Paul Beatty - Tuff

When Winston Foshay found himself on the hardwood floor of a Brooklyn drug den regaining consciousness, his reflex wasn’t to open his eyes but to shut them tighter.

Instead of blinking until he reached a state of alertness like a normal person, he stood up, and eyes still closed, hands splayed out in front of him, blindly searched for the full-length mirror he knew was somewhere between the leather couch and the halogen lamp. Feeling like a birthday boy playing pin the tail on the donkey, Winston found the mirror, gently touched the glass with his fingertips, and slowly opened his eyes, his suspicions of what the donkey looked like confirmed in full.

The jackass staring back at him has the drum-weary, heat-darkened face and heart of a Joseph Conrad river native. A thin beard of nappy curlicues worms from his chin. Deep worry lines crease his forehead. His eyelids droop at half-mast. His thick tight lips hint at neither snarl nor smile. Winston’s is a face that could just as easily ask you for the time as for your money. So impenetrable, so full of East Harlem inscrutable cool is his expression that usually even he doesn’t know what he’s thinking, but this time it’s different. This time his thoughts are as plain to him as the cracked likeness in the mirror. He probed the bullet hole that had smashed his nose into a shock-white dimple of crushed glass and thought, Niggers will be niggers .

Moments before he’d been as unconscious as a white heavyweight and, like the boxer, a debit to his race, so he didn’t quite trust the healthy appearance of his reflection. He frantically patted himself down as if he were looking for a cigarette lighter. Finding no bullet holes, Winston thumped a fist on his chest. “Damn, a nigger still breathing like a motherfucker.”

Scattered about the small Brooklyn apartment were three other ghetto phenotypes, soulless young outlaws posed stock-still, mouths agape, eyes open, like figurines in a wax museum’s rogues’ gallery. The room was Zen silent, save for the sound of the tattered curtains flapping against the wall and the steady gurgle of an aquarium filter. The cocksure composure Winston had lost only minutes before, during the shooting, was returning fast. Cupping his testicles with his left hand, Winston strode over to the nearest body, a man he’d known only as Chilly Most from Flatbush. Chilly Most was slumped over the coffee table, his forehead resting midway between the baking powder and the metric scales. Five minutes ago Chilly Most was fiddling with the dram weights, waiting for the base cocaine to arrive, pontificating on the idiocy of the incumbent mayor guesting on a radio talk show, taking credit for the city’s falling crime rates. “The mayor think rhyming sound bites, community policing, and the death penalty going to stop fools from getting paid. Don’t tell me, a criminal, eight credits shy of an associate’s degree in criminology, that stupid slogan ‘Stop the heist, love Christ,’ a cop on a moped, and the gas chamber will make you think twice. Please, once you decide to commit the crime you’ve already had two thoughts. Sneak attack or frontal assault? Should I say ‘Run your shit, nigger,’ or the more traditional ‘Stick ’em up’? You put the gun barrel up a nigger’s nostril, you think, Damn, I shouldn’t put skylight in this motherfucker’s dome , then you say, ‘Fuck it.’ That’s two more thoughts, right there. Man, the death penalty make you kill more. You spark one fool, you going to smell the vapors, might as well not leave no witnesses. Any fool with a modicum of reasoning ability would draw that conclusion. And if the city is so safe, why the mayor still traveling with nine bodyguards? All this empty election bullshit — if crime is down it’s only because niggers killing other niggers. Like when food gets scarce, alligators eat other alligators, trimming the population.”

Chilly Most had indeed been trimmed. There was a golf-divot-sized cavity in the crown of his head and a thick layer of blood and junior-college brain tissue seeping over the charcoaled entry wound. Recoiling from the carnage, Winston sucked his teeth, popped a piece of gum in his mouth, and muttered, “Goddamn, I hate Brooklyn.”

To celebrate Winston’s eighth birthday, his father had taken him and his rowdy Brooklyn cousins on a day trip to Coney Island. Winston’s present was the entry fee to the annual hot-dog-eating contest. He won first place only to be disqualified for washing down thirty-three foot-long frankfurters with his father’s tepid beer. Instead of a year’s supply of all-beef wieners, he received a fifty-dollar citation for underage drinking.

The party moved to the sideshow tent, where Harry Hortensia, the Bearded Lady, let all the other children parade over her stomach as she lay on a bed of nails. When Hortensia spotted Winston out of the corner of her eye, trundling toward her like a baby hippopotamus, she shot up, rubbed his tummy for a cheap laugh, and gave the disgruntled boy his first kiss. While Salamander Sam, the Amphibian Boy, juggled flaming truncheons, Cousin Carl, imitating a talk-show host, ran up and down the bleachers, shoving an air microphone in the faces of strangers and asking, “Since the bearded lady kissed my cousin Winston … does that make him a faggot?” Then it was on to the Hellhole.

The Hellhole was an upright metal cylinder that by spinning at high speeds used centrifugal force to pin the riders like refrigerator magnets against its metal walls. The operator took Winston’s ticket and glanced at the roly-poly black boy and then at the rusty guide wires dangling overhead. “How much you weigh, son?”

“Not that much,” Winston answered, tears welling in his eyes. “Please, mister, it’s my birthday.” Against his better judgment the operator waved Winston through. “Make sure you stand away from the door. The rest of you little shits stand opposite Buddha Boy to balance things out.” Winston placed himself against the cold steel wall, trying to avoid the glare of his thrill-seeking cousins. “See, Winston, your fat ass going to slow the ride down.” There was a high-pitched whine and the Hellhole began to turn, gaining speed until the g-forces stuck even big Winston to the walls. All was forgiven, and his cousins shrieked and laughed, yelling for the operator to “drop the floor!” With a pained mechanical groan the floor began to recede, and for a moment Winston’s weight was not a hindrance: he was sticking to the wall like a swatted fly, just like the rest of the riders. Then, almost as soon as he allowed himself a smile, he began slowly sliding down the wall like a drop of paint. What, the ride was over? No, Cousin Julie was still horizontal, swimming her way around the cylinder. “Look at Winston,” she yelled, “he falling like a motherfucking dead bird!” The kids spun around and above, raining insults down on the helpless pudgy eight-year-old caught in the vortex of the metal eddy. Winston coughed up a ball of saliva and spat in the direction of his effeminate cousin Antoine, the loudest of his tormenters. The wad of mucus hung in the air for a tantalizing second, then snapped back, splattering on the bridge of his nose. Even his father laughed. Winston began to cry. The tears didn’t run down his chubby cheeks, but streamed backward, past his temples, canaling through the ridges of his ears. The sounds of ridicule from thirteen summers ago replaced the reverberations of gunplay in Winston’s ears. “Fuck Brooklyn, and fuck all you Brooklyn niggers!”