An Ice Cream For Henry

Just like its owner, the Wrangler was rough and ready, good for another fifty thousand miles in the toughest conditions, even though it had rumbled in complaint ever since the time Ted forgot to top up the antifreeze and it blew up on Ocean Drive, an incident that resulted in Ted always carrying bottles of antifreeze in the trunk and bringing the car in for regular checks.

It was unbearably hot as Jim wheeled himself out from under the Mercedes where he had been working on the damned muffler. His face and hands were covered in oil. Jim had never managed to break the habit of using the palm of his hands to wipe the sweat from his brow rather than his wrists,which would have been the only way to keep his face clean because he didn’t wear gloves.

He got to his feet and went to check his paperwork in the tiny room at the back of the repair shop that doubled up as an office and chill-out zone. It was the only distraction in his place of work, apart from the tiny adjoining john.

‘ Bills, bills, bills. For Christ’ s sake!’ Jim said to himself as he put the papers back in order. He picked up the phone from the tiny square desk fixed to the wall and dialed the number of his sister Jasmine.

He informed her Henry would be coming over at lunchtime, asked her how she was and told her that, sooner or later, he wanted to take a trip to Ireland so he could once again take in the emerald-green hills and introduce his son to the clean, fresh air of his homeland. Jim Lewis was no poet, but behind his knitted brow and hardened expression lay a fairly sensitive and melancholy soul.

He had changed a great deal since Bet died, losing some of that sparkle that had enabled him to see things in a very different, positive light. He was very close to Jasmine, even though they were fifteen years apart. Jim was nearly forty-eight and Jasmine over sixty, the other difference being that Jim was in perfect health while his sister had been breathing with just one lung for several years.

Jim came to the United States first, having spent the first ten years of his life in Cork, Ireland. His American dad had married a beautiful Irish girl and gone on to have two children with her, those fifteen years apart. When Jim’s mom died when he was ten years old, his father returned to live in the States and brought Jim with him, while Jasmine stayed behind in her job and crossed the Atlantic only as she approached forty, with her own health already suffering and her father coming to the end of his life. Morgan Lewis died a slow death, eventually succumbing to Alzheimer’s at sixty-two. He had little to leave his two children, apart from the opportunity to embrace the American dream.

Jim used most of the money he got from selling his father’s house to pay for his sister’s health care. This made him, in spite of his numerous character flaws that included stubbornness and a lack of education, appear worthy of people’s respect.

He switched on the radio and tuned in to a country music station. He liked country music, especially since learning to dance to it at the Road to Hell on Saturday nights.

He got to work on the engine of Ted’s Wrangler. As usual, he just needed to give it a once over and then top up the oil and antifreeze.

All his focus really was on Ronald Howard’s Mercedes-Benz. Now the muffler was done, he had to make sure the driver’s door opened smoothly.

After a couple hours work, the gull-wing door once again opened effortlessly as if it had just rolled off the production line back in the days when the world was full of hope after a decade spent recovering from the horrors of the Second World War.

No sooner had he finished the job than Ted Burton entered the repair shop with two bags of fried chicken and a four-pack of beer.

“Jeez, Jim, that baby’s gotta be worth more than your house and mine put together! What happened? Did it have a run-in with a Rockefeller?” Ted said in his baritone voice.

Jim smiled: “It’s the jewel in Ronald Howard’s collection.”

“Is that your pal who’s married to the Loch Ness monster?”

“Yep, that’s the one.”

“And he leaves this Fort-Knox-on-wheels in your repair shop? If I were you, I might have found a way to make it disappear by now!” said Ted, laughing heartily.

“I can’t deny I’ve given it some thought, Ted, but here, let me show you something. Look over there, across the street...” replied Jim, pointing to an armored car with two men inside.

“I’d spotted that car. Who are those two guys?” asked Ted curiously.

