Paul Beatty - The White Boy Shuffle

Fun Facts for Department Store Campers

Did you know that you can tell the temperature by counting the number of high-pitched department store dings in a minute, then dividing that number by five?

I spent entire days in the tent, snuggled up in a down sleeping bag reading Kant, Hegel, and the Greek tragedies by flashlight. Whenever I felt the need to stretch my legs, I’d break out my Cub Scout compass and go orienteering around the store. Grabbing a fishing pole, I’d blaze trails from the glacier-white kitchen appliances up the steep back stairwells and traverse the lawn furniture outback until I reached the bluffs of television sets that overlooked the pet store. From the balcony I’d cast my line into the aquariums below, sip a cream soda, and commune with nature, waiting patiently for a bite. The end of a good day’s fishing would yield a cooler filled with angelfish, oscars, and tiger barbs, but since I wasn’t much of an angler, it was usually guppies, guppies, and more guppies.

The day after Labor Day I was sitting in the tent reading Homer when I overheard some voices outside excitedly commenting on the nearby display of hunting rifles and bows and arrows. Ahh, intrepid explorers! Cautiously, I peeked my nappy head out from between the tent flaps and saw a group of black and Mexican boys a little older than I assembled in Household Weaponry. The glass case was broken and most of the guys were peering down the barrels of shotguns. One was passing a sharp Bowie knife under the nose of the terrified salesperson and asking if he could slash some prices. If I planned to trade pelts for foodstuffs and form a working relationship with this barbarous bunch, I’d have to try the avuncular approach.

I placed both hands in my pockets and sauntered over to the group in as nonthreatening a manner as possible. Each kid was dressed from head to toe in various shades of blue. Baby blue baseball caps, navy blue scarfs, and from the back pockets of those loose-fitting midnight blue chinos, Dodger blue handkerchiefs bloomed like cottony autumn delphiniums. What did the Venice Beach queers say about dark blue hankies in the right rear pocket — was it dominant or submissive?

While I tried to remember, a dwarf-sized freckle-faced big-headed redbone kid the others called Pumpkin nocked an arrow into a powerful compound bow. He took aim at a smug-looking mannequin who was standing up in an aluminum dingy, holding a rod and reel and modeling a black-and-red checkerboard lumberjack jacket with a matching hat, the kind with wool earflaps. One of Pumpkin’s cronies gently placed an apple on the dummy’s head and stepped back. Pumpkin lifted the bow, pulled back on the string till his hand touched his ear, shot an arrow that pierced the mannequin’s forehead and exited through the back of his plaster skull, landing somewhere in the young miss section.

“I shot an arrow into the air, it fell to the earth I know not where,” I said by way of introducing myself. The pint-sized William Tell looked in my direction and twisted his hands in some arthritic gesticulation. I interpreted his double-jointed gesture as a sign of welcome and replied in kind with the only high sign I knew. I raised the back of my left hand to my chin and wiggled my fingers, giving him the high sign popularized by Stymie and Alfalfa in the Our Gang comedies. I felt I was speaking a sort of gangland Esperanto, but Pumpkin stiffened, pursed his lips, and scrunched his face in displeasure. To dampen his anger, I commented on the expensive sheepskin quiver strapped across his chest.

“Nice quiver.”

“Quiver? You saying I’m scared of your ass?”

“No, I’m talking about the holder for arrow shafts.”

“You saying you Shaft? Oh, you that cat, that baaaad mother … shutyourmouth, but I’m talkin’ about Shaft. Oh, I can dig it, motherfucker.”

Not knowing what to say next in a game of who’s on first that was becoming increasingly hostile, I said nothing and looked longingly back at the tent, but his stare hadn’t yet given me permission to go anywhere. Pumpkin and each of his merry men in turn threw up the hand signal again, waiting for me to acknowledge it. I knew better than to give the Little Rascal high sign again, so I stalled.

“That thing you do with your hands is awfully cryptic.”

“Damn straight, nigger, because I’m a goddamn Crip. Where from, punk? Represent, fool, fo’ me and my potnahs break you off something proper-like.”

I felt someone place that apple that had once been on top of the mannequin’s head on my head. Pumpkin furrowed his brow, nocked a shiny brass-tipped arrow in his bow, and said, “Wuddup, fool? You Cuz or Blood?”

My shiftless free will leaned lazily against my brain stem and flipped a coin onto its clammy palm, whistling a chorus of “eeny, meany, miney, moe, catch a nigger by the toe.” From somewhere inside my head a game show host with a majestic voice welcomed me to Final Jeopardy. “What is Blood?” I answered.

The Little Lord Fauntleroys stopped shuffling in place, clenched their teeth, and stood up straight. Their fists knuckled into iron black ballpeens.

“Ennnhhh,” a tall, crazy-looking Mexican boy in the rear said.

“Wink, tell the boy what he’s won as a consolation prize.”

The circle of boys tightened.

“Okay, Bob. Our contestant has won a matching set of contusions and bruises with possibly some lacerations of his internal organs courtesy of that infamous gang, the” — my eyes closed and someone rolled his tongue in a mock drumroll — “Gun Totin’ Hooligans.”

The quills of an arrow brushed past my ear and I turned just fast enough to see it plow into the foam head of the deer with its nose nuzzled in the bear’s ass. The deer wobbled, then fell on its side, dead. The bear looked relieved and the blows crackled and crunched on my head, rearranging my already lumpy phrenological topography. Steel-toed boots explored the depths of my rib cage and waves of pain rapelled up and down my spine. Periodically, my persecutors would rest and step back from my bloodied carcass, share bites of the apple, and admire their handiwork. “Yo, Joe, how do you get both eyes to swell with such symmetry and purple robustness?” Then they’d swallow, spit the seeds in my general direction, and resume whipping my ass. Between thumpings I remained optimistic, hopeful that this would be the beatdown that certified my worthiness, stamped me with the ghetto seal of approval.

Maybe this was one of those jumping-in rituals I’d seen on the PBS documentaries titled Our Youth at Risk or something equally forlorn. My mother would watch these melodramatic shows, angrily addressing the screen. “What they talking about, ‘our youth’? Those aren’t my kids, and if they were, they’d damn sure be at risk. At risk of me putting some euthanasia shotgun pellets in their bellies.” I’d never thought that one day I would be in the center of a maelstrom of “our youth,” pacifying myself with thoughts of possible acceptance into their world. Maybe the Gun Totin’ Hooligans would beat me senseless, then revive me with dousing buckets of water, welcoming me into the fold with snappy French Foreign Legion kisses on both cheeks and Leo Buscaglia gangster bear hugs. “My nigger. What it be like, black? Gimme some love, dawg.” The secret password would be whispered in my ear, and the sacred soul shake taught. I’d raise off the linoleum floor with swollen lips and a gang affiliation, pumping my fist in the air, screaming to the gods, “That’s right, motherfuckers, you don’t know who you fucking with, I’m down with the Gun Totin’ Hooligans. Get back, Jack. Up your milk money before I regulate you and all your punk-ass disciples.”

I was squirming on the ground, contorted into a bloody fetal mess, too sore even to groan when they rifled my pockets. Finding nothing but the book I had been reading, one of the fistic coterie bemusedly read the title. “ The Odyssey? Ain’t that some club over on Slauson and Normandie?” He carelessly flung it back at me, and the book fluttered through the air like a teal-colored paperback butterfly and landed lightly on my chest, face down and open somewhere in the middle. I picked it up, looked at the triumphant, swaggering backs of my conquerors, and read aloud: