Welcome to Braggsville (23 page)

A cult?

Look at that—he licked a pencil eraser and used it to thumb through his little yellow notebook—look at that old hashtag, that's what you call it, right? Hashtag? Way at the bottom.

Daron hadn't read the hashtags. Rather, he had read over them. There were three. #ZombieDick appeared once with a photo of a man in Hartsfield Airport getting his shoes shined. Of course the shiner was black and the shinee was white. When had Louis even taken that picture? #HomeOfTheKingKongZombieDickSlap appeared under a photo of the
WELCOME TO BRAGGSVILLE
sign. Daron checked the time stamp, and was relieved to see that the photo of the town's sign was posted after their visit to Waffle House. He took that to mean that at least Louis had thought about it first, and had spent some time in the town, and had some reason for writing that, even if it was known only to him. #ZombieDickSlap had been Louis's favorite. It graced photos of bumper stickers and The Charlies and a mammy doll (where had he seen that?) and tweets with only the text of the bumper stickers and rebel flags and rebel flag T-shirts and rebel flag hats and rebel flag bikinis and rebel flag bras and rebel flag
pacifiers and Lou's Cash-n-Carry sign, the color scheme of which Daron only now realized, with great embarrassment, was Confederate inspired: red letters, blue background, and around the perimeter a regiment of white stars.

What's that mean? What's your friend into?

I don't know. I never seen it before. Daron had avoided Loose's Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram. What if he made one final post, uploaded his last vision? For a time, Louis and he'd shared a running dick slap joke, but those were threats about slapping the dick, not being slapped by the dick: Keep talking that Freud shit if you want! I'll slap your dick with this psychology book. I'll slap your dick with this remote control. I'll slap your dick with this skateboard. It had been funny. How, though, to explain that to this man with the scarped brow of a Neanderthal?

On the photo closest to Daron, Sheriff placed his hands, palms down and thumbs out, cropping it so that only Bragg Tower appeared. He did the same with a photo of Bragg's statue and again on a photo that needed no cropping because it was a fuzzy digital zoom close-up of the crotch of Bragg's statue. Sheriff tapped the hashtag with his eraser, word by word, as if that was the only way he could utter, Zombie dick slap. Got to mean something.

Daron answered, This isn't serious. They don't mean this. Never seen them before.

You don't friend your followers?

It's . . . No . . . It's . . . Well, yes, but they were all with me so I wasn't checking. But I know they didn't mean it. They were joking.

Well it's some real black comedy, that's for sure. Sheriff slid one of the sheets closer and read, If I'd known it would be like this I would have picked my own cotton. That's not funny, not now, not in these times.

Exactly. It's not funny. That's why they posted it. They were being ironic.

Sheriff spit into the coffee can he kept on the floor beside his desk. He appeared to be chewing that over, literally, cheeks bellowing like he had a mouthful of nails. I know sometimes things don't work out like you mean 'em to. But it looks how it looks, and some will say that's how it is. He gave Daron a wink like they were sharing a joke. That, or his eye twitched. What did Miss Candice say? Call a spade a something or other?

She didn't mean it like that.

Hmmph. Did you mean it when you reported her raped?

I thought she was.

There ain't never been a rape here. Last one even reported was Mrs. Clark having the afterclap with her husband. And ain't no way no Gull's gonna sneak over here and do nothing. They know better. You live right back up on the Holler. You know it's safe. So seems something else must be on your mind.

I really thought she was raped. She was messed up and bleeding and her pants were torn and she was missing her shoes. She came running from the direction of the Gully or the Holler—one of them.

Chicago called in an incident before you, and didn't report a rape. Ain't been a spit of polish out of the Gully since back in eighty-six when Mabel and Kendrid got caught up in that likening business and burned their luck trying to pass over in Doeville. Sheriff scratched the back of his hand against the edge of the desk. Hard. Like he was scraping something off. What about those hashtags? Don't know nothing, huh? Sheriff cupped his hand to scratch behind his ear. Talk about calling spades.

For years, Daron tried to hide that accent, even though more than one professor said it was cute. Quaint he didn't mind, but cute was unbearable. After a few drinks he would sometimes imitate Sheriff (which was damn near as reckless as Louis playing at communion
with incredible edibles). Now, he imagined that Sheriff knew of his mockery and relished this moment, slowly pronouncing each word as if Daron didn't speak English.

