Welcome to Braggsville

Chapter Seven

Was this what Mrs. Brooks meant by a like-minded group? How did he get into Berkeley anyway? Professors, students, Miss Lucille—that dining hall attendant who always complimented his manners—even Daron himself. They all wondered, he knew, especially hearing his Friday-night accent, you—fermented—becoming a long y’all, and ain’t rearing its ugly head before, worse yet, being distilled into ’ant. He could reckon the direction of the wheels turning in their heads: budget cuts plus more out-of-state fart-sniffer students equals lower standards. They were wrong, and if they dared ask, he’d say so. Unlike some of them, he’d done it on his own. No college counselor, no private consultant to groom and polish his applicant profile, no practice admissions interviews. Hard work, summer school, and all the AP he could eat were his salvation, the price of his admission. That, and he wrote a damned fine application letter.

He had revised for weeks, reading every Wikipedia entry on writing, watching every YouTube video on the application process, some links provided by the school, others he found on his own, checking out every book of cover letters from the library. He even ordered online, with his lunch money, a book entitled 100 of the Best Application Essays Ever! He consulted, at their insistence, his father and his AP English teacher. His father’s advice: Tell the truth. A man’s word is his only honor, and honor is the only currency that never needs exchanging. His English teacher’s advice: Teachers spend most of their lives reading piss-rich attempts at mind reading. Distinguish yourself in writing by being completely yourself and speaking your piece, even if your opinion runs contrary to the popular position, in fact, more so in those instances. D’aron had done just that, at the end, working in secret.

Freshman applicant prompt:

Describe the world you come from—for example, your family, community or school—and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

Dear _______ Application Committee,

I am submitting respectfully this essay written for your perusal.

If we were a TV show, we’ d be a soap opera. If we were a musical, we’ d be a rock opera. But, in real life, we’re a Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet.

I was born into a working-class family in the heart of Georgia. My mother’s family was Irish and my father’s family was descended from coal miners. They never had much, but we worked hard and made our way up. Mostly everyone works for the Kenny Hot Air factory where they make motors for the hand dryers used all across our great United States of America. The Davenports and the McCormicks never got along until my folks were married. We believe in diversity and multi-cultural-ism.

My father wanted to go to college, but after coming back from Honorably serving his country in the First Gulf War, the GI Bills weren’t any use because he had to work and couldn’t commute seventy-five miles each way to the nearest community college. Now he is a floor manager and enrolled to earn an online degree in business because capitalism is the future of the world and even China realizes that now, after what Reagan did to Russia and Germany.

My community is working class. When we get together each summer for the annual town picnic, we all share food and really we’re like one big community. We have the most Special Forces soldiers in all of the state per capita. We don’t have a school in town or a college nearby. The nearest community college is 75 miles away and the high school is in the next town.

My town is small, only 700 people, so I had to be bused to school. I integrated well and managed to get along with everybody. I was captain of the debate team and I once saved my grandmother after she was lost in the woods for three days with cancer. It was a scary time.

We’re blue collar, but proud and my family supports the American spirit and the freedom we’re bringing to the middle east, and our town has that same kind of spirit. We’re all red, white, and blue underneath.

I want to major in political science, bio-engineering, and bio-technology because people require peace, parsimonious food, and hygienic water. We also need to protect the earth. Ecology is the future. Not a day goes by when we don’t see a volcano erupting or an earthquake. Global warming is debasing the atmosphere and only we can prohibit it.

I am also interested in education because we need better schools and no child should be left behind. The children are the future. After I graduate, I will also teach. My town needs a summer camp that doesn’t involve hunting and camping and whittling. Trees have rights, too. It should involve things to prepare you for the real world, like math and science and computers.

That is why I am applying to ______________. _____________ has the best programs in these majors. Every time I read the paper, I see someone from _____________ being quoted in the news and giving scientific evidence and explanations for how we can make the world a better place for everybody. That’s how I know that ______________ is the school for me.

Prompt for all applicants:

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

One day I was down at Lou Davis’s Cash-n-Carry Bait Shop and Copy Center, where the slogan is “You Want Credit, Come Back Tomorrow.”

I was after gum, but killing time. It’s dim in there, the only light comes off the iceboxes. Ever since I was little I liked to stand there in the blue glow and pretend I was on a spaceship. That day it was hot, so hot I had to walk to cool down. I walked along the big fridge and freezer, feeling the chill, and saw all the venison sausage and souse and Georgia hash, which was all pretty cheap, cheaper than Jimmy Dean, but more than it would really cost to hunt. I added up the cost of the shells, and the gun, and the time, and the deer lick, and the beer, and whatever else. They’ d just built a Super Walmart two towns over, and I thought about how you could track out all day after a deer, or you could shoot up to Super Walmart or Lou’s and be back in a couple hours with all you needed for a week.

