Liberals says his father from his seat at the kitchen table that is his throne. They don’t understand none, they just hate us for who we are. They can’t take away our God-given right but let ‘em try, let them goddam snowflakes try, and it has been like this every night after his father was returned home to his work, tired but not tired enough to keep him from inflicting judgement upon those who support a bill proposing the ban on flying the Southern Cross in the public arena that was caught plastered on the front of the newspaper that his father saw that his mother was about to throw out. When we saw it his eyes bulged in his head like fat leeches shot through with blood from the previous night’s exploits and his mouth hung open like a puppet whose head strings have been cut and he flew into a rampage and shouted and stood up quickly and knocked the milk and it spilled all over the table. The milk dripped like white blood off the edge of the table over the slick tablecloth and Raymond enough of that yelling you’ll surely wake the neighbors. Well they deserve to be woke came the roar as it still staggered about the kitchen because it’s our Constitutional right and there ain’t no holier than thou Yankee comin’ down and callin’ us racist scum for honorin’ our roots. At last the paper towels were grasped and thrust at his mother and a closet was opened and the banner removed. When the flag was unrolled it was of mighty dimensions, two broad stripes crossing its chest like twin bandoliers with stars instead of bullets. The back was a bold striking red complementing the deep blue of the stripes and it shone with a deep quiet pride. Come on son help me put it up outside. It’s time you learned ‘bout your family history. With flag carried over his father’s shoulder like a bazooka he joined the procession through the kitchen, never you mind the glance from his mother as she put aside sopping, paper towels saturated in a sea of white blood on the slick black table top and ripped a new one from the roll and with some cursing and fumbling with keys and the lock the door opened and there were born again into the fresh light of a new day. His father tipped the banner against the side of the house on the front porch and started fumbling with the flag holder jutting out from the side of the house and at last the pin is released and with save for some cursing and grunting Dixie is hoisted high into the thick white Georgia morning air. He draws back to admire their work and his father turns to him and surprises him by grasping his shoulder and turning him to the flag and looking him in the eye. Son he says this is the flag that your ancestors won fought and died under, ain’t no one who can change that or make you think there’s an’thing wrong for thinking that and as this grand declaration rings forth the flag looks somehow different in his eyes, grand and waving lightly in the breeze as though challenging anyone to try and touch it or take it or even challenge its reverence. Both he and his father are held in its thrall for a few seconds before he is slapped on the back and summoned back inside, breakfast is ready.

At school everything seems to be pretty normal except for a few kids he doesn’t know who have Southern Cross t-shirts and one kid even has little flags sticking out of the little mesh bags on the side of his backpack meant for water bottles. But other than that no one seems to have paid the possible bill any mind except for his social studies teacher who thinks let’s try and have a constructive debate about the bill and wouldn’t someone like to try and start us off. A few tentative hands go up and are eagerly called upon and the standard preliminary remarks are phrased with words like racist and heritage and South and then none as the obvious has been stated. But of course he doesn’t raise his hand he just sits in the back and squints at the grainy flag that has been projected up on the board for the occasion and the eagerness sharpens to desperation as the teacher looks in vain for another opinion. Then the teacher says okay let's go to different sides of the classroom depending on what you think and come on let’s have a real debate out of this and this is done but still it is just stagnant. At last a kid near the side raises his hand and the desperation is squashed and wariness takes its place when he sees that he has just come in and he has a Dixie shirt on. But the teacher smiles on like a soldier going into battle and says thank you Mike what are your thoughts on this and his slides down and he says low with his head tipped upward loud enough for everyone to hear I don’t think no Yankees got no right to tell us what we can’t do just to keep some black snowflakes from getting offended and the classroom erupts with voices and is split like it was once before long ago and suddenly he realizes that most of the black kids in the class are to his right, and there are but a few stragglers in the middle with him and look just as uncomfortable as he feels but there are none but maybe one or two to his left. He looks over and sees how there are white kids on his right too but not most and the battle is raging in full force now with loud voices loud as guns and cannons and the teacher is staring hopelessly at his own creation, wait a second hold on now, but his voice is lost in the flurry of words and voices whiz by like bullets named snowflake and hick and black and Yankee and redneck and other fouler things the teachers doesn’t hear or doesn’t want to and finally he parts the sea by yelling even louder and standing on a chair because no matter how much hate you have when an adult is yelling and standing on a chair you best shut up. But through all of this he’s trying not to hear it, keeps his scrunched eyes fixed on the flag at the front of the room and then he realizes that it is nothing just pixels on a whiteboard or pieces of cloth on bigger pieces of cloth and huh, what a funny thing for people to get so riled about, but really it’s not the flag people hate and fear and love but the ideas that folks have behind it that they’re so fired up about. A flag hasn’t never hurt no one and it's silly to think about a flag can’t shoot someone or beat someone or drag them out of their house and hang them or bind them in chains for hundreds of years. Meanwhile the class finally reluctantly accepted its reigns and control is regained but the calm is not, still tides of emotion pulling in both directions and raging and surging but, wow I guess there are some really passionate debaters in here huh? maybe we’ll try that another time, but then the teacher looks up and sees only him stuck in the middle withdrawn and now alone in the middle of the classroom. The teacher pauses, and says both sides have been very active let’s hear from someone in the middle, and he crosses his arms and scoots his chair back and keeps his eyes at the front of the room and he never says anything but this time he looks his teacher straight through his eyes, and he says I don’t think flags hurt people I think people do, but what he really means is I think ideas do.

