Days and Nights at Taco Bell

For a little while, Taco Bell was the locus of my brother’s pain

and possibly joy, in the way summer jobs can be

when you are a teenager, and you work in fast food,

and days turn hot and meaningless, ruled by clocks.

There were fights with the parents over working the late shift.

And that uniform: brown shirt, brown pants gone slightly shiny,

creases thickened by air-born grease, the constant meat smell.

Back then, the pay wasn’t great. It still isn’t.

It’s horrible, my brother told me. Don’t do it. But,

there are moments, he said. He had a coworker

named John who turned him on to acid rock and shared his pot.

There was the star employee, Sue, with long dark hair and

a winning smile. It was easy to see why everyone had a crush on her.

This helped the time pass during the long, late-night shift,

often followed by the early morning shift, marked by dull hours,

mopping floors. Still, some days the sameness broke.

The Burrito Supreme roll-out: samples for everyone!

The robbery at closing time (his night off) which ended

the arguments with the parents over working the late shift.

Athletic competitions during slow periods on weeknights

when the hours stretched, and stoned, my brother and

his coworkers (though never Sue, star employee)

slammed leftover burritos against an improvised target on the back wall,

splattering beans and cheese, shredding the soft tortillas.

Somebody had to clean it up, but there was satisfaction in that moment:

arm cocked, burrito held high, an inhale. Then, on the exhale:

swinging forward, opening the hand for the release with

a hard follow-through, hurling that burrito through the air

like an archer shooting an arrow deep into the bullseye,

like a pitcher sending a ball straight for home.

Adrienne Pilon is a writer, editor, and teacher. Recent work can be found at Rat's Ass Review, Mobius: A Journal of Social Change, Eclectica, and elsewhere.