T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

He had never before ceased contact with anyone. He had never ceased anything. The embattled ceased. The Jews and Palestinians ceased. But after receiving that text message from Candice, after two days of pining, he felt better, overcome by a mood he could never have predicted — relief. Relieved to no longer worry about Candice liking Charlie, or Charlie liking Candice, or Candice being comfortable, or Candice finding something to eat that isn’t fried, or that everything his mom did was countrified. Knowing he was not on trial, he was relieved when the inquest arrived to, Right settle matters, as Sheriff promised it would.

The deputies controlling access to the side parking lot waved Daron and his parents through. His father circled twice in search of the spot with the best shade, while Daron hunkered in the backseat enraged by his preoccupation with so mundane a matter. Finally his mom gave out, Just park already, hon. The building’s not going to get any further away. His father’s answer: To circle the lot a third and fourth time, which he did unopposed, finally parking not far from a gray sedan marked FBI. The walk from the lot to the side entrance ran along a chain-link fence that creaked against the crush of reporters snapping photos, jabbing microphones through the fence like cattle prods, elbowing each other like aggressive panhandlers.

Due to budget constraints, the county had temporarily closed the older buildings that were more expensive to heat and cool. The proceedings were held in a school board building that normally served as the meeting space for an afterschool program, a fact that the judge found distressing and for which she apologized profusely. Before beginning the proceedings, she instructed the bailiff to remove the cartoon drawings hanging around the room. There was one benefit to this location: with all the interested parties lined up to testify, there wasn’t room to accommodate more than a few reporters. The rest were gathered in the sterile hall, and a few unlucky ones outside under the portico.

Were Charlie and Candice already inside? He hadn’t heard from Charlie since asking about #ZombieDickSlap. It was as if Charlie’d committed e-suicide. From Candice he received one text from a strange number explaining that she was forbidden to have contact with him or Charlie until further notice — Much further notice, to be painfully precise. He didn’t expect this much press, but otherwise Sheriff’s predictions were accurate. He’d called it more reliably than Sheriff’s wife called marriages, with one significant exception: Daron wasn’t prepared for the questions the press asked. He’d received, and ignored, e-mails, phone calls, letters, visitors (greeted by his father, armed), but here, ignoring them didn’t stop them from asking: Why? Would he do it again? What did he tell the Changs? And the kicker: Whose side are you on?

Whose side was he on? That was a question he’d never before had to answer.

Blue. Gray. Blue. Gray. Blue. Gray. Daron knew that during the second American revolution, Nana did say, One side — those damned yank Jehus — had strutted like Joseph, their benjamins brassed near up to their minds like Hisself had cut their coat from clear blue above, hotnosing like circus-trained dogs teetering at the table, their juniors bounced tight as a Jew’s on Christmas. One side? One side meant at least two. But who was the other? he’d never insulted to ask. At just the sound of fat crackling, Nana did say, them’ll stake their souls on your bet, them’ll rise up on them hindmost parts an’ walk beside you — yes, they will — for long enough to fool you both, Nana did say, Oh yeah, them can walk beside you, still them can’t take a proper seat but in they’s teeth. But just who were thems? Who was the other side? YANKS? BLACKS? GAYS? he’d never offended to ask, not even now, during the inquisition, as the coroner Frank Gist named it, regretful in tone and bearing as he had been when calling to give Daron the time and place of the hearing, regretful as he was even this morning for, The in-vi-ron-ment being in-con-ven-ient as it was to all sides involved.

All sides? There looked to be only two sides: The Changs sat opposite the Chelseas (Candice now wearing two fracture boots and a wrist brace — Bless her soul!); Changs on the bride’s side, Chelseas on the groom’s. The Changs with their blond sunglassed lawyer, the Chelseas unescorted. Everyone else was a midnight scramble. Sheriff behind the Chelseas, his two deputies behind the Changs. The first responding paramedic behind the Chelseas, the E.R. physician behind the Changs. When Daron asked to sit on the Changs’ side, his father explained that it was the defense’s side, and, Plain mean luck. It still looked more like a stew to Daron, everyone everywhere. He wanted to point this out to his father, but daren’t disturb him. He hadn’t moved since they took their seats in the back, was only this quiet when hunting, rooted like a fox in a duck blind. Nana must have told him, as she’d told Daron, about dealing with the law, In sooth, Court is capitalized like you or me. I don’t understand. You will, Nana did say, just hope not before too late. Then tell me now. If I explain, Nana did say, you’ll rightly never know. He suspected he would soon have his answer when it was announced that every witness was to give name, civilian title and rank, and then title and rank on the occasion of the circumstances under consideration. That’s what they called it: Circumstances under consideration.

No one said reenactment. No one said war, and no one said civil, just like he’d always been taught. Even witnesses with tongues knobbly as old Miss Keen’s famous northernmost limb listed their particulars almost rehearsed, as if those facts combined was the secret password to a secret clubhouse of which they all were night members. They might as well have been. Sheriff may as well have been straddling the building pulling the strings, or at the window, one large eye surveying his shadowbox, gaveling the walls with those blunt fingers while planning where to glue down the next toy soldier.

If he wasn’t it was only because Sheriff was first to testify: One Henry-Frank-Lucian-Braggsville-police-chief-Confederate-captain swore as instructed and was granted entry to the witness stand — a folding chair padded with a coffee-stained plaid cushion. Between the low stage, where the judge sat behind a gunmetal desk, and the folding tables where the attorneys sat, someone had placed an aluminum easel holding a mounted map of the battlefield. On it, a hand-drawn red circle, bottom heavy, marked the location of the tree. Along the left of the board was a column reserved for witnesses not present at the Incident but sharing testimony nonetheless. Into this column was placed a quarter-sized magnet with Sheriff’s name printed on it in green letters. He had not been at Old Man Donner’s, but he had received the first call, and so could share with all assembled in the court the concern he immediately felt, and the concern he sensed in the voices of the men he talked to that day, You work with a man awhile, you know what they’re feeling, and they were feeling none too good, not a one. By the time I got out there, you couldn’t get a noise out iffen you rubbed two together.

One after another, familiar faces climbed into the witness box and testified as Sheriff said they would. None of them remembered a man with a cross tattoo. Worse yet, every single man, and the married ones, too, was clean shaven, even men who had worn beards since Daron’s father sidled up to Daron’s mother in Dougy’s Bar & BBQ, stepped right into the hot flush of the jukebox, whiskey-licked her neck, rasped, I figure you for at least a Gemini. Every-damn-one that day was clean shaven (even the judge, known to the protectors-and-servers unaffectionately as Miss Hairlip).