a man we’d never met before. In the truck Dad tore the paper off two of the packages and dropped the ice on the boxes in the freezer.
“What’s that?” Femi asked.
“Dry ice,” Dad said.
“But it will melt all over the ice cream, and the ice cream will get soggy,” I said.
“No. It won’t melt,” Dad said. “It will only evaporate.”
I thought he was playing a trick on us. When he turned away, I looked again at the ice in the freezer. Already the entire freezer was filling up with a thick fog. I pressed my finger to the mysterious ice, and a few seconds later I felt a stinging fire flow from the tip of my finger to the top of my arm.
I screamed. Dad whirled around and caught me with my finger on the ice. I couldn’t pull it away. He quickly opened a bottle of water that was near the gearshift and poured it over the ice until my finger came loose. I looked at my quivering finger and noticed that my skin had burned away, leaving only a red pulsating sketch of the skin that had once been there.
“What did I tell you about touching that ice, Tunde? What did I tell you?”
I hung my head in shame and Dad started laughing, booming his voice in my direction. I knew what was coming next.
“GOOOOOOOOD FOR YOOOOOOOU!”
My brothers laughed along with him.
* * *
Dad put the rest of the dry ice into the old freezer in the garage when we got home. Then he went inside and emerged a few moments later with a small cardboard box.
“The final step,” he said.
He opened the box and pulled out a rectangular device that had two switches on the top and a mess of wires on the bottom. I couldn’t read what was written beneath the switches because Dad took the device inside the truck and started working. We saw him battling with wires and pliers; we heard him curse occasionally under his breath. We eventually grew tired of watching him and went inside to watch TV. Dad strolled into the living room an hour later and told us to come outside. He went in on the driver’s side of the truck and clicked something, and we heard a familiar song flowing out of the horn-shaped speaker he’d placed at the front of the truck, just above the windshield.
“That’s the ice cream music!” Tayo cried. We recognized the tune from the ice cr
eam trucks we’d seen on TV. We’d never seen an ice cream truck in Hartville, though.
Dad nodded excitedly. Then we linked arms and listened together.
* * *
The following morning Dad woke us up with his good-morning song, and when we reached the garage we saw an old, thin, beat-up mattress on the floor.
“Put it in the back of the truck,” he said. “That’s where you guys will relax between your shifts.”
We placed the mattress where he told us, right up against the freezer, and we brought along a couple pillows so the bed would be even more comfortable. As we were reclining on it Dad appeared and stared at us.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Tayo, Femi, and I looked at each other, and then we looked around. Dad shook his head slowly.
“What about your books? What do you think this is? A time to rest? If you aren’t working then you’re reading! Go bring your books!”
We ran back inside and brought out a couple of books and placed them on the mattress. Dad surveyed the titles and shook his head again.
“Bring more. I expect each of you to finish one book each day.”
We brought more books and piled them high against the freezer. Dad nodded, then he settled in the driver’s seat and started the engine. He flipped on the music and began to back out, but then Mom stepped into the garage and called him. Dad switched off the engine and left the truck.
We stared out of the windshield as Dad approached Mom. They stood looking at each other for a moment. Mom said something. Dad shook his head and stared at the garage floor. Mom said something else. Dad threw his hands in the air and stepped back. Mom looked up at the ceiling. They just stood there. Then Mom stepped forward and hugged Dad. After standing there with his arms at his sides for a few moments, Dad hugged her back.
Dad returned to the truck with a smile on his face, and Mom went back inside and closed the door. Dad began humming to himself as he turned the ignition. He drove down the length of our street, took a right onto Jones Place, and then he slowed down. We knew better than to ask Dad what he and Mom had discussed, so we tried to ask him with our eyes. He continued humming as if he couldn’t see us, so we stared out of the windows instead as we crawled down one street after another.
Tayo, Femi, and I were familiar with these streets; we’d spent hours walking around our neighborhood in search of kids our age or older who might be interested in playing basketball with us, but our neighborhood looked different, somehow, from the windows of our ice cream truck. The houses looked the same, like precise replicas of our own house, with their small front lawns and brown-tiled roofs, but now the people we saw walking their dogs and kicking soccer balls were no longer friends, or even neighbors—they were all potential customers. A few people simply stared at our truck as we passed, but from the way they looked we might as well have been foreigners engaged in an inspection tour of newly conquered territory, or a single-car parade drifting by. Most of the people we saw ignored us completely. On two occasions we saw a child looking expectantly in our direction and we yelled at Dad to stop. Dad listened and pulled the truck over to the curb, but both times the child shyly waved at us and ran away. We continued searching for customers, but after we’d been on the road for an hour or so my brothers settled down in the back to read. Dad asked me to sit on the chair he’d placed in front of the freezer, right behind his chair. I sat there reading while Dad hummed along with the music.
A few moments later the truck jarred to a stop. I rose from my seat and looked out the driver’s side window. There was a young man with short blond hair and pimply skin standing on the sidewalk, holding a small child to his chest. When Dad extended his hand the man pulled his child away, but Dad kept his hand in the air and smiled at him. I’d never seen this particular smile on my father’s face before. It was so kind, without a trace of malice or hurt or sarcasm or shame. The man looked at Dad’s extended hand, and then at Dad’s smile, and he slowly pushed his child’s body in the direction of Dad’s hand. Dad stroked the child’s head.
