In the interest of not having Darren Wilson's version of the story be the only version offered by the two protagonists in the Ferguson tragedy, here is what I imagine Mike Brown’s testimony to the grand jury could have been...
MICHAEL BROWN: Yeah, I took the cigarillos. That man been takin off the neighborhood since I was a baby. He steal from us, we steal back. That's the game, man. Everybody know that. My auntie would give me candy she stole from there, he got it back in lottery tickets. Why you think he didn't call it in when I brushed outta there with the cigarillos? He make his money, otherwise he wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t be here. And he don't want no police in in his business, you know what I mean? No, man, it wasn't about the cigarillos. That cop never said shit about no cigarillos. That cop been trippin me and my friends for nothing every since he been here. He a punk. Everybody know that. They all bad around here, but he the worst.
INTERVIEWER: So you were walking in the middle of the street and Office Wilson told you and your companion at that time--
MICHAEL BROWN: Dorian.
INTERVIEWER: Dorian Johnson.
MICHAEL BROWN: That's right.
INTERVIEWER: Officer Wilson instructed you to get out of the street and walk on the sidewalk. Is that correct?
MICHAEL BROWN: They was nobody in the street, man! Everybody in our neighborhood walks in the street, and when a car rolls up you let it go by. He had options. He could've mean-mugged us, drove around us and gone on. He could've written us a damn ticket. He could've turned down another street, or turned around. He could've asked us about the cigarillos if that was his head. He could've leaned out his window and spoke to us like men, and said please, or excuse me, like people's mommas are supposed to teach them to do. He didn't do none of that. What he did was he shot and killed me.
INTERVIEWER: Describe how that happened.
MICHAEL BROWN: He talked to us over his loudspeaker, man. He hit his motherfucking siren. Like we was two hundred yards away, or on the interstate or something. We was like, what the fuck, motherfucker. We right here. Who cares whether we're in the street or on the sidewalk, or on the motherfucking curb. That's beside the point. Talk to us like men. I am a college man. I am the biggest person in my family and my community, except for maybe one or two others. I'm a man. You want to be a man yourself, respect that. A man can walk in the street in his own damn neighborhood if he want to. So was we going to move off the street? No. What was he gonna do? Run us over? Bust us for a handful of cigarillos we took from that little crook at the market? No, he wasn't going to do none of that. He was going to run his loudspeaker ass on us. And his siren. Next thing, he rolls up on us so close his side mirror bumps me. Then he stops the car. Dorian and me stop, too. And he tryin’ to get out the car, but right where I'm standing, you see. And I'm not moving. I had my foot planted. I had the leverage. He was trying to get out of his car but he couldn't open the door. Me and Dorian, we was almost laughing about it. I think Dorian did laugh. I was about to laugh. And then I seen he pulled his gun.
INTERVIEWER: So you were blocking him from opening the door--
MICHAEL BROWN: No, man, I wasn't blocking him. He had drove his car up on me and stopped it next to where I was standing.
INTERVIEWER: And it was while he was blocked--by you--from opening his door, that he pulled his gun?
MICHAEL BROWN: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: And then what happened?
MICHAEL BROWN: He told me to back up and let him open the door. Dorian he ran. I woulda run too, but the officer had his gun on me.
INTERVIEWER: So what did you do?
MICHAEL BROWN: I went for the gun, man. I told him he wasn't going to shoot my ass, and I went for the gun.
INTERVIEWER: When you say you went for the gun, what do you mean by that?
MICHAEL BROWN: I mean I went for the damn gun. Grabbed for it. I got my left hand on it, and then we was fighting over it. He was trying to pull it away, I was going for it, and that pulled me into the car. He had me around the neck with his other hand. His left hand it would’ve been. We was both up in the driver's side fighting for the gun. Him choking me and me elbowing him in the face. And that’s when he shot me in my right hand.
INTERVIEWER: And then what happened?
MICHAEL BROWN: What do you think happened? I walked away. That's a rule, man. When the shooting start, it don't matter who doing it, walk away. That's what I did man, I walked away.
INTERVIEWER: When you went for the gun, as you describe it, what was your purpose in doing so?
MICHAEL BROWN: My purpose?
INTERVIEWER: Why did you do it?
MICHAEL BROWN: To keep from getting shot at. To take that gun away from him because anybody who pull a gun on somebody for being in the middle of your own street in your own damn neighborhood should not be having a gun in the first place.
INTERVIEWER: What was your intention for the gun if you had succeeded in taking it from Officer Wilson?
MICHAEL BROWN: My intention?
INTERVIEWER: What were you going to do with that gun if you’d been able to take it away from the officer?
MICHAEL BROWN: Man, have you ever had a gun pointed at you by somebody who want to shoot you?
INTERVIEWER: I have.
MICHAEL BROWN: Then you know damn well you only thinking about one thing at that point in time. You thinking “How am I not going to end up shot?” There’s no space in your head for any other thing. The only thing you thinking about is “How do I not get shot?”
INTERVIEWER: So you thought your best chance at not getting shot was taking the gun away from Officer Wilson?
MICHAEL BROWN: Yes I did.
INTERVIEWER: Why didn’t you just walk away, or back away?
MICHAEL BROWN: I did walk away.
INTERVIEWER: After you got shot.
MICHAEL BROWN: Yeah. After I got shot through the hand. It hurt like shit. It was bleeding like a bitch.
INTERVIEWER: And then what?
MICHAEL BROWN: I could hear him getting out of the car. I kept walking. Then he yell at me to stop. And I’m not stopping. I’m walking.
