Capitalising (Ezzy's Education, Part 34), by Garrett Murch
Several hours after exhaust-fest ended with police dispersing the crowd and making several forceful arrests, Ezzy sat on her bed, trying not to slump. She had finished her challenging chemistry homework and now turned to her assignment for Drawing I.
While Ezzy did not expect to study art in college, the course description for the class said students would be encouraged to focus on their interests, develop their ideas and skills, and set goals. She would get to draw fly fishing scenes and perhaps one of them could replace the black silhouette of an eye her mother had hung on the wall by their front door.
There was a knock on her door. “Good night, Ezzy. Are you doing okay?” “I’m okay, Dad.”
Her father opened the door. Her mother was with him.
“Good night, Ezzy,” her mother said. “We both have to get up at the crack of dawn.”
“Are you campaigning before work?” Ezzy asked.
“No, but there’s an early morning meeting at your school. To be honest, I haven’t felt the same about the campaign since that symposium, but I said I’d go.”
Interesting. Does she really mean that? “Can you believe what those men did at our school today?”
“Sadly, yes,” her mother said. “I heard there weren’t many boys from school there; it was mostly grown men.”
“That’s what I heard, too,” Ezzy said. “The teachers and administrators don’t have the same rules against idling their vehicles.”
“I know. But that was toxic masculinity, Ezzy. It’s got to go.”
“The operative word, Mom, is ‘toxic.’ Not all masculinity. There’s a difference.”
“Of course there is.”
“I don’t think Lucinda Barron sees a difference.”
“I don’t know,” her mother said.
“Do you have homework left to do tonight?” her father asked. “I have to do a drawing for art class.”
“You’re liking that class, right?” her mother asked.
“I was, but the other day when I got to class, Ms. Scales was there. She was sitting at Mrs. Merridan’s desk and she told us she will be filling in for weeks.”
“Why? Is Mrs. Merridan okay?” her father asked.
“Ms. Scales said she went on leave to get her justice sensitivity certification.”
“Maybe doing it during the summer would have been more appropriate,” her mother said.
“Or not doing it at all,” Ezzy said. “Mrs. Merridan is fine. There are a few teachers who might be a little insensitive, I suppose. But she’s not one of them. She pushes us hard, but she’s kind and she treats everyone equally.”
“What are you going to draw?” her father asked.
“I was going to draw a brook trout, but now I’m not sure.” Her parents smiled.
“I should probably get to work on it,” Ezzy said, looking at her desk. Her parents wished her good night again and closed her door behind them. Ezzy looked at the small plaque above her desk made of live edge pine. It read, “Gone Fishing.” Ezzy rolled her eyes. I fished too much.
I’ll start my drawing right after I check InstaTok. To no surprise, there was a new video by Lucinda Barron on the site. What did surprise Ezzy was, for the first time in weeks, Lucinda was not wearing a dress in the freeze frame; she wore a black tunic instead. Lucinda’s frozen mouth was wide open as if gasping. An image of the Ebbing student parking lot filled with smoke was in Lucinda’s background, as half of a split screen whose other half was an image of the World Trade Center burning on September 11, 2001.
Really, Lucinda? Ezzy clicked on the freeze frame.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here this evening following the greatest terror attack ever perpetrated on Ebbing High School.
“Our school is under attack by terrorists with a masculine ideology who seek to destroy the very idea of Justice. A fierce urgency demands we nip this masculinity in the bud before it leads to other non-compliance with the norms of Justice. We face a crisis, and we all know we mustn’t let a crisis go to waste. In the coming days, we will be issuing mandatory suggestions for how to end this toxic terror once and for all.
“The events of today will go down as the Pearl Harbor in our war against fascist non- conformity with our shared Justice agenda. And finally, ugh, I don’t like having to say this again, and so soon, but here goes... God bless you and god bless the united students of Ebbing.”
Ezzy slammed her laptop shut before looking at the comments on Lucinda’s video. I can guess what they’re going to say. “Hyperbole everywhere you look,” she said with her teeth clenched and her lips barely moving. Someone should hyperbole their hyperbole. The Patriot and Justice parties could be called Hyperbole Party One and Hyperbole Party Two. We need credibility, not hyperbole. She took a deep breath.
Someone else can do that. I’m going to draw something productive. I guess not a brook trout tonight.
A few weeks ago, for her first assignment, Ezzy had drawn a woman standing in a river holding a fly rod with the sun between the clouds and a rainbow on the side. Mrs. Merridan had given Ezzy a B+, and Ezzy thought that was a fair grade, knowing she was not particularly gifted at drawing. She appreciated some pointers Mrs. Merridan had given about how to improve on the drawing. Still, Ezzy was happy enough with it since it reminded her of the painting that used to hang by the front door of her house.
She got up from her bed and sat down at her desk with her paper and colored pencils. What to draw?
She stared at her set of pencils, ordered red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. After those were two brown pencils and two black ones: Ms. Scales had given the students an extra one of each on her first day as their new art teacher.