The man laughed nervously. “It’s sure nice to see you here. Certainly hot enough for ice cream. How much do you charge?”
Dad started, and then he turned to his right to peer at the stickers we’d affixed to the side of the truck the night before. The stickers featured artistic renderings of the ice cream bars we’d stacked in our freezer beneath islands of dry ice. As Dad stared at the stickers, I realized that we’d neglected to indicate how much each kind of ice cream would cost.
“Well, since you’re our first sale, tell me what you want and how much you want to pay for it,” Dad said confidently.
The man scrunched up his face and shook his head. “What did you say?”
Dad enunciated: “Choose something and pay what you want.”
The man whispered into the ear of his child and leaned forward slightly so the child could whisper back. He whispered again, listened, then looked up.
“How about a Creamsicle for a dollar?”
Dad motioned to me and I opened the freezer and reached into the upper left corner, where I’d carefully placed a box of Creamsicles the night before. I pulled one free from the pack and handed it to Dad. Dad handed the bar to the child, who wrapped its little fingers around it and smiled at us in appreciation.
“Don’t worry about paying. I hope to see you soon.”
When they left I grabbed the permanent marker from the desk at the front of the truck and waved it near Dad’s face.
“Daddy, we need to mark the prices on the stickers!”
“No, let’s wait. Let’s see what happens.”
My father continued to drive around the city without any plan. Sometimes we passed down the same street twice, and whenever someone called to us we’d stop and let them decide the price. Dad spoke in short, declarative sentences, and he asked me to speak if our customers had more questions. We gave some ice cream away, and we sold some for a couple dollars apiece. As darkness came on we drove back home a few dollars richer.
Tayo, Femi, and I were already out of the truck when Dad reminded us that we had to move the boxes of ice cream from the dead freezer in the truck to the grunting freezer in the garage. We quickly emptied the freezer in the truck and when we saw the mess inside the freezer in the garage we called Dad. He ran to us, and when he saw it he stepped back and cursed loudly.
The freezer was lukewarm and the ice on the sides had melted. A congealed multicolored mass of melted ice cream had pooled on the bottom. The freezer had failed.
Dad stood staring at the ground and we waited because we didn’t know what we were supposed to do. He turned around and began walking back to the truck.
“Help me put all the ice cream back into the truck,” he called.
We did as we were told, and just as we were finishing Mom came out of the house. She was wearing a thin blue wrapper and paint-splotched flip-flops. She rubbed her arms and stared at each of us before her eyes settled on Dad. “What’s wrong?” she said. “Why aren’t you guys excited? How was your first day?” Dad shook his head and stepped into the truck. He started up the engine.
“Tunde, follow me.”
I bounded into the truck and stared at Mom as we pulled away. Her face was blank and her smile was dimming, dimming, fading like a dying lightbulb.
* * *
My brothers and I felt Dad’s heat when he entered our bedroom the following morning, so we woke up before he could shout at us. We dressed quickly and ran to the truck. I opened the freezer and saw the evaporating islands of dry ice atop the boxes. I pressed the packages of ice cream with my index finger; they felt firm and cold. We were already prepared—sitting in the back of the truck, reading studiously—by the time Dad climbed into the driver’s seat. He looked back at us without saying a word, and then he started the engine.
“Daddy, what about the prices?” I asked, tentatively.
Dad switched off the ignition and left the truck with the permanent marker. I w
ent out with him and he looked down at me.
“So what should we do?”
I’d been thinking about it all night and I’d prepared an answer:
“Why don’t we make everything fifty cents?”
Dad smiled for the first time.
“Do you know how much each ice cream cost me? And I have to pay for gas, dry ice, and make enough for us to eat.”
“Okay, how about fifty-five cents?”
Dad laughed.
“Who are you trying to help? Your family? Or the strangers who will be buying from us? You must learn that there are times to be nice, and there are times to be mean.” With that Dad handed me the marker, and he called out the prices as I pointed to each of the stickers. I copied down the prices in neat blocky script.
Our second day on the road was quite different from our first. Dad drove with purpose this time, and we passed by more schools and playgrounds. He didn’t laugh with us as he had the day before; he kept his eyes on the side of the road, searching for anyone with even the smallest quantity of desire in their eyes. Our first sale came much more quickly. After about ten minutes on the road we were flagged down by three teenagers on a playground.
“Hey, man! We didn’t know anyone sold ice cream around here! Whaddya got?”
Dad pointed to the side of the truck.
“Pick whatever you like, I have a full freezer today, gentlemen.”
I peered at each of them, hoping I’d recognize a friend, or at least an acquaintance. I wanted, desperately, to meet someone I knew, someone who would return to school and tell everyone that my father sold ice cream. I knew it was my only chance at the kind of popularity I’d coveted my entire life. Once word got out, people would want to know more about my father, more about my family and—most important—more about me. I had all my answers ready.
(I stopped caring by the middle of the summer. Whenever I saw anybody I knew I could tell from the way they looked at me that they still thought I was a loser. I mean, who was I trying to kid? My parents were still from Africa, I still had a weird name, and we still weren’t Mormons. A little ice cream selling wasn’t going to change any of that.)