The Ice-cream Man (8 page)

8

Marty spent most of Tuesday being stretched and prodded by doctors and therapists. He didn’t know what was worse, the pain in his knee, or all the unwanted attention. By Wednesday his whole body was one big hurt. He was glad his mother hadn’t made him go to school. Bruises from his tumble down the ramp were popping up in places he barely knew existed, and the graze on his forehead and nose burned like a brand.

What had he been thinking? If the purpose of his folly had been to get his mother’s attention, he’d succeeded. He’d never seen her so close to the edge, so out of control as he had on Monday night. The dark part of him might have enjoyed it if he hadn’t been on the verge of blacking out with pain.

If annoying his mother was the prize, it came with a hefty price tag. Marty’s mother seized the opportunity to drag out the old surgery debate. She’d been plotting with the orthopaedic surgeon to get Marty on the operating table for over a year. He’d resisted the persuasive talk of the physios: Didn’t he want more freedom? Maybe they’d even be able to get him on his feet and using a walker again. Wouldn’t that be fine?

Marty couldn’t seem to get it through their heads that he had more freedom in his chair than he’d ever had. Wheelchairs were more socially acceptable than walkers, too. You didn’t see cripples running with walking frames in the Para Olympics, did you? Besides, no one could guarantee he’d ever walk again anyway – even if he wanted to. All the doctor could do was stretch Marty’s tight hamstrings enough to straighten his legs. The problem was it wouldn’t last.

The messages from Marty’s brain to his muscles would always be scrambled, so everything would get tight again. Surgery was just another way for his mother to exert control over him. If he had the operation he’d be totally dependent on her for months afterward, not to mention the sadistic team of physiotherapists.

Marty sighed and looked down at his knee. At least it was back where it was meant to be – more or less. The worst of the pain was now just an ugly memory. He gripped his wheel rims, wincing as the metal touched his grazed palms, and moved through the lounge room. When he reached the dining room, he cocked his head, listening for his parents’ voices. They were still in the kitchen arguing his fate.

‘We should wait till summer is over,’ his father said. ‘He’ll need to be in plaster for weeks and it’s too hot right now.’

‘That’s all well and good, but Doctor Stephenson said there’s every chance his knee will dislocate again. I say we do it now.’

What was all this about ‘we’? Marty had heard enough. He turned away from their voices, headed for the front door. Getting to the billabong to meet Rick yesterday had been impossible, but hopefully he would be there again today.

By the time Marty reached the bitumen path, his knee was throbbing and his sweat-slicked palms were on fire. He let the chair roll off the path and into the bush and then made his slow, painful way to the track that led around the lagoon. Once the lagoon was behind him – clear of kids for the moment since school had only just let out – he stopped and grabbed the water bottle strapped under his seat. Now that he was in the shade of the trees he felt safe. His parents would never think to look for him here. His mother didn’t think he could go anywhere there wasn’t a footpath, and he’d done nothing to dispel that myth. Whenever she quizzed him about scratches and missing paint on his chair, he’d look surprised and say he had no idea. Sometimes it came in handy when adults didn’t know what he was capable of.

Marty recapped the bottle. As he reached down to replace it, his mobile phone rang. He jumped, sending a bolt of pain through his injured leg. With everything else that was going on he’d completely forgotten about his new phone. His fingers fumbled at the zippered pouch beneath his seat and he pulled it out. He hadn’t had a chance to give anyone his number yet, so there was only one place this call could be coming from. He held the ringing phone in his hand for a moment then put it on his lap and propelled the chair down the track, deeper into the scrub. What would his parents do if he didn’t answer? Ring the police, more than likely. He could almost see his mother wailing down the phone that her wheelchair baby had been snatched right out of his own home. Ring the cavalry this minute, Officer! Ring the Prime Minister! Better yet, ring the newspapers!

The scrub thickened. Marty rolled through pockets of deepening shade, skirting fallen logs and bumping over rocks. And still the phone rang.

