From outside the vehicle it was clear what it was—both the shape and the sway of it, as well as the fact that the top layer of tan paint had been shoddily applied and in places the headlights of the cars behind it picked up flashes of the bright colors beneath, the ballooned letters and icons on sticks at angles that suggested yumminess in some mysterious way only children get.
The seized and repainted ice cream trucks now used to shuttle IRS agents is symbolic of something to the effect of adulthood overlaid on childhood? Grown-up maturity concealing, or rather overwhelming, innocence? Seems to be more overt symbolism in this than Wallace's other work, perhaps he would have better refined it in continued drafts.
