Hear this. Hate crimes is Fed time, Little D, and Fed time is straight time. It’s also inconvenient that the deceased was competing with you for a certain young lady’s affections, according to other reports. It sounds like a complicated enough relationship to implicate you in a number of ways, none of them exactly funny. Or ironic.
Daron had never liked irony. He and Louis often argued about it, Daron insisting that if no one understood a joke it wasn’t funny, and sometimes it was better to say what you meant. Louis would only answer, Yes, but in a maddeningly insincere tone. Daron would get frustrated, growing more so when Louis would innocently ask the professor if sarcasm, social niceties, and euphemism were all irony’s close cousins. (Louis sideways: If it helps you understand better, Daron, think of them as kissing cousins.) The professor agreed. Maybe so, but Daron didn’t think that sarcasm, social niceties, and euphemism could be mistaken for hate speech.
They’d read about this in class, how stereotypes distorted, affected, reflected reality. Asians were peaceful. Gays were nonviolent. As were women. Blacks (and sometimes Mexicans) were rarely accused of hate crimes for a number of reasons, but the underlying logic was that they were naturally predisposed to violence and mischief, and so seldom was any attack on whites motivated by hate. Contrarily, it was extremely easy to claim, and prove, that a white perpetrated a hate crime. In fact, popular opinion among the liberals was that conservatives were motivated by hate in everything they did wrong: hiring practices, legal negotiations, and any criminal activity affecting blacks, Mexicans, or gays. If Denver decided that Daron had intended to send a message of terror, then Daron’s every denial must have sounded like an attempt to protect his co-conspirators. But he honestly knew nothing about any militia. Or about #ZombieDickSlap, and neither did Charlie when he texted him. Candice, even though she had used it for one photo, didn’t respond.
Sheriff ended the interview looking as frustrated as he began it. I just can’t figure why, D’aron. I just can’t figure why.
Chapter Thirteen
Why?1, 2, 3
Chapter Twenty-1
A week after the Incident, it looked like Sheriff was correct in his prediction that matters would be well right settled. During their last meeting, he told Daron, I’ll tell you how the inquest’s gonna go: The cause of death is asphyxiation. One person will testify that he climbed up there voluntarily. About twenty-plus witnesses will testify that the young man was not moving when they arrived and that they attempted to render aid, but it was too late. Sadly. The EMTs will corroborate this. One person will claim that the deceased was alive until the men arrived, and that he was whipped. The coroner will testify that there were no marks to indicate that he was struck by a whip, and it will be ruled an accidental death and the Chans—Changs, I mean—can bury their boy. The only thing left will be for the Feds to call their play. That was how it went.
It had been a long week. Terror-stricken by the prospect of being charged with Louis’s murder, Daron considered running away, and might have, had not the attorney his father hired finally convinced him that the inquest was intended to determine the cause of death, and that he, Daron, would not actually be on trial. Without his friends around, his father made it plain that he thought Daron was an idiot for putting his dick in this blender, of all the blenders in the free world. Worse yet, Daron was instructed to cease contact with his friends, especially in public, because, Everything you do will be deemed conspiratorial—and public means online.
(Ceasing contact had felt like one of those errant instructions adults barked to fill space when they didn’t have a legitimate answer. Daron would not have believed that a conspiratorial stink was so easily raised, but there was that couple celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary in Waffle House who asked the waitress to take their photo. She of-course-honeyed and pushed the magic button once their sausage mustaches were arranged. In the background of this festive scene Daron and his friends hunched over their menus. It’s a moment he remembers clearly because Louis is counting on his thumbs as he liked to, listing the different ways hash browns could be served. When this photo made its way to TV, print, and Web, the caption was, The Comanches Plot. Rush Limbaugh called it a modern Indian massacre, an assault on tradition and family values. After that, Daron knew he would find no solace in common sense.)
He had never before ceased contact with anyone. He had never ceased anything. The embattled ceased. The Jews and Palestinians ceased. But after receiving that text message from Candice, after two days of pining, he felt better, overcome by a mood he could never have predicted—relief. Relieved to no longer worry about Candice liking Charlie, or Charlie liking Candice, or Candice being comfortable, or Candice finding something to eat that isn’t fried, or that everything his mom did was countrified. Knowing he was not on trial, he was relieved when the inquest arrived to, Right settle matters, as Sheriff promised it would.