“They’re private security guards hired by the Howards. They’ve been out there three days and nights. They change shifts with another two guards every eight hours. But that’s not it; come look out the bathroom window. There’s another armored car keeping watch over the back.”

“Jeez! Money talks, huh?” muttered Ted as he followed Jim into the bathroom.

“Maybe marrying that brute wasn’t such a dumb idea after all, huh Ted?” Jim said, taking one of the bags of fried chicken from his friend.

“You’d better believe it, even if it’s meant having to get Viagra on prescription refill, the old dog!”

“Maybe he likes it...”

“Jim, that’s gotta be worse than going with a guy. He can’t possibly enjoy it. He’s just thinking of the interest in his bank account!” exclaimed Ted knowingly.

“There’s nothing worse than going with a guy. I’d rather fuck a sheep, as long as it was female!” replied Jim with a look of disgust.

“Bud, my ex-wife used to say that homophobes were actually repressed homosexuals...” replied Ted, snickering as he bit into a piece of chicken.

“Not in my case. Look, I’ve got nothing against them...it’s just that I’d rather keep them at arm’s length. Whatever they get up to in their own time is fine, but I don’t wanna know about it and I don’t want them anywhere near me. Thanks for the chicken and beer, by the way. Make sure you don’t choke on it!” said Jim, before tucking in to his first piece of meat as he watched Ted spluttering because his had gone down the wrong way.

“Wash it down, my friend. I don’t want a dead body lying in my repair shop!” he added, as Ted recovered from his episode by downing half his can of beer.

“How’s my Jeep?” asked Ted, having finished his beer and thrown the can in the trash.

“Oh she’s doing great, Ted. She’s like a tank!”

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to, bud. They’re just heaps of junk nowadays!” said Ted, cracking open another beer and taking a big mouthful.

“Ain’t that the truth...” replied Jim, looking down at his watch. It was nearly twelve.

Ted Burton let out a huge belch of such volume it caught the attention of the two guards hired by Ronald Howard to watch over his Mercedes.

Chapter 4

H enry had spent the first of the two hours he had to complete the math test regularly repeating a four-step movement of his neck: first to the left, looking out the window; second a tiny bit to the right, peeking down at what his classmate Nicholas was writing on his graph paper; third straight ahead, checking that Miss Anderson wasn’t looking; and fourth ahead and to the right, trying to catch the eye of Joanna, but she was engrossed in her work, her head bent over her paper as she furiously scribbled down calculations that were way beyond Henry.

“I can’t do it...” Henry whispered to Nicholas.

“So copy,” replied Nicholas under his breath, not even lifting his head.

He would have copied Henry himself, but Nicholas was already on page three and his neighbor was still stuck on page one.

‘ Ah, who cares?’ thought Henry as he turned the page and began to copy what little he could make out from Nicholas’s sheet.

Chapter 5

I n New York, Barbara Harrison was running north to south through Central Park. She would do her daily workout come rain or shine, although sometimes she had to put work first, in which case she would make do with the treadmill in her apartment or, when she was out of town, the ones in hotel gyms.

She had a lunch date with Robert at one o’clock. They had made up over the phone the previous evening, and this afternoon they would be heading off together to spend the weekend in Robert’s woodland cottage up in Maine, which Barbara considered to be their love nest.

Robert, who was already forty-seven and had an established career, was keen for things with Barbara to move to the next stage. It wasn’t that she wasn’t keen on Robert or hadn’t thought about taking the next step - after all, they’d been seeing each other for years - it was just that he didn’t seem to tolerate her working hours anymore. She could be around for the whole week then suddenly take off for days, or sometimes weeks, on end. Robert hated that, but for Barbara work had to come first, even if she had begun to rethink her priorities a little over the last few weeks after Robert started to keep his distance.

Barbara was forty-two now, and if she wanted to become a mom she would have to get a move on. She didn’t want people to think she was her own child’s grandma on his or her first day at school!

