Welcome to Braggsville

by T. Geronimo Johnson

  Well?

  Like I said, it’s a secret. He made me promise not to share it with anyone.

  Screw you.

  First class wasn’t going to L.A.: their code for secrets not worth keeping, but kept nonetheless. Or, for lies of necessity. It was from a joke Louis had admittedly stolen:

  How’s the pilot get the stubborn Southerner who crashed first class to go back to coach?

  What?

  A Southerner on a flight from Lower Alabama to Los Angeles sees an extra seat in first class and cops it. The seatmate warns him off, the flight attendant gives him the old bartender’s last-call line: you don’t have to go home but . . . , the head flight attendant leans into him pretty hard. He stays put. You know. Southern pride or whatever. They call the pilot, who whispers something to the passenger that makes him pop up hotter than burned toast and sprint back to coach. What does he whisper?

  What does he whisper?

  First class isn’t going to Los Angeles.

  Daron had laughed at the time, and probably would again. He’d laughed at every joke Louis told, even if it was two days later and the chortling erupted while he was in line at Togo’s or taking notes or on BART. If Louis could make that joke again, he would change Southern pride to something like These Colors Don’t Run or another one of the bumper stickers he had tweeted. Daron, though, wasn’t sure that he would find it as funny. First class was going to L.A., or New York, or Atlanta, or San Francisco, or wherever coach was going. The Southerner would end up in the same queue as everybody else, whether he knew it or not, whether they wanted to or not, peanuts in the same pod.

  Chapter Twenty-9

  The summer before ninth grade was the sweet spot. Nervous as he was, D’aron nevertheless expected the best. High school could not possibly be worse than middle school. Ninth grade would mean AP electives, competitive academic teams, and more choices at lunch. He would be allowed to set his own schedules, so he would be liberated from the lockstep of banality and mediocrity. Like many kids, he had often fantasized that his real parents would arrive and whisk him away to another planet where his unique skills would be in high demand, most notably his power to restore the undead, or destroy them if needed. That fantasy was over, but there was still high school. That life would be better demanded little proof, he need look no farther than that summer before ninth grade.

  It was well before his cousin’s first extended stay at hotel vo-tech. That May, Quint had been, Fuckin’ finally released from thirteenth grade for good behavior. He had time to spare. Until then, Quint had paid him scant attention, but that summer they hung daily, jouncing along the former county line road in Quint’s B210, Black Sabbath in the backseat compliments of a speaker he’d liberated from the cafeteria. Afternoons at Little Gorge, under shadow of spruce, watching girls stretch their limbs across the water, hoping, praying, imploring the gods to whisper into Krystal Rae Foldercap’s bejeweled ear: Backstroke. Quint occasionally inquiring about an unfamiliar doe in D’aron’s class, Quint’s friends stopping by to enjoy the view, and no one saying a single unkind word to D’aron all summer.

  Marking noon with a formal twist of wrist, Quint would tip a grill lighter up to knight his pipe and intone wisdoms like, Imagine if everyone was your dentist’s hygienist. And if you didn’t immediately Eureka! he’d accuse you of poor imaginating, doing his best impersonation of the Captain in Cool Hand Luke, What we’ve got here is failure to imaginate.

  It was like that again now, Quint four-wheeling over after dark, taking the back ways, and toting Daron out to his place to ice bourbon, or watch American Idol, or sit on the porch and count crickets. Quint also took him to Rock-n-Bowl 2-fer-Tuesday, some distance from home, fifty miles to be precise, still a few people did a double take while they were in line exchanging their sneakers for the brightly colored shoes everyone wore as if they were all part of the same team (except the cook, Jose, according to his name tag). One night between sets, Daron told his cousin that the Faculty and Student Review Board had met without him. He could return in the fall, on provisional status. Provided he took no further action to discredit himself or the university, he would be restored to normal status after one semester.

