Welcome to Braggsville (9 page)

Welcome back, Little D.

Hi, Rheanne. These are my friends from—

Hi, Little D's friends.

He rattled off their names, but she'd already returned her attention to her magazine. No handshaking and hugging here.

At the back of the store Lou had installed a new deli counter, behind which stood his oldest granddaughter and Rheanne's older sister, Lee Anne, who waved politely from her folding chair, positioned so that she could watch
The Voice
on the television in the corner.

Welcome back, Little D.

Hi, Lee Anne, these are my friends—

Hi, Little D's friends. What are all y'allses names?

His mom rushed through the introductions. They were in a hurry, she explained as she gave her order.

Three pounds of three kinds of meat? Sliced? Lee Anne groaned. You coulda called that in, Miss Janice.

I realize that, Lee Anne, that's why it's an emergency order, because I wasn't able to plan ahead, and pick up my son and his
wonderful friends, who flew clear across the country to see our little festival. I had a lot to do to prepare for this trip, and now that I have an emergency, I knew I had to come here, and not up the road to that big cold box.

Of course. Lee Anne's voice softened at the mention of the big cold box, the mart that was to remain unmentioned, but apparently appreciation wasn't ample motivation. Lee Anne had graduated only two years before Daron, but she already moved like her grandfather Lou himself, and five minutes surely passed while she shuffled to the deli case, turned over several slabs of meat before finding the right one, peeled the plastic back, adjusted the slicer, washed her hands, and, finally ready to begin—no, not yet, it seemed—brushed aside a few stray hairs with her bare hands, made a face of intense concentration, flipped the switch on the machine, and guided the meat across. Lee Anne took a deep breath. A single slice of ham fainted across the wax paper like a Southern belle in sight of a chaise lounge. She exhaled dramatically. One!

Louis and Candice snuck a glance at each other that said, No fucking way this can be serious.

Just joking. I like to do that for the tourists.

Daron's relief was physical.

A young girl of no more than seven came in walking on her heels and stood beside Daron's mother. He recognized her as Irene's daughter Ingrid.

Hello, dear. Daron's mother raised her voice to be heard over the slicer. How are you today?

Fine, ma'am.

Doing some shopping for your mommy?

For myself, ma'am.

Lee Anne stopped slicing. The whirring blade slowed and the sound of the motor faded. Do you need something from this here counter, Ingrid? I done told you this here AC ain't free.

Yes, ma'am, Lee Anne. Two slices of bologna and two slices of cheese.

Lee Anne glared at her, holding the stare while picking up a microphone, unnecessarily as it turned out, and yelling, We need backup at the deli counter. Rheanne slammed her
People
down like last week's
TV Guide
and stomped to the back of the store. Candice approached the deli counter with a handmade doll in her outstretched hands. How much is this?

Rheanne shook her head and picked up the microphone, We need a price check.

Those two were still fighting like it was high school. Daron walked off in frustration, leaving Charlie chatting with his mom. He hadn't wanted to come in here anyway. They'd made a stop for gas as well, which really irked him. Why couldn't his mom have done all this before picking them up? She knew how far away the airport was. But she didn't plan and they had ended up in a gas station with Candice and Louis gasping and pulling out their phones to snap photos of little jigaboo dolls and bumper stickers with slogans like
ARIZONA: DOING THE JOB THE FEDS WON'T DO . . . BLIND JUSTICE IS EQUAL / SOCIAL JUSTICE IS RACIST . . . GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, DANGEROUS MINORITIES DO . . . I DON'T LIKE HIS WHITE HALF EITHER . . . IF YOU'RE ANY 'CAN, EXCEPT AMERI-CAN—GO HOME . . . IF I'D KNOWN IT WOULD BE LIKE THIS, I WOULD HAVE PICKED MY OWN COTTON
. By tomorrow this time, the slogans would be all over Facebook and Instagram. Worse yet, Louis might method tweet, which was his form of method acting. He certainly had enough inspiration.

When Lou rearranged the store, he'd tucked away the bumper stickers in the back corner, but after the last stop, Candice knew what to look for.
AMERICAN BY BIRTH, SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF GOD
announced the one Louis and Candice were reading aloud, working
over the words like kids sounding out the list of puzzling ingredients on the side panel of their favorite sugary cereal.

