T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

It was nearly midnight when Daron sat down next to his friends again. They looked pleasantly tired. He was about to ask them if they were enjoying themselves when his father opened the back door and whistled for him. His parents were alone in the kitchen. His father studied his face, his mother was straightening the canisters, her back to them, but her posture belied where her attention lay.

Call it off, son.

How do you mean?

D’aron, I don’t want to keep you from your friends or have a big discussion about this. Whatever you was planning, call it off.

On the way from the airport, his mother had inquired about their plans for the week. As previously agreed, Daron said they would visit Atlanta a few times, and Savannah, and some Indian burial ground. They needed only to keep their secret until the next morning, at which point phase two would begin. The lynching wouldn’t get far because someone would stop it, someone would give a fit as soon as rope one got tossed over a branch. Louis and Candice insisted on secrecy because if the townspeople were warned, the spectacle wouldn’t have the same effect. There would be no control group, and the postmaim interviews, as Louis called them, would be pointless. Charlie, lastly, insisted this was a situation where it was best to act first and ask permission later. Seemed he was right.

For the first time, Daron felt motivated to do it, to act. He was not one to directly disobey his father. But they had planned this for weeks, and had Professor Pearlstein’s permission to do ethnography, like Zora Neale Hurston or Franz Boas. Daron blurted out, It’s fieldwork. A school project, for Christ’s sake.

I knew it. His father set his jaw like he’d been swindled.

His mom shuddered, apparently at the notion of fieldwork, not the invocation of Christ, because all she had to say was, Why can’t you just read books and write papers, like we used to do in school?

Daron knew that Mr. Davenport would make the final decision, and judging by his silence, it had been made. This was not how Daron would have planned to ask, had he developed a mind to do so. He would have taken his father aside to talk man-to-man, like the adult he was, to explain that times had changed and that direct action was big again, that the South had to catch up with California, and the rest of the world, and stop wading in the sandpit licking its wounds like an old, toothless dog. Yes, reason and rhetoric would have been his strategy.

You best do as I say, hear me, son, or it’s me ’n’ you.

Centered on Daron’s dresser was an oversize Styrofoam light-bulb graced with an Afro wig. Magnifying glass in hand, Louis alternated between examining the wig and Charlie’s scalp. With her hands clasped behind her back, maintaining a respectful distance as though guided by tape on the floor, Candice studied the walls as if some brilliant curator had assembled these posters of Jay Z, MGMT, James Franco in Pineapple Express —which his parents still thought was a fruit drink — Miley Cyrus, BSG, Jessica Alba, Outkast, and Tool, the latter of which made him terribly sentimental because when he was young, it was his father’s mulling music, under the stars, in the backyard, the only sounds Aenima and the bug zapper, the first a eulogy, the second what his father called life’s biggest lesson.

Quint bounced on the edge of the bed rambling about how they all were coming to his place the next night for another cookout. Chez Quint — Quint’s Pub? Louis agreed, but Daron didn’t like the idea. Quint’s friends liked to wrassle and slapbox and shit like that when they got drunk, though some didn’t wait that long. He imagined them fucking up Louis and yelling, Don’t you know karate or Hong-Kong-Fooey?

Every few minutes, Quint’s girlfriend, Maylene, called him, triggering his Knight Rider ringtone, at which point Louis and Charlie would pop-lock, their performance prompting Quint to ignore the call.

Candice stopped before the poster of Michael Jackson in a scene from Smooth Criminal, leaning forward at an impossibly acute angle, covering that halfway was a Harry Potter poster. She traced the outline of Harry’s face. Somehow these two belong together, don’t they?

Believe in magic. Don’t want to grow up. High voices. Not bad, girl, not bad. Quint sucked his teeth as though chuffed, like he did whenever they drove past an ATV/four-wheeler dealer.

Candice blushed like she’d been goosed.

With an orchestral flourish, Daron turned to study the posters. They both represent forbidden desires. Each of them seems uncertain of how to manage the power they have acquired, and confused about whether it resides within them, or requires external agents to activate. MJ felt it was outside of him, but his life was a hero’s journey… He faded out, not because they were all staring at him, which he expected to see when he dramatically turned to face them, but because they were all ignoring him. Candice had moved on to Jessica Alba. Louis was holding the magnifying glass to his nose, Look, Charlie, could I be black now? Quint was laying a mighty eye on Candice.

Knight Rider played. Sine and cosine, bitches! Louis did the wave and transferred the power to Charlie, who leaned back in a slow-motion Matrix -style pop-locking maneuver.

Quint raised his hands like an emcee, Go Loose! Go Loose! Go Chuck! Go Chuck!

Earlier in the evening, Quint had insisted that Candice liked Daron. Break out Oscar, Quint had instructed. Daron thought his cousin was putting him on, setting him up for embarrassment, but sometimes Quint just knew things about women: if they were single, if not, if they were open to exploration, when they were packing the shark’s tooth, if they were a pulsing vessel or a dry vein. As he put it, Trust me. I know these things, almost like I can remember when we had gills, when we rode scales out of the sea. Swore he could smell it, too, and that made Daron nervous, especially when Candice was all blush and blustering and even she was dancing now, watching Quint out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t like Quint. How could someone as smart and beautiful as Candice even like Daron? And what about Charlie, with his sullen gravity and size fifteens? Everyone knew about those rumors (One Louis punch line: If I was named Tyrell and had a ten-inch dick, I wouldn’t go to school, either). And Louis liked her. A year ago, he would never have imagined Candice with someone like Louis, but anything could happen in California.

Quint’s girlfriend hung up. Louis sat down. Charlie opened the window, fingered the sweat behind his ears, Shit, that’s worse.

Let’s go for a walk in the woods, suggested Candice.

Quint jumped to his feet. All right.

Daron glared at Quint. Not at night.

What do you mean, not at night?

C’mon, Quint.

Who shot you?

You don’t have to be Methuselah to know.

Damn, your juniors is bounced tight. Methuselah and ’em, now? Didn’t you learn nothin’ in college? Besides, the Holler don’t start for almost a quarter mile back there.

Technically, Quint was right. You had to climb the hill to go down into the Holler, but they were the same in Daron’s mind, and always had been. All’s I’m saying is everybody knows ’bout the Holler at night. She’s thinking about a cornfield in Iowa, and it ain’t like that here. It’s too easy to get lost. Even Nana got lost back there once.

Quint stared at him so hard that Daron tensed for the blow. The others must have felt the air cool because Candice was, On second thought, I’m too tired. They sat there in silence for a few more minutes. Louis plunked into the desk chair. When Quint’s phone next rang, Charlie and Louis stood silent.