For Whom the Bell Blows

When the waiter saw us come into the McDonald’s he put the straws and napkins under the counter out of sight. We looked like men who needed straws and napkins and he did not want us to have them.

"What will you have?" he asked.

"A Big Mac," I said.

"A beer," Larry said.

"We don’t serve beer here," said the waiter. "We only serve food. There’s the menu."

"Then make it a chocolate shake and a Big Mac."

The waiter brought the food and the shake and he used a large plastic spoon to cut the foamy top off the shake. It looked good. I wished then I had ordered a shake.

"I’ll have a shake too," I said.

"Bite me," he said. "You had your chance to say what you wanted. Now pay up."

"What kind of joint is this," Larry said, and he sipped from his shake and spat a large stream of chocolate and milk onto the waiter’s clean shirt.

The waiter turned good and red. "You punks hike," he said.

"We aren’t punks," I said. "We just have a bad barber. His hair is not really orange and he has not dyed it that way. We camped out last night. He rolled in his Jell-O. We are not punks."

"Then why the safety pin in your chest?" the waiter asked.

I looked. There was a safety pin in my chest. "I’ll be damned," I said. "My mother pinned a note there. I thought it was on my shirt. I thought the pain there was from an insect bite."

"You’re punks," the waiter said, and he took off his cap and slapped it on the counter top and my Big Mac fell off on the floor and splattered. The meat lay in the sauce like an island in a stream.

"To hell with you," Larry said.

"Yeah," I said.

"Get out," the waiter said.

"We’ll come back," Larry said.

"No you won’t."

"There are other McDonald’s," Larry said. "You can’t be at them all."

"I can try," the waiter said.

We walked down to Taco Bell and ordered a burrito and a taco and some good firm chips. We ate the food and it was all very good and the air conditioning was good and the waiter was fine, not like the bad waiter at McDonald’s.

We ate and did not talk. We were looking out the window across Strawberry Street and we saw that it was growing dark.

"Looks like rain," Larry said.

"It looks like a tornado," I said.

It was a tornado. It roared across the street and carried buildings with it and hit the Taco Bell, and the Taco Bell shook and rattled and the roof came off and blew away. If it had been Harry’s Bar and Grill, which is well founded, that would not have happened. Harry’s Bar and Grill would not have blown away.

The wind kept blowing and the walls followed after the roof and then the table we were holding onto. We fell in a ditch behind where the Taco Bell had been.

Larry raised his head when the storm had passed.

"Has it all blown away," I asked, but I did not raise my head. I did not want to see the damage to the Taco Bell and I did not want to think about the other half of my burrito I had not eaten.

"Ask not to where the Bell blows," said Larry with sadness. "It blows to sea along with our lunch."

We climbed out of the ditch and started walking away. I found that I had the other half of the burrito in my hand and I was very happy because the burrito was good. From where we stood we could also see the McDonald’s and it had blown away like the Taco Bell.

"It is a bad thing to think," I said, "but I hope that snotty waiter has blown away with it."

"If it is a bad thing to think," said Larry, "then you better not think about it."