Welcome to Braggsville (34 page)

Informant Caitlin uses persuasive rhetoric selectively—with minorities more than with mainstream contacts. She used it in Spanish with the Latino guards at the cemetery and the campus cop, but never with director Vandenberg or attendant Pearl (Medusa's gatekeeper), who are native English speakers.

Informants Lee and Kain may not have wanted to seat themselves on the periphery, but by willingly doing so, they were complicit in their own segregation. Informants Lee and Kain exhibited “selective perception” (Griffin 2009, p. 259). In other words, informants Lee's and Kain's preexisting prejudices about Southerners prevented them from seeing the Sanderses as generous. Instead, informants Lee and Kain assumed the Sanderses were being charitable out of pity. Informants Lee and Kain also later expressed displeasure about the Sanderses' questions about their athleticism and sexual orientation, even though no one ever asks short, dumpy, fat men if they play football, or horrible-looking people if they are gay.

The Sanderses might've exhibited selective perception when they asked if informants Damon and Caitlin were romantically involved, but their conclusions were based on easily observable facts. Informants Damon and Caitlin arrived at the Sanderses' RV before informants Lee and Kain. And, while informants Lee and Kain sat on the periphery, informants Damon and Caitlin sat at the table. When the Sanderses asked if they were dating, informant Caitlin smiled at informant Damon, which could have been easily interpreted as confirmation.

At the time, informant Damon thought the smile was a connection, perhaps proof of the likelihood and desirability of a relationship between the two informants. Upon further investigation, this researcher concludes that Caitlin's smile wasn't a confirmation of affection. It was an indictment of the Sanderses, and a question:
Who is us?
Upon further research, this researcher has determined that US varies.

Informant Damon complained extensively about the greeting habits of the RVers. Upon further investigation, this researcher determined that informant Damon felt welcomed and that the series of waves he received and returned reassured him of his place and made him feel at home, which he did without considering that his friends might not feel the same. He hadn't thought about how this was their first contact with the South, and how that made him an unwitting ambassador.

Informant Damon's nana was correct. There are two worlds, though they are not as simply defined as above and below. This is not the Fritz Lang film
Metropolis
in which the world is divided into only two groups: (1) rich capitalist industrialists, and (2) the laboring class who live and work underground.
Metropolis
could be interpreted as a metaphor for how different people experience the world. The informants were all at the same literal barbecue, but their imaginary BBQs were all personal and idiosyncratic, and had little more in common than the streets projecting from a traffic circle.

A significant finding pertains to Certeau's distinction between strategies and tactics. According to him, organized power structures use strategies, and the subjugated or disempowered use tactics. In other words, “governments make maps and pedestrians make shortcuts” (Davenport 2015). This debate is rendered moot at the communal well of fire affectionately referred to as “the grill.” They might use coal or lava rocks, pecan chips or gas and hickory, lighter fluid or matches or electronic ignition, they might cook chicken and salmon, ribs and burgers, tempeh and portabellas, they might serve beer, pop, whiskey, or rye, they might listen to Drake, Buffett, Sade, Bey, or Bee, regardless, everyone says in some manner, and always with a smile, Light the grill. If they do not say Light, they say Spark!, or the technically minded say Ignite!, or the nature enthusiasts say Kindle!
In all times and places, the command to start the grill is a request for illumination
(that will be shared?).

The final observation pertains [
sic
] the Indian informants' tactical strategies, which are always indirect. Even Damon had only reacted, not acted. They never directly addressed the problem. Even on the ride home, their critique was indirect. All they said in the car was:

Damon, your boyfriend is hitting me; Damon, your boyfriend farted; Damon, your boyfriend's feet stink. Damon, your girlfriend is hitting me; Damon, your girlfriend is driving her own car; Damon, your girlfriend is having her own thoughts.
⁴

