Say the word aloud enough times and the sheer hillbilly ignorance of it practically rolls off the tongue. Willard is where I grew up. It is a town of people who have been beaten hard and often by life, people with no skills to draw upon to save them from the constant countless repetition of fifty hour work weeks at slave wages. These outbreaks of violence have less to do with racially motivated hate than one might expect. Surely for some the sight of any Mexican is enough to spark a dull, passive kind of rage, but for most these quarrels are merely a way of releasing the testosterone filled tension that builds all winter long.
Winter is a tough go in Willard.
For most of the season roads are undrivable. The only thing to do is sit at home and face the walls close in. On cold winter nights in February the howl of the winter winds can sometimes even drown out the roar of the poor unfortunate screaming children, trapped inside the house with parents who probably didn't even want them in the first place. For the Willard resident in winter, the hell of work is seen as an escape from the hell of home, and vice versa. So he holds his breath, stays his hands, dreams of the summer months, summer months that bring an end to the cabin fever sobriety and winter doldrums, summer months that bring Mexicans with sun seabed faces to pummel, faces you can beat to a bloody pulp without any fear of looking across the lunch table tomorrow at work recognizing them.