Welcome to Braggsville

by T. Geronimo Johnson

  He laughed.

  She sat up. You don’t understand. It’s like the night we did it the first time. You got mad at me, thought I was sick. No one gets mad at me, not like that.

  I’m sorry, Candy. I didn’t mean it like that, Candy. You know I was only scared. Candice. Please. Candice.

  It’s the same way you looked after the morgue. I saw it today when you looked at Freddie. She lay back down and rolled away from him, sobbed. Daron placed one hand on her arm, where it lay still, a trespasser afraid to be discovered.

  I’m scared. It’s real, and Louis is dead, said Candice. And the last thing I said to him was, Shut up! Those might have been the last words he heard. Sheriff knew that. She wailed like a newborn.

  And Daron joined her.

  MAYBE THAT WAS CANDICE’S BURDEN. Daron heard: We got your back, Joan of Arc! What they’d really said was: Show daddy what you made in school. No one took her seriously, and so she had to take everything seriously. The guard at the Mt. Olivet cemetery and Officer Hernandez. Vandenburg. The professors. Even Sheriff and the coroner. It wasn’t Candice’s fault that everyone listened to her, believed her, assumed she was next in line.

  Maybe there was such a thing as tragedy. He had thought she had a power, but recalling how cautiously the flower vendor at their Saturday market twohanded over her bouquets as if she were the frail one, as if delicate, vital petals sprouted from her heart; how Sheriff & Co. talked her out of testifying; how they all wanted to protect her. Even he, Daron, had claimed her idea as his own, to save her blame. Maybe she felt caught between two worlds, too. Maybe she knew how often she was denied direct experience because she looked like someone who had to be protected. Maybe she’d sensed all their big blonde spots, could pass them no more than a starving man an abandoned picnic, a gator a baby. Had she taken everything, or given everything?

  [sniff]

  Yes. A body could be—No!—was a gift. If the body was a gift, what was Louis’s death? Was it a gift only if accepted, and could it be accepted only if change ensued? It wasn’t ironic, it wasn’t a waste, it wasn’t tragedy, was it? Maybe it was ironic if he died pretending to be black in order to raise awareness about how reenactments lionize racist traditions. It was also ironic if he died trying to be ironic and, fucked up as that was, he and Charlie reached that conclusion separately, sharing it the last night of Charlie’s visit, which, he remembered with a shudder against that chill of time, was only hours past.

  [sniff]

  He’d also heard Charlie’s mom’s take on things:

  The Incident at Braggsville had been too much for Charlie’s mother to bear. It would not have been the first time a Chicago boy made his way South and fell into trouble from which he was dredged, taking second class down and the sleeper back, at least most of him. History always takes her piece, so that the Devil can find his way home.

  No, that wouldn’t be the first time, and true we needed progress and people needed to stand up for what was right, and we needed to speak our minds even if our voices cracked, but this was a sacrifice of biblical proportions, and only God himself had the foresight, courage, and well-for-all to sentence his offspring to such a fate, to sacrifice his child for the good of all mankind (God herself, we say sometimes, but rubbing, holding her son’s head to her breast, No, No, No, she hums, never would a mother do or ask such a thing).

  But God also had the advantage of being able to resurrect his son, to return upright what the wicked world laid to ground, to breathe into him what light drove the first bird to venture off its safe limbs, the first fish to flounder and struggle ashore, the first single-celled organism to divide, to decide two was better than one, that then there was at least the possibility of love. God had it like that. That’s how God rolled. Not us. Metaphysically: hooptie-ville. Besides, as Dad always said, Racism is the white man’s problem. He started it, and he needs to fix it.

  It was too subtle, he knew, they all knew, quite the serpent it was, not unlike the notorious reptile, the so-called demon in Eden, but this one says, Eat of this fruit of the knowledge of race and know thyself to be master of all. Only they who do not eat the fruit bear its painful seed.

  [Louis’s cousin had been on a talk show, and was right when he said: Every day that you continue your deceit and your imperialism and your exploitation. Your nepotism. Every time you lie to protect your friends and circle the wagons you are making a choice. Who could blame Louis’s cousin for being angry at what he’d described as a murderous academic exercise? That had cut Daron, who had thought the university the center of the world and learned it was only a part, a smaller part than one imagined, certainly less than advertised. Not all people warm much to others, and nothing the school said or wrote would change that. Uprooted from the soil of lived truth, none of their theories, French philosophers, or social justice creeds amounted to a hill of beans, and wouldn’t grow a beanstalk if they did.]