She loved being in the field and getting around, being active rather than stuck behind a desk, but she figured she had already got everything she wanted from her career, and getting it had hindered her private life more than she could ever have imagined. She felt ready for a new chapter because she loved Robert and knew that she’d never find another guy like him and would eventually end up alone. ‘ A horrible, frumpy old maid. That’ s what would become of me!’ Barbara thought to herself as she ran along West Drive before turning at the south end of Central Park and lengthening her stride as she headed toward East Drive. From there, she would exit the Park on 72nd Street and make her way to her apartment, where she would have time for a quick shower before packing her case for the weekend.

Chapter 6

R obert Brown had booked a table at Erminia, an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side that had been in Eyewitness Travel’ s top ten for a while now.

Barbara had Italian roots and Robert knew that she would appreciate his choice of eatery, even though it was only her maternal grandmother who was Italian and Barbara herself had never been to Italy.

Robert was going to ask her to marry him in Maine, and he wanted everything to be perfect. He loved her and wanted her as his wife. He had told his dad as much in a phone call that morning before leaving the office, and his dad had responded by telling him it was the biggest load of crap he’d ever heard come out of his son’s mouth: ‘ Son, you’ ve done great so far and now you want to tie yourself down?’ Robert chuckled to himself as he recalled his father’s words, spending several minutes flossing in front of the bathroom mirror. Robert was obsessed with his teeth. He brushed them at least ten times a day and flossed even after eating a couple olives with an apéritif. He never went anywhere without his faithful white box of floss. As a teenager, he had lost three teeth when he face-planted after coming off his bike having misjudged a bend at the bottom of a crazy descent. He had also broken an arm and his nose and had deep abrasions on both knees. He survived, fortunately, but having to look at himself without those teeth for three months was unbearable. He’d lost one canine and two premolars, and for someone who was one of the three best-looking guys in college, with a smile that was irresistible to the ladies, that represented something of an existential crisis. He could have had them put back in earlier, but his dad wanted to teach him a lesson and make him see that we’re all just flesh and bones, nobody is indestructible. It was a lesson that had served him well. The boy who fell off his bike had gotten into several scrapes over the years, but that experience had straightened his head out and now he was Robert Brown, owner of one of New York’s premier renovation firms and able to rely on the best carpenter around: his brother, James. The brothers and their team could turn a run-down apartment into a luxury home in a matter of weeks.

Chapter 7

W ith her voice like nails down a blackboard and eyes like a hawk, Miss Anderson always made Henry break out in a cold sweat; every time she looked at him, she seemed to be saying the same thing: ‘ You’ ll never pass your exams. No chance.’

Summer was in the air at Northfield Elementary School. The mating ritual of two flies buzzing their way irritatingly round the classroom confirmed as much. Henry flicked the flies away from his face with his right hand, sending them toward the middle of the room. The class was waiting for Miss Anderson to collect the test that had proved beyond Henry. He was more about words than figures.

The buzzer sounding on Miss Anderson’s desk was the cue for her to begin her sixty-second countdown, at the end of which the pupils would have to put down their pens.

“Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven, fifty-six…”

That bitch loved counting down to zero. She had that smug look on her face, and it gave her a thrill when she caught the eye of a struggling student who seemed to be begging her for more time.

Henry had already put his pen down by the time she’d reached thirty. He looked down casually at his paper, where aside from a square and a few multiplications, he hadn’t managed to finish much - certainly not the divisions, which he found impossible once the numbers got too high.

Joanna complained that she just needed one more minute.

“You can’t cheat the clock! Eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.....zerooooo!”

Miss Anderson got up from her desk and headed straight for Joanna to collect hers first. Joanna threw her arms over her sheet in a desperate but vain attempt to keep it from her teacher’s grasp.

“I want to see ALL pens on the tables. Is that clear?” the teacher said sternly, waving Joanna’s test in the air.