So I decided I didn’t need to hunt anymore. It didn’t make sense.

Now understand that my hometown has produced more Special Forces soldiers per capita than any other town in America.

And when the season opens there’s more hunters out than trees can shake a leaf at. When the season closes, there’s still more hunters out than trees can shake sticks at. Everyone has trophies mounted over their mantels or the front porch and the first buck is a bigger occasion than the 13th birthday.

You got to understand we’re proud, and we respect prey drive. We put down dogs that don’t hunt.

So, I got more hell for this than for being a Battlestar Galactica fan or complaining that Lost was stupid. But I argued that we didn’t sew our own clothes even though there were still patches of wild cotton at the edge of the old Southerby Plantation and that we didn’t make our own shoes even though there was a dairy two exits up, and a hemp farm in the next county so we could make laces.

I’d been a scout all my life, all the way up to Eagle Scout, but hunting just didn’t make sense. I stuck with my guns and am proud of that decision to this day, even though everyone still teases me about it. I won’t repeat here the names they call me.

My father took it hard because that was the one thing we did together that my mom just wouldn’t go for. But he hasn’t given up on me, right now he’s snoring soundly, thinking that I’m pecking away at a letter to UGA.

Freshman applicant prompt:

(Revision)

Describe the world you come from—for example, your family, community, or school—and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

Dear Sir of [sic] Madam,

My mother helped me write several previous drafts of this personal statement. In them, we listed accomplishments such as the Eagle scouts, the volunteer work for the local Red Cross, and my membership (for one day) in the Braggsville Historical Preservation and Dissemination Society. We also listed my participation in several school organizations and the time I saved my cousin from drowning, saved a cat from a bird, and saved my grandmother from certain starvation when she wandered off into the Holler and got lost. I also claimed a long-term interest in about a dozen majors that aren’t even related.

I learned a good word in the process: logorrhea. Not only were those letters too long, and had too many fancy words, the biggest problem was I didn’t remember many of these things. I will not dare to question their veracity. It was my mother who spoke those words, mind you. But the fact that I could neither remember these renowned events with which my extended family regaled each other around the Green Egg, nor supply my own memories, explains exactly how my world has shaped my dreams and aspirations. As my cousin Quint would say, I’ve been worked over by a one-armed potter.

It is not a college admission board who I write at this late hour, long after the parental units have retired because I need to write this on my own, it is to a parole board that I write.

I love my family and my town. My parents never went to college, but have done right by me all their lives. They didn’t take my schooling for granted and they made me study and take summer classes, and made me read all those test-taking books because they wanted me to go to college, but neither could tell me what for, other than that I have to. And for years I never understood why I have to, especially when they want me to go right up the road. But I need to get out of shouting distance of this place where everyone secretly calls school, Juvie!, and openly calls prison, School!

So in addressing the parole board in this hearing I feel I must demonstrate that I have changed, that I have atoned for whatever sin caused me to be born in this partially dry county, that I have learned my lesson. And I have.

I have learned that no matter where you go to school, it’s what you do after school that counts. But, we don’t have an afterschool program. I have learned that kids from all different areas can get along if given a chance, but our schools rarely meet and have only limited contact with other schools. I have learned that sports can bring people of different races and colors together to work for a common goal, but I don’t play sports and we only have one team, and it has only one race on it. I have learned that with access to public health care people avoid dying unnecessarily painful and lonely deaths, but the nearest hospital is over 100 miles away.

I have learned all this from reading books and watching the History Channel and Discovery because my town is tiny. It isn’t even on most maps, and we never had a representative. All our lives we wanted to matter, and we’ve applied for the Special Olympics, the Georgia Games, and the Capital Seat, all to no luck. We’ve tried, but our resources are limited until someone invests something in us, like time and a little money and a little outside influence.

So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m like my hometown, and I need someone to take a chance on me so I can prove my worth. And, I also would really like the chance to experience in person what I so far learned only on TV.

In regarding my major. There are over three hundred at Berkeley, and it’s hard to choose one when the most popular extracurricular activities here are 4-H, hunting, and Xbox. I like food and I observe that most people do as well. When the whistle blows at the mill the blacks go back to the Gully, the Mexicans to Ridgetown, and the Whites back here. But they all meet at the markets and after they talk about the weather, they exchange recipes. My parents are now making burritos and the Mexicans are eating headcheese, and for the best barbecue, Old Lou Davis has the biggest smoker and makes good pulled pork, but I’ve heard the Gully is where they have the best beef ribs. I think nutritional science and anthropology are my interests. To meet other people and learn how food can bring us together.

Thank you for considering my humble application.

I read on the YouTube advice link connected to the application page that we’re not supposed to end with a quote, especially from a book called “The Road Less Traveled.” Well, I guess I just did that anyway, but only to remind you that to get to some of my relatives we drive partway and walk the rest because they don’t have roads leading to where they live. (I hope you liked that.)