  Daron wants to tell Candice, in sooth . . . yet tells her not . . . that he reread his college application letters, then reread his letters. He was right about wanting out. The best thing would be to never return home because you can’t escape after you’re ‘let’ in.

  [sniff]

  He wants to tell her that their professor had lied, lied, outright lied when she described white privilege as a kind of heliotropism, plants nodding at your passing, plants bent willy-nilly at your passing. It had made sense at the time, but it was a lie. Race wasn’t a natural system and didn’t follow natural laws any more than it followed rational ones, and shouldn’t be compared to natural laws.

  Young D’aron had walked the midnight garden flashlight in hand, scanning azaleas, probing morning glories, even inserting a pen light into a crocus. (Sixty-sixty, as Louis would say, 60 = 10.) (Nycti-nasty? Louis would say, You know what’s up with that.) When his father, rifle at hand, found his son thus engaged, he’d chuckled until he choked, but for the first time, D’aron sensed envy and sadness in his father’s laughter, and as they walked back to the house, the Holler behind them, D’aron, who usually felt safe with his father’s heavy arm warming his neck against the fall chill, with the fine hairs teasing his clean jaw, had the uncanny sense that his father wanted to tell him something but couldn’t or didn’t know how, or, worse even, didn’t yet know that he needed to, felt it as surely as the prickling that arose when one entered the Holler, that ghostly presence that announced itself only after you were too far beyond that rank of elfinwood to turn back.

  [pause]

  He wants to tell her . . . in sooth . . . yet tells her not . . . that God did Adam and Eve a favor, as his father had done him. No one could live well knowing that much about someone they loved. So he had to turn them out and be alone. Maybe that, and only that, was tragedy.

  Maybe Louis’s cousin was right, Daron thought, maybe we lied to ourselves as the postmaster and my parents lied to me. Or maybe this is what the Greeks meant by tragedy, not that there were two equal claims, but that your heart so wishes them to be twinned that it’s torn asunder by desire deeper than love.

  (¿Por qué? Because because because nonetheless understandably.)

  He wanted to tell her . . . in sooth . . . yet tells her not . . . cannot . . . about the collective, née militia, how his father later that night—after John-John, dinner, desert—had cried, because D’aron wasn’t Irish; because D’aron Andrew Jackson from Detroit was his father’s best friend in the Gulf, a real American, African-American at that, saved his father’s life twice, and even stayed with them a spell after he lost his own son in Goddamn Saddam, the Sequel; because his parents could never sell their Braggsville home, nonetheless Daron wanted to—really, truly wanted to—call Agent Denver, even wrote a letter telling him, Drop a net on the whole town, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker (and the postmaster), in short, everyone in the Hot Air factory, then tore it up, understandably. How could you blame them for working together, for looking after their own? Besides, as his father said, the collective weren’t rea
lly a threat. None was. Black people weren’t no more interested in starting a race war than making mayonnaise. And in regards to population, the Mexicans were just outfucking us; it’s plain and simple ándele, arriba, arriba under the covers. But most importantly, as his father said, You can’t not be white. So there’s no good use chewing yourself rough as a cob about it. He wanted to tell Candice all, but it wouldn’t bring Louis back. [sigh] He swallows this serrated ache—because because because nonetheless understandably—it would only break her heart.

  (Besides, wouldn’t he be blaming them for mysteries beyond their comprehension? His certainty that Candice had been raped, his suspicion that Charlie didn’t want to seek vengeance because he was black, his anger when the residents of the Gully [Candice forbade him to use Gulls] apologized for inconveniencing him. Where had that come from? All that smoke in his head, and yet he’d never so much as wanted to light a match at a black person, never hoped any ill on them. The N-word. Nigger. Where had that come from? He’d never said the word aloud, though it had pop-locked into his mind, beatboxing unbidden. Didn’t the N-word mean the same thing? How would it feel if someone pointed to Charlie and yelled, Hey, you N-word! How would it feel? It? How would he feel? He? How would I feel?

  How did anyone, anyone, any-damn-one, in this country, for Methuselah’s sake, rise above the mire? Bootstraps? How did anyone live without salt or pepper, speak plain and easy, not want to taste fucking instead of sex or carnal knowledge, ass instead of buttocks or juniors, nigger instead of negro or colored. F-U-C-K-I-N-G-N-I-G-G-E-R-A-S-S-E-S. The cosseted spelling out, and, when not allotted a letter at a time, the highfalutin way they said it all—carnal knowledge, buttocks, negro—said it in that tone which was first cousin to that patronizing timbre used to announce the choo-choo train entering the tunnel when babies were fed. Even then you knew, even the babies knew, that the real good shit was on the table for the adults to nosh.)

