Paul Beatty - Tuff

After the day’s festivities were over and Winston had changed back into his street clothes, Kinboshi and a few of the wrestlers went over to congratulate him. The wrestlers greeted him with firm soul shakes, the two Hawaiians accompaning their grips with American street slang. “Yo, my man, you rocked Homeboy.”

“Thanks, yo.”

When the backslapping was over, the Oyakata began speaking and everyone stopped talking. Without prompting, the interpreter translated. “They tell me your name is Winston Foshay. I’m Oyakata Kinboshi, I trained the fighter you beat. They announced you won by yori-kiri , frontal force-out, but it was really yori-taoshi , frontal crush-out, a more powerful technique. Your style is unorthodox but effective.”

Unable to hold the Oyakata’s stare without smiling, Winston looked down at the ground feeling like the unassuming hero in a martial-arts movie: trained by wind, trees, and the monkeys, the country bumpkin makes a name for himself.

“Is it true you are running for political office?”

Winston nodded, wishing it weren’t.

“Then not only do you win the match, but you probably won a lot of votes today.”

“There is a loosely enforced ban on foreign wrestlers entering Japanese sumo right now. The Sumo Kyokai is afraid of big black men dominating the sport. I don’t know why they are afraid. Whenever Japan gets a chance to prove its superiority complex, we cringe in fear. If you were Mongolian, or even an Argentinian Jew, I could get you in.”

The translator whispered something in the Oyakata’s ear, and the coach’s eyes widened. “That’s right, I forgot Sentoryu,” remembering the mediocre Juryo rikishi , a half-Japanese, half-black wrestler from St. Louis. “You aren’t part Japanese, or that loud woman who introduced you wouldn’t want to sign an affidavit swearing she was your mother, would she?

“I’m sorry, I go too far. You are a politician. Obviously, your first thoughts are for your people and community, and a proud man like yourself wouldn’t abandon his mission for selfish reasons.”

Winston studied the expensive Rolex and Movado watches banded around the thick wrists of the Oyakata and the other sumotori , their fine silk robes, and the retinue of attendants shading their heads with parasols. Clearly there was big money to be made in sumo wrestling. Tuffy wanted to say, “I could give a fuck about an election. Man, put me and mines on a plane and let’s do this. When do I get a couple of slaves?” But he recalled a television documentary he’d seen on the rigors of the Japanese school system. He pictured a college-age Jordy, a mathematics whiz but unable to think for himself. To survive on the streets of Harlem knowing how to factor polynomials wasn’t going to help much.

Kinboshi took Winston’s silence for a refusal of his offer and handed him a small book, The Science of Sumo: The Seventy Techniques Diagrammed and Explained in Great Detail . Winston thanked him and asked if the other wrestlers were ghetto kids like himself. The Oyakata smiled and said most of the rikishi were the sons of farmers and steelworkers, a few were Japanese-born Koreans trying to pass as “traditional” Japanese, and there was a sprinkling of college boys who would do anything to avoid the business world. There was a long, awkward silence as the two men pondered alternative destinies: Winston, a chubby Japanese boy pushed into sumo by overbearing parents. The Oyakata, a running buddy of Tampa Red, hitchhiking from town to town swigging whiskey from coughsyrup bottles and playing a mean blues harmonica. He couldn’t get over how much Winston looked like Robert Johnson. Tuffy began to say something and Kinboshi expected the words to “Ramblin’ on My Mind” to tumble out of his mouth, complete with vinyl scratches and pops.

“Say, yo, what was the name they introduced me as?”

“Kuroyama.”

“What that mean?”

“Black Mountain.”

As city workers disassembled the ring and the bleachers, Winston was back on the stoop, listening to his friends rehash his bout with Kotozuma. “Tuffy said, ‘Blaw! I don’t play that, you Jap motherfucker. Remember Pearl Harbor. Bip!’ Even the police was clapping for you, son.”

“I ain’t seen Tuff that mad in a while. Nigger had on that berserko face. Tuff like to kill that nigger.”

Winston’s generic soda tasted funny and wouldn’t go down his throat. He spat the contents of his mouth onto the sidewalk and listened to the carbonation sizzle on the sidewalk. “Don’t call me Tuffy no more. I want y’all to call me Kuroyama.”

Fariq drew back. “What, son? ‘Kuroyama’? What the fuck that mean, ‘Fat Bastard’ in Japanese?”

The gang broke out in an avalanche of laughter that sent them rolling down the steps and into the street like brown boulders. Even Winston giggled, the paunch underneath his green shirt quivering like dessert gelatin. “Y’all not right,” he said, flinging his soda can out into the street. “Won’t even let a nigger dream. I could be in Japan tomorrow clocking mad loot.”

“You are dreaming.”

“Armello, like y’all ain’t dreaming with this bank robbery shit.” Winston’s voice took on a pouty tone. “We going to give tellers the potion, wave the magic wand, and we’ll be toodle-oo with the cash.”

Armello spread his arms to the side. “Tuff, I seen the documentary, it’s going to work.”

“Man, even if it don’t work, I think the shit will be fun,” Charley O’ said. “How many fools can say, ‘I robbed a bank with my moms’? That right there will be worth it.”

Fariq stood up on his crutches. “And even if it is a dumb idea, you supposed to be down for whatever. Until Brooklyn none of us ain’t never vetoed an idea by saying it was stupid. If you think about it, whatever we do is always stupid. So stupid or not, you supposed to be there.”

Winston opened his book of sumo techniques, saying, “Man, I’m on some other shit now.” On page one was a sketch of two entangled Buddha-esque wrestlers. Just as basketball is not only a matter of being tall, sumo is not simply about being fat and strong. The sumo novice often overlooks the mental aspects of the sport; a well-thought-out strategy and a level head will win more bouts than sheer brute force .

Spencer hadn’t seen much of his supposed disciple in the two weeks since his profile of Winston appeared in the paper. When he handed him a copy of the Sunday edition over a game of Monopoly, Winston glanced at the unflattering photo of him swathed in a sumo belt, read the headline, THE HIP-HOP POPULIST, and handed it back.

“Don’t you want it?”

“Why I want a paper I never read?”

“Put it in your scrapbook and show it to Jordy when he gets older. Besides, you should read the paper.”

“I read it once.”

“I don’t mean the tabloids, I mean the paper .”

“I know what you mean. One day I was on the train and somebody left it in the seat next to me. I picked it up looking for the comics and came across an article on Stanley Kubrick. Loved that nigger, good article too. I folded the paper like the Wall Street motherfuckers do on they way to work. I swear to you, white people was looking me at different. Smiling and shit. Like they wanted to come up to me and ask, “What a nigger like you doing reading a paper like that ?”

“If you want to know what’s happening in the world you have to read the paper.”

“I don’t want to know. And Smush and them don’t want to know neither, so don’t go showing them that picture, okay? Got enough problems with them clowns as it is now.”