T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

Charlie gestured to the crowd around them, thinning as patrons wound their way past the crumbling student learning center, where Mrs. Brooks’s office was located, to catch the train downtown, or mounted the wide steps to the fountain on Upper Sproul Plaza, or veered to grab joe at the MLK Student Union, under renovation, or forked like a school of fish around Eshleman Hall, in the process of being demolished.

That’s not enough. (What had Nana always said? The good Lord speaks with fire on tongue but man heeds man’s advice only if spoken softly, almost hummed.) If I were a Native American, I’d be pissed. Spoken slowly, almost sung, one eye on Candice to be sure she heard.

She had.

And so YOU had ended up at Six Flags, contesting a history that no one knew or cared about anyway. Daron told Denver as much as he could recall about the ashes, their plan, the park director letting them go with a warning. Those details were fuzzy now. What he now remembered most, but didn’t share, was Louis conducting interviews while they waited in line, all four Indians leaning like fishing poles on the crab, with backs arched and necks craned to avoid the sun, their bums against the railing, the smooth wrought-iron banister pressed into Candice’s butt like a barbell across a mattress. In that position and dressed to scrum, with her bowed back and vaulted front, Candice resembled a ship figurehead, her own prows making it impossible for Daron to look at her. Daron’s eyes everywhere but her and that padded bra. Charlie nonchalant as always, like that was his game. Not Louis.

Louis had decided that each bra cup had its own gravitational field, its own personality, and they were indeed different — the left one larger and boxy; the right one smaller and bubbly. He named them Mary-Kate and Ashley.

Tell me, Ashley, what’s life like in Kate’s shadow?

Daron laughed. It was hard not to smile at that one.

Mary-Kate was shy, unaccustomed to attention. Ashley was perkier and more outgoing. Mary-Kate ate carefully but was known to binge. Ashley ate whatever the hell she wanted and never gained a pound. Mary-Kate was a baritone, Ashley a soprano. Mary-Kate liked to be pinched; Ashley, sucked. Mary-Kate liked the sun, Ashley avoided it. Daron knew this because Louis was the voice of Mary-Kate, and Candice, miraculously, that of Ashley, and neither one of them, to hear the two tell it, could wait to ride Medusa and set Ishi free.

When they were slow to answer, Louis tapped them with his pen and made a noise like that of drumming a live microphone. And all Candice did was laugh an encouraging laugh. Back in their room later that night, Daron had expressed his shock that Candice let Louis get away with that.

Why not? One piece of advice my uncle gave me and made me swear never to share is the secret to women. Try this: Talk to them like they are regular people, prime the pump with a question or something, and then shut up and listen.

That’s it?

Yeah.

And first class isn’t going to L.A., either.

Okay, maybe there’s more.

Well?

Like I said, it’s a secret. He made me promise not to share it with anyone.

Screw you.

First class wasn’t going to L.A.: their code for secrets not worth keeping, but kept nonetheless. Or, for lies of necessity. It was from a joke Louis had admittedly stolen:

How’s the pilot get the stubborn Southerner who crashed first class to go back to coach?

What?

A Southerner on a flight from Lower Alabama to Los Angeles sees an extra seat in first class and cops it. The seatmate warns him off, the flight attendant gives him the old bartender’s last-call line: you don’t have to go home but…, the head flight attendant leans into him pretty hard. He stays put. You know. Southern pride or whatever. They call the pilot, who whispers something to the passenger that makes him pop up hotter than burned toast and sprint back to coach. What does he whisper?

What does he whisper?

First class isn’t going to Los Angeles.

Daron had laughed at the time, and probably would again. He’d laughed at every joke Louis told, even if it was two days later and the chortling erupted while he was in line at Togo’s or taking notes or on BART. If Louis could make that joke again, he would change Southern pride to something like These Colors Don’t Run or another one of the bumper stickers he had tweeted. Daron, though, wasn’t sure that he would find it as funny. First class was going to L.A., or New York, or Atlanta, or San Francisco, or wherever coach was going. The Southerner would end up in the same queue as everybody else, whether he knew it or not, whether they wanted to or not, peanuts in the same pod.

The summer before ninth grade was the sweet spot. Nervous as he was, D’aron nevertheless expected the best. High school could not possibly be worse than middle school. Ninth grade would mean AP electives, competitive academic teams, and more choices at lunch. He would be allowed to set his own schedules, so he would be liberated from the lockstep of banality and mediocrity. Like many kids, he had often fantasized that his real parents would arrive and whisk him away to another planet where his unique skills would be in high demand, most notably his power to restore the undead, or destroy them if needed. That fantasy was over, but there was still high school. That life would be better demanded little proof, he need look no farther than that summer before ninth grade.

It was well before his cousin’s first extended stay at hotel vo-tech. That May, Quint had been, Fuckin’ finally released from thirteenth grade for good behavior. He had time to spare. Until then, Quint had paid him scant attention, but that summer they hung daily, jouncing along the former county line road in Quint’s B210, Black Sabbath in the backseat compliments of a speaker he’d liberated from the cafeteria. Afternoons at Little Gorge, under shadow of spruce, watching girls stretch their limbs across the water, hoping, praying, imploring the gods to whisper into Krystal Rae Foldercap’s bejeweled ear: Backstroke. Quint occasionally inquiring about an unfamiliar doe in D’aron’s class, Quint’s friends stopping by to enjoy the view, and no one saying a single unkind word to D’aron all summer.

Marking noon with a formal twist of wrist, Quint would tip a grill lighter up to knight his pipe and intone wisdoms like, Imagine if everyone was your dentist’s hygienist. And if you didn’t immediately Eureka! he’d accuse you of poor imaginating, doing his best impersonation of the Captain in Cool Hand Luke, What we’ve got here is failure to imaginate.

It was like that again now, Quint four-wheeling over after dark, taking the back ways, and toting Daron out to his place to ice bourbon, or watch American Idol, or sit on the porch and count crickets. Quint also took him to Rock-n-Bowl 2-fer-Tuesday, some distance from home, fifty miles to be precise, still a few people did a double take while they were in line exchanging their sneakers for the brightly colored shoes everyone wore as if they were all part of the same team (except the cook, Jose, according to his name tag). One night between sets, Daron told his cousin that the Faculty and Student Review Board had met without him. He could return in the fall, on provisional status. Provided he took no further action to discredit himself or the university, he would be restored to normal status after one semester.

Quint congratulated him, but looked doubtful. He pulled at the frayed hem of his T-shirt, which read I DIDN’T MEAN TO PISS YOU OFF — THAT WAS A BONUS! It’s good news if you wanna go back. But it sounds like they want you to behave better than you do, like they’ll be watching you. Besides, don’t you restore things like cars and houses? He laughed. I wouldn’t last a week. As soon as someone says they’re watching me, I figure I got an audience, so it’s time to perform. Your cellie was like that. That was one funny Chinese dude. I know — he was mad-Asian. He laughed again, louder, a big bellyful of chuckle competing with the strikes and spares, drawing the brief attention of the bowlers in the nearby lanes. No one said anything. A look at Quint and a look away.