T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

Through a photo-encrusted hall, through a large industrial kitchen, shiny and serrated, through silver double doors smudged with fingerprints, and at last into a smaller kitchen, like the kitchen in someone’s home, a kitchen appointed with a car key hook fashioned from burned wood, those clay trivets every fifth grader made for Mother’s Day, and needlepoint samplers on the wall: GOD BLESS THIS HOME over the mantel and sink, A WAIST IS A TERRIBLE THING TO MIND over the window, HAPPINESS IS HOMEMADE over the swinging doors, and on the refrigerator a mosaic of magnets advertising local businesses, as well as Lou’s Luscious News & Animal Calendar, featuring game in various stages of dress. It was as if Daron had sat in this kitchen all his life, and in a way he had, had he not? Daron, D’aron, Donut Hole, dat Wigga D, Turd Nerd: every few minutes a familiar face passed through, rifled the fridge or the cabinets, grabbed a cookie or a glass of milk, gave him a wave, and called him by a not-so-long-forgotten nickname. Oh, the cookies! How had he forgotten the cookies? He probably could have smelled them from the Holler. If he had, he would have imagined, precisely as it appeared, this kitchen.

ON HIS TREK INTO THE HOLLER, he had worried he was walking in circles until one faint trail, a line of broken shadow, ended at an unpaved safety-pin turn in a rough road, a hard-cocked elbow of packed and rutted dirt, no normal road because in one direction it stopped short of the last rise before the highway as if it didn’t connect to any other roads, and in the other direction it ended at a gate marked PRIVATE DRIVE. He could see both from where he stood in the crook of that elbow. At the end of Private Drive, no church. No squat, wooden single-pen building with a simple cross carved into the door. No deacon at anchor. A congregation, though? Yes.

A windmill and a few sheds, a pump house and a short silo, a grain closet and an old dairy, and a soaring barn, majestic even in decay, all facing a broad low hunting lodge with a porch wrapping three-quarters around, and between them a courtyard with a single pole in the center. He vaguely recognized the man who answered the door, but couldn’t recall his name. Was it Rob? Whoever it was knew him because he sighed, Finally. Postmaster’s got an earache all over for you. Come on in, D’aron.

He was led to a room immediately inside the front door, a room with a desk and a few rows of government-issue metal chairs, and a TV/VCR combo on a wheeled cart like the ones they had in the elementary school media center. In fact, the blackboards on three walls, desk chairs, and flag in the corner made it feel very much like a classroom. Along the walls above the blackboards hung photos of the U.S. presidents, ending with G.W. Bush.

Behind him, a voice said, Why no ’Bama? I know you’re thinking it, and I’ll tell you it ain’t got nothing to do with his race. It’s his nationality. He wasn’t born here. That’s why the Terminator had to get out of politics. There was nowhere left for him to go.

Daron went knock-kneed. Postmaster? What kind of code name was Postmaster? Or so he’d wondered until hearing the man speak. Harry Jones was indeed the local postmaster. Should he turn around? Pretend he didn’t recognize the voice? Make a run for it?

The postmaster placed a kind hand on Daron’s shoulder and gently spun him around. Let’s talk, Little D.

He motioned for Daron to follow him down the hall, past photos of locals shaking hands and sharing beers with David Duke, Railton Loy, Hal Turner, Tony Perkins, John Tanton, Senator Russell Pearce, Terry Jones, and others. On the hall bookshelf, The Bell Curve, Who Are We? Freakonomics, Darwin on Trial, Illegal Is Not a Race — It’s a Crime, Jon Entine’s Taboo, tracts by James Watson and Charles Murray and a few others. Below that, rows and rows of photo albums. They passed through an industrial kitchen into this smaller one, and now sat at an old oak table under needlepoint samplers and Lou’s calendar, a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies between them.

Sure you won’t have one? Eatin’ one ain’t gone doom you to stay here forever. Sure, they all say, Don’t eat in the Holler or Gully after dark, but this here’s different. These Reebah’s.

Daron selected a cookie from the side of the plate closest to Harry and took a small bite. They were as good as he remembered from grade school when Little Harry brought them to class every Valentine’s Day. The cinnamon warmed his cheeks and the raisins tickled his tongue.

Harry smiled. The world is changing, D’aron. All we want to do is be prepared. As he explained it, voice quiet and unassuming as when explaining the particulars of certified mail, the majority of crimes were still committed by blacks, with Mexicans a close second, interracial marriage was on the rise, and, as they have already figured out in Arizona, the white race would be a minority by 2020. Michael Hethmon said it best. We’re fixing to be a minority-majority country, and there ain’t a single example in history of that kind of shit storm ending well. Mind you now, the South was ten-to-one black back in the day, but we didn’t have half the problems. Don’t mean that we want to bring back slavery, but we shouldn’t be ashamed to say that things are what they are.

When Daron was a child, this man delivered his comics and sea monkeys, drank tea with the family, sat on the porch and pushed back his hat to let breathe that red crease D’aron always took as a mark of manhood. It was D’aron who greeted him when expecting birthday cards, hurtling across the yard at full speed while the postman cheered, Run, Forrest! Run! It was this man who placed in his hand the big envelope from Berkeley, who clapped his shoulders in celebration and said, Make us proud. It was D’aron who each Christmas handed him the envelope prepared by his parents. A solemn duty it was, his father explained. Never think you’re buying respect. Respect, like honor, you must earn, because both are eternal currencies. This here is only showing appreciation. Daron doesn’t want to be, but he is soothed, calmed.

Counting on his fingers, the postmaster explained, There’s the patriots, the sovereigns, the fools who say the sun revolves around the earth, the black separatists, nativists, the Klan, the ham-headed hammer skins — talk about standing out, might as well take a Christmas tree hunting — the True Church of Israel, and whatnot. But we’re not like that. When the cuz visited you last year, he was out there as our envoy to the State of California Northern Militia Action Group. We know you’ve been brainwashed, we know that Berkeley’s knitting with only one needle and Columbus Day was renamed Indigenous People’s Day and everyone gets free parking. How can you name a day after the people that were saved? That would be like naming veteran’s day Vietnam Day or France Day.

Harry was confused, he must have been. Quint had never visited Daron in California, and he said so.

Harry looked at him for a long moment while he licked the raisin off a cookie, which was terribly unsettling. You’re safe here. He opened a brochure. This is our code of conduct. Here is a list of words you’ll never hear any of us use: You hear nigger, nigger this and nigger that, that ain’t us calling no one nigger. Or Spic, Chink, Porch Monkey, Spade, Piss-Easter, Spear Chucker, Rice Eyes, Wetback, Beaner, Beano, Bluegum, Camel Jockey, Ching-Chong, Chinky, Coolie, Coon, Cunt Eye, Darkie Dink, Dog Zombie, Dune Coon, Eightball, Gook, Hajji, Heed, Jap, Jigger, Jungle Bunny, Kike, Nidge, Niglet [a warm chuckle], Nzumbi, Pancake Face, Pickaninny, Porch Monkey, Prairie Nigger, Raghead, Sambo, Sand Nigger, Schvartze, Sheeny, Shine, Slanteye, Slope, Slurpy Slinger, Sooty, Spade, Spearchucker, Spick, Spook, Squaw, Sucker Fish, Tar Baby, Timber Nigger, Towel Head, Uncle Tom, Wetback, Zipperhead. Hear any of that, ain’t one of us, not even on a Monday. I don’t mean to be a double-speak, or even double-double-speak, by listing so many. I just want you to give full considerate attentions to the multitude. There’s a lot of crap floating around ain’t from our asses. We didn’t make it up. Hear any of that, and you know it ain’t one of us.