  Quint congratulated him, but looked doubtful. He pulled at the frayed hem of his T-shirt, which read I DIDN’T MEAN TO PISS YOU OFF—THAT WAS A BONUS! It’s good news if you wanna go back. But it sounds like they want you to behave better than you do, like they’ll be watching you. Besides, don’t you restore things like cars and houses? He laughed. I wouldn’t last a week. As soon as someone says they’re watching me, I figure I got an audience, so it’s time to perform. Your cellie was like that. That was one funny Chinese dude. I know—he was mad-Asian. He laughed again, louder, a big bellyful of chuckle competing with the strikes and spares, drawing the brief attention of the bowlers in the nearby lanes. No one said anything. A look at Quint and a look away.

  Even in Braggsville, no one fucked with Quint. He always said it was because he looked out for Sheriff’s son when they were both away at vo-tech, in the penalty box, as Sheriff Jr. described it. But the wariness, the caution, was more than quid pro quo, or reciprocation. Everyone somehow knew Quint was as he’d described Louis, shook up. His first year at Berkeley, Daron finally felt like he was one up on Quint. But what if Quint had gone to Berkeley? He would have been a king.

  After the bowling alley, they relaxed on Quint’s narrow porch under a fitted sheet awning. The nylon-webbing lawn furniture was black and gold, Yellow Jacket colors. The sun was set but it was still sticky humid and every few minutes they adjusted their necks and arms to find the cool spots on the chairs’ metal frames. Gnats swarmed under the porch light, so Maylene, his old lady, lit a homemade citronella torch constructed of a wick and a whiskey bottle, in the process complaining that it was amazing what all people paid for now. Soon there’ll be a surcharge for someone to chew your food. Like a bird.

  Daron laughed.

  Yeah, that’s right, she continued, like a bird. Maylene took a seat in the lawn chair farthest from the rest, avoiding Quint’s eye. Quint and Maylene had been together since high school. When they first met, Quint had referred to her as one sweet lick. Within a few months he started to spit whenever he said her name, like it started with a B. It was then that they’d moved in together. They’d broken up more times than Daron could count, usually after Quint broke the law, but they always ended up back together.

  She sat with them for a few minutes, letting her nails dry. Q’s playing it cool ’cause you’re here, but he loves a pedicure and manicure. I give him one each year on his birthday, and whenever he walks away from a fight. And, as a treat for a few other special favors. When I rub his feet, his tongue hangs out like a hot dog’s. She winked.

  Daron laughed again, this time more at Quint’s expression. Embarrassed, was it? But why? It must be nice to have a woman rub your feet. Why Quint would need it at his age, Daron didn’t know, but it should be nice. And Daron had never before noticed, but Quint’s fingernails did look buffed and shaped with professional polish.

  C’mon, Lee-Lee, leave it alone now, or I’ma have to put something in your mouth. It was his usual joke, but there was an edge to his voice. Maylene had already apologized thirty-hundred-and-one times for missing Daron’s welcome home barbecue on account of work. The third time, Quint snapped, He ain’t deaf. And you don’t have to apologize for working.

  If she was working second shift, thought Daron, at least that meant more money. When he was in high school, D’aron had crushed hard on Maylene, the sharp jaw and pockmarks offset by an ample chest the perfect height for hugging. She cursed a lot and was quick tempered, but always had a kind word for D’aron and so seemed like the kind of woman that could protect you, a hard woman who melted into embraces. Like Quint said, You want a pit in the pit, and a puppy in the bed. She had also worked out of town for a spell, acquiring an exotic air. Now, she seemed coarse and gauche, which made Daron feel even more tenderly toward her as his f
ormer affection became pity. He wondered if she could sense that, because every time he had seen her lately, she went out of her way to appear ladylike. This evening she wore a skirt, which she usually only bothered about for church, and her hair was bunched in a bun with a few tendrils pulled down on either side to frame her face.

  Maylene asked Daron about a Berkeley science professor who had a new theory about dinosaurs as herd animals and a business professor who won a Nobel in Economics. He didn’t know either.

  Quint sucked his teeth.

  Maylene bit her bottom lip, thin, so thin, but tonight embellished with overdrawn lipstick.

  Go on, then. Quint fanned the air as if after a bad odor. Tell D about your dinosaur theory.