But then he is back at home and his father’s judgment is flowing thick and strong  and if anything his words have gained fire, picking up energy as they roll unchallenged across the linoleum kitchen floor and bouncing off the walls and out the open doors and windows. Ain’t them liberals mighty fond of free speech, he says as he twists his head back and knocks back his third or fifth beer, cause they ain’t doing too much too defend mine, and here he must admit his father has a point. Every time he hears about free speech it’s with pictures of journalists murdered and jailed punished for using their voices against oppressive fascist regimes but when the banner under attack is the same that flew over the army of Robert E. Lee himself folks ain’t quite as eager to speak up, ain’t they? And, his father continues as beer struggles to keep level in the bottle as the world shakes around it, when are they gonna realize that Ol’ Dixie ain’t no racist symbol, just respectin’ our roots is all, I ain’t never been no racist before, but he has seen his father when he watches the news and the beer and ideas and flowing and the words he has used when stories about protests and demonstrations and black lives matter and how you’re not supposed to say them words but he hears it at school too from kids in his grade too. And it is like that now, the mighty power of Budweiser softening his father’s lips and tongue so the vowels slacken and letters slide together in a rageful lisping speech the fire in his voice telling more than words ever could. But he wonders to himself can a flag be racist, it’s just cloth and stars ain’t nothing there to be racist but then can words even be racist, just a slightly different set of sounds then the harmless ones next to them, and can people even be racist? Folks use the word like it’s something like the color of your hair or your skin like part of your DNA that you can’t help but abide by, but ain’t the only part of a person that can be racist their ideas? Ain’t people just ideas in action, ideas to act and think on, and ain’t ideas like them strange sculptures where you see different things from different points of lookin’ and if you don’t move around you might not even know what it looks like from the other side? Symbols and people and the ideas behind ‘em he thinks, that’s all there really is. But now his father turns to him eyes shot with red under swollen lids, and says son we’re going to a protest down by Hawkin’s street ‘morrow if ain’t no politicians gon’ ‘find our freedom of’ speech we sure as hell gon’ have t’, and he sees his father bloated and drunk in his armchair his mouth hanging somewhat open his head tilted forward looking at him and he thinks, aw dang Pa I’d go but I got homework to do, but his voice comes out strong and steady, sure Dad, and his father lips contract to show their yellowed roots and reaches out to ruffle his son’s hair. His father yells out, hon’, your son and I gon’ go and’ ‘fend our heritage ‘morrow at ‘bout two and his mother’s face appears in the door, and the expression is the one she has always worn as more and more beer disappeared into the void that is his father and words into the air and as she stopped up spilled milk as he and his father walked by to go raise the flag out front, not necessarily accusatory but just asking, is this idea you want to choose but he don’t know so he looks for the floor and she turns away.

He rides in his father’s pickup to Hawkings street and his father has somehow lashed the flag to the bed of the truck and it flies high above them marking their path through town, affording them the momentary attention of the people that see them. His father tries to keep a straight face but a self-satisfied smirk always seems to return and he can tell his father is glad for the attention but he can also tell he himself isn’t. At last they arrive at Hawkings street and there's already a crowd gathered, fifty or a hundred people with flags and signs and he can hear Sweet Home Alabama crankin’ through a boombox. His father is clearly held in rapture to the scene for a moment his mouth hanging open in wonder and his eyes wide open as he has ever seen them but then he blinks and looks at his son and grabs his shoulder, and let’s go, and they get out of the truck. The walk up to the edge of the crowd but his father wants to be in the thick of it so they move through crowd his father pushing his own path as he picks his own through the sea of bodies. He sees that most of the folks are older men like his father and he is the youngest one there and they find their way to around the middle of the crowd where the music is the loudest. His father hums the words to himself but the sky ain’t too blue here in Georgia, more a thick hazy grayish and humid and he’s beginning to sweat here amongst the heat of a hundred warm bodies with hot ideas so boiling hot you could get burnt but then he sees some of the people in the crowd are startin’ to yell at someone or someones rather than just basic general slogans and he tries to navigate through the crowd to see at what it could be and then he sees them, a small crowd but yellin’ too, separated from his by a light barrier. But then sees that most of them are black and he hears words like counterprotesters but along with other things too like he heard in the classroom back at school and the shouting is gettin’ louder too and he looks to his father and he’s standing high and yelling too, cupping his hands so everyone hears his ideas but his voice is lost in the multitude ‘cause everyone’s got the same ideas too. Then he looks to the other protesters on the barrier and his eyes meet with those of a little boy ‘bout his age but this boy’s skin ain’t white like his and he realizes that there is a great idea in the space between the two crowds but it ain’s the same idea depending where you look and this idea looks quite a bit like flags snapping like whips in the sudden breeze but the yelling swells in volume and he can’t see that little boy no more as bodies fall across the barrier and a fight has broken out cause that’s what ideas do ain’t it, they fight each other to see which’s got the most power and he has a terrible feeling he know whose side started the fight and it ain’t theirs, it’s his father’s and mine he thinks and the sun breaks through the suddenly broken clouds and blinds them all in its radiance and the wail of sirens penetrates the din of them and bands of blue and red flashes on the houses nearby not unlike the red and blue of the flags above them until they are rendered colorless in the newborn sunlight.