I have an idea.
Ezzy spent about ninety minutes drawing. When she finished, she sat back and looked at it. It’s kind of simple, but I like it. The drawing was of an American flag in red, white, and blue, as if it were flying in the wind. Instead of adding white stars, however, she’d meticulously made each of the fifty stars include every color of the rainbow. She’d seen similar American flags when she was little and thought they were pretty.
She placed her drawing in a folder, her folder in her backpack, brushed her teeth and hopped on her bed. I’ll check InstaTok one last time.
BREAKING: Verica Navratil Comes Out of Coma
By Luci Lipps 8:12 p.m.
Loose Lipps has had little positive news to report, and as with most good news stories, this article will be brief. Tonight, we have learned Verica Navratil has awakened and is continuing to rest at Ebbing Memorial Hospital. Navratil’s parents, the Navratilovas, have confirmed the development with this brief statement: “We are relieved beyond expression, and ask only that people continue their prayers for Verica’s full recovery.”
* * *
9:47 p.m.
Lucinda Barron stood in the doorway of her mother’s dim study not long after publishing her InstaTok video about the terror attack at school. “Did you see my video, Mom?”
“Sit down, Lucinda,” Professor Barron said, standing up from her antique mahogany desk with ornate, bronze inlay.
Lucinda sat in the black hardwood chair next to her mother’s built-in, mahogany bookcase filled with academic books on political theory, linguistics, and political movements. Her mother walked to a dark, red sandalwood chair, several feet from Lucinda. She lit the brass Samovar lamp that stood on a reclaimed oak side table. She sat and faced her daughter. “It is time to adjust your messaging strategy,” she said.
“Seriously, Mom? What now?”
“First, you must stop using the eye as a symbol.”
“Why?” Lucinda asked.
”Because it has become unpopular, it appears. I’m seeing signs that parts of Hollywood are growing tired of it. And if they don’t like it anymore, it won’t work.”
“I know, you’ve told me a million times: politics follows the culture. So the eye has fallen out of favor?”
“Largely, yes,” Professor Barron said. “But not to worry, the agenda is not changing. Justice will continue to chip away at individualism and masculinity. As time goes by you will see we change our words and symbols all the time, but never our goals.”
“Why do we do that?” Lucinda asked, looking at the broad bookcase that stretched to the ceiling.
“It’s like why hunters cover up their scents so the animals can’t smell them,” her mother said. “But they’re still hunters. Just like we will still know people are incapable of governing themselves justly. We just can’t let people get onto our scent. Too many people still believe self-government and self-reliance can work.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“I think you’ve done an excellent job painting Patriots broadly as terrorists. That is important. Every time they make a mistake and do something reactionary, it is critical all Patriots are portrayed as supporting that behavior. You seem to have that down.”
“Thanks,” Lucinda said, looking down now. “I try.”
“But don’t fool yourself into thinking our full agenda has much support from the American people, or even from your classmates. People still love their freedom, they still think of themselves as individuals, and that’s unfortunately not going away overnight. It’s in the DNA of the United States.”
Lucinda looked at her mother with a confused face. “But I won already; that doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Perhaps not now, but be careful,” her mother said. “You’re only at the very beginning of your political career.”
“True.”
“Right now, as we impose unpopular measures like we have on student vehicles and red meat in school, it is important to distract people by accusing the Patriots of being two more things: they all must be labeled as either authoritarian or fascist. And always as a threat to democracy.”
“But I have been doing that,” Lucinda insisted. “Only a little, I guess.”
“Double down on it. Especially when things are not going well.” Lucinda stared silently at her mother.
“Trust me.” Professor Barron continued. “When you are doing things some might consider authoritarian and undemocratic, the best way to cover up your scent is to accuse your opponent of doing the very things you are doing. It puts your opponents on the defensive and it distracts the people. And if you’re lucky, it will cause your opponent to do something impulsive or reactionary and dumb. Then it looks like your accusations were accurate.”
“Brilliant, Mom. It’s like setting bait for the Patriots to take. Like with my ‘Ban Toxic Masculinity’ pamphlets Trunk’s father burned.”
“Eh, sort of. And don’t get any pangs of conscience about it, Lucinda, because the Patriots try to use similar tactics against us. They’re just not as effective as we are.”
“I’ve got the conscience part down, Mom. Why are Patriots so ineffective?”
“Well, for starters they’re not as smart, or at least not as educated. But it also helps we more or less still have the media, academia, and a lot of Hollywood on our side. I worry about Hollywood, though. Those people like their creativity and freedom. Don’t ever talk about any of this. Ever.”
Lucinda was looking at her phone while her mother spoke. Her face went white. “What is it, Lucinda?”
Lucinda kept her eyes glued to her phone. “Verica,” she said. “She has come out of her coma.”
Mother and daughter looked at each other in silence.
“Well, that is delightful,” her mother said. “You’ll have your comrade back. She’s been a good number two for you.”
Lucinda looked at her mother and looked at the floor while swallowing. “Yeah.”