Jackson caresses his freshly shaven jawline and ponders whether or not the beard has become some kind of new fascist tell. He deliberates as he stands in the sporting goods store north of Stewart, across the bridge, running a quick errand, sneaking in and out of lands, possibly hostile.  His quest is a basketball for his daughter, but twice now he’s rounded a corner to find himself face to face with a large, bearded man. Yes, the men with beards seem to be minding their own business, and yes there’s no arguing the fact that Ed Abbey, Karl Marx, David Letterman, most of the 9-11 hijackers, and ZZ Top all sport tremendous beards, i.e., it’s a broad spectrum, but still…it’s different these days. The beard is a sign, a mark that reads, I’m okay with all of this…

Jackson stands at the top of the aisle considering his next move as the man with the beard reaches out and takes a neon green volleyball from the wall.

Insurrectionist, Jackson thinks.

Concealed carry. Stand your ground. Fart sound. Death cult.

He holds his breath, eyeing the floor, quietly backing out of the dead end, away from the man and his volleyball, afraid to draw attention to himself, afraid his own appearance might reveal too much: drives a Leaf, northerner, preferred pronouns in the footer, shaves almost daily.

He skips past two more aisles and finds the basketballs. Jackson’s reason for being here. Finally. Thank Christ. But now he faces a new dilemma: sizes. Five, six, seven? The assumption is that the highest size is also standard. That is, there’s no ball larger than what the pros use. Only smaller, kid balls, for kids, and problematic adults.

A safe assumption, he tells himself. But…

What if there is a larger ball? What if there’s a size one step past pro? Extra-pro. Pro-plus. He recalls a silly video he saw online, adults playing tennis with gargantuan rackets, another video—ping pong with beach balls—he thinks of landfill, stocking-stuffers, and bloated stomachs.

He grabs an assumed-standard-sized ball. Pink.

Now he’s ready to go.

But instead…

Instead he wanders, looking for something: a shirt for running. Perhaps something neon, to keep metal from crashing into his legs. But all the workout clothes seem non-specific. Is this a jogging pant, or a wrestling bottom? Or something daftly specific, like a frisbee golf vest? As far as Jackson can discern, there’s a tedious clump of generic athletic gear filling the center of the shop; none of it cries out, distance running. All of it looks like gear you’d wear to breakfast or the carwash. He imagines if he were the costume designer for an advertising company hired to sell pharmaceuticals: erectile disfunction, itchy leg, leaky eye, jagged shin. He’d shop here. This would be the place he’d come to dress the actors. Is your ass bleeding salad dressing or making bread? Well, we have a pill for that. Don’t believe us? Then take a look at this handsome couple, wearing gear that’s not quite yoga, not quite tennis, not quite anything, but it’s suitable for a glass of water and a fistful of boner candy, standing, smiling, in an immaculate kitchen, artless and melancholy, like a Florida airport.

He runs his hand across a row of sleeves. They part like water.

And then, suddenly, he’s in the golf section. This is purely by accident. Jackson loathes golf. Loathes its sucking up of the earth’s most precious resource, loathes how it attracts a certain type of white male, the type who gift Niall Ferguson books, are still on Facebook, eye-fuck the babysitter. He hates golf like he hates modern country music with its lyrics about shitty beer, date rape, and patriotic victimhood. He despises golf like he despises the trucks he passed walking through the parking lot minutes ago with ten-story grilles and never-used flatbeds. Bros. Lads. Dark angels of content-creation-conspiracy. Here in Florida. Up north in Maine. Everywhere in between. Soft-terrorism bullies. Poisonous masturbating goblins. Witch-burning stans. Meme baptisms. Armies of bots dressed in Putin-masks and red caps, poking the fires…

Jackson’s vision tunnels. He stops, abrupt, close to frozen, and stares at a shoe.

A beautiful shoe. White with gold-drip trim, fat-borderline-phat laces, a plush rim around the ankle, it looks like a cross between spaceship-casual and the essence of Run DMC in their prime. He grabs it, only to discover it has small spikes on the sole.

It’s a golf shoe.

A golf shoe.