I gave up hunting and I’m a vegetarian and I think I’m ready to be released into society.

On another note, YouTube also said to be honest, so I must admit that the other reason I like UC Berkeley is because the only way I could get farther from home is to learn how to swim.

Sincerely,

Hopefully,

Daron Little May Davenport Class of ??!!

Daron stumbled across those letters shortly before Operation Confederation, as the 4 Little Indians had begun to call it. Rereading them he prickled with guilt.

I gave up hunting? I’m a vegetarian? I’m ready to be released into society? What was he thinking? Community? He’d never used that word so much in his life. Dear parole board! It was as though he had begged to be released from a cage of savage animals. What was wrong with hunting or eating meat? Nothing. Had he felt differently back then, or had he written what he thought they’d want to hear? He feared the worst. Even if it had felt honest at the time, he now recognized a shameful pleading, a palpable desperation, the stench of superiority.

Anxiety redoubled as self-reproach. Spring break was fast approaching, and he had better warn his mother. On the phone he asked her to request that Uncle Roy not use the N-word. His mother paused.

An word? she mused. Oh, in-words? Is that slang?

You know. Nigger.

Oh. Then louder, Oh! So you mean you are bringing friends. Okay, dear. I’ll make all the preparations.

And, ask, no, tell Quint not to make that Chinese joke.

What Chinese joke?

That thing he says that isn’t even funny. When Quint disagrees with something or someone, he says, Hell naw! Start that shit and next thing you know you’re Chinese. Not to mention—most definitely not to his mom—that to Quint, getting Chinese means getting high, and ordering Chinese means ordering dope.

Oh! You’re bringing home company. Don’t fret, D-dear.

Thanks, Mom. I owe you.

No charge, son, no charge. The full cost is no charge. She hummed for a moment her favorite Melba Montgomery song, No Charge. Don’t fret, dear, everyone will be on their best behavior.

And they would be. No one messed with his mother, who could stare a stone into sand. Could you also ask Dad to … well …

Yes, dear. We’ll move The Charlies.

The Charlies were what his father and grandfather called their black lawn jockeys, those two statues flanking the driveway, Serving with a smile. When referring to only one statue, they called it Tom, but together, and collectively, they were The Charlies. As in: Damned tractor went off the shoulder and took out my favorite Tom, they don’t make that size no more so I got to buy two new Charlies. As in: When are we lighting up The Charlies this year, Black Friday or December first? As in: Two Wongs don’t make a wang between ’em, but two Toms make The Charlies. He’d read both the Wikipedia and Uncyclopedia entries on Uncle Tom’s Cabin and found no connection. He knew it was supposed to be funny, but he never understood the joke, and didn’t think he wanted Candice or Louis or—good Lord, goodness, no—Charlie asking for an explanation about The Charlies. Charlie would take it in stride and Louis would say something funny, but Candice would go astral as she had after learning that Ishi meant man, that it was against Yahi custom to tell outsiders your name, that Ishi had no formal Yahi name because there were no surviving members of Ishi’s tribe to name Ishi, that Ishi therefore meant Ishi. She had, as Quint would say, gotten a red-eyed bull up her ass about Ishi, and Ishi wasn’t even alive.

Chapter Eight

¿Por qué? ¿Por qué no?

Porque, as she explained it, Ishi is Yahi for man, Ishi is Yahi for Ishi.

Porque, as she explained it, there was a difference between apologizing and anthropologizing, and neither excuse the desecration of a body.

Porque, as she explained it, they were Ishi’s remains. They are Ishi’s remains. If a picture was a captured soul, what the fuck was a book of them, what the fuck was a history of one people written by another, except an imaginary menagerie, a colonial shadowbox, a little foot warmer for those cold-existential evenings, an amulet against those starless, soulless nights?

You understood none of it, except the part about the foot warmer, which you knew was a myth of Northern aggression, though you daren’t interrupt when the spirit combed her tongue.

Mengapa? Mengapa tidak?

Is that Malay? Uh, you know I don’t actually speak Malay, except for curse words, right?

Mengapa? Mengapa tidak?

Kerana, as she explained it, if everything’s symbolic, then everything’s real. Then when we spread these ashes in Vallejo, people will know. They will know that UC Berkeley, supposedly the best public university in the world, took a man and made him live in a museum like an Epcot Center attraction, that we’re all in prison. That this is what public schools are. People will ask questions. People will demand answers. They will find there are none, and that will be the beginning of a reckoning … (A nod at you.)

What you talking ’bout, Willis?