Rheanne was on the phone now. Was she staring at them? He couldn't tell, but suspected it. She must have been because for just a moment her eyes met his, and they both quickly looked away.

Louis and Candice read the rest of the stickers, each of which bore the Confederate flag and a slogan:
THESE COLORS DON'T RUN . . . HUNTING IS THE BEST ANGER MANAGEMENT . . . THE SOUTH SHALL RISE AGAIN . . . KEEP HONKING—I'M RELOADING
. Lou's selection, fortunately, was not as obnoxious as the gas station's. Daron had never thought much about them, his attention from a young age drawn to the sign over the register:
YOU WANT CREDIT, COME BACK TOMORROW
.

What's tomorrow? asked Candice when they were checking out.

The reenactment. Rheanne blinked once, slowly, as if in disbelief, as if the question were an affront.

You get credit for the reenactment?

That's only if you come tomorrow.

Wednesdays?

On Wednesday, tomorrow will be Thursday.

Oh. That's funny. She gave a frenzied, feverish laugh, so unrestrained that Daron worried she was mocking Rheanne, but Rheanne joined in, too. Candice picked up a pamphlet entitled
History of Braggsville
. How much is this? Rheanne shrugged and picked up the microphone, We need a price check.

Lou's was a few blocks from the edge of town, and from there it was barely a ten-minute drive to Daron's house. The rest of the way home, it seemed that everyone was on their front porch. If they didn't have a porch, they were in the window. Daron called out their names and waved as they passed. There was Mary Jo, Bobby, Kevin, Dennis, Raymond, Lucille, Frankie, Coddles, Lyle, John, Andy, Miss
Ursula, Jim, Lonnie, Postmaster Jones, William, Travis, Todd, Tony, Dennis M. . . . They all waved back.

Will there be a quiz? You know, it's hella creepy, all those waving bingo wings, Louis slapped his triceps.

We drive everywhere here. It's too hot for old people to walk. Daron went back to listing names, hoping to distract them from The Charlies—a legion theyselves—guarding driveways, gracing lawns, standing sentinel on porches with wide-eyed accusation. Not to mention the Hobarts, who were shoe-footing it in the single lane ahead of them with
I DON'T LIKE HIS WHITE HALF EITHER
pasted dead center below their license plate.

Candice leaned over and whispered to Daron, Where do all the black people live?

In the front yards. Louis pointed randomly.

Charlie laughed, followed by Daron's mom.

Daron slapped Louis's hand. No, in the Gully.

The gutter!

No, the Gully, the Gully, repeated Daron, flushed from Candice's whisper, her arm against his, her strawberry breath at his ear. Their neighborhood is called the Gully. It's right behind my house, on the other side of the hill, on the other side of the Holler, then walk a little ways. My nana—grandma—nearly got lost back there and she was from the woods.

Can we walk there?

I don't exactly know how to get there on foot.

Isn't it behind your house?

Sort of. I know how to get there. It's just you don't walk it. After you cross the hill, the Gully is still behind the Holler, but no one actually walks through the Holler. To get to the Gully, you drive back to the highway and around.

She made her life-is-unfair face, angry and sad all at once, like a child who had paid her quarter but received no bubble gum ball from
the globe, a look he hated because it made him feel protective but powerless and swelled a sudden urge to cup her breasts. He tried explaining that the Gully wasn't worse off or hidden. They had it good for work because they were actually closer to the mill, and upwind. They had their own houses and their own store and their own mechanic. It was just that no one walked through the Holler. Nobody. You didn't have to be Methuselah to know that.

H
is mom's backyard rivaled Berkeley's best. The entire plot was five acres, as were most along their road, but his father was one of the few who'd cordoned off a portion of his land, erecting a solid six-foot wood dog-ear fence behind the house to create a sizable yard, almost the dimensions of a basketball court, in which over the years his mother had planted a small herb garden, ivy to dress the gazebo, a flower bed along the house, and several rows of dwarf pear trees. She planned well. When all the planting was finally finished, bounded on each side by colorful flowers or edible fruit was a neatly cropped, lush lawn in the center of which the gazebo sat like a paperweight.

