Paul Beatty - Tuff

“Winston, you need to come back to school — it’s never too late.”

“But it’s always too hard.”

Winston lifted Jordy from the stroller, then walked into the conference room, wedging himself in the nearest corner. His entrance went unnoticed by everyone except Fariq, who silently acknowledged his friend with a raised eyebrow and an almost imperceptible lifting of his chin. Winston’s “peoples” sat around an oak table like off-Broadway dramaturges planning the last act of his life. Inez sat at the end of the table nearest him. On her right were Yolanda, Fariq, and Spencer. To her left a hedgerow of fluffy salt-and-pepper Afros crowning the heads of Winston’s father and his Panther cronies, Gusto, Dawoud, Sugarshack, and Duke, each with a steel Afro pick tucked over one ear. At the foot of the table, in front of an empty chair, sat a speakerphone.

Spencer was proud of himself. It had taken him a week to make the arrangements but by gathering all of Winston’s loved ones in a single room, he’d performed his first mitzvah, and he wasn’t going to let Clifford Foshay’s brutish tactics sour the miracle. He knew of Clifford’s Panther reputation for being an intimidator, and the square-shouldered leather jacket and Mennonite beard only enhanced it. It wasn’t hard to see where Winston had learned his bullish ways. “Where this fucking boy at?” asked Clifford without bothering to even look at the door. He reached for Spencer’s arm and, leather sleeve creaking menacingly, seized Spencer by the wrist. “Fuck time is it?” He hiked up Spencer’s sleeve and, not finding a watch, sank back into his chair. “Where’s your watch, brother? You know, Brother Malcolm said, ‘Don’t trust a man who doesn’t wear a watch.’ ”

Spencer didn’t flinch. “Where’s your watch, Mr. Foshay?”

“Nigger, my watch is in my bag with my poems. Where it’s supposed to be. And don’t puff your chest out at me, I know who you are. You that fucking Negro rabbi white folks drag out every time they need a reasonable black opinion.”

“That’s right, that’s right. Why should we trust you?” echoed Sugarshack. Clifford’s squires sat back in their seats, stroking their goatees and finishing one another’s sentences. “Do you understand what Mao meant when he said—”

“ ‘In the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops, the former may be likened to—’ ”

“ ‘—water, and the latter to the fish who inhabit it’?”

Clifford held up his hand for quiet. “You a Tom. One of those political, cultural, social theorists. And now you cozying up to my son?”

Spencer sat upright in his chair. “I do subscribe to one theory. A metatheory, if you will. That is, I think a good theory should be generalizable, accurate, and simple.”

“Fuck kind of theory is that?” Clifford groused, finally letting go of Spencer’s wrist.

“It’s the GAS Theory, a theory about theories. But no theory meets all three of the criteria: generalizable, accurate, and simple.”

“Einstein’s theory of relativity!” shouted Sugarshack, pleased with himself for citing the grandest of theories.

“Generalizable and accurate, but not simple,” Spencer answered.

“What about the theory that fags and Hindu people talk a lot?” volunteered Gusto, unsheathing his Afro pick from his head and forking out his natural. Clifford frowned and asked, “Whose theory is that?”

“It’s my theory, mofo,” Gusto answered, burying his metal-toothed rake in his now lopsided hairdo.

“Sounds more like a prejudice than a theory,” Spencer said. “But for the sake of our getting-to-know-you discussion, we’ll call it a theory — though a simple one, it is definitely not generalizable, or accurate.”

Tired of playing the wallflower at a party supposedly thrown in his honor, Winston uprooted himself, placed Jordy on the table in front of Inez, and sauntered to his seat. Jordy crawled down the length of the tabletop and nestled himself in his father’s lap. “Man, the only theory that satisfies all three bits of the GAS Theory is the GAS Theory itself.”

“Where in hell you been, smartass?” asked Clifford.

“Where in hell you been?”

“Boy, don’t get uppity with me. Back in my day we didn’t need an intervention to straighten no young black boys out. Things was together. The community raised the children. If Mrs. Johnson saw you wasn’t acting right, she called you, you came. She put the stick to your behind, and you took it. Sent you home, called your mother. When your mother said, ‘Is what Mrs. Johnson said true?’ you said yes, and took another beating from your parents.”

Tuffy casually waved off his father. “If shit was so righteous and together back in the day, how come you turned out so fucked-up?”

Clifford stood up, his hand raised high overhead. “Nigger, don’t disrespect me!” The speakerphone crackled to life and the scratchy voice of Winston’s mother called out, “Clifford, you leave Winston alone!”

“Tell that nigger something, Ma,” Winston said, pulling the speakerphone closer to him and adjusting its volume upward, “before I have to stuff them ‘We Shall Overcome’ civil rights sunglasses up his ass.”

“How you doing, son?”

“Good, Mama. I miss you.”

“I’m here for you, baby, but I only got another thirty minutes until my lunch break is over.”

Spencer scooted in closer to the table. “Speaking of theory, I think we’ve just seen a bit of Freud’s Oedipal theory at work.”

“Now that’s one theory that isn’t generalizable,” said Yolanda. “It surely doesn’t apply to black folk. True, a nigger might want to kill his father, but he sure as hell doesn’t want to fuck his mother. He might fuck a cousin, but Mom is out.”

Spencer picked up his pen and pad and began. “I’m pleased everyone could make it. We are here to help Winston Foshay get on what is called ‘the right track.’ We all know him to be a troubled youth with loads of untapped potential. And Winston, I know that you are cynical about this process and it probably feels like a funeral to you, but please keep in mind that whatever you hear said today, we, unlike Antony, Brutus, come not to bury you, but to praise you.”

Fariq twisted the bill of his baseball cap to a rakish angle. “Tuffy, I don’t know what this fool talking about, but I came to make sure you find a job so you can pay me my ends, nigger.”

“Fuck you, man. You get it when I got it.”

“Let’s get started. Winston, one of a Big Brother’s initial duties is to alert the members of his Little Brother’s support group, assess the strength of the social network, then formulate a plan of action.”

“One minute.”

“Yes, Mr. Foshay.”

“I cannot in good conscience agree to be party to this without knowing where your political sympathies lie, Mr. Throckmorton. How do we know that you’re not leading Winston down the road to black apathy?”

“For the record, okay, I don’t believe in labels.”

“You still a Jew asshole.”

“Thank you, Fariq. As I was saying, before I was so rudely labeled, is that political terms such as ‘left,’ ‘right,’ ‘Democrat,’ ‘Republican’ have no meaning to me. They convey nothing about one’s political personality or motivations. I judge one’s political savvy on whether or not they capitalize the b in ‘black’ and can pronounce ‘Ntozake Shange.’ ”

“Who?” asked Dawoud.

Gusto nudged his stolid partner. “You know, that sister who wrote that play— Rainbows for Colored Chicks Whose Arms Too Short to Slap Box with God .”

“Yeah, I remember. Some bitch talking about how brothers don’t respect them. That shit was pretty good — I saw it while I was coked up.”