The Hat- Still going and going...

(A GROWING SHORT STORY) Mike had run almost a mile and a quarter in fully wet clothes in the wind and rain in pursuit of his hat. It would take several minutes more before he walked back far enough to notice that his truck was not anywhere near where he left it. Water drops ran down over his brow and across wet eyelashes. Mike blinked. He blinked several more times. There was where his truck was, right there. There were the curb and the signs and the peculiar empty lot exactly where they had been. More drops ran down Mike’s cheeks like faux tears while blinking only made the absence of the truck that much more surreal.

“Holy shit!” said Mike into the storm. “Mother fucker!”

-3-


The collected bits and pieces of Mike’s storied life had simply vanished into the wet, windy night. Gone were the playing cards from Scandinavian Airlines. Gone were the key-ring souvenirs Mike had bundled into a single hanging ornament. Gone were the pictures and the contents of his bag. Gone were the little corners of long ago days torn off of napkins and business cards and love notes and day planners.

Gone.

All of it.

Like it had never existed in the first place. The loss of it all staggered Mike against the wind. How could a good luck charm be stolen? Was that what happened? Was the truck stolen?

Or maybe it was towed? Maybe a tow truck came by and took the truck away to some yard in the dark and all Mike had to do was find out where and retrieve it? Maybe there were people who conspired with one another to make a buck and the truck would be released after a few dollars were squeezed? They did that sort of thing in Mexico. Why not here?

Mike’s shirt sleeves were so wet they grew to cover his hands. His pants were so heavy they traveled low on his hips and the legs were scrunched down over his soggy shoes. To pull his pants up, Mike needed to roll up his sleeves. To roll up his sleeves, Mike needed to put his hat somewhere. The wind had lessened some but still felt ominous. Somewhere out there was a gust waiting to take the hat and hurl it down the street again.

Mike held the hat in his crotch and manipulated his soggy clothes. This was what Mike had become in a very short while. There was no money to alter this situation either as his wallet was with the truck. The only thing to do now was to walk toward where people gathered- water squeezing out of squishy shoes and pants and underpants- and ask for help.

There was an open steak house a few hundreds yards back in the direction of the tumbling hat incident. Mike turned and headed toward its crimson neon sign. Two couples could be seen, heads covered with parts of newspapers to keep from getting wet by the mild rain, hopping puddles with kids in tow and dashing for their cars. They would be gone before Mike could reach them, so Mike slowed down from his anticipatory pace. He focused on the sign, and the hope that someone inside would be kind enough to help him, a soggy man blown in that direction by the still gusting winds.

“My truck broke down and when I got out to fix it, my hat was blown off my head… and when I got back from chasing it down, my truck was gone…” Mike told the first people he met inside the double doors. A puddle had formed beneath him as he said not much more than that. A retired couple eyed him up and down distrustfully. Mike did not look like a guy you could trust with your kindness, if you had some you were likely to share. Mike’s soggy visage and large, muscular size were working against him as he tried to charm these two older folks, and their reluctance and hurried exit out into the night left Mike a bit puzzled but undaunted.

“Some people were just weird that way,” Mike thought.

Like many restaurants, there was another set of doors leading into the steakhouse itself. Mike was in the enclave that sold newspapers and advertised tourist attractions nearby. This was where Mike hoped to find the help he sought, as he didn’t want to create a spectacle by sloshing his way onto short-napped carpet with shoes that squeaked like a bath toy and clothes that threatened to just hang to the ground by their very weight. Mike was quite a sight dripping there all by himself. It made him smile.

This too, would be a storied moment- if he could just figure out how it was supposed to end.

Mike noticed that he was rolling and unrolling the rabbit-felt hat up in his hands. His hands were nervous, like they were unaccustomed to the uncertainty that glowed in Mike’s belly like a jalapeno pepper eaten too fast on a dare. They needed to do something useful and the hat suffered for it. A completely soaked-through felt hat will lose its shape and take on a completely new one when it finds itself as wet as this one. The once sharply defined and proud Akubra now looked like Jed Clampett’s hat on The Beverly Hillbillies. All it needed was a hole in its crease.

Mike noticed that the peacock feather he had adorned the band with was denuded and unrecognizable too.

Several families came and went, leaving Mike partially through his explanation for standing where he was standing, dripping like he was dripping.

“My truck broke down and when I got out to fix it, my hat was blown off my head… and when I got back from chasing it down, my truck was gone…”

Different degrees of this statement were spoken by a shivering Mike, and families were dragged off to protect the children.

One of the restaurant employees eventually came out and asked Mike to leave. Mike told her the same story and she called the police. Though inspired by fear, it was by far the best thing that anyone could have done for Mike in this situation. The police would take a report. They would start looking for the truck. Instead of being a dripping nuisance in the entrance to a steakhouse, Mike would become a victim, a person of interest, the topic of conversation for most diner's evening- chewing on steak and pointing with sharp serrated knives.