The deputies controlling access to the side parking lot waved Daron and his parents through. His father circled twice in search of the spot with the best shade, while Daron hunkered in the backseat enraged by his preoccupation with so mundane a matter. Finally his mom gave out, Just park already, hon. The building’s not going to get any further away. His father’s answer: To circle the lot a third and fourth time, which he did unopposed, finally parking not far from a gray sedan marked FBI. The walk from the lot to the side entrance ran along a chain-link fence that creaked against the crush of reporters snapping photos, jabbing microphones through the fence like cattle prods, elbowing each other like aggressive panhandlers.
Due to budget constraints, the county had temporarily closed the older buildings that were more expensive to heat and cool. The proceedings were held in a school board building that normally served as the meeting space for an afterschool program, a fact that the judge found distressing and for which she apologized profusely. Before beginning the proceedings, she instructed the bailiff to remove the cartoon drawings hanging around the room. There was one benefit to this location: with all the interested parties lined up to testify, there wasn’t room to accommodate more than a few reporters. The rest were gathered in the sterile hall, and a few unlucky ones outside under the portico.
Were Charlie and Candice already inside? He hadn’t heard from Charlie since asking about #ZombieDickSlap. It was as if Charlie’d committed e-suicide. From Candice he received one text from a strange number explaining that she was forbidden to have contact with him or Charlie until further notice—Much further notice, to be painfully precise. He didn’t expect this much press, but otherwise Sheriff’s predictions were accurate. He’d called it more reliably than Sheriff’s wife called marriages, with one significant exception: Daron wasn’t prepared for the questions the press asked. He’d received, and ignored, e-mails, phone calls, letters, visitors (greeted by his father, armed), but here, ignoring them didn’t stop them from asking: Why? Would he do it again? What did he tell the Changs? And the kicker: Whose side are you on?
Whose side was he on? That was a question he’d never before had to answer.
Blue. Gray. Blue. Gray. Blue. Gray. Daron knew that during the second American revolution, Nana did say, One side—those damned yank Jehus—had strutted like Joseph, their benjamins brassed near up to their minds like Hisself had cut their coat from clear blue above, hotnosing like circus-trained dogs teetering at the table, their juniors bounced tight as a Jew’s on Christmas. One side? One side meant at least two. But who was the other? he’d never insulted to ask. At just the sound of fat crackling, Nana did say, them’ll stake their souls on your bet, them’ll rise up on them hindmost parts an’ walk beside you—yes, they will—for long enough to fool you both, Nana did say, Oh yeah, them can walk beside you, still them can’t take a proper seat but in they’s teeth. But just who were thems? Who was the other side? YANKS? BLACKS? GAYS? he’d never offended to ask, not even now, during the inquisition, as the coroner Frank Gist named it, regretful in tone and bearing as he had been when calling to giv
e Daron the time and place of the hearing, regretful as he was even this morning for, The in-vi-ron-ment being in-con-ven-ient as it was to all sides involved.
All sides? There looked to be only two sides: The Changs sat opposite the Chelseas (Candice now wearing two fracture boots and a wrist brace—Bless her soul!); Changs on the bride’s side, Chelseas on the groom’s. The Changs with their blond sunglassed lawyer, the Chelseas unescorted. Everyone else was a midnight scramble. Sheriff behind the Chelseas, his two deputies behind the Changs. The first responding paramedic behind the Chelseas, the E.R. physician behind the Changs. When Daron asked to sit on the Changs’ side, his father explained that it was the defense’s side, and, Plain mean luck. It still looked more like a stew to Daron, everyone everywhere. He wanted to point this out to his father, but daren’t disturb him. He hadn’t moved since they took their seats in the back, was only this quiet when hunting, rooted like a fox in a duck blind. Nana must have told him, as she’d told Daron, about dealing with the law, In sooth, Court is capitalized like you or me. I don’t understand. You will, Nana did say, just hope not before too late. Then tell me now. If I explain, Nana did say, you’ll rightly never know. He suspected he would soon have his answer when it was announced that every witness was to give name, civilian title and rank, and then title and rank on the occasion of the circumstances under consideration. That’s what they called it: Circumstances under consideration.
