BECAUSE ALONG ITS SOUTHERNMOST BORDER LAY an inexplicable depression some called the Devil’s Footprint and others Pasco Holler, and all agreed was haunted. For proof they needed only regard their own history: Bragg’s caravan lost there for days like a schooner listless, adrift without anchor or sail—while his missus, gripped in a stupor by the nameless illness that befell her, the old folk claimed, the very second the very first Pasco tree dropped shadow on them—lay wasting away in the carriage, quarantined from even her three young sons, giving up the ghost just as they escaped the cruciferous canopy that had played day for night the better part of a week. Murmurs about a curse, a murder, a lone Indian left behind to guard the wood, an enchanted elm, but these were never mentioned out loud. The widower’s gray face cast doubt on all unfavorable speculation. Himself sick with grief, Bragg ventured little farther than the hill beyond that tree line. There where the Oconee forked in sight of the Holler, he laid his wife to rest in the center of what would become known as Braggsville, the city that love built in the heart of Georgia.
He erected a watchtower on that spot, and there strode imperial, overseeing the construction of his lumber mill, pacing the platform. The moon was always full in Braggsville. Shine during Prohibition, cotton when it was king, real estate and livestock during the Great Depression, hemp during the bull scare, an ordnance mill during the First World War: the town never fell prey to the capricious economic tides buffeting the rest of the country, and the colored folks liked it, too. They even had their own quarter, the Gully, and their own currency. (Except Nanny Tag, who wet-nursed Bragg’s three boys, and so was given room and board by Bragg, and was paid in cash by the superstitious townfolk for whom she performed certain favors.)
The currency was called Nigger-head, and it couldn’t be traded for a real penny, but it had value nonetheless. All services a colored man rendered in good faith to a white man to whom he was not legally bound were rewarded with a Nigger-head that could be exchanged for various goods at the side window of Mrs. Lee’s General and Feed.
Bragg never failed to share this fact with the state legislature when petitioning for Braggsville’s rightful recognition as the political center of the state. He redoubled his efforts after the Civil War, that second revolution, which saw Atlanta deservedly burned to her curbs, while Braggsville, where they had the foresight to dismantle their machinery, remained largely untouched because it appeared to the Union detachments to be, for all intents and purposes, decrepit. Inspecting the mill, the machinery in shambles and scattered about the floor, one Union general was reported to have said, They ought to stick to farming.
The drums and handlers and frame saws all tucked away in the Holler, the mill was back in service within two weeks after the shameful incident at Appomattox and was for several months one of the few operational industrial centers in the South. Bragg again petitioned the state, inviting the Milledgeville legislators to Braggsville to tour the mill, admire the town square centered around the watchtower, itself ringed with smiling azaleas, and enjoy a brief reenactment of the decisive battle in which the local men had figured prominently in humiliating the Yankee forces. He greeted the envoy wearing the boots he’d worn in campaigns with Old Hickory himself, by then known more roundly as the Hero of New Orleans for his instrumental role in suppressing a coup. A new courthouse was constructed (now a Circle K convenience store), the main streets widened, and the railroad station expanded to become the first two-story in the state, complete with a sitting room from which gentlemen could view the incoming trains. The government responded by selecting as capital a town once known merely as Terminus because it was there that the railway ended, then Marthasville—in honor of the governor’s daughter—and finally Atlanta, because the tracks would eventually run from the Atlantic (east 364 miles) to the Pacific (west 2,180 miles). Raymond Bragg redoubled his efforts by redoubling the reenactment in size and frequency, but he died in 1885, childless (his three sons killed in the Battle of Atlanta), without seeing Braggsville accorded the honor it deserved, and before, Fortunately, said all, seeing the mill eaten to ash when a rogue boll weevil broke ranks and ate the insulation out of an already faulty circuit breaker. The reenactments ended soon after. They started once more, unfortunately, when Georgia again raised the Confederate battle flag in 1956, the same year the state legislature passed bills rejecting Brown v. Board of Education. But they have nothing to do with slavery, secession, or segregation. It’s only civic pride.