D
uring the ride home from Six Flags, while Louis and Charlie called Candice his girlfriend, Daron side-eyed her, on the lookout for a pull at the brow, a snort, a pop of the gum she so vigorously chomped. He saw no signs that she warmed to the idea, but saw none neither that she chilled at the thought. And when she gave him that peck on the cheek the morning she left Braggsville, her lips but a kiss away, so close he couldn't see them, could only imagine them, hope raised high a flag. Yet, now, several weeks after the Incident, when they were once more able to talk—so to speak—on a regular basis, Candice and Daron's secret phone calls only made him doubt that they'd ever be more than friends. The Chelseas and the Davenports were as similar as chimpanzees and humans; as NASCAR and NASA; as MIA (soldier) and M.I.A. (singer). (Can't duck truth! The Devil is not in the details; the details are the Devil's cock ring. Are not those details, those distinguishing features, those damned rigid particulars, precisely the attributes that enable the eternal dick slapping? Sincerely, Louis.) Yes, Daron winced listening to the Chelseas' professorial tones and terse barks of laughter, the mother's condescension always unholstered, winced as he had in that conversation with Mr. Buchanan when he was told more than asked about his own parents' education. Mr. Buchanan.
The Chelseas. Candice's phone calls. Those conversations, can they be considered conversations when one person does all the talking?

Understand, please, that she calls him . . . she calls him not . . . she calls him. This is what he has learned: (1) Fridays at 8:45
P.M
. the Chelseas
dinner
at O'Malley's (The Irish and Arabic love their apostrophes. Sincerely, Louis); (2) Her father orders
tuna-tenderloin-rare-as-the-day-it-was-born-no-sides;
(3) her mother orders
my-usual-Raúl-the-spinach-salad-hold-the-bacon-as-far-away-as-possible-because-to-even-lust-in-one's-heart-after-such-delectable-fat-is-to-dangerously-excite-adipose-tissue;
(4) Candy-Pandy orders
yes-another-black-bean-burger-double-swiss-add-thousand-island-yes-I-know-this-is-the-best-steakhouse-in-central-Iowa;
(5) Candice is
Candy-Pandy, Candy Bear, Can-Can,
and, when the parental units are inflamed,
Marianne;
(6) Her mother responds to most of her father's statements with,
That notwithstanding, dear, have you considered
. . . ; (7) When the parental units ask what
Candy-Pandy
is listening to on her—all giggles—
meepthree player,
a trendy performer of her own generation earns an earbud exchange, but any band more than twenty years old does not, so on the fifteen-minute drive to the best steakhouse in central Iowa she often claims Nirvana or R.E.M. in ear, usually the former because Cobain polishes her mother's voice brighter than Uncle Roy's nose and triggers her father's warm sense of generational proprietorship:
Don't you millennial hucksters have your own rebels?
All of this Daron learns not because she calls him. She calls him not. They remain officially incommunicado. Her derrière, though, has different ideas, and dials him up one evening, establishing a tradition, and for three weeks continues to ring Daron from the backseat of the Chelseas' hybrid SUV every Friday at 8:25
P.M.

How does he know it's a booty call, a derrière dial in that literal sense, that literally innocuous sense, that innocuous and damned disappointing sense? The first time, hearing only scuffling fabric within reach and New York accents at dreamy remove, in the most
solemn of whispers he asks: Is this a butt dial? Her answer: Cough-cough. Again sober of tone, he asks: Does two coughs mean yes? Her answer: Cough-cough. Her mother asks:
Do you need a lozenge, a Ricola throat drop, Candy-Pandy?
Her answer: No. He asks: What's the code for no? Her answer: a
throat drop
crashing into teeth, the wet
zysk
of cheeks pinched by citrus. She clears her throat. It's settled: two coughs for yes, one throat clearing for no, accompanied by Nirvana. The first two words in their private language!

But what to tell her? What is a tell? An unconscious self-betrayal? An acknowledgment of one's pole position? The rollover that offers the vulnerable underbelly? (By Louis's count.) An archeological site built up over centuries of cyclical human occupation and abandonment? (Daron's favorite.) Is it to reveal? Confess? Surrender? Does the
tell
require a listener? He is not sure. And so while imagining
Candy-Pandy
seated behind her mother, earbuds at ready, soft gaze ignoring the light spraying across the window, wearing a white tracksuit and flip-flops with pink roses buttoned atop the thongs, he tells her . . . he tells her . . . not.

