It’s already 89 degrees at 11:30 in the morning
in Kansas City, and as I wait for my six extra-hot tacos,
I look around and wonder how many in the lunch crowd
grew up eating these things since the joint opened
for business in 1957 as a small takeout shack
about a half-mile up the highway where you could get two
deep-fried tacos with powdered cheese for a quarter,
although now my brother jokes that it takes a small bank
loan to buy the same today; of course they’re damn good
at any price, at least that’s what we think and it’s probably
the same for that thin bony woman with no visible tattoos
standing close by, wearing a faded Howard the Duck T-shirt
and clutching her order receipt as she stares transfixed
at the counter, like she possibly holds the winning ticket
for the Run of the Roses at Churchill Downs;
however, that particular race is a fast two minutes
from start to finish and she’ll be standing here for a while,
like me, with enough time for an out-of-body experience.
Mine takes me to the movie theater nearby, where my brother
and I saw double-feature monster movies almost every weekend
growing up north of the Missouri River with the city skyline
in view and the occasional heavy smells in the air
from the Armour and Swift meat-packing plants,
sometimes mingled with the aroma of fresh baked bread
from a factory close by, but right now all we can think about
is the Ray Harryhausen movie playing on the screen
that has that hole in the top left quarter where legend says
a kid at a matinee yelled, Feed it a hamburger!
and threw a dart at a giant ant or mutant moth
or lizard the size of a Sherman tank, to show his buddies
how daring he was and to demonstrate to everyone
in the theater how clever and funny he could be;
and I guess he was honing his talents
because he now works for the RNC after spending
a stint as a lobbyist for the oil and natural gas industry,
where he became quite skilled at pulling rabbits out of his ass
while turning himself into a pretzel over the issue of fracking:
As with any industrial activity, the development of oil
and gas involves some slight risks to air, land, water, wildlife
and communities, but hell, I’d be proud to have it
in my own backyard. It would be nice to think that he does have
a hydraulic drill rig next to his pool with a diving platform
for the neighborhood kids. The first thing my brother wanted
when he came back from Vietnam was a dozen of these tacos.
It’s the bony woman and she’s looking at me. I start to answer,
but my mind is already turning to anthropomorphic ducks
as I can’t help but wonder about her T-shirt
and what Ray Harryhausen might have done with his stop motion
animation to help a movie now listed as one
of the worst films ever made—not like the one my brother
and I saw at the theater, where the hydra’s teeth magically
turned into seven sword-fighting skeleton warriors, and Jason
and two of his men fought the skeletons, and when his buddies
were killed Jason jumped into the sea drowning the skeletons,
and he escaped back to his ship and sailed on to Olympus
where Zeus said that, in due time, he’d call on Jason again.
Yeah, I say to the woman. They’re like the golden fleece
of tacos. “Well it’s better than ‘feed it a hamburger,’
but not much,“ I think to myself as she cocks her head
and looks at me as if I’m an alien from another planet,
and then I realize that I’m staring at her T-shirt again,
but that’s when her order number is called and she
whispers to me as she moves to the counter, Thrift sale,
and I hear voices in my head from so long ago:
Make haste, Prince Jason! For your life, make haste!
The forty and nine heroes are calling to him, already
seated on the benches of the galley, with their oars
held perpendicularly, ready to let fall into the water.
And after the movie, my brother and I walk home
from the theater into a wild, wintry night, laughing,
sometimes running this way and that as we fight
skeletons that come at us out of the snow.
