Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Some days the streets will teem with kids scrambling and scrounging through pockets and sneakers for sweaty wads of money, a loose quarter. They’ll grow frantic as your Prince Ice Cream truck putters into view. Kids will pogo on the roadside, flapping money like parade pennants.

Preserve the illusion that Prince Ice Cream is sweet nostalgia, a summer amusement staffed by honors students with hearts like Saint Nick. But understand that it doesn’t last. Soon your truck will crawl along abandoned streets; the clatter of your bell will ricochet off silent houses. Someone out of sight will yell, “Skippy is a ripoff.” A Sno-Kone will blast against your windshield, a Sno-Kone you sold on that street the day before. It will melt on the glass like a disintegrating rainbow.

Become desperate. Search everywhere within the hundred square miles of your jurisdiction, especially near sundown when sales peak and you’re prowling the woods west of Hammersport, just south of the lake. One virgin cul-de-sac can sometimes yield more cash than several village streets. Learn to ignore NO TRESPASSING and NO SOLICITING. Follow roads that become private drives. Encounter a farmer who’ll jump from his tractor and buy an entire box of Mississippi Mud Pies.

When it’s worst, remember there will always be certain apartment complexes and trailer parks — the places you’ll haunt even after nightfall and into late September, places where people squint at your headlights from their lawn chairs unfolded in the parking lot. Children in their pajamas and with dinner still smeared on their cheeks; children pouring sticky dimes into your hands even before their selections are made. “What can I get for this much?” they’ll ask. Watch them devour whole popsicles in the red glow of the taillights. Some kids without money will beg while their parents gawk from concrete steps. These children will cling to your arms and implore you.

Shirtless, bald-shaven teenage boys will wander around your truck, whispering to each other, lingering beside the driver’s door where inside the money is hidden, where the key in the ignition keeps the truck running. Your shoulders will tense, your pupils widen, but you’ll know you couldn’t prevent them if they tried.

One evening in the woods just south of Lake Ontario your headlights will flash over a sign half obscured by overgrown roadside brush — a wooden marker for Dorset Motor Park. Brake, and notice for the first time that the dirt access road leading to the abandoned Whitman Cold-Storage Plant is bordered by a huddle of mobile homes.

In Dorset Motor Park you’ll lurch the truck through an unseen pothole, and the bell will sound its tocsin even before you pull the strap, a noise intruding through private windows and thin trailer walls. Those who are already outside will gather in the street, children first, stepping into the high beams with their faces stark as bleached bone. Beyond them, at the road’s end, the factory will rise with its crumbling brick and lettering faded to charcoal dust.

A single street that had seemed deserted will now rustle with shadows moving just beyond the light. Someone will lean into your open window, a man whose wet coils of hair stream across half his face. Notice fresh blood on his swollen lower lip. Smell the doughy odor of beer.

“We been waiting all summer for you, man,” he’ll say. “Frigging kids been pestering me.” He’ll reach across your body and flick one clean peal from the strap. Catch the onion scent of his armpit. He’ll unlatch your door and step backward to where others are crowding, all of them scowling like prison inmates. The only lights in the park will be those glowing from the trailer windows, dimmed by towels and sheets used for drapery.

A dozen silent children will huddle at the tailgate. Stand behind them. Swat the gnats hovering around your head and glance back to the paved road that you’ve left. Overhead, stripped tree branches will vein the skyline.

The man with the busted lip will press through the children, wielding a beer can in a Buffalo Sabers cozy. “All right — it’s on me, twerps — but you all get Bomb Pops.” Nodding to you, he’ll flip open the cooler lid. “They just help theirselves here or what?”

Push through the children, quietly excusing yourself. Some kids will mutter about the baseball mitt with the embedded gumball, but the man will hold firm — “It’s Bomb Pops or nothing. Skippy’ll set you up.” Wince at the contempt fizzling in that name — Skippy. Stand on the fender. Dole out Bomb Pops to children clutching, some of them shivering.

“What’s the damage, Skip?” he’ll ask, slurping his beer. He’ll lift one leg and scratch at a welt on his bare foot and groan. He’ll be wearing only a pair of cutoff jeans with white threads like peeling skin.

Tell him fifteen dollars.

“Fifteen? You’re kidding me, man.”