T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

To celebrate the town’s ninetieth anniversary in 1920, the city held a pageant complete with a buffet and staged a reading of Bragg’s Declaration of War on the U.S. Traitors and even had three little boys in gray soldier’s uniforms with wings. It was received with all the reverence of the Pope, and for that weekend everyone came together and forgot their side spats and pickle spitting and celebrated their visionary founder. But the next year, the crowd thinned, and it declined even more the year after that. Meanwhile the cities close to Atlanta, like Newnan and Tyrone and Peachtree City, grew into prosperous suburbs in their own right, so in 1960 Braggsville filed another petition, and eventually restarted the reenactments. Attendance shot up, no doubt helped by the growing civil rights movement. In fact, the first modern Braggsville Historical Preservation and Dissemination Society reenactment took place a week after King delivered his I Have a Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital.

From 1861 to 1865, the Confederate flag flew all across Georgia. In 1955, the state raised it once more, to protest federally mandated integration. But, funny thing is, they’d never stopped flying Old Dixie here in Braggsville. It wasn’t about slavery, they said. It was about the Northern presumption about one man thinking he had the right to tell another man what to do. And what to think. And what to believe.

We in the Gully said nothing. No more.

What no one is telling you is that the so-called deserter was one of Bragg’s sons. He died later, because he was found out and put back to gun on the front line. But for three months he hid out in the Gully, where no one would think to look. Only Bragg himself, his son, and one general knew this, and that general went on to become a legislator and sat on the Milledgeville committee that Bragg invited to view this town. That’s why over the years the petitions have not been successful for the Olympic equestrian events, the state games, and even the Special Olympics. But we got Walmart in the Gully.

Finished, he took his hand off Daron’s shoulder.

Oh, that slick nigger! Daron thought. Was this how Mike Myers felt during that telethon? Daron guessed it was when Quint later told him, You got straight Kanye’ed.

AND WE WERE AFRAID YOU WOULD COME BACK singing Dancing Queen, his father declared, trying to make a joke of it later that night. He was alone in his laughter. His mother stood with her arms crossed as though plotting. Elsewhere anger announced itself more vigorously: there was a fire in the Gully, and later a brick thrown through the Davenports’ garage window. The next morning, the FBI stationed a man across the street. As Denver explained it, you’ll talk when you’re ready. I just want you to live until then. He wanted to station the agent in the front yard, but Mr. Davenport refused the offer, even after being assured that his taxes paid for it, instead insisting that very fact gave him the right to respectfully, but forcefully, decline. I don’t need no outsiders to protect me in my own town from my own people.

Daron was plotting his escape from Braggsville, and finally saw his chance. After the inquest, Louis’s family flew his body directly to Malaysia, so his San Francisco remembrance celebration was scheduled almost a full two weeks after his death. Daron discovered the date by reading the school paper online, an act undertaken with trepidation, avoiding the editorials, op-eds, and columns, summoning a discipline quite unlike his usual forays into cyberspace. When he told his parents about the memorial service, they agreed that he needed closure, closure being the only shrink-speak spoken at home. (Can we get some closure on that back door? the refrigerator? your mouth? Lost?) Daron packed two days early, picking out his clothes for this four-day trip with even more care than he did when first leaving for college.

He and Candice had not shared a word since the morning her parents picked her up. He’d not seen her since the inquest, making this the longest period of time since they had met that they had gone without contact. The longest week of his life. No IMs, texts, or Facebook messages. No Instagrams or tweets. Simply put, no direct communication, as the lawyers advised, for fear it would be intercepted or misinterpreted, or both, intentionally. Charlie changed his privacy settings because of the endless threats posted to his Facebook wall, and closed his account altogether after he was doxed, and the death threats began to be accompanied by the GPS location of his home or his face pasted over an image of a dangling Saddam Hussein. It was as if the Indians had committed cybersuicide, as if Candice’s final post, the four of them at his mom’s backyard barbecue, had been a picture of the Last Supper. As it was, Daron didn’t remember her asking anyone to take it, which only added to the vertigo he felt when he first saw it: he, Candice, and Charlie flanking Louis, who still stood on his stage, that white plastic chair. Their heads staggered in space reminded him of Olympians on the rostrum: Louis, the victorious gold medal recipient; Charlie, silver; Candice, bronze; Daron, a runner-up, even with a hometown advantage. He was giddy and anxious at the thought of being with Charlie and Candice again, and after learning that he would not see his friends, he suffered a deep dismay at life’s caprice, felt bridled by a broad stroke of well-black despair even more suffocating than the Easter Sunday despondency that strangled the eight-year-old D’aron — bka Faggot — when his stripper cousin cautioned him: Yes! Christ can rise from the dead; it’s professional wrestling that’s staged. Could we have nothing for ourselves in this world?

It was the day before Louis’s memorial service, and when his mom called him to the phone, Daron sprinted to the kitchen, breathless as he greeted Charlie, who had only bad news. He had spoken to Mrs. Chang, and they were not welcome to attend.

Is that what she said?

May as well. She said it might cause too much commotion. She said it might, uh, Distract from purpose. So, yes.

Charlie must have been mad to mock Mrs. Chang. Are you going anyway?

D, I can’t go to the bathroom without closing the door. That’s not a joke, D. It’s a report from the field.

Does Candice know?

Yeah.

Have you seen her?

No.

You’ve talked to her?

Once.

About what?

Everything. Charlie paused. What else is there to talk about?

What did she say about me?

Charlie paused even longer this time. Nothing.

Did you tell your mom?

About what? She already knows everything.

About the memorial? About us being distractions?

Nope.

Did Candice?

Probably not. It doesn’t apply to her.

Daron had been excited to hear his friend’s voice, and upon learning that they were not welcome attendees, first felt the comradeship of the wrongfully persecuted. That agreeable sensation evaporated, recondensed caustic. At hearing that Candice was permitted to appear at the memorial, Daron wondered if this was how she’d felt about the morgue. Had Candice felt this angry, this betrayed, at learning that Daron and Charlie had seen Louis, but she could not? Even as part of him felt it deserved, that her attending the memorial service from which they were barred neatly repaid a debt he’d considered unfairly incurred, he felt a sting of resentment and tried telling himself that it was not her fault any more than the morgue decision was his.

More than ready to escape the claustrophobia of home, Daron didn’t tell his parents, either. If he could make it back to Berzerkeley, he might not return to Braggsville. Three printed tickets to San Francisco hung on the fridge door. Printed because his parents didn’t trust e-tickets. Three because Daron’s mother refused to let him travel to California alone, worried as she was about reprisals. Malaysian people have gangs, too.