T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

The attic armory was opened for the first time since Katrina. From then on, Daron’s father insisted everyone carry a firearm at all times, just in case the Nubian threat of reprisals came to fruition, in case divine retribution took a secular turn as it so often did in the South. At the arrival of the news vans, though, the Nubians tempered themselves, being too shrewd to waste airtime, their suddenly sober behavior giving them the appearance and bearing of jilted grooms.

The brides, then, arrived next, their long, flowing white robes raised daintily to the ankles as they descended from the bed of the extended cab dually pickup, each pair taking a position on either side of the tailgate, extending a hand to help the others down, until lined before the Davenport residence, like vestal virgins in their pure white robes, these truly bleached to blind, were twenty-three Klansmen.

Who’dve ever thought I’d be happy to see these assholes? Let’s just hope they don’t start a gunfight, or a fire, was heard to be said around the block on several occasions, but no one knows by whom.

Finally, as was their way, as Daron had learned in Berzerkeley, a group of miscellaneous white people arrived to involve themselves in affairs none of their concern. This particular group was a brightly colored rainbow coalition (in dress only), complete with rainbow posters and matching rainbow shirts — So cute, said his mom — and the chanting of slogans such as, Equal Rights for All, Abolish Reenactments, and States’ Rights = Slaves, Right?

Daron watched from the living room window, his mother at his side, his father refusing to pay it any mind (though he freely expressed irritation at the absence of a cross breeze, which they suffered without, now that the front door was always closed and locked). Daron, though, found it fascinating. The Nubians and the Klan had said nothing to each other for two days, the camps remained huddled in separate groups, the Nubians with posters reading NEVER FORGET and the Klan with posters reading SOUTHERN PRIDE IS NOT A SIN, their backs more often than not turned to each other like a couple in an argument whose provenance has long been forgotten. Their relationship was soon to be consummated. (In the wake of such moral turpitude, the makeup sex isn’t long coming.)

Within the hour of the Rainbow Coalition’s arrival, the younger Klan members were pushing the gays, poking them with their sticks. The gays ignored the taunts. They weren’t necessarily effeminate or slight, and one blond in particular looked like he worked out a lot. In fact he resembled Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governator, during his days as the Terminator.

When the Klan grew frustrated because they could not get a rise out of the gays (who were white, remember), the Nubians teased the Klan and finally entered the fray to prove that they, the Nubians, could get a rise out of the gays. But they couldn’t, either. (Throughout this, no one poked the Gay-benator.) (As no one would have poked Charlie, who wouldn’t have been there in the first place.) It was clear from the expressions, though, that the gays expected harassment from the Klan but were somewhat surprised by the aggression from the Nubians. Throughout the day, they had gradually moved farther from the Klan and closer to the camp of black robes.

Finally, they joined forces: the Klan and the Nubians assaulted the gays, taunting, teasing, calling them faggots and AIDS maggots and HIV magnets, and, when that didn’t provoke them, launching rocks and sticks, threatening greater violence yet to come.

His mom said gays were too passive for their own good, but Daron believed they were simply nonviolent. They didn’t shrink away from the prods and pokes and name-calling, they merely ignored it, refusing to be roused to anger, and it was this presence of mind, this composure that drove the other two groups mad and started all the trouble. It was in the middle of such a skirmish that Daron risked a dash to the mailbox.

When the news featured a photo of Daron checking the mail with his shotgun, flashing VIGILANTE underneath, the front door vanished in his eyes as surely as the mystical portals of his childhood fantasies.

WHEN HE DID GO OUT, through the back door, no one in town stared. They didn’t look at him at all. At Lou’s they didn’t even greet him when he entered. He was overnight an invisible man, a sensation so eerie he stopped going outside during the day. (Was this what Ellison meant?) On the local radio, a few people even accused him of being in cahoots with Otis, that uppity nigger. When the host chastised a caller for using that word, the caller laughed.

They’re the whole problem. Fellow got dressed up like a nineteenth-century nigger. If you do that and you hang from a tree like a nineteenth-century nigger, you’re fixin’ to die like a nineteenth-century nigger. That’s a pretty sure recipe, just like Jim and PBR make a perfect boilermaker.

Sir, that jazz language is uncalled for.

I ain’t the one caused all this trouble.

But, sir, don’t you understand — the host adopted a mock-lecturing tone — there’s no equivalent word for white people?

I know, and it angers me. Been like that since Wilma had Bamm-Bamm. Who wants to say niggered and dimed all the time? I feel kind of left out, but as soon as we get a nigger word for white people, I’ll use it. I’ll use it like salt, I will. Want to hear a joke?

As long as it doesn’t include the word quote-unquote nigger.

This doesn’t. A black guy, a white girl, a Chinese guy, and a white guy get into college. Why don’t they graduate? First day, they tell the Chinese guy to bring the school supplies. But he ain’t there that morning, they’re waitin’ and waitin’, and finally he jumps out of a closet and yells, Supplies!

Daron turned off the radio. He had heard that joke before. Used it like salt, too. Jo-Jo’s father used to say that a lot. (Also favored asking the air, What’s gonna happen when the jumping beans are run plumb out of Dodge? They’ll climb into a Ford and drive that into the ground, too.) A few evenings, Daron had driven to Jo-Jo’s house, but he was never home, at least that’s what his parents said. They also never invited him in. The third time, they asked him to stop coming back.

He didn’t think much of it until he saw Jo-Jo’s Facebook page. The old photos of Jo-Jo drinking were all removed. He was reborn and every new photo featured a clean-shaven, innocent-looking lad that Daron would have scarcely recognized were it not for that distinctive short brow. When he frowned, his widow’s peak nearly poked the bridge of his nose. In several recent photos, he held a Bible, and in others his fingers intersected like crosses, and in one Daron could clearly see a cross tattoo at the base of his thumb. He remembered Jo-Jo posting to Facebook that he was born again, and he was getting a tattoo to make it permanent, To remind me ev’ry time I yank a beer, but never had this possibility crossed Daron’s mind. The same Jo-Jo who once held a beer tab between his thumb and index finger and declared, This is the only ring you’ll see on my finger. The same Jo-Jo who posted a photo of himself suited up Gray on the morning of the reenactment, and hadn’t made another post in the ten days since. The possibility that someone from Jo-Jo’s church knew better than Candice what had really happened at Old Man Donner’s nagged Daron. He drove to Jo-Jo’s house that night. No one answered the door.

Still, when Agent Denver next stopped by, to again ask if he knew anything about a militia, to again ask if he was being threatened, to again ask if he was protecting anyone, Daron responded, No, comfortable, that was an honest response. There was no way that Jo-Jo would whip anyone. Besides, he’d hung with everybody back in high school. Daron also still doubted Candice’s story. It’s not that she’d lied, it’s just that she was so frantic she might have been confused about some things. She never told the story the same way twice. There was no way that Jo-Jo would whip anyone, even though Daron had to wonder if there was a good chance he knew who did. When he asked his father’s opinion, he was told, You can’t take back a fart, son. No need to stink things up more than they are. Isn’t there someone else Sheriff says you’re supposed to call?