  She stumbled through an attempt at explaining how dinosaurs were more like humans than we thought, how each new theory was different in that way. First, scientists thought dinosaurs abandoned their eggs, but now they’ve learned they’re good mothers. Thing is we’re more alike than we know. She repeated that a few more times, like a mantra. Yep, she added, we’re all more alike than we know.

  She could start a fan club with that back in Berkeley, but it was hard to follow the overall argument. Her word choice was vague and therefore confusing, reminding Daron of one professor’s choice advice: Be a word herder. The powerful intellect leashed by an impoverished vocabulary is a myth. Without a vocabulary, a language, the intellect cannot develop.

  Quint stared at his feet the entire time she talked. When she went back inside, the smell of polish lingered, and for as long as it did, Daron said nothing, thinking of Candice.

  Quint chucked his can. Some people shouldn’t read. All it does is confuse them.

  I don’t think I’m going back.

  Here’ll drive you flat shit bat. Next thing you know, you’ll be Chinese.

  But there drove him crazy, too. Ever feel like you just don’t fit in? Daron asked.

  Nope.

  They enjoyed the silence for a few minutes before Daron asked, You seen Jo-Jo lately?

  Quint shrugged.

  Know where his church is?

  Quint grunted. Ever saw me in church? That don’t even sound right. I’ll go to a goddamned gay bar first. At least they admit they’re trying to screw you.

  Know if they rebuilt that one back up in the Holler?

  I don’t keep up after that fool, snapped Quint, so Daron decided to leave it alone.

  Quint lived at the very edge of town. His father built the house right before he went off to Operation Desert Storm with Daron’s father. Good thing too, because he never came back. It was a covenant broken. Forty-two soldiers from Braggsville fought in Vietnam. After the war, forty-three soldiers returned to Braggsville. Frank Enders married an army nurse he met over there. As long as they volunteered, they’d considered themselves immune. Everyone asked, How can anyone take what you give? After Desert Storm, everyone in town asked, How could a war with almost no casualties happen to take one of our sons? No one had an answer. They just added Quint’s daddy’s name to the plaque mounted on the watchtower. They gave D’aron’s father the hairy eyeball until confirming that he was stationed nowhere near his brother-in-law. It was during that period D’aron came to understand what other folks meant when they said Braggsville was a town where every wrong turn was a dead end.

  Through the thin copse behind Quint’s house, light glowed faint like hanging lanterns were suspended from the trees. Daron always forgot how close the Gully was.

  Quint saw him looking. You wanna walk over there?

  I been wondering about Otis. About what he said. He had a whole different history for Braggsville.

  You were swatting at the same beehive back when you was writing those school letters, belching all about your mom’s interference, kicking more racket than a drunk wingnut in a metal bucket, clicking about how you didn’t remember her stories. Seems like you got in. She must have did something right. Quint raised an eyebrow. I’ll tell you same thing I said then. History’s personal. People are better off keeping some things to themselves, like when they last went to the bathroom or to visit the ass doctor.

  Daron chuckled. There was no point in telling Quint that he’d written a new letter, trashed the one his mother wrote. After another patch of silence, a rough one he didn’t enjoy as much, Daron ventured to ask, You know anything about a militia? This Denver guy, the FBI guy, keeps asking me about the Holler.

  Quint eyed him like he was a predator circling, looking for the easiest angle of attack. You ain’t got no business in the Holler. Not now. I’ll gamble this much for you, D, ain’t no Bat-Signal for the Joker. Sort them screws. Now, what about the Gully? You wanna walk back there?

  Is it safe? Daron asked. He hadn’t been in years, had only a faint memory. Spice. Wood. Snatches of bronze.

  I do it all the time.

  Is it safe?

  Quint laughed.

  From inside, Maylene shouted, Why don’t you leave them people alone? You act like you don’t get fed over here. I see ’em looking at me all funny when I take labels down to shipping.

  They’re admiring your nails is all. He slapped Daron on the knee and set off toward the tree line, their backs cooling where the nylon webbing had cut wet lines.

