See iffn ya'll can remember this...Moderate Man

 

The day was dawning bright and clear at Yosemite National park; the sun rose serenely over the treetops, the advancing day chasing away the shadows of night, still pooled in the misted valleys and in the deep woods. Suddenly, a flock of birds scattered at the sharp sound of the word "NNNNOOOOO!"

 

The sound cut through the stillness of the early morning like a laser through pudding, carrying for miles through the misty air; animals scattered and ran off in all directions, birds filled the air in their panicked rush to escape.

 

The voice came again; "STOP, BASTARD FASCISTS! I WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO DRILL HERE! YOSEMITE IS SACRED! FIND YOUR BLACK BLOOD-FUEL ELSEWHERE, YOU FUCKING USURPERS!" it screamed.

 

A puzzled reply is heard; "Lady, what the hell are you talkin’ about?"

 

"I’M TALKING ABOUT PREVENTING YOU FROM ONCE MORE PIERCING THE SOUL OF MOTHER EARTH WITH ANOTHER OF YOUR FUCKING SPEARS! WE DON’T NEED OIL THAT BADLY! YOU WILL NOT EVER DRILL FOR FUCKING OIL HERE AS LONG AS I’M ALIVE AND ABLE TO DRIVE MY HULKING SUV TO GET HERE!"

 

"Lady, we’re a troop of Boy Scouts. And hey---watch the language, huh? We got kids here."

 

Stunned silence stretched out for several seconds, then "Watch my---FUCK YOU! HOW DARE YOU TRY TO TELL ME TO DO SOMETHING I DON"T WANT TO DO! ARE YOU TRYING TO VICTIMIZE ME? OPPRESSORS! BOY SCOUTS! BOY SCOUTS! OHO! I SEE NOW! NOW IT MAKES SENSE! FUCKING HOMOPHOBES! GODDAMN SEXISTS! YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST HAVE YOUR OWN LITTLE MOTHERFUCKING ORGANIZATION WHERE YOU CAN JUST MAKE YOUR OWN LITTLE MOTHERFUCKING RULES THAT ITS MEMBERS ARE REQUIRED TO FOLLOW? THAT YOU CAN INCLUDE AND ACCEPT ALL IN YOUR FUCKING CADRE BUT ONE OR TWO PARTICULAR TYPES OF PERSON? HOW WRONG YOU ARE! NOT WHILE FOULMOUTH STILL DRAWS BREATH! I WILL TAKE YOU COURT! I WILL CALL THE ACLU----

 

"They’re already on us."

 

"Oh, yeah. That’s right….WELL, GOOD! NO MATTER! THE LIBERAL LEFT WILL PRY FREE YOUR MIND AND SPIRIT!" FoulMouth’s eyes glazed over with rapture, "WE WILL FUCKING FORCE YOU TO CONFORM TO OUR CONCEPT OF MORAL RELATIVITY, BY THE DIRECTIVES OF LAW AS HANDED DOWN BY SYMPATHETIC (accent on ‘pathetic’) INDIVIDUAL LIBERAL JUDGES INSTEAD OF THE MORONIC, INEFFICIENT AND LESS EASILY-MANIPULATED ELECTORATE!"

 

　

 

Suddenly, an engine revs out of sight….quite a large engine, too, by the sound. The Scouts, embarrassed by the completely and unbelievably unnecessary outburst of anger and foul language from the woman in purple spandex, all look past her in search of the source of the sound, and of something, anything, else on which to focus their attention. The Scoutmaster, opening his mouth to politely ask her to let them pass, stops, looking around.

 

Then, with a rush of wind, a large hole opened in the air behind FoulMouth. She spun to face it, ready for action, whipping out a handful of her crossed-out ‘W’ razor disks.

 

Out of the hole surged a gleaming, beautifully-kept 1976 Ford monster pickup, riding atop a lift kit that raised it some five feet off the ground, and four enormous, knobby, off-road tires.

 

It was painted a deep blue and, air-brushed on the passenger side door, was a lifelike portrait of Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. On the driver’s side door was an equally lifelike portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Depicted on the wide hood was a battle scene; gray-clad soldiers surged forward amid explosions and under the waving Stars and Bars, warring savagely with their cousins and brothers in Union blues.