Jackson thinks of the time he and his college friends conspired to steal bowling shoes. It was an asshole move, but they were privileged college kids and every idea seemed top shelf. They had all gone to K-Mart and bought the cheapest sneakers they could find. Five dollar shoes, Velcro. Next, they’d gone to the bowling alley in Brunswick. Picked out lovely three color bowling shoes with the size stitched across the back, and the bottoms like pealed wallpaper. When they’d finished their game, they just walked out. Left the K-Mart shoes behind. People had asked, but how can you wear bowling shoes? It was winter, in Maine. Everything was ice.  But they didn’t care. They wore their bowling shoes all winter, through slush and across frozen mud. Into frat house basements and on late-night trips to L.L. Bean. Good times. The 90s. Nothing mattered, history had ended, and the five-dollar shoe was king.

Jackson wipes a briny half-tear from his eye and considers if he could wear a golf shoe as a non-golfer. Was such a thing possible? Could it be done? Or would the earth simply open up and swallow him whole for attempting such fuckery?

Could he…?

No. No he could not.

It’s golf. It is against the rules: not of golf, but of basic human decency. Don’t support the golf industry, ever. Even standing here with a desirous look on his face was crossing the line.

He sets the shoe down and flees. Only, in his haste, he moves deeper into the golf section. Now he’s surrounded by off-pink polo shirts, pleated march-on-Charlottesville khakis, and funny little hats one places on their drivers. He feels his lungs tighten. Pauses, from his Royal River Health Food totebag he fetches his inhaler, takes a puff, holds it, eyes closed, three count, exhales.

Can I help you?

Jackson turns and finds an elf staring, expression flat.

Sorry? Are you an elf?

I’m small. Do you need some help? You look lost.

Jackson notes the elf’s name tag: Tracey.

Thank you Tracey. I was just looking for…a running top, in a bright color.

To match your basketball?

Uh…no. So I don’t get run over by some mad bastard in a comically large truck.

Tracey the elf raises an eyebrow.

This is for my daughter, he adds, holding up the ball, so she can practice while we’re here visiting her grandparents, my wife’s folks.

How sweet, Tracey says. Let’s see what we can find to make sure you don’t get hit by any crazy bastards.

She has an accent that’s not Florida, not southern. It’s city, New York, like old interviews with Cyndi Lauper. She has short blonde hair, full of product, bleached, but not by chemicals—but by magic. Her eyelids painted with sparkle. Her eyes butterfly blue. Narrow hips. Square shoulders. A calmness and sympathy that tells Jackson they are both outsiders here, both passing through, no intention to stay, no vested interest in the salination of the water table, the re-zoning of orange groves, copyright law extensions, shark bites, or the small-toed governor’s various beady-eyed crusades against books, children, foreplay…

Yes, thank you, that would be great.

I mean, you’re not going to find anything in the golf section. Do you golf?

Me? No. I did, once.

They were now leaving the golf area, reentering the nebulous middle section of the store. Ambiguous activewear. Senseless socks. Hopeless hoodies. Inane…

Once?

With my granddad, when I was a kid.

Jackson thinks of the 3-par, 9-hole course in south-central Michigan. His grandad had once gotten a hole-in-one, came home with a trophy. The course was as simple as they came. No trees, no water. Just sand, grass, and par threes. Jackson’s granddad had taken him a few times when he was a teenager, not yet able to drive. Keep your head down, goddammit. That was what Jackson’s granddad had yelled, over and over.

Keep your goddamn head down. He was not a nice man. He called Black people horrible things, crass things. He bathed in anger, swam in disdain. He’d been at Pearl Harbor and saw his buddies die. Burn, drown, sink, become gone. At various times, his three children had all gone years without speaking to him, including Jackson’s own father. Eventually colon cancer got him. His wife lived another ten years, until, a few days before turning 100, she slipped away, her bones liquid, her hair silver and still kept.

That’s nice, Tracey says.

Not really, he wasn’t a good guy.

Well, have you met many golfers?

Jackson laughs. Real laughter. Not polite. Spontaneous—but also polite.

Here, what about these?

Tracey Vanna-Whites her arm before a rack of Under Amour shirts.

Eh, not really my thing.

Your thing?

Jackson reaches into the rack and pulls out a grey and black top with a pattern running vertically from neck to waist. The pattern is: tattered flag. It makes him think of the movie Red Dawn and school shootings.

All this, what’s this all about?

Oh, you don’t care for the…?

Exactly.

But the quality is pretty good, she says. That is, the fabric is cutting edge.

Cutting edge?

It transfers your sweat from your body into deep outer-space, so you don’t get weighed down.

Okay.

Jackson selects a bright orange top. Large. Acrylic. Whatever that means.