  The sweet-smelling wood, the soft pine needles underfoot soon gave way to a path born more of use than planning, a gravel lane worn nearly to dirt and hugged by elms choked in bramble, which they followed until it forked, downhill to the left and uphill to the right. On the right was a collection of mailboxes, maybe twenty, several of which Daron had met in a previous life with an aluminum Louisville slugger, as well as several blue boxes labeled COUNTY EXAMINER, a few of which had not recovered from their own interrogations, that local version of the great American pastime. D’aron, much to his credit, he’d once thought, was only blowing off steam, and never once—not even one time—cracked lip when the others asked, Who writes Gulls anyway, and when they get a letter, who reads it to them? He now wondered how much of his fear about coming back here was actually guilt, and how much of the guilt was fear—nothing was as it seemed.

  That way’s the river. Quint pointed uphill. This way’s the Gully.

  They walked toward the Gully, the gravel sometimes glowing hazy in the moonlight, other times only a sound or a sharp stinging in the sole. The houses were far apart, not as far apart as they were on his street, but they felt similarly distant because there was no light in between them. No streetlights, just the gravel road and a cabin or shotgun home or saddlebag house every two hundred yards or so, set back at various distances from the road, road cut by use and not design. The first house they passed that was close to the street was in the style known locally as a dogtrot. Single story, the home had only two rooms, one to the left and one to the right, and the hallway between ran straight though the house from front to back, So as like the dogs can trot through without messing nothing, as Nana once explained. The side of the home was scabbed by fire.

  A little black girl, six or seven, her hair in three thick braids, waved at them from the porch. Evening-steven, Mr. Quint, how you?

  Fine, Ingrid, fine. Evening-steven to you, too. How are you tonight, dear? And your momma?

  We’s all good.

  An older woman, probably the mother, poked her head out and waved, too.

  Quint waved back. Hi, Miss Irene. It was like that at most houses they passed. Quint knew them by name, and they him.

  How you know all these people?

  I been walking through here for years. Half of ’em work at the mill anyway. And Gully shine is the next best thing to . . . you know.

  Daron had always associated it with vo-tech, but now he wondered where Quint had learned his rock-in-the-flip-flop walk.

  A mile into the Gully, the houses were made of cinder block, like his own, but still were no larger than the cabins they’d passed earlier. Unlike these, the Davenports’ home was clad in vinyl and neatly trimmed. At one of the cinder-block houses, painted whit
e, the old lady on the porch huffed as they passed. I see Ms. Maylene not speaking today?

  No, ma’am, this here’s my cousin.

  Really now? Bring him close for me to see.

  She was a large woman, the arms of her metal rocking chair cut deeply into her hips. She took Daron’s hand and held it to her cheek. I pray for your friend. Every night. You did a fine thing, son. It was right fine. Over her shoulder she yelled, Reggie! Octavia! Ernie! Tyrone! Get out here.

  Windows lit up. They now stood in what appeared to be a courtyard centered in a cluster of square cinder-block homes, all in a similar style, huddled together as if to protect themselves from the night. Now Gulls emerged from these houses in twos and threes, sometimes singly, all shuffling sleepily like the undead. An old man in a thin housecoat, hands out, as if copping a feel through the dark. Two little boys rubbing their eyes with their arms. A girl clutching a cat to her chest as if to ward off a bad dream. (For one salty, thrilling moment, it was zombie-apocalypse-esque.)

  They smiled and touched him, some shaking his hand, some kissing him on the cheek, others fingering the hem of his garment. As they crowded ’round Daron, an unspeakable fear rose in him. He would have lashed out and run had he not at that moment heard the familiar voice of Otis. Give the boy some space, now. Give him some air.

  Tables were set up and a hog slaughtered. Fiddlers weaved a fine tune and eventually an upright bass took a place between them. At the tables, some plastic and metal, others merely planks across barrels and sawhorses, preserves and breads and cobbler were all laid out, and it was as if every house donated the best of what they had. Through the night they ate and drank, and Daron had so many questions. How long had they lived there? Why didn’t they move to the other side? Did it still flood? But it would have been impolite to voice them aloud.

  They looked as if they had questions as well. Why’d you do it? How’d you come up with the idea? How are they treating you now? But those would have been impolite as well. It felt like a reunion after an embarrassing absence. The affection and appreciation were earnest, but things had changed so much no one knew what to say.