First They Take Your Tortillas…
“Make this make sense! Make this make sense!”
Cracker McCracken is incensed about something. I can hear him bellyaching halfway across the factory floor. Five hours into the first shift following a two-week holiday shut down, and he’s already lost his goddam mind. He’s standing in front of his welder, hollering and punching the air.
“What the hell’s up with Cracker?”
I probably know better than to involve myself with his hysterics. I’d lately distanced myself from the mind following two unsuccessful forays into the Alabama wilderness searching for cryptids. Namely, the elusive Bigfoot. Cracker would have been just as happy, I think, discovering proof of any strange beasts. Lizard men and Moth man. Mormons or chupacabras or Michigan Wolverine fans.
“Did Erich Von Daniken die? Is that what he’s losing his shit about? The motherfucker’s gotta be ninety years old. He can’t be surprised.”
“It’s his tortillas,” my son says.
“Why are his tortillas not making sense?”
My son looks at me with that special expression of withering pity usually reserved for the mildly retarded guy working the lunch counter at Burger King who seems incapable of differentiating between a fish sandwich and a Whopper Jr with cheese. This especially galls me because since shaving his beard, leaving behind his pervy little mustache, coupled with his foppish mop of longish hair, he resembles a modernization of Meathead from All in the Family. And, you know, god bless Rob Reiner and all he did for the world, shit-talking the Republicans and all that. I’m just sad my son chose to look like that.
“No, Dad. He left his tortillas out on the breakroom table for a few hours and management swooped in and tossed his tortillas in the trash.”
“Without warning?”
He added a cocked eyebrow to his previous expression.
“Well, it looks like I know what I’m going to be writing my next column about.”
“Really, Dad… Tortillas?”
“Yep. And I told you, son. We’re working together, now. Call me the Polish Hammer.”
“There’s no way in hell I’m calling you that. I’m just thinking with everything going on in the world. Trump drinking Madura’s milkshake. That lesbian poet getting shot in the face. You think there might be more important things to write about?”
“Absolutely not. I’m just not sure I can find a humorous angle on an award-winning lesbian poet getting shot in the face while her wife antagonized heavily armed, unevenly tempered Gestapo agents looking for the least excuse to end a liberal life. There’s just no laughs to be had there.”
“Why does it always have to be humorous?”
“Cause humor is the only way I can cope with this downward spiral of a civilization that peaked with the invention of edible underwear.”
“Can you at least leave me out of this one?”
“Of course, son.”
The silly bastard hadn’t read a word I’ve written his entire life. I’ve stopped taking offense at his literary negligence. He refuses to read anything by anyone. He’s sworn to keep his mind refreshingly free from the clutter.
I begin my investigation by asking the hard questions of the victim, Cracker McCracken.
“How’s it going, Cracker?”
“Fuck off, Hammer. I ain’t in the mood.”
“Hey there, buddy, just because you haven’t added any appellations like Ritz or Soda doesn’t mean I should go without. You know it’s Polish Hammer.”
“I just don’t want to hear any bullshit.”
“I feel ya, man. I’d be tore up too if I was working a twelve-hour shift with nothing to look forward to other than a delicious taco dinner, only to discover, due to the vindictiveness of management, you were relegated to spooning spicy ground beef into your yap from a heated Tupperware bowl.”
“I didn’t even get that. Once I found out they tossed my tortillas, lost my appetite.”
“Oh man. Were they flour tortillas or did you splurge on the hard-shell corn tortillas?”
“They were the corn. And the night before I fried them in oil and shaped them and everything. That’s why I set them on the breakroom table to keep them at room temperature instead of refrigerating them. You can’t really microwave them, else they’ll turn all soggy.”
“Ah, yes, I know how you struggle to avoid the soggy tacos. I bet you’d have settled for the flour tortillas if you knew they’d end up on the bottom of a trash bin.”
“Nobody could have known because it wasn’t a rule until after they dumped my tortillas. After they did it, they posted the sign. No food left on the table. No lunchboxes. Nothing.”
“Why?”
“They said to cut down on mice.”
“Well, that’s bullshit. Five feet away they got a rack of candy and chips for sale.”
“That’s why I’ve just been asking somebody, anybody, to make it make sense. Because I can’t figure it.”
“It doesn’t make sense until you realize they have a personal vendetta against you.”
Cracker looks taken aback. “What do they have against me?”
“Management at Hydra Hydraulics have always resented the working man. Lately, though, it seems as though they’ve been growing more aggressive.”
“But why? I work so hard.”
“Eh, you don’t work that hard. Have you considered the possibility that they’ve been replaced by Lizard people hell bent on curtailing the consumption of tacos?”
“Is everything about me a joke to you?”
“Have you at least entertained the possibility?”
“Yes, and roundly rejected it due to lack of proof. I think the management are just a bunch of assholes, man. They got forty-eight surveillance cameras set up. At least three of those in the break room. Why didn’t they just come up to me and ask me to put it somewhere else? Why be so hateful and straight up trash my lunch?”
And this, I would have informed my son if he cared enough to read this far, lies the crux of my column. Where the tortillas dovetails into award-winning lesbian poets getting shot in the face by a masked goon.
When someone with just the slightest modicum of authority in a shit splat little manufacturing facility on top of a mountain in rural Alabama thinks nothing of trashing a working man’s lunch with no regards for the employee’s feelings, in fact, operating with the firm belief it’s for the employee’s own good, so the breakroom habituates won’t be inundated by rats while munching tacos, I find it is only a small leap to the paramilitary jackass utterly unsuited for his job given absolute authority to harangue and impugn upon the rights of a citizenry he despises. Why do I keep mentioning the victim was an award-winning lesbian poet (as opposed to the cryptid-hunting welder)? It’s not just to be snarky. There’s no doubt in my mind the murderer scored extra points with his comrades for ending the life of an award-winning lesbian poet as opposed to the props he would have garnered had he merely blown away a woman or a run-of-the-mill angry lesbian. It goes without saying, in an attempt to keep these liberal-leaning streets safe, some good law-abiding democrats are going to be inconvenienced permanently.
And it’s going to get worse. More tortillas are going to disappear from the breakroom tables. More award-winning lesbian poets are going to get shot in the face. What are you going to do about it?
I know I’m not going to be leaving any tortillas laying around any breakroom tables. It’s not compliance. It’s lunch preservation. And if I should ever get shot in the face by some goose-stepping wannabe commando (first I’d have to leave this Republican stronghold where the Mexicans are tolerated) please don’t tell them I was a poet. Last thing I need is a cadre of social media warriors sharing a poem I wrote about shoving sweat socks down my pants in an attempt to entice the ladies.
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