What do you think of this one?

Great, Tracey says. Want to try it on?

Jackson scans the store, looking over the tops of dozens of racks of tops.

Not really.

Well, let me know if I can help you with anything else.

Tracey leaves him standing, holding his orange top. He watches her weave around sweat pants and zip tops and a display of expensive bottles meant to keep you hydrated as you move closer toward your best self. He starts to return the orange top to the rack, but now she’s glancing back at him and he quickly tosses the shirt over his shoulder like a sack of grain, walks in the opposite direction.

He spies another insurrectionist up ahead and takes a hard right turn. Now he’s approaching a wall of running shoes. He quickens his step. A calm spreads over him. No insurrectionists here. The shoes are future. Flying cars. Giant beds of Buddah foam, of Jesus touch, of Spock-engineered cushion. E.T.’s womb. He lifts a shoe from the wall and squeezes, puts it to his nose. Sweet bliss. The color, the design, everything is goingtobeokay, there is no global warming, no reactionary politics, no coal-rolling modifications, no second amendment, no TERFS or red tides or ticks or tanks rolling into Gaza City. There is only promise, an under-seven minute mile, a podcast positing Tina Turner as God, single-payer healthcare, and an algorithm promoting heavenly Chicago House music and sweet ripe fruit.

How often does one need to replace their running shoes? Every year? Every six months? Six weeks? He looks down at his own boat shoes, shoes he never wears unless here’s down here, visiting, keeping head low and opinions gated.

Blending. Carefully monitoring the cake and wine.[1]

Jackson looks inside the beautiful, artful running shoe. Finds the price. Minor gasps. He’s not unfamiliar with the cost of high performance shoes, but. Still. He thinks about Kevin the photographer, who travels the world shooting marathons and Diamond League track meets.  Kevin told him they now make one-use shoes. Jackson thinks about crime scenes. The forensic specialists in their disposable gear. He thinks of buying shoes and never wearing them, just putting them in a safe. He puts the shoe back and walks along the wall until he comes to the back corner of the store.

A bathroom.

He starts to walk down the not-so-obvious hallway but stops at a sign. No merch beyond this point. He takes the orange top still draped over his shoulder and sets it on the rack. Next, the pink basketball. Then he continues down the hall to the bathroom.

Which is empty, a relief.

He looks under the stall just to make sure.

He does his business, washes his hands, is at the dryer taking his time, allowing the air to fully dry his hands, when the door opens. A man dressed like a duck hunter—or rather, a duck—walks in. He’s got scruff, but not a full Christo-fascist facial mop. Still, he has the look. Jackson wipes the remaining moisture on his pants and exits. The man says, Merry Christmas.

You as well, Jackson says. He takes another look. The man is at the mirror, adjusting his hat, which is orange and has two bills and a picture of Kitty Wells on the front.

Jackson steps outside. His own orange item is gone. The pink ball remains. He leaves the ball on the rack. He doesn’t know why, just does. He suddenly hates the ball. Hates his decision. A pink ball. Stupid. Insane. Embarrassing…

He exits the hallway and looks around. He turns and heads toward the wall with women’s running shoes. The colors are even more vivid here. The whites more white. The teals like bullets. The fluorescents like MDMA pop music for fetuses. A curly-haired woman is at the wall, stroking her chin, focused on the display she’s building. She’s not in possession of his orange running top. He heads back into the guts of the store and sees a man tidying a rack of socks.

Excuse me.

Yes?

Uh…I was in the bathroom and…

Jackson pauses. TMI, he thinks.

What I mean is, I left this running shirt on the rack, per the store’s stated policy and…

The man doesn’t blink. He has short black hair that’s so neat it’s like Playmobile hair.

Och, he says, shameful that is.

Scottish? Welsh? Jackson can’t be sure.

Well, yes, Jackson says.

Sooyur sayin’ someones done and nicked yr top?

Yes…are you from Scotland?

Och, meh cover’s blown. The man smiles.

I’ve been to Glasgow, Jackson says.

Ranger or Celtic?

Uh…

I’m just joking. If you left yr top on the loo shelf, someones best re-shelved it. I’d check the rack where yous found it like.

Okay. Thanks.

No bother.

Jackson stands for another second while the man returns to tidying the socks.

He decides against going in search of another top. Instead he wanders deeper, entering an area of the store he’s yet to explore: team sports played on grass. Soccer. Baseball. Field hockey. Sports that require helmets. Padding. Mouth guards. Sports with coaches that in their past lives drank heavily but are now sober and grateful society still allows them to be around children and parks.