Hear this. Hate crimes is Fed time, Little D, and Fed time is straight time. It's also inconvenient that the deceased was competing with you for a certain young lady's affections, according to other reports. It sounds like a complicated enough relationship to implicate you in a number of ways, none of them exactly funny. Or ironic.

Daron had never liked irony. He and Louis often argued about it, Daron insisting that if no one understood a joke it wasn't funny, and sometimes it was better to say what you meant. Louis would only answer, Yes, but in a maddeningly insincere tone. Daron would get frustrated, growing more so when Louis would innocently ask the professor if sarcasm, social niceties, and euphemism were all irony's close cousins. (Louis sideways: If it helps you understand better, Daron, think of them as kissing cousins.) The professor agreed. Maybe so, but Daron didn't think that sarcasm, social niceties, and euphemism could be mistaken for hate speech.

They'd read about this in class, how stereotypes distorted, affected, reflected reality. Asians were peaceful. Gays were nonviolent. As were women. Blacks (and sometimes Mexicans) were rarely accused of hate crimes for a number of reasons, but the underlying logic was that they were naturally predisposed to violence and mischief, and so seldom was any attack on whites motivated by hate. Contrarily, it was extremely easy to claim, and prove, that a white perpetrated a hate crime. In fact, popular opinion among the liberals was that conservatives were motivated by hate in everything they did wrong: hiring practices, legal negotiations, and any criminal activity affecting blacks, Mexicans, or gays. If Denver decided that Daron had intended to send a message of terror, then Daron's every denial must have sounded like an attempt to protect his co-conspirators.
But he honestly knew nothing about any militia. Or about #ZombieDickSlap, and neither did Charlie when he texted him. Candice, even though she had used it for one photo, didn't respond.

Sheriff ended the interview looking as frustrated as he began it. I just can't figure why, D'aron. I just can't figure why.

Why?
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A
week after the Incident, it looked like Sheriff was correct in his prediction that matters would be well right settled. During their last meeting, he told Daron, I'll tell you how the inquest's gonna go: The cause of death is asphyxiation. One person will testify that he climbed up there voluntarily. About twenty-plus witnesses will testify that the young man was not moving when they arrived and that they attempted to render aid, but it was too late. Sadly. The EMTs will corroborate this. One person will claim that the deceased was alive until the men arrived, and that he was whipped. The coroner will testify that there were no marks to indicate that he was struck by a whip, and it will be ruled an accidental death and the Chans—Changs, I mean—can bury their boy. The only thing left will be for the Feds to call their play. That was how it went.

It had been a long week. Terror-stricken by the prospect of being charged with Louis's murder, Daron considered running away, and might have, had not the attorney his father hired finally convinced him that the inquest was intended to determine the cause of death, and that he, Daron, would not actually be on trial. Without his friends around, his father made it plain that he thought Daron was an idiot for putting his dick in this blender, of all the blenders in the
free world. Worse yet, Daron was instructed to cease contact with his friends, especially in public, because, Everything you do will be deemed conspiratorial—and public means online.

(Ceasing contact had felt like one of those errant instructions adults barked to fill space when they didn't have a legitimate answer. Daron would not have believed that a conspiratorial stink was so easily raised, but there was that couple celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary in Waffle House who asked the waitress to take their photo. She of-course-honeyed and pushed the magic button once their sausage mustaches were arranged. In the background of this festive scene Daron and his friends hunched over their menus. It's a moment he remembers clearly because Louis is counting on his thumbs as he liked to, listing the different ways hash browns could be served. When this photo made its way to TV, print, and Web, the caption was, The Comanches Plot. Rush Limbaugh called it a modern Indian massacre, an assault on tradition and family values. After that, Daron knew he would find no solace in common sense.)

He had never before ceased contact with anyone. He had never ceased anything. The embattled ceased. The Jews and Palestinians ceased. But after receiving that text message from Candice, after two days of pining, he felt better, overcome by a mood he could never have predicted—relief. Relieved to no longer worry about Candice liking Charlie, or Charlie liking Candice, or Candice being comfortable, or Candice finding something to eat that isn't fried, or that everything his mom did was countrified. Knowing he was not on trial, he was relieved when the inquest arrived to, Right settle matters, as Sheriff promised it would.

