Delicious Tacos - Finally, Some Good News

Are any of us.

Do you think I did this? It’s not my fault–

Everybody works, you know. Everybody suffers. You didn’t have to do what you did.

Why did you send me to a fancy school and then make me clean toilets at night. Why did you make me work at McDonald’s. The kids looked down on me. I had to tell them–

I wanted something better for you.

Well– I know. I’m sorry I wasted it. I’m sorry I was ungrateful–

She was gone. He’d been here a long time. Night coming on. He had to get home to his cat. Who would feed him. He needed to let him in, the coyotes were out– and he was standing with his father. Big as a bear with scars from tattoos rubbed off with a wire brush. When he was five they’d found a pigeon in the street. Stomped on but alive. His father made a splint for its wing. Kept it warm in a box of wood shavings on the porch. He would whistle to it at night until one day it flew off. He had thought it might come back to visit, but it never did.

I’ll take care of him, son, his father said.

He felt an incredible relief.

But you ought to take care of someone too.

There was a sound beginning. An organ. A man in a suit. You were friends with the deceased, he asked. He looked like Tony Todd from Candyman.

Was he? Yes, he said. Very close.

How long?

My whole life.

You loved him?

Sometimes.

Well I think thing are about to wrap up, the man said. I’ll see you outside. And there was Marcy in her toothpaste color underwear. Dirty hair, dirty face, the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He was asking why did you leave me. I didn’t leave you, she said.

I’m sorry I gave up–

You didn’t yet, she said.

I didn’t want to lose you.

You’re still here. But why did you let me go. It’s not safe.

A hymn played. Things were indeed wrapping up. And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England’s mountains green . He remembered it from Monty Python. And they’d sung it at his school. In chapel . Years later he’d looked at the lyrics in a book of hymns. Something something dark Satanic mills . The Industrial Revolution. From some William Blake poem. The school was kids whose grandparents had money from factories and slaves. That was who read William Blake.

There was a crowd now. He recognized every face. People murmuring, mumbling, losing their places; half-coherent lyrics swirling around big glass stained glass windows that were beginning to melt. Jesus with a sheep. Jesus with a U.S. Navy corpsmen circa 1912 kneeling, offering him something. Old bearded men in togas. Peter or Paul or somebody. There was some convention as to who had what face since 30 AD but he could never remember. Holding a book open to three Greek letters he couldn’t read. Pointing up an impossibly long finger. Eyes of the pictures all blue. The coffin was closing. New growth pine, semigloss. He had a headrush coming on and he was walking fast up the aisle toward a back door open a crack. Everyone looking at him. A thump as the door slammed behind him. A black vestibule for a second. The big gray sky outside. Then the wind picked up. And he fought, but he was being carried.

There was a raft in the catfish pond and one time Bryan kissed her under it. Both of them holding onto the ropes the 55 gallon drums were tied to the old deck wood with. Hanging with their legs dangling into the cold deep water. The sunlight out past the shadow of the raft made rays in the silt that seemed to go down forever, even though it was maybe 8 feet deep. You could almost feel the slimy brown bullheads squirming in the mud. They had a stinger on their side fins that felt like frozen metal going into you. The plastic barrels making noises on the wood like bongo drums.

They were whispering. The sound carried over the water. He made her laugh and she looked up nervous at his fingers on the white nylon ropes. Water spiders big as a coffee can lid lived on top of those barrels. Came down at night to stalk the elegant silver bugs that skated on the water. And he kind of wrestled his legs around her waist in her white one piece bathing suit. Wrapped his ankles around her and pulled her in while she was laughing and sucked on her bottom lip a little. And she stuck out her tongue like she and Tanya practiced on their fists. He’d eaten a grape Otter Pop and his mouth tasted like it. And when they pulled apart his tongue still had a little bit of that color. Someone did a cannonball off the raft and the corner dipped down to where it almost hit her head and they swam out separately and didn’t talk about it. Thinking about it made her arm hairs stand up after.

When school started again they started talking. He’d call her and she’d be near the phone so her mom wouldn’t get it. Take the band aid color receiver on its long curly cord into her room. Sit against the door. Talk about kids in his class. Movies. Softly so her mother couldn’t hear. He loved Aliens. She made her father rent the tape but he insisted on watching it with her. It was rated R. He’d liked it more than she had. The ecology of the creatures didn’t quite make sense.

They talked so long the phone handset would stay warm after. His voice made her feel like someone was tickling her back. Why don’t you come out to the treehouse Saturday, he said.

The boys had a treehouse. Even though they were too old for it now. Ricky McAllister had a car even, a hardship license. A Mercury Topaz in metallic teal. Somewhere past where the last tract houses sat half finished in the mud. White plastic sheets flapping off them that said Dupont Tyvek . Beer bottles everywhere and bullet holes in the old gray plywood. Cicadas screaming. We’ll pick you up, he said. We’re gonna get beer.

How? Does Ricky have a hardship license for that too-

His brother’s home.

Ricky’s brother was in the army. His fiancée was pregnant. There was a joke that no one knew what the baby would look like. She worked at the antique store. It was called The Town Pump and so was she.

OK– what will I tell my parents–

Tell em you’re getting drunk with older boys–

I’m serious.

Tell them you’re visiting Ricky’s brother, helping him with his PTSD.

She put on her lipstick two hours before. She‘d worried that riding her bike would make her sweaty. But it had rained enough to be cool. Not so much that the mud sucked in your bike tires out past where the hot top ended. God was looking out for her. She laid her bike in the tall wet weeds and waited for the Topaz to come. She was early.

In the car the boys played AC/DC so loud you couldn’t talk. Her friends still listened to the Backstreet Boys. Ricky was fifteen but his fingernails looked like he worked on cars and his voice sounded like he smoked. He had blue eyes like a movie star but the whites were red. Pupils the size of a pencil dot. She was in back with Bryan and in the passenger seat in front was Ricky’s cousin Steve, who had epilepsy and scars on his arms. He’d lit his shirt on fire burning garbage with an old can of gas.

They parked next to one of the gutted out half built houses. Rocks banged on the metal parts of the car underneath. The foundation full of brown water where mosquitos bred and on the cement someone had painted FUCK and SATAN. Past the last house the road turned into a dirt path into the woods. She heard great-tailed grackles whistling back in the pines. Their song was supposed to contain the seven notes of passion. On the path a female dipped dead grass into a mud puddle and flew off to add it to her nest. Steve carried the beer. Ropey muscles rippling under his scars.

Ricky asked Bryan: so is this your new girlfriend. She felt her ears get hot. Bryan said: a good friend.