He enters an aisle where, halfway down, a father and son are standing before a display of baseball gloves. The father looks cross. The son looks tired, upset, bored, despondent, dejected, preoccupied, bitter, over-it. More than anything, he looks all-of-the-above.

All you have to do is apply oil, the dad says.

Uh-huh.

You oil it, and then you put a ball in it like this.

The dad takes a brown leather mitt from the wall and looks around. He spots a ball, encased in unnecessary plastic eggshell packaging.

See? he says. He puts the ball, plastic and all, into the glove, and squeezes them together like he’s trying to make juice.

You rubber-band it good and tight and leave it overnight. By morning, it won’t be stiff.

But…

Trust me.

But…

So you’re okay then with this one? You like black more?

But…dad, look.

The kid puts on the mitt. It’s huge. It teeters on his wrist. He holds it up and it wobbles like an upside-down cup on a tiny spike.

I can’t even…

Even what? the dad demands.

I can’t even make it close, even a little.

That’s because you need to oil it and do what I said. Rubber bands. Oil. Like I said.

It’s too big Dad. It’s garnormous.

No, you need it big to catch those fly balls.

I don’t like fly balls.

Sure you do.

I don’t.

You need it big to field those grounders.

The boy starts to cry.

The dad turns red, his hands become fists.

Jackson’s seen enough. Now he’s passing a display of tennis rackets. He picks one up. It’s lighter than air. It flies out of his hand and crashes into more water bottles. Metal clangs on the ground. The elf appears, twinkle-bang. She’s saying, it’s okay. No worries. No big deal. Jackson wants to stay and chat. Wants to help tidy up. Wants to ask her if she likes working here. Or if she has bigger aspirations. Dreams. Or things like dreams. Maybe she wants to act, or write, or surf, or colonize, not in a kill-people way, but in a Mars or the Moon way. But the best he can manage is to pick up the one water bottle that’s rolled the farthest away and hand it silently to the elf. He sees nothing in her eyes to indicate she remembers him from their previous encounter. Perhaps if he still had the orange running top. Perhaps if he’d made more of an impression. Or maybe this is a different elf. Her twin. The store’s loud speaker pipes in an instrumental schmaltz version of She Bop.

Jackson walks past soccer balls and tetherballs and pineapple balls. He recalls someone once making a joke, that they liked to play “sports ball,” but he can’t remember who said it, or why, or when. Only that she was wonderous. And that they laughed. And in that moment with sounds coming from the mouth of a creature as divine as a hummingbird, he felt love and happiness. But he can’t remember a face, or a place, just “sports ball.”  The insipid intersection of capitalism and sport being dwarfed by the wonder of simple things, objects with shape, Aristotelian, the sound of laughter, jovial and unafraid.

He’s back at the basketball display. The pink balls now make him angry. He grabs a normal ball. Rusty basketball orange, with black stripes. It feels like it needs air. He thinks he should buy a pump. No sense buying a flat ball. No sense at all.

An older man is walking toward him, talking on his cell phone. The man posts up next to Jackson, still talking.

Well, the man says, the club has worse food, but it’s social.

Jackson takes a few steps away from the man, giving him some space. Jackson was once the type who, years ago, would have casually strolled through a sporting goods store in south-central Florida talking on his phone, loudly, dickishly. Obliviously. Now, he’s different. Now, he doesn’t take his phone out of the house unless it’s by accident. He doesn’t look at his phone for the first hour of the waking day. It’s not allowed in the bedroom. Talking on the phone in public, as far as Jackson is concerned, is like farting—loud and wet—in public. But, this man is older. It’s the one exception Jackson makes for what, in general, is a blanket disdain for anyone who talks on their phone in public. It’s not that older people don’t know better. And it’s not that older people are just too out of it, too dotard, too decayed to realize how obnoxious their behavior is. No, it’s simply that, as far as Jackson is aware, older people simply don’t give a fuck. Not one. Single. Solitary. Fuck. In a deep, transcendent, near-spiritual way. They will fart in public, piss in a sink, shit on a wafer, on the collection plate, in the Pope’s hat. They will scratch and shed and milk and howl; they do all this because they do not give one single fluid ounce of fuck what you or anyone thinks.

Respect. Next level. Talk on, kings and queens. You went to the Savoy to see Chick Webb. We go to Chick-fil-A.

