And Now, As Promised
How lousy are your prospects when you
sign on for a midnight appearance
as a headless Frankenstein monster
in an all-night Halloween film fest
at the Uptown in downtown Omaha?
But there he was, punctual and prepared,
where my chaperoned grade-school pals
and I had just thrilled to Karloff and Lugosi
in The Body Snatchers. How was he to know,
through two peep holes in his paper mache
neck and shoulders, that the first two rows
were filled with Ripple-stoked gang-bangers
from Tech and Central, game for a deep drag
of late-night nastiness. This despite two cops
stationed at each side door, night sticks
handy.
“Gnarrrrgh,” came a muffled
menace from inside his “bloody” stump,
hobnailed boots clomping back and forth
across the stage as lightning flashed on the screen
behind him. Clomp, clomp, a job well-done,
however brief. But then, the overreaching:
down the stairs and into the center aisle.
“Unh,” he gasped as the bangers pounced
with chains and fists and boots, on stump
and torso, arms and shins, the mache piece
twisted sideways then ripped off to reveal,
before the cops descended, a balding,
bloody head and, afterwards, as medics
strapped him, shorter now, on the gurney:
that look of dazed, gut-deep astonishment
when a friendly day turns pit bull, preview
of what, so far, we’d only seen in movies.
