Us vs Them War Continues
In the world of BIG HATS ARE US, everything was an Us or a Them.
There were Patriots, and there were Enemies.
There were Real Americans, and there were people who apparently lived in America while somehow failing to qualify.
There were Winners and Losers, Lions and Sheep, Patriots and Traitors, and an ever-expanding category of suspicious persons who had committed such offenses as buying the wrong coffee, driving the wrong car, reading books without pictures of battleships on the cover, or failing to display sufficient enthusiasm when someone mentioned The Leader.
And then there were the iWOACAs.
Individuals Who Obviously Acknowledged Certain Awful Things.
Or perhaps it stood for Individuals Who Objected to Acknowledging Certain Authorities.
Nobody seemed entirely sure anymore.
Rusty Trawler had once explained the acronym to someone at the bait shop, but halfway through he'd gotten distracted by a discussion about lawn-mower regulations, and the official definition was lost.
The important part was that iWOACAs were THEM.
And therefore The Woman Who Would Not Acknowledge Their Greatness was obviously one.
She had no idea.
This made interactions with her deeply frustrating.
For example:
“How you doing?” Rusty Trawler asked one morning when she passed him while walking her dog.
“Great!” she said.
Great.
GREAT.
Rusty stiffened.
Oh, she knew.
She absolutely knew.
Great was their word.
They were the GREATEST PATRIOTS.
They had hats saying so.
Large hats.
Some remarkably large hats.
There had recently been discussion in the BIG HATS ARE US Facebook group about whether a patriot could technically wear a hat so large it interfered with peripheral vision while operating a riding mower.
The consensus was yes.
Freedom.
But here came this woman, strolling down the road with her German shepherd mix, casually claiming that she was doing GREAT.
Mockery.
Classic iWOACA behavior.
She might have lived here for years. Her children might have been born here. Her ancestors on both sides of the family might have lived in the region for generations.
That meant nothing.
Rusty's people were from here.
Her people had merely survived here.
There was a difference.
Her family had survived the Revolution.
The Civil War.
World War I.
World War II.
Influenza.
Polio.
The Great Depression.
The Dust Bowl.
Desert Shield.
Desert Storm.
The Pepsi-Coke Wars.
Star Wars.
The New Kids on the Block versus Backstreet Boys cultural schism.
Some unpleasantness involving Beanie Babies.
And whatever had happened in Hawaii.
The railroads were slightly more complicated.
There remained an allegation—never conclusively proven—that one branch of her family had removed several sections of railroad track to prevent rabble from reaching Texas.
But everyone had difficult relatives.
Still.
None of this made her sufficiently American.
She had failed to perform the required genuflection before the Great Hat Leader.
And BIG HATS ARE US members were deeply suspicious of anything beginning with U-N.
Unpatriotic.
Un-American.
United.
Bah.
Unity was what people talked about when they wanted you to stop winning.
The preferred civic philosophy was simpler:
GENUFLECTING. BOOTLICKING. FOREVER.
Rusty looked at the woman's dog.
German shepherd.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
And its name?
“Harris,” she had once told somebody.
Rusty's eyes narrowed.
Harris.
Of course.
Signal received.
Gaslighting liberal bitch.
She was probably doing it deliberately.
The dog, unaware of his role in the collapse of Western civilization, stopped to sniff a clump of dune grass.
“What a beautiful morning,” she said.
Rusty grunted.
“I love fall.”
Rusty's brain slammed on the brakes.
THE FALL.
She had said The Fall.
Not autumn.
Not September.
THE.
FALL.
Oh, she knew exactly what she was saying.
He could almost admire the audacity.
Almost.
She smiled toward the sky.
“I actually love the turn of every season. We're at such a wonderful latitude for it. You really notice everything changing here—the migrations, the light, the shifting weather. It's glorious.”
Latitude.
There it was.
Big word.
Classic.
People like her were always throwing vocabulary around.
Longitude probably wouldn't be far behind.
Rusty had never trusted people who used more syllables than necessary. Literacy, in his experience, often preceded trouble.
He searched quickly for a response.
Something devastating.
Something that would let her know that he knew that she knew that he knew.
Then it came to him.
Perfect.
“You enjoy YOUR FALL.”
He emphasized your.
HA!
Rusty felt electricity surge through him.
Take that.
Counterstrike.
Blowback.
Backdraft.
Boom.
Mic drop.
He had flipped it.
He had reverse-carded the entire operation.
He pictured himself later telling Dale and Pooter about it.
She says she loves the fall, right?
And I says—you enjoy YOUR fall.
There would be silence.
Then somebody would whistle.
Maybe Dale would slap the table.
Damn, Rusty.
Savage.
Rusty allowed himself the smallest satisfied sneer.
The woman nodded pleasantly.
“I will. Have a good one!”
And walked away.
Rusty watched her carefully.
She took a deep breath.
Stress.
Obviously.
His remark had landed.
Devastated her.
Probably reconsidering everything.
In reality, she was smelling the salt air.
There was something especially lovely about the coast when summer loosened its grip.
The sunlight came in at a sharper angle. Grapevines rusted along fences. Spiderwebs appeared silver in the mornings. Geese crossed overhead in imperfect Vs, arguing among themselves about navigation.
She loved that.
Maybe she'd go by the beach before heading home.
Then she would make a cinnamon latte and sit on the porch.
Yes.
Definitely cinnamon.
Maybe vanilla too.
Harris trotted beside her.
She felt suddenly overwhelmed by gratitude.
Not the dramatic kind.
Just the quiet sensation that sometimes arrived when the world became briefly, inexplicably enough.
The dog.
The sky.
The changing season.
Her children.
Her little house full of strange treasures.
Coffee waiting at home.
She didn't need anything from the man she'd just passed.
In fact, within twenty seconds she'd almost completely forgotten the exchange.
She had not noticed Rusty's new hat.
This was unfortunate because it was extremely large.
He had ordered it online after determining that his previous hat did not adequately communicate the magnitude of his patriotism.
The new one had a brim nearly four inches wider.
She had also failed to notice his sneer.
She had completely missed the devastating rhetorical significance of YOUR FALL.
Oblivious.
Absolutely oblivious.
She continued walking.
And because the morning was beautiful, she began one of the little meditations she'd been practicing.
She imagined the peaceful feeling in her chest expanding.
Down her arms.
Into her hands.
Through her belly.
Her legs.
Her feet.
Then outward.
Past her skin.
Past Harris.
Across the marsh.
Over the sound.
Into houses she'd never enter and toward people she'd never meet.
She imagined everyone getting one small moment of this feeling.
Just peace.
No winning.
No losing.
Nobody above.
Nobody below.
Nobody required to acknowledge anyone's greatness.
Just the enormous blue sky and migrating birds crossing through it.
Behind her, Rusty Trawler scratched furiously beneath the waistband of his shorts.
Damn it.
What was that?
He scratched again.
The rash had returned.
Probably immigrants.
Or seed oils.
Possibly the United Nations.
He would research it later.
Rusty adjusted his enormous hat and continued toward the bait shop, already improving the story of his victory.
By lunchtime, the confrontation would last seven minutes.
By dinner, she would have been furious.
By Friday, three men at the marina would know that Rusty Trawler had personally defeated an iWOACA in open ideological combat.
And The Woman Who Would Not Acknowledge Their Greatness?
She sat on her porch with a cinnamon-vanilla latte.
Harris slept at her feet.
A flock of geese passed overhead.
She looked up.
“Oh,” she whispered.
“How beautiful.”
And somewhere across town, for reasons he could not explain, Rusty scratched his rash again.