He pulled the chair to a stop. He’d have to answer it, tell her he was fine and to leave him alone, that if she didn’t he’d never come home.

Marty snatched the phone from his lap. ‘Hello, Mum, I’m –’

‘Hello, Marty.’

‘You’re not . . .’ Marty cleared his throat, trying to summon some spit. His chest was uncomfortably tight. ‘Who is this?’

Laughter. ‘You don’t know who I am? Well then, you may call me the Grim Reaper.’

Marty’s scalp prickled. ‘Look, I think you must have a wrong number.’
How lame was that? The guy knew his name
!

‘Oh, Marty, you funny boy. Perhaps this will jog your memory . . . click, click . . . it’s time to play “Name That Tune”. Click, brrrrrrrrr . . .
Half a pound of tuppeny rice; half a pound of treacle; that’s the way the money goes. Pop! goes the weasel
.

Marty jerked the phone away from his ear as though it had just grown fangs. His breath came in short, harsh bursts. His head spun. What was going on here? Something crackled nearby and his head whipped around, eyes scanning the bush. As far as he could tell he was alone.

It took every scrap of determination he had to put the phone back to his ear. ‘W-why are you doing this?’ he said in a strained voice.

‘Because I can. What’s the term you young people use? Ah, yes, payback.’

Marty gritted his teeth. Anger uncoiled in his belly. That was good. He cleared his throat. ‘Look, I really don’t need this aggro, so leave me alone, you frigging creep.’

‘Tch, tch. Such dreadful language. You think you’ve got it tough, do you? You don’t know the meaning of the word.’

‘How did you get this number?’

‘I told you, I’m the Grim Reaper, Marty. I can get whatever I want. I know you’re the kind of kid who likes to have fun. You love pranks. Isn’t that so, Marty?’

The memory of the day he’d slam-jumped the ice- cream man swam into Marty’s mind. His stomach spasmed. ‘N-no, no I don’t. Leave me alone.’

Sigh. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that. The Grim Reaper comes for everyone sooner or later. Life is all about consequences, Marty. And naughty children must be taught their lessons. How else will they learn?’

Although he was almost physically sick with fear, Marty fed his growing anger as one would feed sticks to a fire. It flared within him, hot and alive. Who did this nut-bag think he was?

‘You’re not the Grim Reaper, you freak!’ he screamed into the phone. ‘And if you don’t leave me alone – leave all of us alone – I swear I’ll call the cops. You hear me?’

Laughter. ‘And tell them what? That you almost caused an accident with that clever prank of yours? I’m sure that will get you a lot of sympathy from the police.’

‘No, I’ll tell them how you’ve been stalking us, how you . . . How you rang me.’

‘Oh you really crack me up, Marty. You can prove none of it. Where else should an ice-cream van be on a hot day if not driving along a residential street, hmm? Stalking indeed.’

The ice-cream man’s voice lost its jovial tone and took on a hard edge that doused the fire in Marty’s belly. ‘Let me give you some friendly advice – if the police so much as give me a parking ticket I will hold you personally responsible. I will be in your face every second of every day. I will make you and your trouble-making friends pay. You got that?’

Although there was no one there to see him but the birds in the trees, Marty slowly nodded.

The phone went silent.

At the billabong, Marty sat with his back against a gnarled gum tree and gathered his wits. After thinking it through, he’d decided that he was more likely to run into the ice-cream man if he headed back home than by continuing to the billabong as planned. He felt confident he hadn’t been followed, and even if he had he would be well hidden on the bank of the billabong by the thick wall of foliage.

Watching the shadows skip across the water and listening to the sounds of the bush was a balm to Marty’s shattered nerves. He’d never gone camping, had never really wanted to, but right then he had an overwhelming urge to see what it was like to sleep among the trees and wake to the sounds of chirruping insects, rather than the jabbering of his clock radio.

Marty’s thoughts drifted back to the ice-cream man.
What if you’re wrong and he did follow you
? a niggling voice, buried deep in Marty’s head, asked.

What if he got out of that van and followed you on foot
?
How hard would it be to follow a kid crashing through the bush in a wheelchair
?

