Welcome to Braggsville. T Johnson Geronimo

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,