Paul Beatty - The Sellout

“Sure, go ahead.”

A mite ? I hung my head in embarrassment. I hate when people get all folksy around black people they think they’re superior to. What was next? Fixin’? Sho’ ’nuff? A chorus of “Who Let the Dogs Out”?

“Dad, what are we doing here?” I mumbled, my mouth full of the saltine crackers I’d been stuffing down my gullet since Memphis. Anything to take my mind off the heat, the endless cotton fields, and the thought of how bad slavery must have been for someone to convince themselves that Canada wasn’t that far away. Although he never spoke about it, like his runaway ancestors, my father, too, fled to Canada, dodging the draft and the Vietnam War. If black people ever do get slave reparations, I know plenty of motherfuckers who owe Canada some rent money and back taxes.

“Dad, what are we doing here?”

“We’re reckless eyeballing,” he said, removing a pair of 500x General Patton binoculars from a fancy leather case, placing the black metal monstrosities to his eyes, and turning toward me, his eyes big as billiard balls through the thick lenses. “And I do mean reckless!”

Thanks to years of my father’s black vernacular pop quizzes and an Ishmael Reed book he kept on top of the toilet for years, I knew that “reckless eyeballing” was the act of a black male deigning to look at a southern white female. And there was my dad staring through his binoculars at a storefront no more than thirty feet away, the Mississippi sun glinting off the massive spectacles like two halogen beacons. A woman stepped out onto the porch, an apron tied around her gingham dress, a wicker broom in her hand. Shielding her eyes from the glare, she began to sweep. The white men sat open-legged and open-mouthed, aghast at the sheer fucking nigger audacity.

“Look at those tits!” my father shouted, loud enough for the entire cracker county to hear. Her chest wasn’t all that, but I imagine that through the portable equivalent of the Hubble Space Telescope her B-cup breasts looked like the Hindenburg and the Goodyear blimp, respectively. “Now, boy, now!”

“Now what?”

“Go out there and whistle at the white woman.”

He shoved me out the door, and kicking up a blinding cloud of red delta dust, I crossed a two-lane highway covered with so much rock-hard clay I couldn’t tell if the road had ever been paved. Obligingly, I stood in front of the white lady and began to whistle. Or at least tried to. What my father didn’t know is that I didn’t know how to whistle. Whistling is one of the few things you learn at public school. I was homeschooled, so my lunch hours were spent standing in the backyard cotton patch reciting all the Negro Reconstruction congressmen from memory: Blanche Bruce, Hiram Rhodes, John R. Lynch, Josiah T. Walls … so although it sounds simple, I didn’t know how to just put my lips together and blow. And for that matter, I can’t split my fingers into the Vulcan high-sign, burp the alphabet on command, or flip someone the bird without folding down the non-insulting fingers with my free hand. Having a mouthful of crackers didn’t help either, and the end result was an arrhythmic spewing of pre-chewed oats all over her pretty pink apron.

“What’s this crazy fool doing?” the white men asked each other between eye rolls and tobacco expectorations. The most taciturn member of the trio stood up and straightened out his No Niggers in NASCAR T-shirt. Slowly removing the toothpick from his mouth, he said, “It’s the ‘Boléro.’ The little nigger is whistling ‘Boléro.’”

I jumped up and down and pumped his hand in excitement. He was right, of course, I was trying to re-create Ravel’s masterpiece. I may not know how to whistle, but I could always carry a tune.

“The ‘Boléro’? Why, you stupid motherfucker!”

It was Pops. Storming out of the car and moving so fast his dust cloud kicked up its own dust cloud. He wasn’t happy, because apparently not only did I not know how to whistle, I didn’t know what to whistle. “You’re supposed to wolf whistle! Like this…” Recklessly eyeballing her the whole way, he pursed his lips and let go a wolf whistle so lecherous and libidinous it curled both the white woman’s pretty painted toes and the dainty red ribbon in her blond hair. Now it was her turn. And my father stood there, lustful and black, as she just as defiantly not only recklessly eyeballed him back but recklessly rubbed his dick through his pants. Kneading his crotch like pizza dough for all she was worth.

Dad quickly whispered something in her ear, handed me a five-dollar bill, said I’ll be back, and together they hurried into the car and tore out down some dirt road. Leaving me to be lynched for his crimes.

“Is there a black buck Rebecca ain’t fucked from here to Natchez?”

“Well, least she knows what she likes. Your dumb peckerwood ass still ain’t decided whether you like men or not.”

“I’m bisexual. I likes both.”

“Ain’t no such thing. You either is or you ain’t. Man crush on Dale Earnhardt, my ass.”

While the good old boys argued the merits and manifestations of sexuality, I, thankful to be alive, went inside the store for a soda. They carried only one brand and one size, Coca-Cola in the classic seven-ounce bottle. I twisted one open and watched the effervescent sprites of carbon dioxide dance in the sun rays. I can’t tell you how good that Coke tasted, but there’s an old joke that I never understood until that bubbling brown elixir slid soothingly down my throat.

Bubba the redneck, a nigger, and a Mexican are sitting at the same bus stop when BAM! a genie appears out of nowhere in a cloud of smoke. “You each get one wish,” says the genie, adjusting his turban and his ruby rings. So the nigger says, “I wish for all my black brothers and sisters to be in Africa, where the land will nourish us and all Africans can prosper.” The genie waved his hands, and BAM! all the blacks left America and went to Africa. The Mexican then said, “ Órale , that sounds good to me. I want all my Mexican peoples to be in Me-hee-co where we can live well and have yobs and drink from glorious pools of tequila.” BAM! They all went to Mexico and left America. Then the genie turns to Bubba the redneck and says, “And what is it you desire, Sahib? Your wish is my command.” Bubba looks at the genie and says, “So you’re telling me that all the Mexicans are in Mexico and all the niggers are in Africa?”

“Yes, Sahib.”

“Well, it’s kinda hot today, I guess I’ll have a Coke.”

That’s how good that Coke was.

“That’ll cost seven cents. Just leave it on the counter, boy. Your new mommy be back in no time.”

Ten sodas and seventy cents later, neither my new mother nor my old father had returned and I had to take a wicked piss. The fellows at the gas station were still playing chess, the attendant’s cursor hovering hesitatingly over a cornered piece as if his next decision decided the fate of the world. The attendant slammed a knight onto a square. “You ain’t fooling nobody with that Sicilian gambit chicanery. Your diagonals is vulnerable as shit.”

My bladder about to burst, I asked black Kasparov where the bathroom was located.

“Restrooms are for customers only.”

“But my dad just purchased some gas…”

“And your father can shit here until his heart’s content. You, on the other hand, are drinking the white man’s Coke like his ice is colder than ours.”

I pointed to the row of seven-ounce sodas in the cooler. “How much?”

“Dollar-fifty.”

“But they’re seven cents across the street.”

“Buy black or piss off. Literally.”

Feeling sorry for me, and winning on points, black Bobby Fischer pointed into the distance at an old bus station.