Something moved through the undergrowth mere metres away from where Marty sat. He strained his neck looking left then right. A twig snapped, filling him with dread. He held his breath and waited. Was it Rick? No, Rick would have shown himself by now. It had to be an animal.
Or the ice-cream man
his mind insisted. No, he couldn’t afford to think like that, not now that he was trapped here. Aaron had said there were feral dogs. Maybe that’s what he’d heard. A heartbeat later the leaves rustled, further away and then, thank all the gods in heaven, the noises stopped altogether.

Just an animal out for a walk, something furry and harmless, Marty told himself, sucking air between his teeth. If Rick was coming he’d be here by now; it had to be after four o’clock. How much longer should he wait? No sooner had this thought formed than Marty heard the unmistakeable crackle of sticks and leaves being crushed underfoot, and then the murmur of voices.

Rick broke through the screen of branches with Aaron close behind. When he spotted Marty he grinned. His eyes flicked to Marty’s strapped knee.

‘Geez, didn’t think you’d make it down here with that leg.’

Marty touched the elastic support bandage, no

longer white after he’d had to leave his chair and crawl through the last few metres of scrub to the billabong.

‘Aches a bit, but that’s not my biggest problem right now.’ He glanced at Aaron and nodded a greeting.

‘I’ve got some heavy-duty stuff to tell you guys.’ Frowning, Rick squatted on the bank and scooped

up a handful of stones. He weighed them in his hand and began, one by one, to throw them at the rusting VW. ‘Why do I get the feeling I’m not gonna like this?’

‘Yeah, well, I don’t like it either.’ Marty picked up a rock and threw it. It hit the water with a deep PLUNK! A startled rustling sounded in the tree above.

‘You going to sit down, or have you got someplace else to be?’ he asked Aaron.

Aaron’s cheeks flushed pink. He shook his head. A hank of streaked hair flopped across one eye. He pushed it back and collapsed in a heap, his expression grim. ‘It’s got to do with
him
, hasn’t it?’

Marty nodded and picked up another rock. ‘He rang me on my mobile, on the way here. I haven’t even given you guys my number yet and somehow the ice-cream man has it.’ He suppressed a shudder and threw the rock as hard as he could. It missed the water entirely, landing on the far bank. Something in the undergrowth grunted and moved away.

Aaron and Rick sat in stunned silence. Their pale faces and gaping mouths reminded Marty of the clowns’ heads you have to plug with ping-pong balls at the show to win a prize. Under other circumstances, he would have laughed.

A crow dropped silently onto the roof of the VW and regarded them with sharp eyes. Most people would consider the crow’s appearance a bad omen, but not Marty. He respected the intelligence of crows. Any bird that could figure out how to flip over a cane toad and peck out its guts without getting poisoned was okay in his book.

‘Crud,’ Rick finally said.

Marty nodded. ‘With a capital “C”, mate.’

‘What did he say?’ Aaron’s tongue was going mental –
lickety-lick, lickety-lick
.

‘Not a lot really. Just wanted me to know he was enjoying making our lives a misery and that there’s nothing we can do about it.’

In a flurry of movement, the crow spread its wings and took to the sky.

‘We have to tell the police,’ Aaron said. ‘First the email, now this.’

‘What email?’ Marty demanded.

Aaron glanced at Rick. When Rick didn’t say anything he turned back to Marty. ‘Someone calling themselves the Grim Reaper sent me an email yesterday. There was a sound file attached. It was a recording of “Pop! Goes the Weasel”.’

Marty chewed his lip. ‘He called himself that when he rang me, too. Said he could do anything he wants ’cause he’s the Grim Reaper.’

‘We have to tell the police,’ Aaron insisted.

‘No, we can’t.’ Marty picked up a stick and began tearing at the bark. ‘The freak said that if the cops come anywhere near him he’ll really make us pay and I believe him. Hey, do you still have the email?’

‘No, I deleted it. Just the thought of having that on my computer gave me the creeps.’