Welcome to Braggsville (25 page)

Photos, too. First a decorated vet with a purple sickle under his eye and a crusty gash in the middle of his lower lip, naked from his jeaned waist, his torso a calico patchwork of tender bruises as numerous as his medals. Next was the woman with a knot on her temple where the arresting officer kicked her in the head (seizures for life). Then the autopsy photos. Then a photo of Louis retouched, and a beret added, so that he resembled the iconic image of Che.

#ZombieDickSlap? Open sesame. Abracadabra. Shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits. Sure, he'd read about police brutality, racism, injustice, written papers, punished classmates with PowerPoints, but at the end of each semester, he'd forgotten all, literally and figuratively. Forgotten, as he'd forgotten about his father being on active duty, forgotten about Quint when he was locked up. Forgetting being just another way of keeping his hands off hot pots. He'd never visited Quint in vo-tech. During the early sprees, he'd been too young. Later,
secretly (and foolishly, he knew), Daron feared being trapped inside, due to a riot or a case of mistaken identity.
North by Northwest, The Big Lebowski, Galaxy Quest:
mistaken identity was the trope in his father's favorite films. It was in Daron's mind all too possible to call on Quint as an alien and end up a resident. And that was how he felt now, that he had become an unwitting citizen of a foreign country where human rights atrocities flourished unchecked. What pricked most when he saw that image of Louis—Che Chang!—was not that someone whose username was Gonomad and whose avatar was a vampiric beaver had hijacked his friend's likeness, but that there were so many others who hadn't, who had posted pictures and mementos of their own friends. How could there be so many Louis Changs in the world?

T
hey remain late into the summer night, parked under the stars on Gearheart, the new Lover's Lane. The Davenports watch from their living room window, Mr. Davenport timing his morning departures with the changing of the guard, that moment when one reporter is packed up, but the next not yet unpacked. The culture vultures soon catch on and schedule reporters and cameramen on overlapping shifts. It was two days after the inquest, not even two weeks after the Incident, and a carnival had planted stakes in the street in front of their house.

Call the police? Never. The news vans with their lights, antennae, and fresh faces were a relief, an oasis, an outpost of civilization in the deepest recess of a dangerous wilderness, now encroaching from both sides. Understand, please, that the Nubians arrived first—during screen door season, mind you—drumming with the dusk the morning after the inquest. Sunup an hour away, a black school bus with the eye of Horus emblazoned in gold on its sides and the glittering slogan
THE SUN RISES IN AFRICA
along the back awakened the Davenports when it came to a halt opposite their driveway, amid the cacophony of crunching brakes and backfiring engine and groaning transmission, and disgorged seventeen men dressed in black robes with gold trim and matching fezzes, men
who promptly formed a diamond and performed their sun drum ritual.

Can't say much about protesters when it ain't federal land, now can we, mused Sheriff, calling from the car after executing a twenty-point turn. Maybe you should talk to Otis.

The attic armory was opened for the first time since Katrina. From then on, Daron's father insisted everyone carry a firearm at all times, just in case the Nubian threat of reprisals came to fruition, in case divine retribution took a secular turn as it so often did in the South. At the arrival of the news vans, though, the Nubians tempered themselves, being too shrewd to waste airtime, their suddenly sober behavior giving them the appearance and bearing of jilted grooms.

The brides, then, arrived next, their long, flowing white robes raised daintily to the ankles as they descended from the bed of the extended cab dually pickup, each pair taking a position on either side of the tailgate, extending a hand to help the others down, until lined before the Davenport residence, like vestal virgins in their pure white robes, these truly bleached to blind, were twenty-three Klansmen.

Who'dve ever thought I'd be happy to see these assholes? Let's just hope they don't start a gunfight, or a fire, was heard to be said around the block on several occasions, but no one knows by whom.

Finally, as was their way, as Daron had learned in Berzerkeley, a group of miscellaneous white people arrived to involve themselves in affairs none of their concern. This particular group was a brightly colored rainbow coalition (in dress only), complete with rainbow posters and matching rainbow shirts—So cute, said his mom—and the chanting of slogans such as, Equal Rights for All, Abolish Reenactments, and States' Rights = Slaves, Right?

