Paul Beatty - Tuff

Winston bristled at Charles’s suggestion that he was scared of drug dealing. “I told you, no. Just the drug thing is embarrassing. There’s no dignity standing on the corner saying ‘What’s up?’ ‘What you need?’ to every person who passes by, like I’m really a friendly motherfucker. ‘Smoke? Smoke? Red Top. Jumbo. Double Up. You straight, my man?’ People ignoring you, pretending you’re invisible, stepping over and around you like you a piece of dog shit on the sidewalk. But you be caught up, chasing that dollar. Raising your eyebrows at everything that move. Pushing product on kids, stray cats, and old women on they way to church. And every now and then one of them old holy-rolling bitches bites, be like, ‘Hit me off with a twenty.’ Man, that shit depressing as fuck. The worst is when these rides with out-of-state plates pull up packed with twelve white boys, like a damn Ringling Brothers clown car. ‘What’s up, you got that rock, bro?’ ”

“Hate it when a white boy call me bro,” concurred Armello, to the head-nodding agreement of Fariq and Charles.

“True indeed. They only call you bro when they want something,” Fariq empathized.

“I be wantin’ to stomp them fools. Why you got ask me for drugs — I look like a dealer because I’m black?”

Nadine frowned. “But you was dealing, Tuffy.”

“That makes it all the worse. I am the stereotype, angry about being stereotyped. Then when five-o blow up the spot, they treat the white boys like day campers. ‘You fellows go home, you don’t belong out here, it’s dangerous. These people will eat you alive.’ Turn to me like I’m a cannibal shaking salt on some white kid’s leg—‘If I see you out here again, chief, you gonna go down.’ My pathetic ass strugglin’ to get out an understandable ‘Yes, sir’ because I’m gargling crack rock wrapped in cellophane, tryin’ not to swallow unless absolutely necessary.”

Winston grabbed the joint from Charles, inhaled, and began to speak without breathing. The words seemed to come from his nostrils: “I ain’t selling no drugs.”

Inez was in disbelief: Tuffy refusing to deal drugs? Maybe her homilies suggesting how Winston should channel his street savvy into political action were finally sinking in. This was a different boy than the one who at the mention of Che, Zapata, and Gandhi would screw his face and say they didn’t sound like revolutionaries but like soccer stars.

“Come on, Ms. Nomura, why you keep looking at me like that? Wipe that smile off your face — it’s not like I’ve seen the error of my ways and shit. I’m still the same nigger. No shame in my game.”

“That’s right, no shame in his game,” echoed Yolanda, though she, too, was relieved that Winston had renounced dope peddling.

“I haven’t changed, y’all. You remember how in junior high you used go into the bathroom and there’d be one bold-ass, foul, don’t-give-a-fuck nigger taking a massive shit in a doorless stall and smoking a cigarette? Well, that nigger was me. No shame in my game. I’ll still mug a nigger, take a dump in a public toilet in a second.”

Charles rose to his feet. “Don’t play yourself, Tuff — how you think Derrick opened that Laundromat? Tito, that shitty tacquería? I say we ask Diego and them to put us down.”

Armello waved Charles off. “Whitey, I’m with Winston on this one. You ain’t got shit to say, because every time we get popped you don’t never no real time. You get reprimanded to your mama’s custody. Besides we ain’t got to do the drug thing nohow. Do we, Smush?” Armello hit the joint. The marijuana’s potency doubled him over with a hacking cough. A plume of smoke spewed from Armello’s mouth, immediately followed by a violent eruption of a clear, viscous slime that fell to the sidewalk in globs. Armello wiped his mouth, beamed, and handed Fariq the weed. “Hit this, G, my God.”

Without puffing on it, Fariq handed the joint to Yolanda. “I’m going to talk to Moneybags, y’all. Come up with a hustle somewhere between dope selling and banking.”

Nadine asked Yolanda for a puff, but Winston intercepted the pass, lipped the blunt, took a strong hit, then handed it to Nadine. “Damn, nigger, you got it all soggy.”

Bleak , he thought, my shit is looking bleak. Damn, that is some good-ass weed . Involuntarily his eyes closed. His brain seemed to solidify like drying cement, and his head grew heavy. A passing cloud blotted out the sun. Even with his eyes closed Winston noticed the sky darken. “You know what would be cool right now?” he said in a dreamy voice. “A fucking solar eclipse.”

“Whatever, nigger.”

Tuffy imagined being camouflaged in an umbra that matched the pitch blackness of his skin, the abysmal blackness of his mind, and the mysterious blackness of space. He took one more puff. I’d be lost in space then. I could disappear like a motherfucker. Harlem, we have liftoff .

ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND LIGHT-YEARS:The Milky Way looks like a discarded hubcap by the side of the night road.

ONE MILLION LIGHT-YEARS:All quiet on the eastern edge of the universe, 109th Street between Lexington and Third Avenue. The front line of the war on everything, and the end of creation. In space no one can hear you scream. In New York City everyone can hear you — but will anyone pay attention?

My purse! He stole my purse!” The shout shattered what remained of the afternoon’s fragile tranquillity, a rock thrown through an already broken window. And pedaling in its wake was a skinny, graham-cracker-colored black boy. Shirtless and wearing only sneakers and a pair of denim cutoffs, the boy weaved his mountain bike through the stickball game. He held a leather purse to the handlebars, the cleaved straps flapping in the wind like streamers. Running down the middle of the street giving chase was a husky woman taking short, lung-burning, end-of-the-marathon strides. “That’s Big Sexy,” remarked Nadine, biting her nails. “That boy stole her purse.” The last time Winston had seen Big Sexy was at Jordy’s baby shower. She’d been thoughtful enough to buy Jordy pajamas that he’d grow into. Her daughter Lydia DJ’d, mixing salsa, merengue, and hip-hop into a seamless concerto that glued her mother to the dance floor the entire night. A pink Spaldeen sailed past the cyclist’s head. “Fuck you doing, man? You fucking up the game.” The purse snatcher bunny-hopped the bicycle onto the sidewalk, nearly knocking over Inez and Armello. Winston glanced over at the Bonilla brothers, who sanctioned the crime with their idleness. “Anyone know that nigger?” Winston asked. No one said anything. In painstakingly slow slow motion, Winston dug his gun from his pocket, cocked it, then slipped the small pistol onto his trigger finger like a wedding ring. “What the hell this fat fool doing, Smush?” Nadine asked. “I think he thinks he’s starring in one of those Chinese gangster movies. You know how they move in slow motion for no apparent reason.”

Slapping Armello on the butt, Winston nodded at his friend’s motorcycle. “Uncle, but still. Let’s go.”

Armello acknowledged his orders with a snappy, Cantonese-accented “Yes, sir!” and the vigilantes leapt onto Armello’s motorcycle. Armello stomped the kick start and gunned the bike into gear. Winston placed one hand on Armello’s hip and with the other held the gun aloft. Firing a round into the sky, he yelled, “You can’t get away with the Crunch, because the Crunch always gives you away! Il ladro! Il ladro! ” The quip was barely audible over the screech of the skidding rear tire as the motorcycle peeled off into the street. Big Sexy pumped her fist, too exhausted to deliver any words of encouragement.