T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

Did his parents also look at each other with resentment born of intimacy; did they want more than anything else to reach out to each other, to close cold space; did they say things to hurt each other first intentionally and then again, without meaning to, in the midst of apologizing? Did they inventory their intimacies? How did you look at someone and care so much for them and hate them at the same time, be so angry that you didn’t even trust yourself to have a valid emotion, so angry it couldn’t be real?

Had they asked themselves if they really knew each other at all, or too much? Had they wondered how can you despise someone who’ll share anything but cookies; who makes every fight her own; who is creeped out by penguins (they strike her as crippled, and crippled things distress her), who asks you to read certain books only so that you’ll hate them with her? Or did this anger itself illuminate the other person; did anger crystallize your affections; in a moment of alienation, did you see her anew? Admiring again the way she stood against challenge, even in the fracture boot, erect and long of limb, leaned forward when thinking as if her thoughts could support her, how her eyes sought yours and held them?

Did his parents also want more than anything else to shake their heavy pride, their cursed vanity, to splinter the malediction, squeeze it between them like a crying child transformed by tender affection? Had they not wanted, more than anything else, more badly than anything else — to say, I love you? Would that stop it? Daron was afraid to try. How did you tell someone your feelings? Did you just say it? That wasn’t clever.

What did her parents, the professors, do? His parents were always happier after. And socked. Daron felt worse. Socked, shoed, shitty.

THREE TIMES SHE TOLD THE STORY, each version different. They would have asked for a fourth, but couldn’t bear again the unexpected detail, such as how a soldier smeared with dirt smelled like fabric softener, or how the rebounding branch pitched a quivering green cloud, or how the sound of a regiment adorned with canteens and tin mess kits, scampering in confusion, could not mask the thump of his body knocking against the earth. Each version felt an account by a different eyewitness. In the first, she was initially approached by the captain, who incited the men. In the second, the captain was barely mentioned. In the third, the captain directed the cutting down. In all three versions, a man with a cross tattooed on his hand snatched the whip from Candice, brandishing it with zeal before whipping him.

Of the rape she said nothing.

The three of them sat in the gazebo. The box of wine his mother had left earlier remained on the table, now empty. The only light was the bug zapper, sleeved in a cyclone of gnats. His father had always called that life’s biggest lesson. D’aron first assumed he meant, Moths to flame. For years D’aron prided himself on having perceived the answer without posing the question, but in high school he learned that platitudes were venial sins — easily forgiven, even if not easily fixed — and then at Berzerkeley he discovered that they were mortal sins, evidence of a corrupted soul and lazy mind, that clichés were an order of unsanitary intellectual musing akin to wearing someone else’s crumbs on your own mustache. So the last time his father made the comment, Life’s biggest lesson, Daron shrugged it off. His father smiled, So you get it? Moths to flame, moths to flame, Daron muttered. His father scoffed, and after repeated inquiries refused to share the meaning. When Daron ventured to ask his cousin about it, Quint replied, There’s some shit you don’t want to know, Li’l D, some shit you don’t want to know, and then nearly broke a rib laughing at the wisps of exasperation wafting from Daron’s ears.

He had delight in his eyes, she added after a long silence.

Light in his eyes?

Delight. The guy with the whip.

Fuck. I don’t need to hear that. I really don’t need to hear that. Charlie hunkered as he had for the last hour, elbows on knees, head on hands.

You mean he looked happy? Daron asked. Really?

My memory… maybe you should have… whatever.

Daron grunted.

I thought he was okay. It looked like he was laughing. When he was kicking, it looked like he was having fun.

Please. Fuck! Charlie rapped his fingers against his head. Enough. It’s not our fault they wouldn’t let you see him at the hospital.

Candice stood and walked to the edge of the yard. At the hospital, she had asked to see him. Demanded to see him. Said that she more than they deserved at least a final silent moment with him. It was forbidden. It was against the rules, the cops had told her. You’re not family, their answer sounding, according to her, rehearsed. She seemed to think there was a conspiracy against her.

We should have gone, D.

I showed him how to tie the knots. I showed him three times. Over Charlie’s head, Daron could see Candice sit on the hard ground next to the pagoda and turn her back to them.

We should have gone, Daron. People would have recognized you.

Daron knew they should have gone, but every time someone said it, his body rejected it like a toxic organ. He saw this happening to himself, yet was unable to stop it. Unable to stop himself from saying, Maybe you should have, but then you would feel like Candice. Louder: Maybe I would feel like Candice. Louder even: Maybe that’s why she’s angry. Because she was there and couldn’t stop it. She was there and he is still dead.

Candice’s head dipped lower with each sentence, until he couldn’t see it at all, only her one hand ripping up grass, the opposite elbow cocked as if she were covering her mouth.

Charlie curled with rage. If this weren’t your home, I’d light your ass six ways to Sunday. You think you’re a man because you have some guns, because you wanted to shoot some — what are they called here — Gulls? Do you know what it’s like to shoot someone? Have you ever seen someone shot? Have you ever seen a dead body?

Daron choked on his answer; Charlie on his apology.

FINALLY CANDICE ASKED, Why won’t they let me see him? Because I’m a woman?

No answer.

Cut the bullshit. You know why.

Candice looked as if she had been slapped, her right cheek running crimson up to her temple and down to her neck.

Don’t get cryatica and dramatica about that, really, Candy. I know you feel like shit because you were there and still couldn’t prevent it, so your only choice is to jump on everyone else. Us for not being there, anyone who uses the wrong word, whatever. But that’s not going to guarantee justice. It’s only now getting started, so we’ve got to get our shit together, and get fucking serious, or what’s going to happen when the real accusations fly? Charlie raised his brow in challenge. What’s going to happen when they accuse you, Candyland, of being a clueless white girl who watched her friend asphyxiate because she was too frightened to move, or act, or call for help? That’s what they’re going to say. That… that you’re making this up and you’re an atheist liberal nutcase. The pressure is going to be on Daron’s folks, too.

My folks aren’t involved.

Charlie continued as if he hadn’t heard him. They might get laid off, anything. It’s going to get pretty ugly, and maybe the most we can hope for is that there is no civil suit. The Changs could get this house. Yours too, Candice.

Daron hadn’t thought of that.

But we were being ironic when we posted those bumper stickers, protested Candice. Everyone knows we were joking.

Everyone who is our age, probably white, and a college student at a hella liberal school. Don’t you get it? This never made any fucking sense to anyone but us, and there aren’t as many of us as we fucking thought.