The deputies controlling access to the side parking lot waved Daron and his parents through. His father circled twice in search of the spot with the best shade, while Daron hunkered in the backseat enraged by his preoccupation with so mundane a matter. Finally his mom gave out, Just park already, hon. The building's not going to
get any further away. His father's answer: To circle the lot a third and fourth time, which he did unopposed, finally parking not far from a gray sedan marked FBI. The walk from the lot to the side entrance ran along a chain-link fence that creaked against the crush of reporters snapping photos, jabbing microphones through the fence like cattle prods, elbowing each other like aggressive panhandlers.

Due to budget constraints, the county had temporarily closed the older buildings that were more expensive to heat and cool. The proceedings were held in a school board building that normally served as the meeting space for an afterschool program, a fact that the judge found distressing and for which she apologized profusely. Before beginning the proceedings, she instructed the bailiff to remove the cartoon drawings hanging around the room. There was one benefit to this location: with all the interested parties lined up to testify, there wasn't room to accommodate more than a few reporters. The rest were gathered in the sterile hall, and a few unlucky ones outside under the portico.

Were Charlie and Candice already inside? He hadn't heard from Charlie since asking about #ZombieDickSlap. It was as if Charlie'd committed e-suicide. From Candice he received one text from a strange number explaining that she was forbidden to have contact with him or Charlie until further notice—Much further notice, to be painfully precise. He didn't expect this much press, but otherwise Sheriff's predictions were accurate. He'd called it more reliably than Sheriff's wife called marriages, with one significant exception: Daron wasn't prepared for the questions the press asked. He'd received, and ignored, e-mails, phone calls, letters, visitors (greeted by his father, armed), but here, ignoring them didn't stop them from asking: Why? Would he do it again? What did he tell the Changs? And the kicker: Whose side are you on?

Whose side was he on? That was a question he'd never before had to answer.

Blue. Gray. Blue. Gray. Blue. Gray. Daron knew that during the second American revolution, Nana did say, One side—those damned yank Jehus—had strutted like Joseph, their benjamins brassed near up to their minds like Hisself had cut their coat from clear blue above, hotnosing like circus-trained dogs teetering at the table, their juniors bounced tight as a Jew's on Christmas. One side? One side meant at least two. But who was the other? he'd never insulted to ask. At just the sound of fat crackling, Nana did say, them'll stake their souls on your bet, them'll rise up on them hindmost parts an' walk beside you—yes, they will—for long enough to fool you both, Nana did say, Oh yeah, them can walk beside you, still them can't take a proper seat but in they's teeth. But just who were thems? Who was the other side? YANKS? BLACKS? GAYS? he'd never offended to ask, not even now, during the inquisition, as the coroner Frank Gist named it, regretful in tone and bearing as he had been when calling to give Daron the time and place of the hearing, regretful as he was even this morning for, The in-vi-ron-ment being in-con-ven-ient as it was to all sides involved.

All sides? There looked to be only two sides: The Changs sat opposite the Chelseas (Candice now wearing two fracture boots and a wrist brace—Bless her soul!); Changs on the bride's side, Chelseas on the groom's. The Changs with their blond sunglassed lawyer, the Chelseas unescorted. Everyone else was a midnight scramble. Sheriff behind the Chelseas, his two deputies behind the Changs. The first responding paramedic behind the Chelseas, the E.R. physician behind the Changs. When Daron asked to sit on the Changs' side, his father explained that it was the defense's side, and, Plain mean luck. It still looked more like a stew to Daron, everyone everywhere. He wanted to point this out to his father, but daren't disturb him. He hadn't moved since they took their seats in the back, was only this quiet when hunting, rooted like a fox in a duck blind. Nana must have told him, as she'd told Daron, about dealing with the law, In
sooth, Court is capitalized like you or me. I don't understand. You will, Nana did say, just hope not before too late. Then tell me now. If I explain, Nana did say, you'll rightly never know. He suspected he would soon have his answer when it was announced that every witness was to give name, civilian title and rank, and then title and rank on the occasion of the circumstances under consideration. That's what they called it: Circumstances under consideration.