Welcome to Braggsville (24 page)

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.

When Daron's parents rose to leave, the only people remaining in the room were the Changs and their attorney. On the wall near where they sat was posted one drawing someone had missed, perhaps because it was lower on the wall. It hung crooked, as if the child had taped it there himself. A self-portrait in red, yellow, and green, the
little boy was skateboarding past a red house with smoke curling from the roof in broad yellow corkscrews mottled as crayon often is when applied over a rough surface, but as Daron noticed only after a second and third glance, there was no chimney on the home. Operation Confederation raised Cain instead of Abel, as Nana always warned him not to.

Tentatively, Daron approached the Changs, walking along the center aisle swinging wide to avoid surprising them. He looked back at his parents. His father shook his head, but his mother urged him on. As he came to the end of their row, he could see that their attorney was sorting cigarettes that had fallen loose in her purse. Mr. Chang appeared to be praying. He wore in his lapel one red flower, which leaned a little to the left.

Daron wanted to adjust it. Believed that if he could summon the power to do so, all would be forgiven. But he could barely walk. As a wall they stood, Mr. Chang and the blond attorney, who, as Daron approached, pushed up her sunglasses like a visor. It was Mrs. Chang, her face tilted and open. He faltered. Christ, it was hot! Why hadn't he defied his father and sat beside them? At least in the same row. At least on the same side. Wasn't his luck plain mean enough already? Was it the privilege of not having to do something that made it a privilege at all? When he was within a few feet of them, close enough to see the deep lines around her eyes, Mrs. Chang extended one finger to shush him and drew her sunglasses back down with the finality of a judge's sentence, worse yet, another inquest, and this time it was Daron's death being investigated, and she had found the cause. Like Court, the Changs did not need to say it aloud, either, and they didn't. So he did. I don't know why I didn't say, No. No. No. To all of it. The dots. Ishi. The Veil of Ignorance. This trip. I don't know why.

I do, replied Mrs. Chang. But, before you ask, it do you no good to hear it from me.

Mrs. Chang, I—

—Daron, I give you advice. Avoid my mother. Avoid the color blue in dreams. Avoid the shade of young trees. Louis's wishes, not mine.

They retreat, like in a dream because he is powerless to stop or follow. He can only wait to wake up. Once back outside, he is ashamed of how happy he is that his father parked in the shade.

H
irschfield had warned them that there could be a civil suit, though it would take at least a year to build. So Daron assumed the inquest being over meant that things would calm down. But the news coverage increased. Daron had put B-ville on the map all right: every national network devoted at least three minutes daily to summarizing the Incident at Braggsville while showing electronic stills of Daron's house, or Lou's Cash-n-Carry Bait Shop and Copy Center (they got a laugh out of that one), or the crowd at the giant poplar, their faces underlit by candles, cheeks glistening, eyes veiled. One station ran a fifteen-minute special on Billie Holiday's rendition of Abel Meeropol's poem
Strange Fruit,
ending the segment with a picture of Old Man Donner's field, the tree the only spot of color in an otherwise black-and-white image. People even talked to Otis Hunter, mayor of the Gully, whom Sheriff had said he wanted Daron to meet. What Otis had to do with anything Daron couldn't understand, but several Atlanta stations interviewed him. Otis said only that it was a sad occasion for everyone, that he didn't blame the children for being born into this world, and that anything he had to say about young Mr. Davenport he would say to his face. Other stations devoted airtime to Louis's Twitter and Instagram feeds, at least those tweets and Instagram photos marked #ZombieDickSlap. The
vigils at the site of the Incident grew in direct proportion to Braggsville's notoriety. And Braggsville's notoriety grew.

What was a #ZombieDickSlap? No one knew. Plenty asked, but no one knew. #BraggsvilleDickSlap was another matter. Ask any earthling with Internet access. A legal row over New York's stop-and-frisk ordinance targeting black and brown teens? A North Carolina sports bar requires minority patrons, and minority patrons only, to purchase memberships? A white woman throws acid on her own face and then files a police report in which she claims to have been attacked by a black woman? James Byrd Jr.? Oscar Grant? A pizza order sent to a black fraternity in care of Toggaf Reggin? Officer Andrew Blomberg acquitted of beating Chad Holley, despite video evidence? #BraggsvilleDickSlap. Unarmed and seated student protesters pepper-sprayed by Berkeley campus police? Tony Arambula? Jose Guerena? Kelly Thomas? John J. McKenna? Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.? Vang Thao? #BraggsvilleDickSlap. Trayvon Martin? Dillon Taylor? Michael Brown?