DARON HAD HEARD IT ALL BEFORE, except the part about the Nigger-head and the reenactments coming back with the flag. He’d thought they’d always been part of the town. His mother told the story for Charlie’s benefit (as they picked at his mom’s famous French toast, finally removed from the No Fly List), explaining that Charlie was wise not to get involved because it didn’t have anything to do with him. Daron listened patiently, and though the currency issue deserved further investigation, he asked no questions so as not to encourage her. She was already angry, as was his father, who was at that moment driving out to Old Man Donner’s land.
As long as Daron could remember, the mill ran at half capacity on the day of the reenactment, operated mostly by folks from the Gully and the few townies who picked short straws. His father, though, worked that day every year. To his family, he explained it as time-and-a-half. To his coworkers he said, It’s not good and smoky until nearly four, when the battle climaxes. Strange thing was his father never was at the field by four, or at all, as a matter of fact. This morning, though, when Daron and Charlie returned from dropping off Louis and Candice, he was sitting in the living room, and wasn’t even dressed for work. He’d taken the day off because his son was in town, had planned to surprise him, but he quickly turned woeful, as he had before they put down Chamber, their old German shepherd, his face bunched up at hearing that Daron let his friends go and do alone what he was forbidden to do. Son, I would have preferred you defy me than abandon your friends, which no man should do. Daron tried explaining that they were only planning to remain at the house those few hours until the parade started, at which point they would conduct their interviews. Mr. Davenport didn’t want to hear it, and before leaving to find Candice and Louis, he stopped at the front door and took one last look at his son that made Daron feel like his balls had retracted completely into the cold corner pocket of his stomach. Daron had wanted to go with him, but his father said he’d better do it alone, Besides, you had your chance to go tits up.
THEY’D ALL BEEN TO LOUIS’S HOUSE on several occasions, taking the ninety-minute bus ride to the Richmond district for family dinners with Louis’s parents, grandparents, two great-uncles, and younger twin brothers. Lasagna for the first visit, after that, authentic Malaysian food such as chicken curry, roti canai, nasi lemak. Candice adored the twins and often spent the afternoon with them across the street in the Argonne Playground. Louis’s mother in the kitchen working her magic while keeping an eye on Candice, Candy Can-Can from the land of Candistan, as she called her, and the twins. Candy Can-Can and the boys at the swing set, each one competing for her attention, swinging higher and higher yet, their squeals reaching a crescendo at the zenith where they momentarily vanished into sunlight on noon-bright days. Charlie and Louis shooting hoops. Nonstop bantering. Louis’s secret weapon? The well-timed punch line. Daron reading or sometimes playing hoops—if they were in the mood to take it easy on him—but mostly watching Candice and how natural she was, how she fit right into the family, how even Louis’s mom had noticed, joking once that her sons would do anything for a blonde. They have big blonde spots! So, I fight fire with wood. No, really! Once—Louis hates homework—once I bought blond wig, and said I was teacher now. Do it! He says only if I promise to take off wig. Still worked. Bad report card, he knows I’ll pick him up in the blond wig. And she wasn’t even the funny one. The uncles were.
On their visit to Braggsville, Daron hoped, Candice would play with his little cousins, Uncle Roy wouldn’t tell his racist jokes, and Aunt Boo
wouldn’t pass out drunk. Mostly, he prayed that no one would use any of his nicknames. He wanted Candice to fit in, to think of the Davenports’ as the Changs’, another home, but more so. It was more . . . familiar. Maybe even one of his older cousins would give Candice a new nickname (that wasn’t seventeen syllables long). What he had not anticipated was that Candice might hobble up to the back door about an hour after he’d dropped her and Louis off at Old Man Donner’s, shaking, arms clawed by thorn and bramble, rooted to the back patio, shivering, refusing to come in because, Don’t want to get blood on the floor. Don’t want to get blood on the floor. Her clothes torn, shredded hems wavering around her pale ankles, zipper broken. Daron averted his eyes, but not before seeing a flash of cleavage, a triangle of tiger-striped panties. She had thistles in her hair, and she clutched her blouse desperately across her breasts, her white knuckles scraped and bruised, eyes swollen dark with fear.
