T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

So there you are. At the picnic table. The air at last out of Candice’s balloons; and right before lunch, YOU made extended trips to the bathroom and let some pressure out of yours. But your palms are sweaty, and your feet, and you avoid looking at the guards — who all stare at you — and the ride attendants, too, and you get it. You know what he means. You want to tell him you understand how it feels, but he will say for you this is only today, for me this is everyday, every day — watched, followed, harassed — everyday. But, still, you get it. You wish you knew what to say to him, how to begin the conversation. Instead, you let him sit next to her, which he does in silence, as do the rest of you until the agreed-upon time, eyes on hands, feet, legs, neck, everything but Candice, until show time, when YOU learn that nothing, no purses, no hats, and certainly no glossy cardboard boxes can accompany riders on the Medusa. Because. The attendant Pearl pointed to the sign overhead, a periodic chart of pictograms among which, Candice insisted, she saw no cardboard boxes. One hand on her hip, rocking heel-to-toe in her thick-soled grudge-green Doc Martens, Pearl lectured them on the many perils of high-speed travel in unpiloted vehicles. Ever seen a pair of AA batteries fly out of a camera and slam into someone’s face at 110 kilometers an hour? Know what a can of Mountain Dew can do at those speeds? A book? A Big Mac?

To Daron’s amazement, Candice didn’t try to persuade the attendant to change her mind. As the 4 Little Indians retreated, Candice snorted. All she had to say of Pearl was, She’d wear black nail polish if they let her.

COULD A BEAK BE TOO PINK? Daron wondered as they instituted a hasty plan B. After having been turned away from Medusa and discovering that the highest point in the park, the Volcano, was inaccessible to pedestrians, Candice swiveled her scope toward the heart, the center of the park, the fountain, a circular basin finished in stucco and slate and surrounded by tiny red flowers, a fount from which surged a curtain of mist shaped like an inverted Bundt pan and ribbed by a dozen sprouts of water, and from the center of that erupted three bronze dolphins imprisoned eternally in the hazy bell jar, their bowed bodies predicting long arcs, their eyes on points distant.

The sculptures had appeared to piss Candice off more than anything else. She had rounded the fountain twice, tracing a larger circle with her feet, her backpack clopping loudly whenever she stopped to stomp on the three spots where the dolphins would land were the miraculous to occur. Even the fucking statues want to be free! Hungry, and so tired, Louis and Charlie had taken a seat on a nearby wrought-iron bench. Daron stood midway between Candice and his buddies, between the bench and the fountain, feeling as he had all morning — like an emissary, an ambassador, the diplomatic hotline between squabbling republics. He had encouraged Candice not to give up, if it was important to her. He had encouraged Louis and Charlie to have patience when waiting in line, though he hadn’t expected Louis to interpret that as license to hold a conversation with Candice’s breasts (which she adjusted far, far too often for Daron’s liking). Lastly, he had waved them all together once Candice decided on a spot. Charlie and Louis staggered over with the enthusiasm of teen relations visiting Seventh-Day Adventists on a Saturday morning, taking stilted, robotic steps as if they had no ankles.

Candice arranged them in a semicircle around the cardboard urn, armed them each with ceremonial feathers, furs, and ornaments (all made of red paper, which Louis assured them was okay because Chinese people did that for funerals). Charlie had a Native bracelet he’d received as a gift. Louis donned a Burger King crown, the paper plumes willowed with gaudy jewels, glass trinkets he’d bought at one of Berkeley’s many bead stores. Candice wore a dream catcher around her neck right where her oversize crumb catchers had been earlier. She laid out an arc of smooth rocks between the three of them and Ishi’s urn, and two larger concentric arcs between Ishi and what she called, The Outside World. Atop Ishi she placed a paper tomahawk. I’ll read something I’ve found online. She waggled her phone. It will take maybe two minutes tops. On her cue they held hands and began to hum. Her only instruction being, Hum! Daron was surprised that they quickly fell into harmony as surely as if they had rehearsed for weeks, and he felt a nervous thrill whenever someone glanced in their direction. She restarted reading her passage at least four times because every fifteen fucking seconds a kid dragged his mommy or his nanny or his daddy or sometimes, because it was California, his mommies, or more rarely, his daddies over to see, Oooooohhhh powwow. Candice always wanted the kid to hear the whole thing. She was like the teacher he’d had in eighth grade who believed, You can only combat absenteeism and truancy with love. If you were late, no matter how late, she’d catch you up on what had happened so far, stopping the entire class to greet every tardy student like the prodigal son. The only reason she wasn’t fired was because, Methuselah be damned, she could trick the sun into oversleeping, as Daron overheard a teacher say one afternoon at Lou’s.

Mrs. Price. That was her name. Eighth-grade D’aron — aka Mr. Davenport, aka Dim Ding-Dong, bka ( b etter k nown a s) Faggot — had always wanted to come in late enough so that for just a minute or two, Mrs. Price would devote all her attention to him and only him, and he would have a feeling all over that was a mix between a warm bath and rubbing his groin against the kitchen sink, which was unavoidable when reaching for the tap. Mrs. Price, smells so nice, Mrs. Price, let me taste your spice, Mrs. Price, let me juggle your dice — always snake eyes, must have come to Daron’s mind because he stood between Candice and Charlie, and the hand Candice’s held — and that hand only — was clammy, that entire arm warm and tingling as if it had fallen asleep and been violently awoken.

Like criminals, kids attract each other, and soon eight children sat in a row before them, clapping at the end of Candice’s every sentence. Fortunately, their parents appreciated the break and relaxed on nearby benches — close enough to watch their children, but not close enough to get a good look at our 4 Little Indians. One of the kids stared like Daron was somebody important, and he had to admit the kid was cute. From a passing first aid attendant — Whassup? From a short black kid pushing a broom — a nod. From a cute brunette driving the handicapped golf cart — a wave. From the fountain — Dribble dribble. Briefly, it all felt very natural. Then came Tweety Bird, whom Daron had never seen up close. Then came a Latina who stopped at the insistence of her two blond charges, twin boys about waist-years-old. The crowd had grown. The kids hummed along as best they could, harmonic as a holiday hymnody. Candice chanted:

You are the sparrow’s song, the crow’s caw

The rose’s fragrance, the spring thaw

In our hearts you live forever,

Children will celebrate your brave endeavors

And we’ll take strength from your resolve

Until we meet again in heaven above

Charlie squeezed Daron’s hand, motioning at the nearby twin boys. One twin did cartwheels while the other coyly reached for a paper feather. Candice hissed him away. The Latina in charge of the twins made an apologetic face, more so, it seemed, for her powerlessness than for the twins’ behavior.

But Tweety deserved the attention, now only yards to their left, her fluffy finger dragging through the air like that of a director shadowed in the stage wings, resigned to her cast’s tendency toward insurgency. But this Tweety, as Louis pointed out in an inching whisper, has a clitoris-colored tongue — a hot one — a clitoris-colored tongue with a soft groove as inviting as a warm hot dog bun. Behold the blessed velvety furrow! And this Tweety, much to Daron’s surprise, is too pink in the beak, too pink for him to be at the same time holding Candice’s hand, too pink for him to be at the same time having random memories of Mrs. Price, such as a vivid image of the scrumptious freckle centered in the cleft of her chin, peeking down the split in her bib, pink enough to threaten a hot and perhaps soon not-so-private bristling, and about this he feels that confusion, that particular confusion he felt after the first time he knew himself in the biblical sense and lay there for some long, huffing minutes, afraid to look down because he thought he’d peed in his hand. It was a particular confusion that provided the only reliable refuge against shame.