T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

We came around to avoid the crowd up there. You didn’t know what I meant by downstairs? The deputy looked distressed. Shit, Daron. I thought you knew what I meant, but just not how to get here. No one told you? The deputy looked at Mr. Davenport for help.

Mr. Davenport offered his hand. Thank you, Tom. Let me get a minute with the boys.

Of course. I’ll just inform the coroner now that y’all here. The deputy opened the door a crack and whispered to someone on the other side, listened a moment. And whispered again, louder, It’s his friends. That wouldn’t be right. He gently closed the door, nodded to Daron’s father, and leaned against the far wall.

Daron. Charlie. Mr. Davenport. All three stood facing the door. As if trying to make out the meaning of the letters etched in the glass. C-O-R-O-N-E-R. Certainly a misunderstanding, a case of mistaken identity. Certainly. No one died in Braggsville unexpectedly. Not because of a joke. Unless it was a sick joke on Louis’s part. Daron’d heard the deputy, heard his father, heard the coroner, but Daron knew it was a mistake — certainly — until his father turned so that he was between Daron and Charlie and the door, turned with a certain determination, as if to shield them, turned with the resolution of the sentenced, faced Daron and Charlie, palmed their necks, squeezed once, swallowed, nodded as if he had rehearsed this speech, as if he knew beforehand what to expect, and Daron rolled his shoulder back and pulled away from his father, away from the unwelcome awareness that his father had rehearsed this speech, performed this speech in Iraq, oh how many times, Daron didn’t know, but often enough to have an expression on his face that Daron had never before seen but knew with certainty meant this is no mistake, that meant, Son, your friend is dead. That much is certain. Now you must go through that door there and identify his body. You invited him here and you owe him that much. That much is certain, as unthinkable as it is, that much is certain.

Daron had felt his legs shaking ever so slightly at the sight of the door; at the thought of going in, both legs now shook uncontrollably. I can’t do it, Dad.

His father hugged him close, cradling his head in his hand. It’s your friend. You owe it to him. Here might be your only chance to be alone with him again.

Charlie, looking at the floor, whispered, I’m going in. Could have been me.

At that, Daron cried aloud, sobbing fully now. The deputy moved farther away, kindly taking a seat on the stairs at the opposite end of the hall, his back to them.

Charlie knocked, and the door swung open. A few minutes later, he came back out, pulling the door shut silently behind him with a restrained twist of the knob, sniffing, eyes red, lips quivering, breath in sharp bursts.

You come in with me, Dad, please. I can’t go alone, Daron whispered. Bail bondsmen’s and undertakers’ and attorneys’ business cards were affixed by straight pins to a small cork board. On the wall beside it, flyers for bereavement support groups, grief counselors, a local pizza parlor. He studied them all, staring away, away, away from the door, from the deputy, who was turning to leave, away from Charlie, now weeping, and away from his father, whose gaze remained locked on Daron even as he inched closer to pat Charlie on the back, flinching away from his face reflected in his father’s eyes. Please, Dad, he mouthed. Don’t make me.

His father said nothing, but Daron felt his eyes on him. Charlie’s weeping increased in volume. The deputy returned with a cup of water, which he handed to Charlie along with a fistful of paper towels. Charlie drank the water in one gulp.

Asked if he wanted more, Charlie nodded affirmatively but crumpled the cup, regarding his hand as if it were alien to him, then the other hand, then both, turning them back and forth like a baby who has discovered how unimaginably far the body extends beyond the self.

As Daron prepared to knock, the sound of a saw shrieked through the thin door, and he shrank back.

Sorry, muttered the deputy as he squeezed by Daron and into the morgue, the shrill of the saw rising strident as he opened the door enough to stick his head into the room. A moment later it was silent again. The deputy stepped back from the door and nodded at Daron.

Though it was ajar, Daron knocked softly on the door. He thought he heard someone say come in, but waited to be sure. He didn’t want to walk in on people in a place like this. The coroner who leaned into the threshold to motion him in looked familiar. That was a strange sensation. On campus he often saw people who reminded him of other people he knew — especially the Asians — but the campus was so large he rarely ran into people he knew unless he was in the dorm or at one of the buildings where their classes met. But back in Braggsville, everyone knew him, and he had forgotten that feeling of never being anonymous.

You JT’s uncle?

That’s right. You Janice’s boy.

Yes, sir.

My condolences. I don’t know what all the scheme was, but it’s a sad ending.

Louis was on a gurney with the sheet still over him. The coroner paused. You ready, young man?

Daron shook his head, No, even as he mouthed, Yes. The coroner peeled back the sheet.

Sorry he ain’t been cleaned up yet.

Louis lay on his back, his open eyes staring straight ahead, like when he was drunk or playing possum. His legs were knotted and twisted. Black polish stained his face, starting in a neat line halfway down his forehead where the wig had once been and spreading in a web of rivulets under his eyes. On his chin was one quarter-sized spot where the makeup was wiped clean and Daron could see a few hairs of that thin, patchy beard. Adding to the surrealism was the wig cocked like a baseball cap. It had managed to stay on even as they removed the noose, but it was pushed back the way one pushed back a ball cap at the end of a long day, or when taking a moment to think. That’s how Louis appeared, like he was in deep thought. Daron looked closely at Louis’s legs and saw that he was wearing the pants of a muscle suit. Louis’s bag was on a nearby gurney. Daron picked it up. It was now so light, unlike the day they’d arrived in Atlanta.

Don’t think you can take that. Evidence. The rest of the muscle suit is in there. The EMT cut him out of the top. They tried, but seems he’d been gone for a while before they got there. What was he doing out there anyhow? What were the lot of them up to?

Protesting the reenactment.

The coroner gave a humorless guffaw. Protest? Isn’t the reenactment already a protest? No one pays them two cents. Can’t get a buffalo nickel out of a donkey hide. Guess that’s gonna change, now. Y’all stirred up a mess for Braggsville. Real Wile E. Coyote move, pissing on your own shoes there. Won’t be able to call it Draggsville no more. With a quick nod he replaced the sheet, jerked it straight so that it gently settled over Louis’s body, the big lump of the wig first, then the legs, the torso last.

Replacing the sheet did nothing to abate Daron’s terror, to fade the horrid image floating still before his eyes, transforming the set of Louis’s mouth into a macabre grin. Louis rarely grinned. Laughed a lot, but rarely grinned. Daron once asked, How can you be a comedian if you never smile? Exactly! Louis had answered.

You know how to contact his family? Phone number, anything?

Daron silently backed away from the gurney and through the door.

In the hall, the deputy asked Daron if he wouldn’t mind stopping off to see Sheriff on the way home. Charlie, too, if possible. He then repeated the coroner’s question: You know how to contact his family? The girl’s already down there, but apparently ain’t talking none. The deputy stared closely, searching, like he was looking to see if Daron was going to lie, the look the cops would give him when they pulled them over on weekends in high school, the looks teachers sometimes gave him as they handed back his papers. It asked, Are you really one of us?