 

Mounted firmly to the roof of the cab was an eagle-topped 3’x 5’ American flag on a staff, and it waved proudly in the breeze. Mounted on the passenger side, just to the rear of the door, was a Confederate flag of slightly smaller dimensions than the American flag above it…mounted on the driver’s side was a black banner bearing the image of a stylized red "3". Beneath the number, in flowing script, were the words "Remember the Intimidator…Dale Earnhart Sr."

 

Mounted to the massive grill of the vehicle was a wooden plaque bearing the words "RedNeck". A personalized license plate bore the words "Rebel Yell 1". Confederate flag decals decorated each window, even small ones in the corners of the windshield.

 

The truck idled for moment, its stereo blasting the voice of Larry the Cable Guy mumbling, over a laughing audience, "Dear God, please forgive me for that remark about how hot my mother and my sister are, and be with the starving pigmies down there in New Guinea; amen." As the hole from which it came closed with loud rush of air, the engine then stopped and the silence was total.

 

The door opened, and a boot stepped out onto the running board…then another. In seconds, a figure had dropped to the ground, hidden from the waist up by the massive blue door.

 

FoulMouth could see that the figure wore workboots, worn, faded jeans and a jacket of some sort, but no more.

 

Fingers wrapped around the edge of the door, and it swung shut with a loud slam. There, revealed at last, was the figure of RedNeck, the alter-ego of one Donny-Ray Miler.

 

Dressed in his jeans and boots, his jacket was a colorful, satin NASCAR-themed affair, the collar upturned. Under the jacket, he wore a gleaming t-shirt with the logo of the Atlanta Falcons, and on his head was a gray, mesh-backed cap, silk screened with "CSA-The South will rise again!" in yellowish-gold script, on the front over a Confederate flag. His hair was cut in a mullet that was in bad need of a trim. But then, it always looked like that.

 

"Howdy, ya’ll…." He said cheerfully, with a wide grin, walking toward the group. He was chewing on a toothpick.

 

FoulMouth snorted with sour good humor and smiled derisively. "Well, I’ll be ass-fucked raw…." she said, her tone cold; behind her, the scoutmaster placed his hands over the ears of the youngest member. "If it isn’t Foghorn fucking Leghorn."

 

"Nice to see you, too, LoudMouth," RedNeck chuckled; putting his hands in his pockets, he said, thoughtfully, "Though chicken is delicious, especially fried, and the good Colonel Sanders managed to make himself a few vaultfuls of money from it, I wouldn’t, really, compare myself to that particularly symbolic bird."

 

FoulMouth drew herself up, affronted at his mangling of her name. Also, as a vegan with socialist tendencies and an unflagging supporter of animal rights, this off-hand remark enraged her. "That’s ‘FoulMouth’….she groused, her tone warning.

 

RedNeck smiled serenely at her reaction. He looked at the troop of scouts. "Are you young gentlemen all right?" he asked.

 

The scoutmaster nodded. "Feeling a little unnecessarily harassed," he said, looking with much annoyance at FoulMouth, that champion of liberal ideals, "but fine, thanks."

 

"Well, ah can most certainly understand that!" RedNeck concurred jovially. His gaze returned to the woman. "FoulMouth," he asked, "where’s your partner, Angryman?"

 

"We fought the LRWS last week…" she told him, "he’s still pulling his atoms together. He’ll be out of sight for a while. That trick comes in handy, but it’s a pain in the ass waiting for him to find all his atoms." She did have to admit, grudgingly, that she found his southern accent and mild "bad-boy" aura terribly sexy. She quashed these distracting emotions, however, by thinking of the struggles of the strong, maliciously anti-sexual and angry feminists of NOW back in the glory days of the 1970s. That did the trick.

 

"Ah, I see…" RedNeck said politely, which garnered a sneer from FoulMouth. "Well, give him mah regards whenever you can see him again." He paused, then said, "FoulMouth, why don’t you just go on about your business now, and leave these fine young gentlemen to their field trip? Haven’t you got an endangered species of somethin’ or other to save somewhere?"