INTERVIEWER: What exactly did he say?
MICHAEL BROWN: Cop talk. Like out of a TV show. (Quoting Wilson) “I am ordering you to stop and turn around with your hands up.”
INTERVIEWER: And then--
MICHAEL BROWN: Now I’m not walking. I’m running.
INTERVIEWER: Why?
MICHAEL BROWN: Man, what had I done? I had walked in the middle of the damn street? And I end up getting shot on account of it? I’m out. Fuck this guy. I’m going to go find Dorian and we’re gonna get a doctor to look at my hand, and then I’m going to hire a lawyer, and my family and me are going to own this dude’s white ass, and half of Ferguson on account of it. And then we are going to chase every racist white cop off the police force here, and me and my friends are going to replace them. We gonna get those jobs.
INTERVIEWER: And you are thinking all of this?
MICHAEL BROWN: Blink of an eye, clear as a bell. All of it.
INTERVIEWER: So you start running, and then what?
MICHAEL BROWN: The second I start running, I hear the shots. One, two three. Crack, crack, crack. I could hear the bullets pass me.
INTERVIEWER: And then what?
MICHAEL BROWN: They all three shots missed. But I stop, because now it clear this motherfucker is going to pump at me till he empty. So I stop, and I turn around.
INTERVIEWER: With your hands up?
MICHAEL BROWN: Not in the beginning. I was holding my shot hand. I was squeezing it like this (holds hands together at waist level, left hand pressing the right between thumb and palm) to keep it from bleeding. He yells at me again to put my hands up. He got his gun pointed at me, so I put my hands up.
INTERVIEWER: Describe what happened next.
MICHAEL BROWN: I was mad. I was mad before, but now I am seriously mad. We didn’t do shit. And this is what it turns into? Thing is, this ain’t the only time. This happen all the time. These cops who don’t even live here come in and get in our business. You want to tell me what to do on my street, in my neighborhood, why don’t we start with you live on my street, or in my neighborhood, or in my city. How about that? If you my neighbor, if you my family, my homie--if you in my school, or my church or my town and you ask me to use the sidewalk for some reason, and you talk to me like a man, I listen. You come in here from some redneck town because your redneck friends who are already cops here take care of you, and you tell me where to walk? No, man, that ain't happenin'. You get a job that belong to the community and you don’t know how to do your job when you have it? Yeah I was mad, about all of it, man. All of it.
INTERVIEWER: So you are standing with your hands in the air, facing the officer, who is how far away from you at this point?
MICHAEL BROWN: I don’t know. Far enough away to miss. Thirty feet? Forty feet? Fifty? I don’t really know. I ain’t takin’ no measurements with a gun pointed at me.
INTERVIEW: So then what happened?
MICHAEL BROWN: I called him the worst name I could think of, the name I thought would hurt him most.
INTERVIEWER: What name was that?
MICHAEL BROWN: I called him a boy.
INTERVIEW: That was it?
MICHAEL BROWN: No, man, that wasn’t it. I told him he was a boy hiding behind a badge and a gun, pretending to be a man. And that he could go fuck himself, because I was going to make sure it all got taken away from him, like a man take a little boy’s toys.
INTERVIEWER: And what did he say?
MICHAEL BROWN: Nothing. He was walking at me, pointing the gun, and his eyes was going everywhere, not every really looking at me, and that’s when I knew what he was thinking.
INTERVIEWER: And what was he thinking?
MICHAEL BROWN: That he have to kill me to keep his job. And that’s when he did me. It wasn’t no big surprise from that point, what happened.
INTERVIEWER: Describe it for me, please.
MICHAEL BROWN: He shot five shots and hit me three times, me with my hands in the air. He hit me here, here and here. (Indicates arm, torso and head.) And so now I’m not thinking about how to keep from getting shot, I’m not thinking at all. It was like my body took over, trying to save itself from dying. No thought involved. My body ran at him, man. My body put its head down and ran at his scared little boy ass. And that’s when he hit me and I went down. (Indicates crown of head.) It was a lucky shot, man.
INTERVIEWER: And what would you have done if you had reached him?
MICHAEL BROWN: Lived, man. I would have survived.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have any recollections of anything after that?
MICHAEL BROWN: I remember I was looking down on my body. There was a big pool of blood next to my head. I knew I was dead. I could see the cop still standing there with the gun in both his hands. People from the neighborhood were starting to come around, look out windows and stuff. And even though I know I am dead, and I know the cop is the one who killed me, I feel this love for him that is just, it’s like, nothin’ I ever felt when I was in my body, man. It was supernatural how much love I felt for a man who I had hated with all my heart, only a few seconds ago.
INTERVIEW: Why do you think you felt that way, Michael?
MICHAEL BROWN: There’s no more thinking. There’s only being.
INTERVIEWER: I see.
MICHAEL BROWN: You will.
INTERVIEWER: Anything else? Any other recollections?
MICHAEL BROWN: Yeah, my granny’s swing.
INTERVIEWER: What about it?
MICHAEL BROWN: My granny had a swing hanging from the big tree in her backyard out in the country. When I left my body, it felt like I was on that swing, that it had swung back as far as it could go, and that’s where I had run into the individual with the gun who had taken my body from me, and now I was swinging back, toward the sky, and this amazing supernatural light. And as I was swinging, I could see everything and everyone along the way that had ever happened to me, even that little crook from the Market. And I felt love for them all. And I let go of the swing, and flew.