Joanna Longowa was of Polish origin. The prettiest girl in class, she had long blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin that highlighted her rosy pink lips. Henry had liked her right from the third grade, when she and her family had moved to New Jersey. She was good at all the subjects, and her only flaw was her perfectionism. Henry was certain she’d finished the test and got all the sums right, but figured she’d just wanted to embellish her standard-issue paper with some doodles.

“Henry Lewis, what do you call this?”

“It’s my test,” Henry replied timidly. A few of the children couldn’t stop themselves from smirking. Everyone knew that Henry was dumb at math, but no-one was brave enough to mock him in front of Miss Anderson, because she’d mark you down or, worse, detain the entire class during recess for a whole week.

“Silence!” she yelled, reaching up slowly and clenching her fist around the two flies. She walked calmly to the open window and tossed the traumatized insects outside as if she were feeding the ducks.

There was complete silence as Miss Anderson finished collecting in the assignments, and only the bell at the end of the class restored the usual noise and commotion.

Chapter 8

cca

T ed Burton drove his old Wrangler out of Jim’s repair shop at midday, and within an hour he had arrived in Jersey City to spend a few hours with his friends from the Firearms Academy. Sat outside the entrance as usual, basking in the sun, was Leland Wright. Leland was well into his seventies, but he had the complexion and look of a man fifteen years younger. He wore a Marines beret over his close-cropped white hair, a blue t-shirt bearing the inscription ‘ My girl is my gun’, gray camouflage pants, and black tactical boots.

“I thought you weren’t coming round here no more!” said Leland as Ted appeared before him.

“What do you say we have ourselves a little M4 battle?” replied Ted, grinning from ear to ear.

Leland looked at his friend and began to laugh as he stood up from his plastic chair.

“You old son of a bitch....wait here while I ask Charlie to come and replace me on the door,” replied Leland, pulling a two-way from his left pant pocket to call his friend.

Inside the Firearms Academy, it was far less crowded than on weekends, so the line for the range was fairly short. Next to the automatic-weapons counter was a prominent framed poster of Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association.

“You want some mozzarella sticks?” Leland asked Ted.

“No thanks, chief. Maybe later. I only had breakfast an hour ago,” Ted replied, desperate to get his hands on the M4 assault rifle.

“Suit yourself, I’m gettin’ me some,” said Leland, making his way toward the huge bar.

Everyone greeted Leland with respect and, as Ted had done seconds earlier, called him “chief”. Little wonder his favorite t-shirt had the word emblazoned on it in big yellow letters. That was the tee Leland wore on weekends, when hundreds of gun-loving Americans and their families would descend on the Academy. Not everybody came to shoot or take a course on how to use firearms; the Academy was simply one of the favored hangouts of second-amendment fanatics. On Sundays, the Academy would play host to people of all ages, colors, and races, united in their disdain for Obama’s proposal to have Congress debate a law banning the use and purchase of automatic weapons.

“Come on, pal, come over here and join me for a beer!” yelled Leland in the direction of Ted, who was salivating at the prospect of feeling the M4A1 in his hands.

“I never say no to a beer!” Ted replied, making his way toward the bar.

Leland was chewing on the still piping hot mozzarella sticks, seemingly without burning his tongue or the roof of his mouth.

“Go on, have one...” he urged Ted, who didn’t need a second invitation and bit into one of the sticks, taking care not to burn his own mouth.

“Some Italian journalist came by on Sunday. You know, one of those ball-breaking conscientious objectors who think they’re smarter than everyone else. I spotted him straight away. He was like a fish out of water!”

“What did he want?” asked Ted.

“You know what Europeans are like: damn democrats hoping to speak to us and find out why we would possibly want to bear arms.”

“And did he interview you?”

“Sure. But if you’d been here, he’d have interviewed you as well,” replied Leland.

“What did he ask?”