Daron yelled for his mom as he and Charlie helped Candice to the nearest chair, but even as her legs shook she stiffened, again because, Don’t want to bleed all over it.
Charlie and Daron stood on either side of her, Charlie holding her arm, Daron the white plastic chair, insistent. Shit, Candice. It’s plastic!
At last she sat, hunched head to knees with her legs pressed tight together, her frenzied hands pawing her face as if she’d been contaminated with pepper spray, and silently wept, more shivers than sobs, her cries barely audible but her body everywhere shuddering in unmistakable grief. Daron felt the trembling in her arms traveling through the chair legs and the sand-set patio stone and into his feet with the insistence of electricity. Charlie felt it too, judging by his mournful expression. He looked on the verge of tears and was breathing steadily through his mouth to fight them back.
Candice, Candice, they whispered. Candice, tell us what happened. Can you tell us what happened?
She shook her head with a low moan and, without looking up, pointed in the direction from which she had come, the direction of the Holler. For some moments this was all she was able to communicate. Then she was still for a few minutes, during which time both Daron and Charlie tried calling Louis, but got no answer. When she did speak, it was in wet bursts between breaths. All of them . . . Barely got away . . . All of them were after me.
Louis? Where is he? Charlie looked over his shoulder toward the back fence. Is Louis back there?
Candice, where’s Louis? Daron spoke slowly, nearly slow enough to spell it out. Louis? Where is Louis?
Candice shrieked and stomped. Looking at her feet Daron winced. The ankles and insteps red clay encrusted. The left little toenail ripped off. Muddy blood caulked the cuticle and the nail bed was red as a blister. They . . . took . . . him! They . . . took . . . him!
They who? They who?
Candice was sitting upright now, no longer clutching her blouse. Her bra, also tiger-striped, poked through the hole where the breast pocket would be. Charlie reached over and gingerly adjusted her shirt, but there wasn’t enough fabric to cover everything.
She looked up at Daron, and her eyes, always a little sleepy in a cute way, were inflamed, and her stare so fixed and piercing, her expression so numb, that Daron turned away, afraid that otherwise she would communicate with that gaze all that she had seen and he simply could not bear it, not in his town, not in his house. All of them, he heard her repeat, but he didn’t look back, instead continuing the course he was charting through the yard away from her.
Charlie called 911 while Daron traced Candice’s footsteps through the begonia bed and to the fence, on which she’d left a bit of her shins. In the distance he saw a feather of smoke—someone was burning trash. He had thought he smelled something burning. He hoisted himself up to the fence top. Footsteps in the dewy grass ran between the edge of the Davenport property and the wood line, forging a path that would cut through the Holler and into the Gully. He was thankful she had made it back. He’d heard tell of people lost to themselves in the Holler for years.
Charlie said something. Candice shrieked again, and yelled, I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!
Daron cursed to himself. Last summer they had walked all the way from downtown Berkeley to downtown Oakland, because Candice wanted to see how black people really lived. (Really lived, she stressed. How they teased her. Will they have iron lungs and barometric chambers? Do they hang from the ceiling like bats?) Another time they high-stepped over every drunken cripple in the Tenderloin to see Little Saigon. She drove through Hunter’s Point blasting Kreayshawn, and registered to tutor at San Quentin, where she already had a pen pal. Candice, with all her questions about where the black people lived and the Gully, had wandered off on a crusade and gotten herself raped by a nigger. Louis got hisself shanked or shot or Jehovah knew what trying to stop it. Daron was sure of it.
