The Hat

The hat had first belonged to a Mr. Edward Happer, a crisp gentleman of means and an amply moneyed Philadelphia family. There was nothing remarkable about the hat. It was the type of hat they all wore, all the erect, sharply glancing young gentleman of late 19th century society. A deep, rich brown felt, soft and yielding. Its presence announced that its wearer could afford to appear soft and yielding, because everyone knew he was not.

When Edward Happer died of influenza in 1890, his hat stayed behind. It was eventually worn by the son of Mrs. Gladiola Berletti, a widow who pieced together a living working for the church. She had received Mr. Happer's things for the funeral, but his mother couldn't bear to look at the hat, that symbol of the station her son would never be able to assume.

And so Mrs. Berletti kept it. When Anthony Berletti—Tony—left to go live with relatives in New York, he took the hat with him. Not understanding that anyone who knew what the hat implied would know he wore it fraudulently—not being born under the hat, as it were—he wore it everywhere he went. His swagger was natural though, inborn, and the hat amplified it little. Still, Tony liked the way it looked. He turned to admire himself in windows often.

When he died, drowned on a scow in the East River, his uncle couldn't stand the sight of it, sitting on the sill where Tony had left it that morning, smug and soft and never needing to lift a finger. Uncle Paolo threw it out the window—his first official act of mourning: he opened the sill and flicked the hat onto 124th Street below. To be trampled by draft mules, for all he cared.

From there, the hat found its way into a general store on the corner of 127th and Harrison. And from there, from head to head, to the Mississippi River and the groves of California.