  He tells her . . . about the afternoon he scaled the support beams and found himself . . . found himself . . . found himself confused . . . no . . . confronted . . . no . . . found himself staring down the international menagerie in the garage loft: The Charlies, the mammies from New Orleans, Salt and Pepper Climb on Cucumber, as well as the Bibinba, Zwarte Pieten, and Hajji Firuz dolls his cousins picked up while stationed abroad, not to mention the Blackface Soap and Watermelon Whistler tins, and that strange guy wearing only a loincloth, turban, and a skeleton’s grin. Cloistered in the dark, arranged as if guarding the steaming furnace, the fire of accusation in all eyes. When he was young they had both intimidated and empowered him. When he was young, after being threatened, D’aron-aka-Brainiac-aka-Sissy-bka-Faggot shadowboxed with the Moor in the loincloth and, when teased, he, Hippie!, kicked The Charlies. One Tom’s scalp was pocked along the left, jagged laps and plastic gashes of exposed skull a visible testimony, a reminder of the day that happy hickory stick licked some pits into its head—after yet another rhubarb with Rheanne. When he was young, they were talismans giving him a measure of control over the world. As an adult, they were curses, provoking him to think that as much as he loved Charlie, it would be easier if there were no black people at all. If only there could only be people. (He’ll feel this sensation again during a study abroad outing to the Vatican museum, when the docent explains that among the garden sculptures crowding one seemingly forgotten small, sideways gallery are pagan idols, that a closer look reveals amid the doe and stag statues of Mithra and Gayomard and other decommissioned gods, and his guilt is replaced by the terror he feels for us all. This he will dare to speak, but that only breaks her heart, too.[ ]

  Chapter Latest

  Good morning, sir. I am Candice Marianne Chelsea. I am a junior at Loyola. I am pre-law, with a minor in public health. My date of birth is July third, 1992.

  You don’t need to call me sir, Candice.

  Yes, sir, Agent Denver.

  My name is D’aron Little May Davenport. I was born November thirtieth, 1992, in Braggsville, Georgia. I am a student at Loyola. I’m a general studies major.

  I’m Charles Roger Cole . . . Chicago-Bronzeville . . . Jan. fifteenth, 1994 . . . Northwestern University . . . Junior . . . My major is sociology and my minor is social justice, though I still don’t understand why you need that information. At school I write for The Protest, so know that if we veer dangerously from protocol, the public will be informed . . . What? . . . My friends can tell you their own names. They can talk; believe me . . . Yes. I did use a semicolon in speech . . . No . . . right there. That should be a semicolon.

  No, sir, not as far as I know. There wasn’t any intention or suspicion there would be any danger. If we thought there was, Louis and I wouldn’t have gone.

  Who in Braggsville would have threatened us? Threatened me? The town’s not that kind of place. No, we were never threatened in any way.

  Suspicious of what? Tampered with the harness? . . . That question does not even make sense.

  Daron? Secret societies? No, sir! [laughter] No, we never went past the backyard.

  I never seen anything back there ’cept that old church.

  Daron in a militia? . . . How long are we going to be here?

  We thought it was a good idea at the time, sir. Maybe Charlie and Daron never really liked the plan, but Louis and I always did. States’ rights is not a convincing argument. If we say the Civil War was not about slavery, next we will say that slavery was not about race. Even if we get generous and say it wasn’t about race—at first—what else could it become about? How else could you live with that cruelty? If we deny that, then we’ll say that it was actually a beneficent institution, an early model for the welfare state. The Holocaust goes next, starting with the argument that it was also about handicapped people and the Roma, too. Where does the self-deception end? And who pays for it? We do as much as them! It’s like all those crazy right wingers . . . Yes. We hoped to get news coverage, but not because of the reasons we did, sir.

  No. I never thought it was a good idea, but I didn’t think it was a dangerous one, either.

  If you can’t see how this could have been effective had things gone differently, no explanation will make sense to you anyway.

  Only those letters I showed you, sir. The marriage proposals from the prisoners.

  When do all these interview records—the paperwork and recordings and all—become available to the public? All the fan mail I told you about is just between us, right? You promised that, right?

  That’s not me. My social media accounts are still closed. I’m strictly IRL—In Real Life. I haven’t been on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Tumblr in months. The barbed and articulated Glenn Beck anal plug was the most civilized of the threats.