Jackson should leave, give the man privacy.

But still…he’s curious. So he hovers. Luckily, a display of air pumps rests perpendicular to the basketballs, so he posts up and gives the wall a careful review.

The old man continues, no, the man says, I didn’t say that. I said, it’s more social. I thought you liked social. Well don’t get mad at me. I’m not the one who’s bending over backwards to be made president of the garden club. Like I said, I’m fine with either I…I just think the food is better inside. Fancy? Well no…but I wouldn’t call it fancy. Sure, if a cloth napkin is your threshold, then fine. Fine…no, I said social, not formal. You know, our friends. Okay, my friends. A salad. Chopped. No. Maybe. Walnuts. At Dick’s. Footballs.

Jackson raises an eyebrow.

For the boy. No he’s not. I got my first football when I was still in diapers.

Jackson’s eyes drift down to the man’s waistline and below. As far as he can tell, the man has not yet returned to the diapered state, but Jackson has a look all the same. He thinks about the former president. About how the nation has been discussing, for years, as to whether this fragile man wears adult diapers. About whether this fragile man shits his pants on the regular. Intentionally. Psychotically. A fecal flasher. It’s an odd thing, for the nation to debate whether the man who was in charge of the nuclear arsenal—weapons with the power to burn every atom of carbon-based life off the face of the earth a thousand times over—whether this man was sent by god to restore whiteness to its rightful place overseeing all and forever; or if this man was a drugged-out fool with a broken gumdrop penis who shits himself daily and takes pleasure in knowing those around him have to bare the stench. Every night pealing his shit pants off and tossing them splat to the floor, knowing someone else will pick them up.

Deciding once and for all that the man on the phone doesn’t in fact wear diapers, Jackson swings around to the more obvious matter at hand: whether or not the man was mixing up basketballs and footballs. The most obvious conclusion is the man knows perfectly well the difference between a football and a basketball. What is happening is, the man has simply paused before the basketball display to finish his conversation before carrying on to find the footballs he seeks, a task that will require focus, no chatter.

The man continues:

I don’t care what his father permits. The boy’s staying at our house, if he wants to throw a football he can throw a football. A cun…a concussion? Don’t be stupid. No, I didn’t, I said…I said don’t be stupid, not that you’re stupid. No, they’re two different things. Look, if I want to buy my grandson a football, I’m going to buy him a goddamned football. End of…he can sink in a lake for all I care. Okay. I will. I love…I love you too.

The man puts the phone in his pleated pants pocket and steps back, staring up at the wall of basketballs. He selects a ball that’s splashed with pop art and is definitely not full size. Then he moves along.

Jackson grabs the cheapest hand pump on the wall, also splashed with pop art, the kind he associates with the spine of the Miami Vice cassette tape, the kind he associates with Trapper Keepers and his first skateboard, and follows the man. He needs to know if the man is going to buy a football, or if in fact the man is unaware that he’s buying a football that is actually a miniature basketball. Jackson has no intention to interfere. There’s no—excuse me sir but I couldn’t help but overhearing—about to happen. He just needs to know. He can’t quite believe this man is potentially going to buy a miniature basketball with pop art splashed across both hemispheres while believing it’s a football. The man is undoubtedly American. He had no German or Swedish accent to account for the mistake about to go down. He clearly understands and intends to participate in the American tradition, cultural and ritualistic, of indoctrinating his grandson into the modern day form of gladiatorism.

So how, in all that is holy and fucking right in the world, could this man be confusing a basketball with a football?

Unless Jackson is the one confused…?

But he’s not confused. He knows the bloody difference between a basketball and a football. There’s no question here. Jackson nods his head firmly. Grunts. Twinks his nose. Spins his wedding ring. Cracks his spine.

He continues to follow the man. He has to see it through. He has to know. He follows the man all the way to the register. Here, in a large black metal pen, is the man’s final out, a chance to course-correct, for inside the pen is nothing but footballs. Hundreds of them in all colors and sizes, loose, unencumbered by cardboard or plastic eggshell packaging. Nothing but naked, virgin footballs. And a sign too: FOOTBALLS STARTING AT $5. Exclamation points ad nauseam. The last minute spontaneous purchase, like a pack of chewing gum, all teed up: yes—I do need a football come to think of it—but the man, to Jackson’s bemusement, gets in line, and stands next to the football pen, and never the once does he turn his head. In fact, the man seems to be deliberately not looking at the huge pen of footballs just inches to his right, towering over him, shelter from his storm.