 

"I went to that meeting Wednesday, you inbred fuck, thank you very much!" she said, irritated. "We hired lobbyists to save the last purple-spotted mosquito! And we will! Those imperialist, Bush-lackey army bastards will never build that hospital on that property!"

 

"Ah heard that the hospital is gonna to provide free abortions to anyone at all with no questions asked," RedNeck said, his tone matter-of-fact.

 

"Hm…really?" FoulMouth replied, shocked….perhaps she’d been too hasty in her support of Mosquito Rights.

 

"No, not really, you liberal robot. I just wanted to see what you’d say, and ah wasn’t surprised. Now, ma’am, with all due respect, why don’t you just----

 

"WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?" FoulMouth roared, stunned beyond belief at his insolence. "WHAT DID YOU FUCKING SAY???!!! DID YOU REFER TO ME IN A GENDER-SPECIFIC MANNER? HOW DARE YOU DISRESPECT ME??!! YOU GODDAMNED SEXIST PIG!" She tossed her razor disks in rage; the scouts scattered and dived for the underbrush at the sides of the path.

 

RedNeck calmly snapped his fingers, and a well-worn fiddle appeared in his left hand, the bow in his right. With fluid grace, he passed the bow over the strings of the instrument, and a chord from "Sweet Home Alabama" filled the clearing, outsized notes appearing physically in the air, flowing from the strings. They formed into a shield before the rightist hero, and the disks thunked solidly into a few of them and dropped impotently to the ground. RedNeck then changed tunes, and the opening notes from "Dixie" could be heard. As he played, the notes materialized and surged of their own accord toward FoulMouth, forming themselves into a spinning circle that would bound her tightly.

 

But the leftist was well-prepared. "FUCK!" she roared, stepping sharply backward and moving her fingers and hands frantically in an odd, sculpting fashion. "BUSHITLER!" "SHIT!" "OILWAR!" As she spoke these magic words, multiple small left hands began to form in the space before her, appearing from her fingertips. These hands, another manifestation of her ability to create a larger left hand, and likewise formed from her foul words and liberal rhetoric, slapped at the notes even as they attempted to ensnare her. At length, she had blocked the musical attack. She smiled smugly and dusted her hands together with arrogant finality.

 

"That’s a fucking big-ass truck you drive, you Bushie swine. Guzzles a lot of gas, I’ll bet," she snarled with sarcasm. "That’s right, support the Christian emperor by increasing his family’s oil fortune!"

 

Redneck grinned. "Uses only slightly more than that tank of an SUV you drive, I’d think," he replied, "And, ah might point out, ah ain’t the one cryin’ about drillin’ for oil on federal land."

 

FoulMouth staggered backward, enraged under this shocking offensive of ironic truth.

 

"Look at those racist symbols!" she cried, pointing. "All those fucking Rebel flags! The Civil War’s over…you lost; the Confederacy is fucking dead! Deal with it, motherfucker!" she admonished triumphantly.

 

"Yep," RedNeck agreed ruefully, taking off his hat and clutching it to his chest, "it is dead…just as dead as Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and just as dead as Eddie’s chances of ever being president, but you can’t seem to get over that," he calmly retorted.

 

FoulMouth was stunned…stunned that so low a creature as this provincial shitstain could ever utter the sacred names. "You really are a racist animal, you know that? Hater! HATER!" she raved.

 

"Now looka here, little lady;" Redneck said, his face growing serious. "That might be true about some people; mostly uneducated, racist northerners, I’d think, but as for mahself and most others like me, that flag there means one thing: ‘Heritage’…..not Hate," he said, replacing his hat.

 

FoulMouth screeched inarticulately. "YOU LIE!" she finally managed. "THE CIVIL WAR WAS AN ATTEMPT BY THE ELITIST, RACIST SOUTHERN PLANTATION SYSTEM TO KEEP BLACKS ENSLAVED!"

 

RedNeck smiled a sad, yet unsurprised, smile. "If you knew anythin’ at all about Civil War history," he said softly, "you’d know that the tragic War of Northern Aggression was actually fought over State’s Rights. It was the Union that made it an issue of race and slavery when their president issued the Emancipation Proclamation. That president, by the way, was a Republican…." he smiled as he saw that FoulMouth, at the moment in a purple rage (at the moment he could hardly tell where she stopped and her costume started), had no retort. He pressed further. "You’d also know that only a very small portion of the soldiers who wore the Confederate Gray were slave owners. Most of them were poor farmers, just like my great-great-grandpappy, who volunteered and even brought their own guns and ammunition simply because they just didn’t like the idea of the North coming in and telling us what we should do with what was fairly well our own business."

