Paul Beatty: The Sellout

“Hominy, is that you?”

“I wish it was, that boy’s a natural!”

Suddenly you can hear the director offscreen yelling, “We’ve got plenty of wood, but we need more nigger. C’mon, Foy, do it right this time. I know you’re only five, but niggerize the hell out of this one.” Take #2 is no less spectacular, but what follows is a low-budget one-reeler called “Oil Ty-Coons!” starring Buckwheat, Hominy, and a heretofore unknown member of the Little Rascals, a moppet credited as Li’l Foy Cheshire, alias Black Folk, an instant classic and, to my knowledge, the last entry in the Our Gang oeuvre.

“I remember this one! Oh my God! I remember this one!”

“Hominy, stop jumping around. You’re in the way.”

In “Oil Ty-Coons!” after a clandestine back-alley meeting with a lanky, chauffeur-driven, ten-gallon-hat cowboy, our boys are seen pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with cash down the crime-free streets of Greenville. The nigger rich trio, now dressed in top hat and tails at all times, treats an increasingly suspicious gang to an endless run of movies and sweets. They even go so far as to buy a destitute Mickey an expensive set of catcher’s gear he’s been admiring in the sporting-goods-store window. Dissatisfied with Buckwheat’s explanation for their newfound wealth—“I’z found a four-leaf clo’ber and done won the Irish Lottery”—the gang trots out a number of theories. The boys are running numbers. They’re betting on the horses. Hattie McDaniel has died and left them all her money. Eventually the gang threatens Buckwheat with expulsion if he doesn’t tell where the money is coming from. “We’z in oil!” Still harboring doubts and unable to find an oil derrick, the gang follows Hominy to a hidden warehouse, where they discover the nefarious darkies have all the kids in Niggertown hooked up to IVs and, for a nickel a pint, filling oil cans with crude drop by black drop. At the end, a diaper-clad Foy turns and mugs “Black folk!” into the camera before the scene mercifully fades out with the Our Gang theme music.

Finally King Cuz breaks the silence. “Now I know why that fool Foy went crazy. I’d go nutty, too, if I had some shit like that on my conscience. And I make my livelihood shooting motherfuckers for no reason.”

Stevie, a hardcore gangster as ruthless as the free market and unemotional as a Vulcan with Asperger’s, has a tear running down one cheek. He lifts a can of beer to Hominy and offers a toast. “I’m not sure how I mean this, but ‘To Hominy. You’re a better man than I.’ I swear the Oscars need to give a Lifetime Achievement Award to the black actor, because you guys had it hard.”

“Still do,” says Panache, who I didn’t even know was here and I supposed must be back from a long day on the set of Hip-hop Cop. “I know what Hominy’s gone through. I’ve had directors tell me, ‘We need more black in this scene. Can you black it up? Then you say, ‘Fuck you, you racist motherfucker!’ And they go, ‘Exactly, don’t lose that intensity!’”

Nestor Lopez stands up sharply, swaying for a moment as the vodka and weed rush to his head. “At least you people have a Hollywood history. What we got? Speedy Gonzales, a woman with bananas on her head, ‘We don’t need no stinking badges,’ and some prison movies!”

“But they’re some great prison movies, homes!”

“At least there were some black Little Rascals. Where was fucking little Chorizo or Bok Choy?”

Though Nestor has a point about there not being a Chorizo, I don’t mention anything about Sing Joy and Edward Soo Hoo, two Asian Rascals who, though by no means stars, had better runs than many a snot-nosed brat the studios trotted out in front of the cameras. I’m headed toward the barn to check on my newly purchased Swedish sheep. My baby Roslags are huddled under the persimmon tree; it’s their first night in the ghetto and they’re afraid the goats and the pigs are going to jack them. One lamb’s a scruffy white, the other’s a mottled grayish color. They’re shaking. I hug them both and plant kisses on their snouts.

Hominy’s standing behind me, I hadn’t noticed him, and, monkey see, monkey do, he plants a chapped liver-lipped kiss on my mouth.

“What the fuck, Hominy?”

“I quit.”

“Quit what?”

“Slavery. We’ll talk reparations in the morning.”

The sheep are still shivering in fear. “ Vara modig ,” I whisper in their quivering ears. I don’t know what it means, but that’s what the brochure said to say to them at least three times a day during the first week. I shouldn’t have bought them, but they’re endangered, and an old husbandry professor saw me on the news and thought I’d be a good caretaker. I’m scared, too. What if I do go to jail? Who’s going to take care of them then? If the First, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendment violations don’t stick, there’s talk of an International Criminal Court trial and charging me with apartheid. They never prosecuted a single South African for apartheid and they’re going to arrest me? A harmless South Central African-American? Amandla awethu!

“Come inside when you’re done out there,” Marpessa calls from the bedroom.

There’s urgency in her voice. I know she means now; I’ll bottle-feed the sheep later. Eyewitness News is on. My girlfriend of five years lies facedown on the bed, her pretty head in her hands, watching the weather on the television atop the dresser. Charisma sits next to her. Leaning against the headboard, her stocking feet crossed and resting on Marpessa’s ass. I find what little mattress space is left and climb into my dream ménage à trois.

“Marpessa, what if I have to go to jail?”

“Shut up and just look at the TV.”

“Hampton made a good point in court when he said that if Hominy’s ‘servitude’ was tantamount to human bondage, then corporate America better be ready to fight a hell of a class-action lawsuit filed by generations of uncompensated interns.”

“Will you stop talking? You’re going to miss it.”

“But what if I go to jail?”

“Then I’ll just have to find another nigger to have unimaginative sex with.”

The rest of the party is huddled around the bedroom door. Looking in. Marpessa reaches back, grabs my chin, and forces my head to look at the screen. “Watch.”

Weatherperson Chantal Mattingly is waving her hands over the L.A. Basin. It’s hot. There’s a surge of moisture moving in from the south. The excessive heat warning is still in effect for the Santa Clarita Valley and the interior valleys of Ventura County. For other areas expect seasonal temperatures with cooling until about midnight. For the most part, skies will be clear to partly cloudy, temperatures mild to moderate [whatever that means] along the coast from Santa Barbara to Orange Counties and much warmer inland. Now for the local forecasts. Not expecting any major changes from now till late evening. I always like weather maps. The 3-D effect of the topographical coastline map rotating and shifting as the forecast moves south and inland. The gradations in the colors of the mountain ranges and low-lying plains, they never fail to impress me. Current temperatures …

Palmdale 103°/88° … Oxnard 77°/70° … Santa Clarita 108°/107° … Thousand Oaks 77°/69° … Santa Monica 79°/66° … Van Nuys 105/82° … Glendale … 95°/79° … Dickens 88°/74° … Long Beach 82°/75° …

“Wait, does that say Dickens?”

Marpessa laughs maniacally. I shoulder my way past the homies and Marpessa’s kids, whose names I refuse to say. I run outside. The frog thermometer hanging from the back porch reads exactly 88 degrees. I can’t stop crying. Dickens is back on the map.