Jackson imagines walking up behind the man with his own full-sized basketball and saying aloud—to himself—but aloud and with the intention of being well-overheard, Oh shit, FOOTBALLS, perfect, just what I was looking for. Footballs! Thank Christ, I almost left without buying a FOOTBALL for my son. My son who is young, but not too young to start playing the great American game of dead-at-47, bash-your-brains-out football…

Jackson imagines this all as a middle-aged couple join the line. He glances back. The man has a black handgun on his hip, the holster shabby. His wife has a silver Rambo-knife strapped to her thigh. She wears a shirt that says, WOKE DEEZ NUTZ in big teal letters. The man wears a baggy black hoodie promoting an energy drink. The man turns, allowing Jackson to see the energy drink’s logo: a sunglassed shark with butt-crack and a vest kitted out with grenades and dildos.

Forgot something, Jackson mutters, head down. He steps out of line and fast-walks back into the guts of the store. Up ahead he sees Tracey, talking to her co-worker, the Scottish man, and the staffer with the wild curly hair who’s presently miming like she’s playing piano. He is about to interrupt their conversation when he realizes Tracey is crying.

He overhears her say: but she was so young, and all she did was drive her sister across state lines…

Jackson pivots. Up ahead, the basketballs. He can’t take another second of…he swings right, passes a mile of water bottles, each costing between fifty and ten thousand dollars. He hits the wall of running shoes and both knees start to ache. He swings right again and focuses on his breathing. He doesn’t want to pass out. Breathing too fast. He does five long sips of air. And then: expansion, calm descending—no need for another puff on the inhaler—for now he’s stopped before a familiar fascination.

Jackson grabs the gold and white golf shoe and sits down on the floor. Kicks off his own boat shoe and slips it on. Back up on his feet. Puts his unused boat shoe on the display rack. Begins to walk. One Sperry boat shoe, one glorious, cleated gold and white golf shoe.

Excuse me, sir….you cannae….

Jackson looks over his shoulder. The Scottish man is standing with arms folded.

Tracey comes around the corner, tears still spilling from her eyes.

Jackson begins to run. Click pat. Click pat.

Sir!

Clickpat-clickpat-clickpat…

Scotland and Tracey are now running after him. Piano-mimer joins them, a crossbow in her grip.

He swings left.

Old man who doesn’t know a football from a basketball burst through a rack of swim trunks.

Jackson throws his cheap air-pump at his pursuers. The old man one-hands it and rips it apart with his teeth.

Dad and son look up from their baseball glove, see action, forgive, and fall in line. The duck man from the bathroom drops from the ceiling on a span of dental floss, nearly crushing the boy, and joins the fun. From off-stage, someone tosses the duck man a lit tiki torch.

The flame is volleyball green.

Clickpat-clickpat-clickpat…

Rambo knife with her WOKE DEEZ NUTZ top and her man—hood up— are now blocking his way. Growling. Wolf-like. Fangs, blood smeared on their cheeks. Empty 99-oz cans of energy drink in their paws. The man pulls his gun and bites off the muzzle. Gimmie that gummy gun, says the woman, but the man ignores her as he starts in on the barrel.

Jackson grabs a water bottle and cocks his arm.

Drop the water bottle sir! the store’s loudspeaker bellows.

Jackson drops the water bottle. It bounces once, an empty metal ring, and rolls into a sports bra the size of Mount St. Helens. The loudspeaker resumes playing Time After Time. A man holds a balloon and a needle. His beard reaches the floor and is painted red & blue. A small child in hockey pads is thrown with the force of a jet engine into a smokeless ashtray. A giant inflated middle finger continues to inflate. In two days, it will be Christmas. The Scottish man removes his plastic hair. Not today son, he says, then he takes a pepper grinder and knocks Jackson out cold with one mighty popkid swing.

[1] The cake and wine from Ballots & Fence Rails by William McKee Evans. Mentioned by Evans as a reconstruction era term used to describe Union Army officers and soldiers, or other Unionists.

About the Author:

Nathaniel Krenkel lives in Portland, Maine. He is the host of Rhizome Radio at WMPG and runs the record labels Team Love and OYSTERTONES. His published work can be found at nathanielkrenkel dot com.

*Featured image by Dasha Yukhymyuk on Unsplash