The Ice-Cream Man

Setting his bike up against the fence, he entered the dugout just as the game ended. Jimmy met him near the bleachers tucking his bat behind his head with both hands. “What’s up, you shitheels!” Jimmy greeted him with a good natured push to the shoulder. He had picked up the word “shitheels” from his older brother Eddie and had become quite fond of it in the last few weeks.

“Nothing,” he replied, “just going around on the new bike.”

“I see.” Bobby saw him look past his shoulder for a moment before looking back at him. “One of them girls is checking you out, man.”

He looked back to see the group of girls; while most were looking and smiling back, he picked out the girl Jimmy was talking about almost immediately. Long, wavy red hair curtained away from her bright green eyes as she gave Bobby a warm, dimpled smile. He took quick glances in between staring at the ground before his feet, but he guessed that she liked what she saw.

The boys and the girls went off in groups around them, and Bobby was just about to work up the courage to approach the girl when a sound suddenly entered their collective earshot. High-pitched, but distant. The sound quickly rose as it grew closer; the sound of a truck blaring its familiar, pleasant jingle.

“Ice cream!” one of the kids shouted unnecessarily as everybody rushed to flag down the source of the jingle. It stopped at the end of the street, and so did everybody else as they awaited the services of the Ice Cream Man. Bobby, however, had no money on his person, and so he begrudgingly turned around to collect his bicycle, which he sat on idly while he watched his friends buying their ice cream. While watching, he noticed that it was the same man in the truck he had seen the last few times. An older man (probably as old as Mr. Hargis, Bobby suspected), with thin white hair and a pleasant smile to light up his slightly wrinkled face.

About me