Daron watched from the living room window, his mother at his side, his father refusing to pay it any mind (though he freely expressed irritation at the absence of a cross breeze, which they suffered without, now that the front door was always closed and locked).
Daron, though, found it fascinating. The Nubians and the Klan had said nothing to each other for two days, the camps remained huddled in separate groups, the Nubians with posters reading
NEVER FORGET
and the Klan with posters reading
SOUTHERN PRIDE IS NOT A SIN
, their backs more often than not turned to each other like a couple in an argument whose provenance has long been forgotten. Their relationship was soon to be consummated. (In the wake of such moral turpitude, the makeup sex isn't long coming.)

Within the hour of the Rainbow Coalition's arrival, the younger Klan members were pushing the gays, poking them with their sticks. The gays ignored the taunts. They weren't necessarily effeminate or slight, and one blond in particular looked like he worked out a lot. In fact he resembled Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governator, during his days as the Terminator.

When the Klan grew frustrated because they could not get a rise out of the gays (who were white, remember), the Nubians teased the Klan and finally entered the fray to prove that they, the Nubians, could get a rise out of the gays. But they couldn't, either. (Throughout this, no one poked the Gay-benator.) (As no one would have poked Charlie, who wouldn't have been there in the first place.) It was clear from the expressions, though, that the gays expected harassment from the Klan but were somewhat surprised by the aggression from the Nubians. Throughout the day, they had gradually moved farther from the Klan and closer to the camp of black robes.

Finally, they joined forces: the Klan and the Nubians assaulted the gays, taunting, teasing, calling them faggots and AIDS maggots and HIV magnets, and, when that didn't provoke them, launching rocks and sticks, threatening greater violence yet to come.

His mom said gays were too passive for their own good, but Daron believed they were simply nonviolent. They didn't shrink away from the prods and pokes and name-calling, they merely ignored it, refusing to be roused to anger, and it was this presence of mind, this
composure that drove the other two groups mad and started all the trouble. It was in the middle of such a skirmish that Daron risked a dash to the mailbox.

When the news featured a photo of Daron checking the mail with his shotgun, flashing
VIGILANTE
underneath, the front door vanished in his eyes as surely as the mystical portals of his childhood fantasies.

W
HEN HE DID GO OUT,
through the back door, no one in town stared. They didn't look at him at all. At Lou's they didn't even greet him when he entered. He was overnight an invisible man, a sensation so eerie he stopped going outside during the day. (Was this what Ellison meant?) On the local radio, a few people even accused him of being in cahoots with Otis, that uppity nigger. When the host chastised a caller for using that word, the caller laughed.

They're the whole problem. Fellow got dressed up like a nineteenth-century nigger. If you do that and you hang from a tree like a nineteenth-century nigger, you're fixin' to die like a nineteenth-century nigger. That's a pretty sure recipe, just like Jim and PBR make a perfect boilermaker.

Sir, that jazz language is uncalled for.

I ain't the one caused all this trouble.

But, sir, don't you understand—the host adopted a mock-lecturing tone—there's no equivalent word for white people?

I know, and it angers me. Been like that since Wilma had Bamm-Bamm. Who wants to say niggered and dimed all the time? I feel kind of left out, but as soon as we get a nigger word for white people, I'll use it. I'll use it like salt, I will. Want to hear a joke?

As long as it doesn't include the word quote-unquote nigger.

This doesn't. A black guy, a white girl, a Chinese guy, and a white guy get into college. Why don't they graduate? First day, they tell the Chinese guy to bring the school supplies. But he ain't there that
morning, they're waitin' and waitin', and finally he jumps out of a closet and yells, Supplies!

Daron turned off the radio. He had heard that joke before. Used it like salt, too. Jo-Jo's father used to say that a lot. (Also favored asking the air, What's gonna happen when the jumping beans are run plumb out of Dodge? They'll climb into a Ford and drive that into the ground, too.) A few evenings, Daron had driven to Jo-Jo's house, but he was never home, at least that's what his parents said. They also never invited him in. The third time, they asked him to stop coming back.