No one said reenactment. No one said war, and no one said civil, just like he’d always been taught. Even witnesses with tongues knobbly as old Miss Keen’s famous northernmost limb listed their particulars almost rehearsed, as if those facts combined was the secret password to a secret clubhouse of which they all were night members. They might as well have been. Sheriff may as well have been straddling the building pulling the strings, or at the window, one large eye surveying his shadowbox, gaveling the walls with those blunt fingers while planning where to glue down the next toy soldier.
If he wasn’t it was only because Sheriff was first to testify: One Henry-Frank-Lucian-Braggsville-police-chief-Confederate-captain swore as instructed and was granted entry to the witness stand—a folding chair padded with a coffee-stained plaid cushion. Between the low stage, where the judge sat behind a gunmetal desk, and the folding tables where the attorneys sat, someone had placed an aluminum easel holding a mounted map of the battlefield. On it, a hand-drawn red circle, bottom heavy, marked the location of the tree. Along the left of the board was a column reserved for witnesses not present at the Incident but sharing testimony nonetheless. Into this column was placed a quarter-sized magnet with Sheriff’s name printed on it in green letters. He had not been at Old Man Donner’s, but he had received the first call, and so could share with all assembled in the court the concern he immediately felt, and the concern he sensed in the voices of the men he talked to that day, You work with a man awhile, you know what they’re feeling, and they were feeling none too good, not a one. By the time I got out there, you couldn’t get a noise out iffen you rubbed two together.
One after another, familiar faces climbed into the witness box and testified as Sheriff said they would. None of them remembered a man with a cross tattoo. Worse yet, every single man, and the married ones, too, was clean shaven, even men who had worn beards since Daron’s father sidled up to Daron’s mother in Dougy’s Bar & BBQ, stepped right into the hot flush of the jukebox, whiskey-licked her neck, rasped, I figure you for at least a Gemini. Every-damn-one that day was clean shaven (even the judge, known to the protectors-and-servers unaffectionately as Miss Hairlip).
One by one, Blue and Gray alike, they took to the folding chair and attested to the tragic perplexity of the heretofore unimaginable circumstances hereunder under consideration. Blue and Gray alike found their tessitura. Blue and Gray alike sang a chorus of sympathy for the Changs. Blue and Gray alike sang a chorus of sympathy for Charlie, who they reckoned must have been terrified by the very proposition, but who was not present, his mother having decided that, Surviving a shark attack didn’t make anyone a better, or luckier, swimmer. Blue and Gray alike sang a chorus of sympathy to Candice, a few rows ahead of Daron, Candice who didn’t testify, didn’t need to, because she had, Already been through enough; because she had, Cooperated enthusiastically—um, well—thoroughly with Sheriff and the coroner; and because she had, Already given a complete statement, which the judge reviewed along with Charlie’s statement. Besides, She has already been through enough. Besides, It’s a right hot kettle for any young lady to pour. Blue and Gray alike were equally appalled.
But only Blue, and Blue only, would and could speak to the Incident at length, would and could plumb the circumstance without being circumspect, because, as the magnets and the lines filling the board like flight plans made clear, Blue approaches that old poplar from the low Donner wood. Blue each year steps first foot in that shaded loam. Blue was all that saw all of what was to see of importance. And as far as Blue could calculate, the victim was dead when they arrived. In the confusion, The girl run off. The whip no one right recollected, fixed as they was [pause] on cutting down the poor boy. The Changs were stoic, as expected, but Candice scrutable, stricken by a condition, her shame-sounding half-swallowed ceaseless sobs steady as that old black fan up in the corner, its waving reprimand near enough to drown out her quiet crying.
