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Show Go Love/142 In Salt Lake there's this Chinese Restaurant we like-call it the Golden Dragon-that shares its eastern wall a mortuary The takeout's out of this world, and for a few dollars they'll deliver For some years we opened our front door to steamy eggrolls and ham-fried rice, hot and sour soup and Admiral's Chicken, then Lara's pre-school route took me by the place right downtown off First South. The first sight sobered me-a horned golden dragon spilling across the plate glass Inside, a man in glasses counted money out of a cash register. To his right, close enough to reach out and touch, the eastern wall where every morning'the sun rose up over the eviscerated sewed-shut dead. All that karmic energy passing between, it was more than I could take. For one thing, what happens on the other side really is inconceivable When I was a reporter for Lonoke Star, the undertaker's wife crashed eighty-five miles an hour into the side of the Willy Ray Courthouse and got trapped inside with the Dale Carnegie Instructor of How To Win Friends and Influence People at Jackrabbit High. Firemen had to cut them out with an oxyacetylene torch. It was big news, eclipsing that year's arrival of Leviathan even, the undertaker's wife crushed behind a dashboard with her lover. |