He didn't think much of it until he saw Jo-Jo's Facebook page. The old photos of Jo-Jo drinking were all removed. He was reborn and every new photo featured a clean-shaven, innocent-looking lad that Daron would have scarcely recognized were it not for that distinctive short brow. When he frowned, his widow's peak nearly poked the bridge of his nose. In several recent photos, he held a Bible, and in others his fingers intersected like crosses, and in one Daron could clearly see a cross tattoo at the base of his thumb. He remembered Jo-Jo posting to Facebook that he was born again, and he was getting a tattoo to make it permanent, To remind me ev'ry time I yank a beer, but never had this possibility crossed Daron's mind. The same Jo-Jo who once held a beer tab between his thumb and index finger and declared, This is the only ring you'll see on my finger. The same Jo-Jo who posted a photo of himself suited up Gray on the morning of the reenactment, and hadn't made another post in the ten days since. The possibility that someone from Jo-Jo's church knew better than Candice what had really happened at Old Man Donner's nagged Daron. He drove to Jo-Jo's house that night. No one answered the door.

Still, when Agent Denver next stopped by, to again ask if he knew anything about a militia, to again ask if he was being threatened, to again ask if he was protecting anyone, Daron responded, No,
comfortable, that was an honest response. There was no way that Jo-Jo would whip anyone. Besides, he'd hung with everybody back in high school. Daron also still doubted Candice's story. It's not that she'd lied, it's just that she was so frantic she might have been confused about some things. She never told the story the same way twice. There was no way that Jo-Jo would whip anyone, even though Daron had to wonder if there was a good chance he knew who did. When he asked his father's opinion, he was told, You can't take back a fart, son. No need to stink things up more than they are. Isn't there someone else Sheriff says you're supposed to call?

However this be, it is plain to a demonstration, that hot countries cannot be cultivated without negroes. What a flourishing country might Georgia have been, had the use of them been permitted years ago? How many white people have been destroyed for want of them, and how many thousands of pounds spent to no purpose at all?

—Anglican preacher George Whitefield, 1751

W
ild Bill Hickok toured with a troop of up to one hundred. Three survivors traveled to Little Bighorn every year until they died. Mormons trek the pioneer trail. Gettysburg attracts scores of visitors daily and Washington's Christmas Crossing celebration continues to draw record numbers. Every Yuletide a thousand windows and lawns are illuminated with nativity scenes. The reenactment is not a Southern creation. We may do it better than most, but it is not a Southern creation. It has always played a key role in Braggsville history. After the Civil War, Congress visited town to witness a reenactment of the Battle of Braggsville as part of a campaign to bring the capital here from Milledgeville. Since then, it has continued as a peaceful event, until now, intoned the newscaster, though Braggsville, you may recall, first came to national attention two years ago when local students protested the two-prom system. I have in the studio with me Otis Hunter, mayor of the Gully, and Daron Davenport, the Braggsville native whom many hold responsible for the recent tragedy.

Daron cringed when she said tragedy. Everybody knows better. The first fact they learned in his course on Greek theater (or in any introductory lit theory class) was that a tragedy arose when one faced two competing claims of equal magnitude. Hence, when Antigone is
faced with either abandoning her brother Polynices's rotting corpse to cook the air in accordance with Creon's dictates
or
burying her sibling in accordance with family duty, she faces tragedy. When a drunken idiot falls asleep at the wheel or knob or whatever it is and the subway crashes, that is not tragedy. When the term was first explained, Daron appreciated the certainty of the definition and the commitment to exactitude the professor's lecture symbolized, making possible the surety that had so long eluded him. The scales had fallen from his back, as had the fin. From that day forward, whenever he heard the word tragedy, he could tell a lot about a person. The only catch was that he himself did not believe in tragedy. He doubted one would ever face two claims of equal importance. Fuck Creon, Antigone buried Polynices. Family first. Abraham was hands up, slim blade winking, when the Lord stayed his arm. God first.