When they entered the backyard, his mom gesturing as though announcing dignitaries to the royal court, a cheer sounded across the crowd. Daron cringed when he heard
Jungle Boogie
playing. His family was dangerously drunk when they started playing soul, and it was only eight
P.M.
Almost thirty people danced, sang, chatted, smoked, or swapped stories in various corners of the yard, all waiting to ambush him with embarrassment. His fifty-seven-year-old aunt Boo would soon be dropping it like it was hot, his uncle Lance would soon be doing the funky chicken clogging routine, and his seven-year-old cousin Ashley would soon be doing her Beyoncé
Single Ladies
impersonation, complete with a body suit, stockings, and high heels.

Then there were his older female cousins—the stripper, the trucker, and the elementary school teacher—referred to as no-count because they'd never married. The stripper and teacher were twins, and rumor had it they occasionally played switcheroo. At most gatherings, one started a fire and the other a fight. But there was no telling who because they switched roles for each party.

Of course there was Uncle Roy, who resembled Don Knotts and chanted nigger like it would cure his pancreatic cancer. His wife, Aunt Chester, never knew where to put the needle down in the conversation and couldn't meet people without making fun of their names, if she liked them. Daron couldn't blame her. Her Christian name was Anna, but Uncle Roy always introduced her as his wife, Chester, and often added, nodding at her bosom, You'll never guess how she got that nickname or why I married her. Quint, more a brother than a cousin, had the Confederate flag tattooed on his left forearm, in case you didn't see the one on his right, Balance, his only explanation.

Daron led his friends around the yard, introducing them to everybody more for his own benefit than for theirs, wondering what he would do and whom he would talk to when the niceties were over. Since college started, these get-togethers felt more stressful. His young cousin's dancing was evidence of the media's deleterious influence on her definition of beauty and her self-image. (He had written a paper proudly entitled
The Story of Oh: Hypersexualization and Young Girls,
and e-mailed it to one cousin, who e-mailed it to another cousin, who e-mailed it to another, who posted it on Facebook with a request for help interpreting the, Journalism of my little cousin who I always knew was going to be a genius. Another cousin had it bound and shelved.) She would never look like Beyoncé; even most
black
women didn't look like Beyoncé. Though when young he had
admired their sarcasm and sharp wit, his older female cousins—the misanthrope, the pyromaniac, and the exhibitionist—all obviously hated their lives, lives that would never recover the hope of their youth, lives now defined by their status as old maids, though barely thirty. They were stuck here, and the finality of that sentence pained him. It was impossible to have a conversation with one of them and not feel like he was addressing a ghost. He should have warned his friends it would be BYOC—Bring Your Own Conversation.

Yet, every few encounters one of the Indians fell happy captive. Charlie was the first to go. Uncle Roy asked if he had folks 'round the way in the Gully. When Charlie shook his head, No, Roy offered to tell him about it. A few minutes later, the crazy cousins, avoiding Daron's eyes, sheepishly asked Candice about medical marijuana, and the four of them huddled like old friends under the umbrella his mother had borrowed from Lou's for the occasion.

And Quint waited at the end of the circuit the entire time, grinning, stroking his thin chin, sharp elbow propped, pinned to a stumpy forearm thick as a pig's knee; he'd recently spent another thirty days on chopping down a tree to steal a bike. (He blew time like he had it to spare, like it grew on clocks instead of died there.) His favorite top, when he wore one, was any T-shirt with writing because, It's like you can say something without saying anything. Today's slogan:
I MAKE IT LOOK EASY
.

Quint hugged Daron so tightly pain passed immediately into nostalgia. Six years older, Quint was forever bigger and stronger, and always squeezing or thumping or noodling Daron, as he did now, slipping Daron into an arm-bar and a full nelson and then a headlock to give him a noogie. Their entangled limbs did not resemble those of wrestlers at work so much as modern dancers in choreographed chaos. Daron had long since stopped resisting and accepted that Quint had to thump his chest at least once in front of all new folks. There were two types of people, as Daron learned in Anthro 101:
tree climbers and tree pissers. His older, stronger, and quicker cousin Quint, unfortunately, was of the latter variety. (And no Twitter rants would suffice; Q was analog as a motherfucker.) On the other hand, at least he was a cousin. Threat of Quint was enough to limit the high school bullying to name-calling (Donut Black Hole beat big black eye). No one wanted Quint on their back, the very position in which Daron now found himself.