No wonder she was in such shock. She had come to Braggsville only to help. Candice must have felt terribly betrayed to be attacked by the very people she so often advocated for. Daron could not imagine a deception of similar magnitude, except maybe learning much, much too late that you were adopted.
His next thought was to retrieve the shotgun in the hall closet. What if they came looking for her, chasing after her to get rid of the evidence? He had to go back for Louis, too. At the patio door he paused at Candice’s side, unsure whether to touch her, unsure whether he wanted to. She twitched like she was possessed. Charlie squatted beside her, holding her hands, speaking in a soothing voice. She still refused to enter the house. Daron ran inside, calling for his mom again as he went. As he slid the patio door shut, out of habit—Were you raised by jackals, young man?—the cool, conditioned air gave him goose bumps and the smell of bacon made him want to vomit. It felt unreal. How could Candice be out there in that state, just inches away, when inside it was so safe?
From the kitchen, he dialed 911 for an ETA, and was quickly frustrated by the operator’s request for more details, because details would only improve the possibility of a positive outcome. That’s exactly how the operator said it. Positive outcome. Daron wasn’t certain there could be a positive outcome after rape, but he told what he knew: she was attacked in the woods near the Gully. He tried calling Louis again. No answer.
He then retrieved the gun and walked back outside. Candice sat with her face hidden in the crook of her arm. Charlie knelt beside her, stroking her hair. His hand was large enough to cover almost half her face, and yet his every touch was gentle and controlled, like Chamber had been with children. Daron thought Candice’s self-control was commendable. She didn’t flinch, even though only moments ago she’d been pawed and clouted by hands much-too-much like Charlie’s. Then again, soothing looked to come natural to him. When he saw the gun in Daron’s hand, he turned ashen.
Are you up for this? asked Daron, pulling him to his feet and out of earshot.
What are you planning, D? I don’t think you can take them all.
How many were there?
She says it was all of them, Charlie whispered. It must have been the whole town.
All of them. They were all around. In every direction. They took Louis. They were everywhere. It was like a riot, said Candice, or at least that’s what Daron thought he heard. He was not sure because her face was still tucked into her arm. When he said that he couldn’t hear her, asked her to tell him again, she lifted her head only enough to pull her shirt collar up to her eyebrows and declared, All of them.
All of them?
Daron waited a few moments, but all she had to say was: All of them.
Are you up for this? Daron again asked Charlie, gesturing with the gun.
Charlie’s regretful expression was answer enough.
Daron stepped around him. He could do this on his own. Hunting was one thing, but Daron could do this. It had been hard not to feel a smug pride when he brought home this menagerie. It was, of course, mixed (one part anxiety—one part pride—one part concern they’d think his family nuts), but it was hard not to have cons
idered himself urbane, sophisticated with Charlie in the front with his mom, Daron himself volunteering to ride bitch in the back so that he would be between Louis and Candice, feel her leg against his, and at the same time showcase them all, but now he felt as if he had driven through town with a fourteen-point buck strapped across his hood. Of course by nightfall everyone would be cold-nosing the back door after a slice.
Chapter Fifteen
Mr. Davenport drove Daron and Charlie in the white Bronco. Candice and Mrs. Davenport had gone ahead in an ambulance. County General was a squat, meagerly windowed seventies brick building that resembled a school more than a hospital, which meant that it looked like a prison. Smelled like one, too. The emergency room was fit to bust with reenactors, so many that they overflowed into the waiting area, and then the smoking lounge outside, most still wearing their heavy wool Confederate uniforms. Daron had half expected to find Louis among them, doing his version of a USO standup routine for the troops. But he wasn’t. And he still wasn’t answering his phone.
Daron’s father led the way from the parking lot, followed by Daron, and Charlie several steps behind, out of anger or to avoid family frictions, Daron didn’t know. Whenever he looked back at his friend dragging the toes on his classic high-tops, Charlie avoided his gaze.
Welcome to Braggsville Page 11