The Entertainer
by Nicki Blake
He sits in his truck and watches the children.
He prefers the quiet suburbs, the ones whose leafy avenues and infrequent traffic make it safe for kids to play out in the street and on the sidewalks. These are where he parks at a distance, winds down the window, and waits. Now, in the high summer when schools are still on vacation—his favourite time of year—there are children everywhere in the hour before dinner. Sounds of their play carry on the warm breeze. He stares at them as they splash in wading pools. He silently referees their roadway ballgames.
He’s waiting for the point when the activity lessens, when parents call from the porches summoning their barefoot offspring inside. The street empties: bicycles are abandoned, tipped sideways, on patchy brown lawns; the wading pools with their meniscus of dead leaves and grass-clippings slosh into stillness; baseball bats are dropped mid-play, ready for the games to resume later.
When that holy moment comes, when there is no one left, he shuts his eyes and smiles, breathing deeply, relishing the anticipation. Then he starts the engine. Foot barely on the accelerator, he moves off, trundling into the vacated spaces, cruising inches from the kerb so he can peer into their homes and gardens.
He needs to be sure they are mid-meal, gathered around the dining table or the backyard grill. He wants them occupied, settled, before he flicks the switch which sends music shrieking through the horns on the truck’s roof: shrill digital ragtime ripping through the early evening tranquillity, its twangy melody a rude antithesis to the plaintive mellow song of roosting birds. He cranks the volume. Joplin’s magnum opus distorts and reverberates across the entire suburb and upwards to where planes are bleeding contrails across a pinkening sky.
His heart leaps when the jaunty tune summons them to the windows. Small faces steam the glass with eager breath. It is their turn to watch now as the truck, with its seductive pastel-pink paint and bright decals displaying the temptations within, crawls away from them. Some make a futile dash for him, banging open front doors and racing to the kerb, coins clutched in their sticky little hands. His foot presses harder on the pedal, not by much, but enough so he sees their woeful faces quickly become distant in the rearview mirror.
Sometimes he avoids the streets, sticking to the back alleys, imagining their confusion when he is heard but not seen. Sometimes he’s daring enough to park and stick a ‘Sorry – Sold Out’ sign on the sales-window before he blares “The Entertainer” to bring them all running while he hides on the other side of the glass, stifling his giggles as he listens to the gleeful approach, the dejected retreat.
When twilight comes, he drives to the woods on the edge of town. There, in clearing concealed by a glade of sycamores, he upends the contents of the vats onto the undergrowth before returning them to the truck—they will self-replenish overnight and he will awake to a fresh batch, ready for another day’s entertainment. While he works, pitching tub after tub of withheld ice cream over the wild blueberry bushes where it melts deliciously like strange summer snow, he imagines the children dragging their feet to their too-light bedrooms, protesting summer’s lack of darkness and their unreadiness for sleep as bitterly as they protested the denial of treats.
Job done, he resumes his seat, taking pleasure in the wastefulness. As darkness descends upon the vanilla-drenched clearing, wild laughter rises within him along with an exquisite schadenfreude which is as sweet, as ephemeral, as cold as ice cream.
The Molotov Cocktail 