Gray had their own proclamation. Blue, Daron noticed, were floormen, pitmen, linemen, all in the figure eight of his high school, middle school years, all outsiders, the ones whose parents moved to Braggsville when the mill expanded and the office needed new sleeves, the ones whose fathers came from ’cross the state and married in, the ones whose parents were too poor to work at the mill because their grandparents crossed the wrong street a long time ago. Some were third generation but wore Blue because it took four to call Braggsville home. The Gray, big G, were supervisors, firewatchers (as the engineers called themselves), law enforcement. Parents. Two linemen from his graduating class. And the pride and relief Daron hadn’t known he’d felt until then at each witness not being Jo-Jo diminished at the thought that maybe Jo-Jo just didn’t want to play Union but couldn’t yet be Confederate. Still he was surprised when Jo-Jo’s father sang in the stand with the others. According to a Facebook post a few months back, Jo-Jo had been promoted at the mill. He should have been with the Gray. After hearing Gray out, Daron was glad he wasn’t.
Yes, Gray had their own proclamation. Paramedics were Gray, as was the soldier who performed CPR, as was the soldier who propped Chang up on his hood to meet the ambulance instead of waiting for it to take the hill, as was the soldier who dialed emergency services, risking his good name because the cell phone prohibition was lifted only for soldiers whose wives were nearing delivery, and only for that reason alone could calls be made or received, but he knew, It was only right because the boy was a guest in our town. Yes, Gray had spoken without speaking. No one said reenactment. No one said war. No one said civil. No one said lynching.
The inquest, the hearing, wasn’t so much a listening as a telling, and Court didn’t need to say aloud what everyone knew by the time the last Confederate soldier clambered off the stand and slapped boot back into the gallery, The boy was dead when he got up in that harness. The girl panicked and run off, but not before trying to help. (As one witness said, nodding at her parents, Poor child was prob’ly scared for her life.) The young man from Chicago had the good sense not to go. Court didn’t need to say aloud, Though they are to be commended for valiant attempts, for noble conduct, for disciplined grace in the face of slander, no soldier on that battlefield, not a one, could have saved that poor victim’s life. (Except maybe the victim himself through a change of plans.) His death was accidental. And so this inquest rules it to be. But that does not leave aside the question of why he was there. No, Court didn’t need to say it aloud, not as Daron sat there sweating until his underarms smelled like old tacos, but Court said it anyway, leaving Town to think, If no one is guilty, what was the boy a
victim of, D’aron? What have you made us kin to?
As Blue and Gray departed, Daron remained seated, averting his eyes, as he had at the end of that sixth-grade swim meet after which they’d started calling him Dim Ding-Dong. That afternoon, he was too fearful to venture far enough into the dank, cavernous locker room, the endless rows of gray louvered doors the interior of an alien spacecraft. After he changed into his street clothes and returned to the bleachers, his mother said, with a laugh, that he had mooned everybody. He didn’t think it funny, and wanted to wait for everyone to leave then, too. His mother refused his request. Back then, Mrs. Goman winked at him and Mr. Clark smiled and Mrs. Houston called him cutie pie, and he felt a secret thrill, saw himself anew in their eyes, his nudity a celebrity. Today, while waiting for the sound of shambling feet to die out, he cut peeks at Candice as she rustled her belongings together, rising with her father holding one elbow, her mother the other. (Crutches Louis would have called polio crutches. This thought was an indignity, he was certain. Why did he keep thinking of Louis only as a funny person, and why did that make it hurt all the more?) Her black dress covered her from fracture bootie to neck. The day after the Incident, he’d heard his mother tell Candice, Dear, in Iowa don’t you put the Jell-Os in the molds before you take them out for a stroll? Since then Candice wore a bra faithfully. For some reason, that turned him on more than when she let them march free. What would he have thought if he first met her today, without a dot, without a prepared speech on Native American rights, in mourning? Without catching her gaze, he couldn’t know.
And so he forced himself to stand, to look up, even though he was afraid to see what was reflected in the Town’s eyes, afraid to know what he would think of himself in the mirror of their faces. No one looked back. They all avoided him, except Candice, who gulped when he stood, who looked back in desperation as her father pulled her along like a stubborn child, his own head down, his other arm wrapped tight around his wife. His wife and Candice were the same height. At the exit he pulled them close, tight as booster rockets, and they turned sideways to fit through the door as if they were a single apparatus. Candice looked once more, and Daron thought he saw on her face the same fear and confusion and desire burning his. He had let her down.
Welcome to Braggsville Page 18