 

"YOU ENSLAVED AFRICAN-AMERICANS!" FoulMouth squeeked through her insane rage.

 

"That is true, yes," RedNeck acknowledged sadly. "But at the time, it was the way things were; it was felt, mistakenly, that slavery was needed to make the system work. A sad, but true, fact of history. We perhaps held on to the old ways longer than was necessary, but that’s an argument for the academics." His tone darkened. "Besides, you lefties enslave them yourselves now, you know;" he said matter-of-factly. "Just not in the same way."

 

FoulMouth was shocked and utterly dismayed by these words. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE! AFRICAN-AMERICANS HAVE IT BETTER NOW THAN THEY EVER HAVE BEFORE! HOW FUCKING DARE YOU ACCUSE US OF ENSLAVING THEM? HOW CAN YOU FUCKING SAY THAT?"

 

"Because, you see….they’re the Democratic Party’s main power base. You hold them in "their place" with your government programs and promises of a free ride if they’ll just keep on votin’ for you," RedNeck explained. "You don’t really help them; you give them hand-outs instead of a hand-up. When one of them does start to make good on their own, make a little more money and start to do better, you drastically cut their benefits in punishment, makin’ it impossible for them get by in the interim. Thereby, you’re keepin’em reliant on your welfare system, which is designed like a trap; a spider’s web; once you’re in that system, it’s virtually impossible to get back out. In order to keep the support comin’, they are bound, by their sheltered heads, full stomachs and clothed backs, to keep on votin’ for you, so that the programs that provide their subsistence livin’ standards can continue to be supported. You don’t help them, … in the long run, you hurt them." He shook his head sadly at the thought.

 

"Also," he pointed out, "you lie to them, you keep tellin’ them that they’re victims, and not responsible for their own lives and destinies…..those that do manage to rise above your traps and succeed often vote for more conservative policies. They are victims of a sort, though, I will admit that. Victims of liberalism and the Democratic Pa----"

 

"LIAR! YOU LIE! ALL FUCKING LIES!" FoulMouth shrieked, cutting him off. "NONE OF IT IS TRUE! NOT ONE MOTHERFUCKING WORD!" she choked, cowering, with her hands clamped firmly over her ears under this bright shaft of illuminating truth. "I WON"T HEAR IT! ANY OF IT!!"

 

"Jesus Christ, lady; why don’t you just lighten…." RedNeck started to say.

 

FoulMouth looked shocked. "SSSShhhht! Shut up! Don’t you DARE say---those…..words…." she said, saying ‘words’ as if it made her ill.

 

"What words?" RedNeck asked, truly puzzled.

 

"You know perfectly well ‘what words’!" FoulMouth yelled accusingly. "Th-that naaaaame!"

 

"Name?" The hero paused for a moment, considering the words he’d used. "Jesus Christ?"

 

"SSSSSsssht! Damn you! Don’t say that name!"

 

"Why not?"

 

FoulMouth looked annoyed and angry. "This park is under federal jurisdiction, that’s why! Public land! No worshipping allowed!"

 

"So…..I can’t mention God here? Way out here?" Redneck asked.

 

FoulMouth paused and adopted a thoughtful expression. "Big ‘g’ or little ‘g’?" she asked.

 

"Big."

 

"Nope, sorry."

 

"That’s nuts…what if I wanted to come here and worship the trees and rocks? Maybe I’m a Druid? Or a Satanist, maybe; maybe I want to build a bonfire and dance around naked for a while and sacrifice a goat to Satan?" RedNeck asked mockingly. "Is that okay?"

 

FoulMouth, not picking up on the mockery, considered and said, "Well….Druid, huh?" she nodded, "Yeah, that’s okay….Satan, now…" her tone became unsure. "Let’s see…Satan….welllll, Satan is mentioned in the Torah and the Bible, so I don’t know…hmmm… Oh!" she said, her face brightening, "But he’s also mentioned in the Koran…so yeah, Satan worship is okay. Just not…you know…that other guy…."

