T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

Daron shrugged off that comment, as he did their going cattywonked at the airline counter in Atlanta, their civility war with the flight attendant, their kerfuffle at baggage claim in San Francisco, their muttering match with the hotel clerk, and that they made him carry all the luggage, all the way, all the time, right up to the room, his father saying, You’re young, you don’t need a baggage cart. He shrugged it all off. They had been tense lately, and he knew they would be angry enough to swallow vinegar after he told them that he wasn’t wanted at the service. Surprisingly, they weren’t. His father continued to unpack as if he had not heard Daron, each piece of clothing folded as neatly as a U.S. flag and conveyed from suitcase to dresser with two hands. His mother, though, muttered, Good, before she caught herself. Are you sure? Daron nodded. She unloosed a long whistle as she flounced back onto the threadbare floral bedspread, her arms out like it was an exercise in trust. What are we going to do here?

Get Daron’s stuff together.

He can pack himself.

This isn’t summer camp.

That’s my point.

Roger that. His father closed the drawer with his hip and set his mother’s suitcases on the ribbed luggage stand beside the dresser. The drawer action was smooth, as quiet as the rubber clap of a refrigerator door, and he looked back to be sure it had closed. Sightsee? Treat it like a vacation? It costs as much.

May as well make a stay of it. His mother smiled wryly, as often happened when she approved of an idea but intended to put up an argument anyway. She must have changed her mind, because after a moment she agreed, This trip to El Cerrito did cost as much as a trip to El Mexico. She snorted and pointed to the trundle bed on which Daron sat. His father had wanted to stay in Fisherman’s Wharf, his mother near Union Square, but after hours online, they settled for this suburb north of Berzerkeley.

What does El Cerrito mean? mused his mother. Well? She repeated her question.

I don’t know.

Then I’m not sure why we’re paying for that smartphone.

Methuselah! Three days of this, thought Daron, tapping out his search. A moment later he muttered, Little hill.

Thank you, D-dear.

That evening Daron said he wanted to go for a walk and made his way to the El Cerrito del Norte BART station to catch the train to campus, sunglasses on and a hat pulled over his ears for the ten-minute ride. At every stop he regarded oncoming passengers with apprehension, and when the train reached Berzerkeley, he exited one stop before campus and walked the rest of the way. One of the blue bulletin boards on Sproul Plaza had been dedicated to Louis and was covered with photos, notes, cards, letters, candles. Daron could not bring himself to go close enough to read the notes or inspect the photos. Instead he walked to Candice’s dorm, moving always with a crowd. She was not in her room. The roommate’s eyes flitted about as if afraid to be seen talking to him. Are you sure? With a deliberate step, the roommate pushed into the hall before opening the door wide enough to grant full view of the posters, the books, and the folded sheets stacked on Candice’s stripped bed, the bare desk. I could be mistaken. Asked when she last saw her, the roommate’s voice said, The night before your trip; but her tone, her tone — the pitch and enunciation were those usually reserved for eyewitnesses in missing persons cases on shows like CSI Miami —her tone said, I last saw Candice when she climbed into the car with you. Those eyes again, as if calling for help. If she calls, ask her to call me, please. The way the roommate nodded, Daron knew she wouldn’t keep her promise any more than a Capulet. After the roommate’s facial expression and tone gutted Daron, the familiarity of Telegraph warmed his bones with its patchouli-hawking hippies and the exotic scents of the restaurants, until he was on that strip of sidewalk lined with vendors, beggars, and gutter punks, all of whom Louis would have had a joke for. By the time he was at People’s Park, he knew it was too soon, too soon.

The next morning, after a few hours of his father’s horrid night sounds, Daron awoke to find his parents at the desk, his mother in the chair, his father seated next to her on the luggage stand. His mother was studying a map. She occasionally flipped it over to read the legend before marking another destination. His father took notes and read the landmark descriptions aloud, his voice dramatic when describing Muir Woods or the Golden Gate, and less enthusiastic about the Union Square Shopping District, Coit Tower, and the Mission, though there was at all times a tenderness in his tone, an affection that Daron had understood at last in tenth grade as the reason why they had two cars but so frequently drove everywhere together, his mother dropping his father off even when her Saturday A.M. errands ran in the opposite direction.

Daron had heard that Europeans frequently landed on these shores laboring under the enthusiasm of ignorance and impossible itineraries, unaware of the magnitude of the United States of America, into which every EU country could fit twice and still leave room for most of Mexico to rest its head, leastways those who weren’t already doing so. California was no different: the Davenports in the New World. His parents eyed L.A. and the Redwood National Park with equal ardor when both were at least a day’s drive away, in opposite directions. He’d expected to play the tour guide, but this morning, knowing more than his parents about anything, even regional geography, frightened him, left him feeling exposed.

You coming?

Let the boy hang out with his friends.

I have to meet a few professors.

Or that.

Want us to come?

It’s college, Mom. I kinda have to go alone.

His mother tilted her head as if she needed to do that to take him all in. Are you okay with this memorial? Do you want to go later or earlier, after the crowd? We can go with you. Your father can go in and see if Mrs. Chang is there. Or gone yet, if we go after.

Thanks, Mom, but I don’t need to go. I’ll find another way.

That day there were three events honoring Louis. After the Changs’ San Francisco service, the university was hosting a colloquium and poetry reading on race and liberty ( The Body Linguistic: Syntax, Sexicons and Civil Rights, bait he wouldn’t fall for under any circumstance, having learned the hard way that a sexicon was not a sexy-ass icon, but a lexicon inhabited by big-ass words, and that any course with a title such as Sexing the Victorian was about the lack thereof ). There was also a memorial remembrance sit-in at the university student center. Daron wondered what would be said at the colloquium and sit-in, what vitriol they would spray about the South. He wasn’t curious enough to attend in person. He wouldn’t have considered subjecting his parents to that. Not that anyone would recognize his parents, but they would be forced to witness Daron’s humiliation, so those events he mentioned not at all.

As he watched his mother bite her pencil between circling Jack London Square and Alcatraz, and his father begin to memorize the major thoroughfares as he did before driving through any new city, drawing his finger along the streets while reciting street names, Daron felt an unexpected burst of respect and appreciation. They were willing to make a go of it for him, and that emotion harrowed him, provoking Daron to imagine them lost, or worse. He ignored it, but after they left, each kissing him on the head and telling him they loved him, and all that remained was the scent of his mother’s hair spray and his father’s Brut, he locked himself in the bathroom and cried, overcome by the fear that he would never see them again. After drying his face, he found that they had left him two twenties and a ten beside the alarm clock, and he cried again because he felt, somehow, that he had never seen them before. What else had he missed?