What I’m talking ’bout, Willis, she explained, is how could any decent human force the last living member of a tribe to live in a museum? Ishi, how Ishi must have dreamed at night, how Ishi must have dreamed. How Ishi must dream even now. Though the museum and Kroeber both promised that Ishi’s body would not be desecrated, Ishi was autopsied in defiance of Native custom, Ishi’s body cremated, and Ishi’s brain wrapped in deerskin and shipped by mechanical conveyance to the Smithsonian. Ishi! How Ishi must dream.

Candice was not reassured to learn that the Smithsonian repatriated the body. Would we commend a stock market swindler for repaying stolen funds? Plan A: We’re taking Ishi to Six Flags and we’re riding Medusa and we’re releasing Ishi at the summit, and …

¿Cómo? Bagaimana? How? A padded bra! With three pounds of ashes double-packed in eight lucky-ass Ziploc bags, duct-taped like Styrofoam padding lining a bike helmet inside a Victoria’s Secret triple-D underwire, she’d put the pied piper out of a job, or at least off of it: the Six Flags guard checking her bag didn’t see anything in that shadow, not the collapsed box that would be the urn, not the clutch of feathers, not the half pint of Old Grand-Dad, none of it. She had borrowed Charlie’s rugby jersey, and damned if a spontaneous folk etymology didn’t cleave your brain as scrum took on a whole new meaning.

(Is it that … could you be … are you … might you be predisposed to objectify women, to remain stunted in what one prof called abject masculinity? Are you unfit for the university, the universe where no one has a body? A shame you cannot name scores you. For one class last fall, you read Andrea Dworkin, Akasha Gloria Hull, Martha Nussbaum, and at least a dozen other feminist authors, including Naomi Wolf and John Stoltenberg, both of whom argue that even the idea of physical attraction is socially constructed, argue that no one is innately beautiful, argue that society just told you so—about certain people. You found, though, that the more you tried looking at Candice and not thinking about her as a body, but as a person, the more you thought about her body. And now this!)

So there you are. At the picnic table. The air at last out of Candice’s balloons; and right before lunch, YOU made extended trips to the bathroom and let some pressure out of yours. But your palms are sweaty, and your feet, and you avoid looking at the guards—who all stare at you—and the ride attendants, too, and you get it. You know what he means. You want to tell him you understand how it feels, but he will say for you this is only today, for me this is everyday, every day—watched, followed, harassed—everyday. But, still, you get it. You wish you knew what to say to him, how to begin the conversation. Instead, you let him sit next to her, which he does in silence, as do the rest of you until the agreed-upon time, eyes on hands, feet, legs, neck, everything but Candice, until show time, when YOU learn that nothing, no purses, no hats, and certainly no glossy cardboard boxes can accompany riders on the Medusa. Because. The attendant Pearl pointed to the sign overhead, a periodic chart of pictograms among which, Candice insisted, she saw no cardboard boxes. One hand on her hip, rocking heel-to-toe in her thick-soled grudge-green Doc Martens, Pearl lectured them on the many perils of high-speed travel in unpiloted vehicles. Ever seen a pair of AA batteries fly out of a camera and slam into someone’s face at 110 kilometers an hour? Know what a can of Mountain Dew can do at those speeds? A book? A Big Mac?

To Daron’s amazement, Candice didn’t try to persuade the attendant to change her mind. As the 4 Little Indians retreated, Candice snorted. All she had to say of Pearl was, She’d wear black nail polish if they let her.

COULD A BEAK BE TOO PINK? Daron wondered as they instituted a hasty plan B. After having been turned away from Medusa and discovering that the highest point in the park, the Volcano, was inaccessible to pedestrians, Candice swiveled her scope toward the heart, the center of the park, the fountain, a circular basin finished in stucco and slate and surrounded by tiny red flowers, a fount from which surged a curtain of mist shaped like an inverted Bundt pan and ribbed by a dozen sprouts of water, and from the center of that erupted three bronze dolphins imprisoned eternally in the hazy bell jar, their bowed bodies predicting long arcs, their eyes on points distant.

The sculptures had appeared to piss Candice off more than anything else. She had rounded the fountain twice, tracing a larger circle with her feet, her backpack clopping loudly whenever she stopped to stomp on the three spots where the dolphins would land were the miraculous to occur. Even the fucking statues want to be free! Hungry, and so tired, Louis and Charlie had taken a seat on a nearby wrought-iron bench. Daron stood midway between Candice and his buddies, between the bench and the fountain, feeling as he had all morning—like an emissary, an ambassador, the diplomatic hotline between squabbling republics. He had encouraged Candice not to give up, if it was important to her. He had encouraged Louis and Charlie to have patience when waiting in line, though he hadn’t expected Louis to interpret that as license to hold a conversation with Candice’s breasts (which she adjusted far, far too often for Daron’s liking). Lastly, he had waved them all together once Candice decided on a spot. Charlie and Louis staggered over with the enthusiasm of teen relations visiting Seventh-Day Adventists on a Saturday morning, taking stilted, robotic steps as if they had no ankles.