 

"Why’s that?"

 

"Well….because….well, I don’t know; it just is!" she insisted, annoyed that he would ever question her obviously correctly-conceived ideas.

 

"Lady, you’re a serious whackjob, you know that? My taxes pay for these acres of nature, too, you know?"

 

"Regardless, no mention of repressive deities on public-funded property. That’s the law. Worship, and the Christian religion as a whole, is to be relegated to a narrow field of reference…mainly in churches and homes, of course…" her left hand rose to cover her mouth, "but we’re working on those too…." She made the "sshh" sign and winked, smiling a secret smile.

 

"Ah can’t let you do that, FoulMouth," RedNeck said, shaking his head. "It’s just not fair to the American people…most of which are Christian."

 

"There’s nothing you can do about it, you stupid fuckwad….it’s the law."

 

With that, RedNeck turned slowly, showing FoulMouth his jacket’s colorful back, covered as it was with the logos of multiple NASCAR sponsors. With great reverence, he reached back with both hands and turned down his collar.

 

FoulMouth was instantly blinded by the searing light, containing the full brightness and power of the sun, which shown out from the back of his neck.

 

"AAARRGHH!" she cried, covering her eyes. Branches of trees and brush around the clearing burst into flame from the radiating heat coming off the sun-seared flesh of RedNeck’s red neck. "I want you to stop your assault on religion, you left-wing freakshow," RedNeck said calmly.

 

"NEVER!" the Liberal champion cried.

 

With that, she closed her eyes and began to speak slowly, her voice seeming to echo through the trees.

 

Her arms began to wave eerily. "Fuck….shit….Bush is an imperialist….oilwar…..Christian crusade….Osama’s a hottie…." A massive left hand appeared in the air.

 

"Ah don’t think so, little lady." RedNeck said, pulling up his collar and turning to face her. He clenched his fists and drew back, inhaling deeply. A small cyclone formed and could be seen, drawing air into his lungs through his mouth. He held his breath for an instant, glaring at his opponent, then---

 

　

 

"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

 

　

 

The force of the sound slammed into FoulMouth, knocking her backward, her feet coming off the ground and arms jerking forward as if she’d been pulled sharply from behind. The giant hand disapparated completely, her naturally weak powers of concentration now broken. FoulMouth, screaming, flew backward and crashed into the ground some fifty yards away, leaving a crater the size of her rather large buttocks and knocking over a tree. The scouts cheered heartily from their hiding places.

 

"That’s why some also call me "Rebel Yell," RedNeck said, his tone satisfied. He tugged at his jacket to straighten its shape, and smoothed his sleeves.

 

When she sat up and beheld the prostrate tree, FoulMouth lay her hand on its rough bark, and shed a silent tear for the ancient wooden sentinel of the forest. She turned her hateful gaze balefully on RedNeck.

 

"You shall pay for this," she hissed, indicating the dead tree. She rose and, raising her hands, produced from thin air a blizzard of subpoenas and judicial writs and other legal documents by the hundreds of thousands, attempting to keep her enemy tied up in litigation.

 

"John Marshall;" RedNeck said quietly, standing firm amid the blowing documents, and the transparent spirit of the great jurist, a native of Virginia, appeared. He opened his robes and absorbed the storm of paper, closing the folds as the last of them was drawn in, and vanished.

 

"HOW DARE YOU USE MY OWN METHODS AGAINST ME?" FoulMouth howled, staggering backward. "Only the Left is allowed to manipulate the constitution through the courts!

 

"Hank Sr.," RedNeck said softly, ignoring her. The spirit of Hank Williams appeared before her, and FoulMouth, startled, screamed and stumbled backward.

 

"Waylon," RedNeck said, and the ghost of Waylon Jennings appeared to her right. She looked fearfully in RedNeck’s direction.

 

"What are you doing?" she whimpered.

 

"Johnny," and the ghost of Johnny Cash appeared to her left.

 

"Thin Elvis", and a handsome young vision of the King appeared behind her.

