[22 July, 2022]

After a long drive through the north of Arkansas we end up in a small town called Mena. Immediately we are met with an enthusiastic singer on the corner of the street, playing “All Right Now.” The traffic lights give his performance ambiance as he sings, “There she stood… in the street.”

In the parking lot between Walmart, Pizza Hut, and McDonald’s, we spot a group of white boys wearing baseball caps in their pickup trucks with big rims, engines roaring low. From the rearview mirrors hang a dozen or more heavily-scented Christmas tree-shaped air fresheners, presumably masking all the odors associated with boys on their way to manhood.

Intrigued, I rush toward them. Without me asking any questions, they tell me the biggest stories. Eighteen-year-old Cody is missing a little finger, accidentally cut off with the log splitter, and Mason, 17, once caught a huge largemouth bass—what this fish looks like speaks for itself. They earned the money for their trucks themselves, mind you: These boys were brought up with a big work ethic. They don’t talk about abortion and politics, (“too complicated”), and their favorite move with girls is The Shocker.

“The Shocker?” I ask. “Yes! Two in the pink, one in the stink.” The boys are moving wildly with their hands in Shocker position. Even without a pinky finger, Cody knows how to make something out of it. “It makes the ladies scream!” I look at some of the girls who are hanging around, and I wonder how many of these girls have endured The Shocker, and how much of the sound made in the process was about pleasure.

I think of 20-year-old Daunte Wright, the young Black man who was pulled over because he had an air freshener on his rearview mirror—in many states this is prohibited, because it would obstruct your view. In reality, though, it is often an excuse for officers to pull someone over. For Wright, this situation ended with a bullet in his chest.

“Are you afraid of the police sometimes?” I ask them. “Police? Noooo, they don’t bother us.” The carefree attitude of these boys is difficult to reconcile with the other side of the American coin.

“You want to see a burnout, ma’am?” I prefer doing it myself, but I hold my tongue. “Yes!” Lamp oil on the tires, and burn away. In the background, I hear the false but comforting words, “All right now baby, it’s all right now.”