He tells her . . . about his life now . . . about how it recalls the tedium of summers after he stopped hunting and before he learned to drive, except there is no job to which he need be ferried. He tells her there are only two hunts he still enjoys: the raspy Braille of old book covers and the whisper of vinyl drawn from sleeves. But no more. The record stores, video stores, bookstores, those temples of wisdom whose employees he'd so envied were extinct, themselves now
tells
. Those clerks who could name the third track on
Nevermind
or tell you that
Breed
was originally titled
Imodium
—without quite sneering—are gone the way of the dodo bird or sliced bread in Berzerkeley.

All the jobs he wants are *
POOF
*, and it's his fault. Killed,

, he knows, by him and his generation, and all their online shopping and file sharing. What remains are a paltry assortment that
rouses indignation, a long dozen of those very occupations that he's always feared most. What fun! Oh, he applies at each, and more. His father sees to that, in truth oversees, watching him complete and submit the applications for the adventure of a lifetime: cashiering at the big cold box, stocking at Pilot, burgering at McD's, as the manager called it. Cheering squads at the big cold box, employee appreciation parking lot picnics every first Friday at Pilot, community service opportunities at McD's. Each of the businesses self-identifies as a three-sun solar system, as employee-centered, community-centered, and customer-centered. These are occupations in the martial sense of the word, takeovers by invading forces. Every organization, every single one, Daron worries himself, orchestrates a silent competition with the church; they want not employees, but practitioners, apostles, acolytes—not workers, but worshippers. Between this observation and his reflections on school, he concludes that everyone advertises for the mind but expects you to bring the soul.

He tells her . . . that reporters occasionally stalk about, that Agent Denver has stopped by a couple more times, always in his signature blue windbreaker, the arrival of his black sedan marked by thin smiles and his departure by rock salt, but that he, Daron, remained distant, even after Denver suggested that his father's transfer to the night shift wasn't voluntary. That was no extraordinary prescience by Daron's mind. Charlie and Hirschfield had both said it might happen, and he had not believed them either, even though he knew Charlie to be wise beyond his years.

He tells her . . . not . . . that when he was in the garage this morning, he tripped over a stack of unfamiliar boxes, inside of which were enough econ and finance textbooks to choke Warren Buffett. As he was sorting through them, his mother came from behind without warning, scaring the Big Blue Jesus out of him, asked why he was cold-nosing around the garage. He'd no answer. It was as though he was slapped awake after blacking out, and couldn't piece together his
reason for being out there or even how he'd arrived. He asked about the textbooks, and she replied, Think you're the only one who reads?

Yeah. Maybe. No. But textbooks, Mom? And these books, he'd noticed with discomfort, were very well read: highlighter marks, underlining, exclamation points, question marks, lots and lots of big question marks as if the reader were preparing to cross-examine the author, blatant interrobangs, and more dog-ears than Iditarod, or better yet, the San Francisco SPCA, which was a no-kill shelter.

He tells her . . . not . . . that his mother then admitted to being in school online, and wanted to surprise him.

With what? That's weird. You're too old to get a new job. What do you need school for?

Same as you.

You have a job.

That's not why you go to school.

Then why?

To learn?

What? What have you learned?

That's the point, D-D, she snapped twice, that's the point.

He tells her . . . he tells her . . . not . . . about how his mother faced him, leaned against the pressure-treated four-by-four support as if it were comfortable, crossed, then uncrossed her arms and legs, another holdover from those counseling sessions. Open body, open heart, open mind, Dr. Ventura always advised. Don't you remember that rhubarb with your father? You nearly came to blows. He fixed you for June and July at the mill, but you howled louder than a drunk monkey about summer camp. He said you needed to make money. She pointed at him. You said you needed skills. He said you needed work. But you said you should learn, needed to learn, that you wanted a job you couldn't figure out how to do just by showing up. Remember that? You wanted a job you had to think about. You even used his own advice against him: Never be the first one to ask
her to the prom. That went over like a poke in the eye, burned him worse than a chow-chow in June. Remember?