 

"Tammy," he said, and Tammy Wynette appeared, hovering several feet above her.

 

She spun madly, fearfully facing each of them in turn. "What is this?" She cried, bracketed by the five ghostly crooners, each a Southerner in their own right.

 

"Sing, folks;" RedNeck commanded cheerfully, and Hank launched into his hit "Your Cheatin’ Heart"; Waylon began to warble "Amanda", Johnny "Ring of Fire" and Elvis, hips quivering, began the opening lines of "Viva Las Vegas". The ultimate insult, however, came when Tammy began the opening lines of "Stand by your Man", the anti-feminist ‘theme song’.

 

"NOOOO!" FoulMouth screamed, covering her ears; "YOU FUCKING ONE-TOOTHED, TWELVETOED, TRAILER-TRASH, INBRED MOTHERFUCKING HICK! THIS IS THE MUSIC OF RUBES AND SHEEP-FUCKING BUMPKINS! I WILL NOT BE SUBJECTED TO IT!" But she sank to her knees, weeping loudly as the music continued, and, collapsing, drew into the fetal position (and probably hoping she wasn’t about to be aborted). Hank finished up and moved on to "Tear in my Beer", and Waylon to "The Dukes of Hazzard" theme; she howled in agony. "Noooomoooore…" she groaned.

 

"That’s enough, folks, thank you…." RedNeck said quietly, walking toward the downed liberal, and the ghosts disappeared. The only audible sound was FoulMouth whimpering on the ground, cursing pitifully under her breath, and the sound of RedNeck’s boots crunching on the path.

 

Over the sound of her breathy whimpers, "fuck….shit…..sonofabitch….motherfucker…." could be heard, but, stunned by her ordeal, she was weakened and virtually powerless.

 

RedNeck crouched down and said "Kudzu," and "Spanish Moss", and a dense patch of kudzu plants immediately rose out of the soil beneath FoulMouth, and the hanging moss drooped from the trees above her; the plants, working in conjunction, gently lifted her off the ground and into a seated position.

 

RedNeck, ever the Southern Gentleman despite his appearance, offered her an unused McDonald’s napkin from his jacket pocket. She snatched it from him sulkily and wiped her eyes. Sniffling, she asked, "What are you going to do to me?"

 

RedNeck looked amused, but not surprised. "Do? Why nothin’, little lady. I’m not gonna do a thing. I’m lettin’ ya go."

 

"Go?" she asked, not daring to believe…in the hands of a conservative nutjob like this one, any evil thing could happen.

 

"Yes," he said gently, "you’re free to go; do as you will….live and let live. By and large, that’s what we conservatives mostly want, you know." he explained. "We don’t want you goin’ to court and pushin’ your ways and ideas on us, usin’ the media to flood us with your messages, tryin’ to brainwash us; that’s why we resist you so hard. All we ask of you is.…let us be. We won’t take you to court and try to force you to do things our way, kinda like the Union did to the Confederacy. We only ask you to do the same."

 

"But…you conservatives are always trying to tell us liberals what we should do," she said, her tone mildly accusatory.

 

RedNeck smiled. "Advisin’ you on what we think you should do is one thing….manipulatin’ the courts and media and tryin’ to actually force you to do it is another. That’s the main difference between us and our tactics, on the whole."

 

He waved her off. "Now go on….go about your business."

 

Unbelieving, FoulMouth rose and stumbled unsteadily. He reached out to help her, but she shoved him away.

 

"DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH ME, YOU MOTHERFUCKING CONSERVATIVE ASSHOLE! I HATE YOU! YOU ARE INTOLERANT! YOU ARE RACIST! YOU ARE SEXIST! YOU FUCKING DISGUST ME!" With that resetting of her ideals, she ran off into the forest, screaming in rage, toward her massive SUV.

 

RedNeck, bemused, shook his head as he watched her go.

 

"But you just remember…." he said quietly, "…no matter what kind of crazy schemes you come up with….no matter what weird causes you choose to back…the Right will be there to oppose you. Remember that." Turning, he walked back to his antique pickup, waved to the Scouts, coming out of their hiding places now, and was gone back the way he came, into the hole, the strains of Hank Jr.’s "A Country Boy Can Survive" echoing through the trees.