“The usual bullshit about how gun ownership is linked to shootings in schools and stuff like that. I told him: ‘Guns don’t shoot themselves.’ If he’d just thought for a second about how many Americans own a gun, he’d have realized that by his reckoning the entire United States should be populated by the ghosts of people who’ve been shot just for fun. It pisses me off how people draw parallels between folk like us, who are simply defending the second amendment, and a few fucking screwballs. We’ve got more than three hundred million guns in circulation and they try to lecture us on morals! They can go fuck themselves!” Leland shouted, his face red with anger.

“I hope you ripped him a new one, chief. I can just picture that pussy journalist asking his questions, trying to get the moral high ground. Who the fuck are these Europeans anyway? Do you think any of them actually swear allegiance to that blue flag with the stars? I don’t know what the Brits are waiting for. They should just leave! They barely tolerate one another, they don’t even speak the same language for Christ’s sake! The only thing uniting them is that stupid currency, and that’s likely to fall below the dollar. Well, I say let them stay unarmed and ready to be fucked by some demented regime! Seems like they’ve already forgotten all their fucking dictators. They just don’t get how important the second amendment is. They see us as cowboys, but when they’re totally screwed by another crazed despot, they’ll be begging for our help...”

“Tell me about it. They squeal and we come running!”

“And I’ll tell you something else: I bet they’re sat there jerking off listening to Obama on TV, and they can’t wait to pin the blame on the United States when some crazy shit happens in the world!”

“You tell ‘em, Ted!” cried Leland, banging his fist on the bar.

“Look, chief, I won’t deny that at my age even I’m starting to think it might be sensible to restrict the sale of guns to civilians. Automatics, I mean. Only people with their heads screwed on and both their oars in the water should be allowed to own an automatic. Even better, why not limit them to people who have served in the military and sworn allegiance to the United States? Loyal people, patriots, people like us, Leland....” Ted said, and took a long sip of his beer.

“Sure, but people should always be ready to do whatever they have to do to protect themselves...”

“A decent pistol is more than good enough for protection. Some weapons should be reserved for war,” replied Ted, still caught up in the emotion of the discussion after Leland’s impassioned rant.

“Depends on who the enemy is, Ted. What’s the name of that spaghetti western where Clint Eastwood says: ‘ When a man with a .45 meets a man with a rifle, the man with a pistol will be a dead man’?”

“I didn’t know the Italians could make movies!” joked Ted, as Leland and the barman who had been listening to their conversation joined him in roaring with laughter.

“You’re a lowlife, Ted Burton, and I’ve always loved you for it, but I’m tellin’ you, that was a great movie!”

Ted and Leland quickly finished their beers and retrieved their assault rifles in readiness for their contest on the range.

“Hey look, Major, seems as though it’s on the house for you today,” Leland said, pointing at a sign that read: ‘Kids shoot free’.

“Thanks, granddad, but I don’t need a sign. I may be retired, but just looking at you makes me feel young,” replied Ted.

“What do you say we make this a little more interesting? Ten beers says you’ll be bawling like a baby when we compare our M4 scores,” Leland challenged Ted.

“You’re on, granddad. I’ll be beating you just because I don’t want to have to carry you home over my shoulder...” replied Ted, laughing as he followed his friend into the shooting area, his rifle slung over his shoulder and boxes of ammunition firmly in his grasp.

Chapter 9

H enry was relaxing between classes, and had quickly forgotten all about the math test, when suddenly he heard the unmistakable sound of the ice cream truck drifting in through the window. Actually, it wasn’t the same tune as normal, but it was close enough. Henry looked out and saw that, indeed, it wasn’t the usual truck.

‘ Mr. Smith must have had to get rid of his old truck…’ the boy thought to himself, speculating that his favorite vendor must have fallen on hard times: in place of his usual huge white and pink truck with a giant plastic ice cream cone on the roof was an smaller old gray campervan with just some small modifications on one side. The vehicle looked like something out of those World War II books that Bet had bought from a flea market when she was pregnant and Henry’s dad kept on display in the bookcase in the living room.