Paul Beatty - Tuff

ONE LIGHT-YEAR:The time it took for Daddy to send that first child-support check.

ONE HUNDRED LIGHT-YEARS:Depth perception disappears. Nothing in the universe seems more than an arm’s length away. The universe must be handled gently, like the oldest vinyl record in the collection. I pull it slowly from a worn cardboard jacket. Holding the universe by the edges, I blow on its scratchy surface. Flipping the universe over, another puff and the dust from side B is a new galaxy. If you could play creation on a turntable, what would it sound like?

ONE THOUSAND LIGHT-YEARS:I see the souls of Demetrius, Zoltan, and Chilly Most trying to find the happy hunting ground. “Where are we? Alpha Centauri? Nigger, we want Alpha Cygni! Give me the map, motherfucker!”

“You see your heaven up there?” Fariq was propped up on his crutches, which formed a makeshift cruciform on the chain-link fence behind him. Ankles crossed, arms to the side, a can of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, Fariq began yelling, his voice carrying throughout the empty park: “Beer and fish for everyone! Who sold me out? Judas? I knew it — greedy bastard! Before I die I leave you with this last holy piece of advice: Never, never let a nigger kiss you in public.”

Uncapping his marker, Winston jammed his forearm into Fariq’s throat and scribbled on his friend’s wrinkled brow. He stepped back to admire his work. “There, now you’re Jesus.” Fariq wet his hands with beer and tried to rub the inky scrawl from his forehead. “Come on, man, what’d you write?”

“I-N-R-I.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but it’s always at the top of any Jesus-on-the-cross painting I’ve ever seen. A Rasta once told me it means, ‘I Negro Rule I-ternally.’ ”

Fariq stopped rubbing his brow. “ ‘I-ternally’? Now what the fuck does that mean?”

“No idea. I thought you would know — sound like that crazy Five-Percenter ‘White man is the devil’ madness you be talking.”

Fariq pirouetted on his clubfeet and removed the crutches from the fence. He was about to right himself when he lost his balance, teetered, and fumbled away his walking sticks. Before he could pick them up, Winston scooped the metal stabilizers off the ground and waved the poles in Fariq’s face, snickering, “Drunk?”

“Drop my shits, fat boy. I can pick ’em up myself.”

“Fat boy?”

Winston tossed the metal poles about ten feet away from Fariq’s twisted legs. “Fetch, punk. If Jesus Christ could walk on water, a fake Jesus can at least walk on two legs.” Without hesitating, Fariq released the fence and boldly ambled forward, his feet pointing inward at an angle that made his toes touch, his thin legs bent at the knees, forming an X. Feet never leaving the ground, Fariq took three wobbly steps, stopped, and exhaled. Winston couldn’t restrain himself. “Why are you holding your breath? You’re not swimming underwater — breathe.”

“Don’t be watching me walk,” Fariq cautioned Winston. “I hate it when motherfuckers be watching me walk.”

“You ain’t walking, nigger. You ice-skating or something. You so shaky it looks like there’s an earthquake but you’re the only one who can feel it.”

Reaching out for his crutches, Fariq pounced on them like dollar bills in the street, clutching the supports to his chest before they could blow away in the wind. “Told you I could walk.”

“You better quit bragging, track star, before I call Social Security tomorrow and tell them to stop sending you them disability checks. Let’s go get some more drink.”

They headed back to the store in silence, listening to what passed for a quiet night in the city. A streetlight sputtered and hummed. Rats scaled mountains of trash bags. Caught up in the headwind, sheets of loose paper and debris blew past the boys’ feet. A campaign flyer for the upcoming election plastered itself to Winston’s chest. He peeled it off. The handbill read: VOTA WILFREDO CIENFUEGOS, DEMOCRAT POR COUNCILMAN DISTRITO 8. SEPTIEMBRE 9TH. ¡PARE LA VIOLENCIA! Pare la violencia: Stop the Violence — a phrase that prior to the Brooklyn incident was part of the ecumenical white noise he’d heard and seen since grade school. Don’t Smoke. Just Say No. Safe Sex. Be a Father to Your Child. Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk. Pare la violencia . Winston didn’t have a problem with Mr. Cienfuegos’s advice, though he didn’t find it very practical. How? he wondered. Would an impassioned plea from a politician turn Winston into a pacifist? Could Wilfredo Cienfuegos have convinced the Brooklyn henchmen to put away their guns and allow a cripple and a sluggard to walk off with Bed-Stuy’s money in their pockets, beneficiaries of the ghetto’s free-market economy?

But Winston had the power to stop the violence. Oftentimes when he came upon a scene of aggression the combatants stopped pummeling each another, unsure on whose side Tuffy, the neighborhood superpower, might intervene. Winston imagined himself dressed in a suit and tie, his face superimposed on the political circular. But the daydream quickly slipped away from him. In his mind the handbill yellowed into an Old West wanted poster. “Wanted for Councilman Eighth District — Winston Foshay. Start the violence!” Winston released the flyer into the slipstream. I’d be a good-ass politician, though . The sheet of paper boomeranged in the wind and reattached itself to his hip like a house cat afraid of the backyard wilderness. Winston folded the flyer and stuffed it into his back pocket.

“Tuff, it was dead bodies, the whole nine.”

“Yup.”

“We still alive.”

“Yup.”

“Culture cipher, my brother. The fundamental black man manifest as the elemental hierarchy of the earth-sun dichotomy—”

“Don’t start.”

“Yacub—”

“I’m serious, don’t start.”

Fariq gave up trying to enlighten Winston to the ways of the knowledgeably holy five percent, and ran through possible acronyms for I-N-R-I to occupy his hyperactive mind. If Needed, Resurrect Immediately. Idolatrous Necrophilia, Religious Intercourse. Inspected — Natural Redwood Immobilizer. Is Nothing Really Important?

“Tuff, I bet you that I-N-R-I is Latin for some shit.”

Tuffy’s head was buried in the market’s night box, trying to talk to the proprietor through three inches of Plexiglas; if he heard Fariq he didn’t answer.

I Negro — Remedy Intoxication.

Winston didn’t realize how drunk he was until he arrived at his apartment and couldn’t insert his key into the lock. After a few misses he resorted to the method he picked up from watching his next-door neighbor return home after a payday binge. Bending down and closing one eye, Winston placed his left index finger on the keyhole. With his right hand he pressed the tip of the key into his left shoulder. Using his left arm as a guide, he slid the key into the lock with his right hand. Winston opened the door as quietly as possible, rehearsing his excuse to Yolanda for why he didn’t call. “I was at Keith’s crib and that nigger’s phone is off, so I sent Taurus to tell Jamilla to tell Yusef to tell Laura to call you. But I didn’t know Yusef got a restraining order against Jamilla after she set him on fire for fucking Wanda. Turn out that fool under house arrest anyway, and couldn’t tell Laura or nobody else nothing, nohow.” He was slowly making his way down the dark hallway when a block of light from the bedroom illuminated him like an escaped convict.

“Don’t worry about trying to creep, the baby woke.”

“All right.”

Walking past the bedroom, he hurriedly made his way to the bathroom.