Paul Beatty - The White Boy Shuffle

“Drop me and Scoby off at my house.”

“No time, G.”

“Well, where we going?”

“Montgomery Ward’s.”

When we pulled into the Montgomery Ward parking lot, there were Psycho Loco, No M.O. Clark, and Joe Shenanigans standing behind Psycho Loco’s van next to a huge iron safe. Grimy, covered with sweat, the boys were overjoyed to see us. So this was “the heist.”

“What the fuck? Are you motherfuckers crazy?”

“Chill, homes. We just want help lifting this thing into the van.”

“How did you get it out?”

“Look,” Scoby said, pointing to a set of rubber wheels attached to the bottom of the strongbox. Only Montgomery Ward would build a mobile safe. I had two thoughts. Why are all safes painted beige, and would my mother come visit me in prison?

“Dude, I can’t be wearing no stone-washed prison outfit for the rest of my life. That shit makes me itch.”

Scoby tried to comfort me. “You can wear any kind of shirt you want, just no rhinestones or metal buttons. Besides, I haven’t seen one police car the whole day.”

He was right. I hadn’t even noticed. The entire day had been an undeclared national holiday. Los Angeles was a theme park and we were spending the day in Anarchyland. All stores and banks remain open, but unstaffed. From this point, waiting time for this attraction is zero minutes. I calmed down.

The safe was unbelievably heavy, which everyone but me took as a positive sign. I thought the thing could just as easily be empty or filled with employee timecards as stuffed with valuables.

On our third try we almost had the safe inside the back of the van when we all heard an extremely disheartening sound. “What’s that?” everyone asked.

“Uh, the Doppler effect,” I said.

“Shit, it’s the cops.”

With a final strain we edged the safe onto the bumper of the van, but our knees buckled under the weight and the safe dropped to the ground with a heavy thud. The sirens were getting closer. No one had the energy for another lift, but we couldn’t leave the safe in the middle of the parking lot, not with visions of Spanish gold doubloons dancing in our heads. I looked in the van and saw a length of rope. How stupid we’d been. All we needed to do was tie one end to the safe’s handle and the other end to the van’s bumper and we could drive away, pulling the safe along behind us.

I heard the cop car pull into the parking lot. My back tightened in anticipation of hearing a gunshot or a threatening “Get your hands up and step away from the vehicle.” What I did hear was something I hadn’t heard in years: my father’s voice. I told the boys to keep going and I’d distract him. I turned around to see my father step out of the car, gripping a shotgun in one hand.

“Dad. Long time no see. Things must really be hectic if you’re out on the streets.”

I heard the van slowly pull off, and I looked back to see the safe trailing behind it like a tin can tied to the car of newlyweds headed for their honeymoon. When I turned to face my father, the hard rubber butt of the shotgun crashed into my jaw. I saw a flash of white and dropped to the pavement. My father’s partner stepped on my ear, muffling his words.

“You are not a Kaufman. I refuse to let you embarrass me. You can’t embarrass me with poetry and your niggerish ways. And where did you get all these damn air fresheners?”

Something hard smacked the side of my neck, sending my tongue rolling out of my mouth like a party favor. I could taste the salty ash on the pavement. Ash that had drifted from fires set in anger around the city. I remembered learning in third grade that snakes “see” and “hear” with their sensitive tongues. I imagined my tongue almost bitten through, hearing the polyrhythms of my father’s nightstick on my body. Through my tongue I saw my father transform into a master Senegalese drummer beating a surrender code on a hollow log on the banks of the muddy Gambia River. A flash of white — the night of my conception, my father twisting Mama’s arm behind her back and ordering her to “assume the position.” A flash of white — my father potty-training me by slapping me across the face and sticking my hand in my mushy excrement. Soon my body stopped bucking with every blow. There was only white — no memories, no visions, only the sound of voices.

“Gunnar, my young revolutionary, while you were in a coma, you got a letter from the Nike Basketball Camp. You’ve been chosen as one of the hundred best ballplayers in the nation. Actually, you’re number one hundred.” — Coach Shimimoto

“Son, your father and I both think it’s best for you to transfer to another school. We’re sending you to El Campesino Real in the Valley.” — Mom

“Dude, you got fucked up.” — Nicholas Scoby

“You gots to get better, cuz. We can’t figure out how to open the safe.” — Psycho Loco

* * *

The safe sat in the middle of Psycho Loco’s den, a three-dimensional puzzle daring to be solved. Old Abuela Gloria, reportedly an expert safecracker in Havana during Batista’s glory days, was wearing a stethoscope and listening to the tumblers click as she spun the combination dial back and forth.

“Isn’t Abuela Gloria deaf?” I asked Ms. Sanchez.

“Yeah, but she insisted on trying.”

Abuela Gloria removed the stethoscope from her ears and pulled on the latch. Nothing happened. “Fucking goddamn box.”

Scoby was calculating possible permutations of a combination lock numbered from zero to one hundred. He’d already tried thirty-two-thousand different combinations while I was in the hospital. Psycho Loco came in from the kitchen and tossed me a cold Carta Blanca. The beer sailed over my head and I had to stretch my aching arms to catch the tumbling bottle.

“Damn, you did that on purpose. That shit hurt.”

“Just a little physical therapy to speed up your convalescence.”

“Thanks.”

“When you flying to Portland to the basketball camp?”

“August sixth, end of the summer. I should be healed by then.”

Scoby knelt beside the safe, flipping the dial from number to number and shaking his cramping hands in frustration as his magic failed him.

“Gunnar, look at the safe. Maybe you can figure out a way to open it.”

“What I know about opening a safe? That thing almost got me killed. I don’t give a fuck if you never get it open.”

I was lying and Psycho Loco knew it. I hadn’t taken my eyes off the box since I’d been there. I couldn’t shake the word “treasure” from my head: rubies, gold lanterns, and ancient scrolls. I wanted to free the genie and fuck up my three wishes.

I wish I knew how a bill changer can tell the difference between a one, a five, and a ten-dollar bill.

I wish I could dance like Bert Williams.

I wish I had a lifetime supply of superballs, so I could bounce them as high and as hard as I pleased without worrying about losing them.

I ran my hands over the safe’s tapered edges, then stood back, waved my fingers, and said in a slow, spooky voice, “Open sesame.”

“We did that shit already. Ala-kazam, hocus-pocus — we even paid that voodoo lady on Normandie fifty dollars to open it with some of that ol’-time Yoruba religion.”

“What happened?”

“She got chicken blood and pixie dust all over the fucking place. Damn near burned the house down with all the candles.”

I turned the safe so the door faced me. The wheels creaked under its weight. “I wish we could open this thing right now. I can’t take the suspense. Psycho Loco, how did you know where to find the safe?”

Psycho Loco laughed. His mother groaned. “I feel like Ma Barker,” she said, and left the room.