Donnetown Today or Recently (or a Long Time Ago): 23. For Ice Cream

At the round earth's imagin'd corners

At the round earths imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angells, and arise, arise
From death, you numberlesse infinities
Of soules, and to your scattered bodies goe,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom warre, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despaire, law, chance, hath slaine, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never tast deaths woe.
But let them sleepe, Lord, and mee mourne a space,
For, if above all these, my sinnes abound,
'Tis late to aske abundance of thy grace,
When wee are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach mee how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou’hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood.

-- John Donne

Sunday, February 5, 2012

23. For Ice Cream

[Statement of Gerrard Hubin. Written by Hubin June 24, 1985, James County Police Headquarters interview room.]

Cops told me, said write down what I did, and looks like they want to watch me write it down, but I put my left arm curved around the paper so they can just wait till I am done to see what it is.

When I was little I wrote with my left hand and Father Pfeffer made us write with quills and inkwells. My hand would always get in the wet ink and Father Pfeffer tied it behind my back with the strap and made me learn to do it right with my good right hand. I use pencils now, I like the big fat ones you can hold easy, but I still use my good hand and do it right. My bad hand I keep in my pocket except when I'm writing and then it holds down the paper and wants to write but it can't. It wants to do things all the time. Sometimes I feel bad inside and the bad hand keeps shaking and grabbing and I have to strap it up and make it go to sleep.

So here: I sold ice cream without a selling license. Blackgall Creamery fired me out of my job, so I went and sold ice cream which I made myself. Why I'm here is, I have no license to sell ice cream. So sure it's a ticket or worse.

I sold ice cream at night to people when they were asleep in bed, and I have no night business license. I maybe came in their windows, except for Mrs. Wissel who didn't lock her door, but the others it was windows. No license for that either.

Fat cop keeps looking at the big mirror. That can't be pleasant. He came to the house and got me, I tried to fix up the ticket with free ice cream, I thought it would work, it didn't work, he said no and called me wise-ass. He doesn't look like a man who ever turned down ice cream before.

Smooth dark ice cream, Red Raspberry Black Cherry. First I went to Mr. Voordts house after he fired me out of my job and I felt real bad, and I stood outside the window a long time and it got more and more bad and then I think I unbuckled the strap on the bad hand. Pins and needles but it was strong and went to work right away. I sold Mr. Voordts a great lot of Red Raspberry Black Cherry, and then also I sold some ice cream to Mrs. Voordts because she woke up. All of the ice cream melted red.

Some other people too, I felt like I wanted to move some more of the Red Raspberry Black Cherry while it was still dark, so I went down the block, to Mrs. Wissel's house and some others. Every time I sold it the ice cream melted red and it spread out red on the floor, and they got down in it laying down. Or they got down first and laid down on their lying faces and then it spread out red on the floor. I'm not super good at remembering stuff.

But they folded up when the bad hand went to work and went down for the count alright. But I felt a great deal better after that and I put the strap in the donation box at the church on my way home.

The main thing is, I have no ice cream license, therefore cops came and got me and they are watching me write this and I know I write slow but steady and they can wait, and now I'm done.