The Drive-Thru Oracle
The Drive-Thru Oracle
Kevin Davis, 2024
At sixteen, I turned into the glow
of a fast-food drive-thru—
stomach echoing, thoughts unfastened.
The menu board flickered,
numbers rearranging themselves,
prices breathing in and out.
I rolled to the speaker.
It watched me.
Static. Then:
“What do you want?”
“Uh… a chicken sandwich and fries.”
The night held its breath.
Grease-sweet air pressed through the window.
Then the speaker again, slower now,
as if tasting each word:
“What do you really want?”
I glanced up.
The pictures had changed—
burgers replaced by ladders,
a compass,
a pair of open hands.
“A… chicken sandwich?”
“No.”
The word vibrated in the metal pole.
“What do you want to do with your life?”
My hands tightened on the wheel.
It felt warm. Almost alive.
“When I was little, I wanted to be a fireman.
Maybe a cop. Now…”
The parking lot stretched longer than it should have.
“I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m sixteen,” I said.
My voice sounded borrowed.
“I haven’t lived enough.”
The speaker crackled
like something burning far away.
“That is not an answer.
What will you be?”
The answers fell out of me like coins:
“A soldier. A psychologist.
A husband. A father.
A minister. A friend.”
“Good.”
The word rang
like a bell dropped down a well.
“How will you arrive there?”
“I… don’t know.”
“Then that is your work,” it said.
“To not know.
To move.
To fail.
To gather days.
Do not begin
before you have begun.”
Above the speaker, the clown leaned closer,
its paint cracked into maps.
I smelled smoke.
Or salt.
Or time.
I opened my mouth—
—and the world snapped.
“Hi there! Can I take your order?”
Fluorescent light.
Asphalt.
A plastic clown, sun-bleached and grinning.
The menu: burgers, fries, shakes.
Nothing else.
I sat very still.
“I’m not ready to decide right now,” I said.
No one answered.
I drove forward when the car behind me honked—
past the empty pickup window,
past the blank-faced clown,
back into a night
that felt slightly unfinished.
My stomach was empty.
My life, suddenly, was not.
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