  The blackface was a surprise to me, sir. The wig, not really. I mean it wasn’t surprising, knowing how . . . Louis [pause] Louis was. But seeing it was a surprise . . . I thought I saw a tattoo. A cross tattoo right here at the bottom of the thumb. I should have brought my phone, sir.

  I wasn’t there.

  You know I wasn’t there.

  Yes, sir. I realize you might still have a hard time believing or understanding how or why four Berkeley students thought this would be a good idea. We never would have done it in Iowa.

  I don’t know why we thought it was a good idea.

  Of course you don’t understand. Look at you. You guys still wear windbreakers.

  It was my idea, sir.

  It was my idea.

  It was my idea.

  Mine, sir.

  Mine.

  I already told you.

  Why not, sir?

  Why not?

  I already told you.

  Says who, sir?

  Says who?

  I already, already told you.

  Yes, sir. It was foolish to fake a hate crime to make the opposite point. But we weren’t faking a hate crime. We were reenacting American history.

  We shouldn’t have done it. It hasn’t made anything better.

>   It was collaboration, a collective effort. Dress in period costume and ask about slavery. Questions such as: If you could have slaves, would you be happy? Would you still drool over pro bowls? Would you stop reliving this moment like it was the last of the glory days, a decisive fourth-quarter ninety-nine-yard run ending in a fumble? Would you ease up on the fucking zombie movies? Maybe I’d tell them not to get so red under the collar about Obama, an aberration not soon to be repeated, that a rising tide lifts all boats, but a yacht is still a yacht and a dinghy is still dingy. Maybe I’d ask them why they’re so damn restless. Why so impatient? Slow-acting poison yet kills. Maybe I’d ask why they can’t just be happy, or at least satisfied. That’s the question. Yes! Why can’t they be satisfied with our fractional existence as bequeathed by Article One, Section Two, Paragraph Three of the United States Constitution? Why can’t they be satisfied that three-fifths is the only real number with an irrational tail, its endowment an enduring quotient, a problem never solved. That is the only question: Why can’t you just be satisfied that thirty-five percent of black children grades seven through twelve are suspended or expelled during their school careers compared to fifteen percent of whites; that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders continually refines Oppositional Defiant Disorder and that each revision accelerates the process of coding, tracking, and incarcerating black children; that only sixty percent of blacks attend high schools that support and prepare them for graduation, compared to nearly eighty percent of whites? Why can’t you just be satisfied that blacks are three times more likely to be searched and four times more likely to experience use of force when stopped by the police; that when mandatory minimum sentencing laws for crack fell under judiciary review, mandatory minimum sentencing was instituted for juveniles, grew straightaway long in shadow, is applied disproportionately to black youth; that blacks comprise only twelve percent of monthly drug users, but constitute thirty-two percent of persons arrested for drug possession; that blacks comprise twelve percent of the gross U.S. population but forty-three percent of the incarcerated population; that wages grow slower, twenty percent slower, for former black inmates once released from prison? Why can’t you just be satisfied that the black unemployment rate is roughly thirteen percent while the national average is roughly seven percent? Why can’t you be satisfied that blacks represent approximately twelve percent of the population but account for over forty percent of new HIV infections? Why can’t you just be satisfied that blacks have the highest mortality rate for all cancers combined? I demand not that you be happy about this, only satisfied. Are those numbers not sufficient cause for your quiet celebration? Can you not simply enjoy the conflagration, warm hands at those bodies burning eternal, Roman candles illuminating your feast of angels? Why can’t you allow this crime to continue, this auspicious advent of the slow crime movement, to continue victimful but assailantless? Why can’t we have a hands-off instead of a handout? Why must you dress for the party? Why must you dance around the swallow dug so generously as to mock natural phenomena? Why can’t you let us die in peace? Why can’t you look at this Medusa: history in its myriad inversions, loops, whorls, coils, corkscrews, spirals; from slavery to Jim Crow to the Carceral State; this Medusa: the Möbius trip; the helix that stitches the U.S. of A.’s social DNA; yes, coach goes to New York, but never disembarks; this Medusa: upon whom to gaze turns only heart to stone, for how else could a people suffer so unless born of inherent deficiency or willed by God? Why can’t we bear our Curse of Ham in the privacy of dignified silence? Why can’t you sit back, crack a cold one, and let America in toto enact its collective reenactment? That’s what I would ask, but I wasn’t there. So, would I do it again? Yes, but this time I would attend. That’s what I would do differently. Only that.