“What a load of crap,” I said, interrupting McJones with a schoolboy raise of the hand.
“Like you wouldn’t rather be born here than in Africa?” C _ _ _ n _ _ w _ _ _ snapped back with a streetwise inflection that belied his curriculum vitae and his V-neck sweater.
“What, here?” I pointed at the floor. “Like in Dickens?”
“Well, maybe not a hellhole like Dickens,” McJones said, giving the other guests a “Don’t even bother, I got this” glance. “Nobody wants to live here, but you can’t even pretend to tell me that you’d rather be born in Africa than anywhere else in America.”
You’d rather be here than in Africa. The trump card all narrow-minded nativists play. If you put a cupcake to my head, of course, I’d rather be here than any place in Africa, though I hear Johannesburg ain’t that bad and the surf on the Cape Verdean beaches is incredible. However, I’m not so selfish as to believe that my relative happiness, including, but not limited to, twenty-four-hour access to chili burgers, Blu-ray, and Aeron office chairs is worth generations of suffering. I seriously doubt that some slave ship ancestor, in those idle moments between being raped and beaten, was standing knee-deep in their own feces rationalizing that, in the end, the generations of murder, unbearable pain and suffering, mental anguish, and rampant disease will all be worth it because someday my great-great-great-great-grandson will have Wi-Fi, no matter how slow and intermittent the signal is.
I said nothing and let King Cuz do my fighting for me. In twenty years, I’d never heard him say anything in a meeting more substantive than acknowledging the fact that the iced tea could use more sugar, but there he was, facing off with a man with four advanced degrees who spoke ten languages, none of them black except French.
“Nigger, I refuse to let you impugn Dickens like that!” Cuz said sharply, standing up and pointing a freshly manicured nail at McJones. “This is a city, not a hellhole!”
Impugn? Maybe twenty years of Dum Dum Donuts rhetoric hadn’t all gone to waste. To his credit, McJones, despite Cuz’s tone and size, didn’t back down. “I may have misspoken. But I must take exception to your implication that Dickens is a city, when it’s clearly a locale, nothing more than an American shantytown. A post-black, post-racial, post-soul flashback, if you will, to a time of romanticized black ignorance…”
“Hey, look, fool, save that post-soul, post-black bullshit for somebody who gives a fuck, ’cause all I know is that I’m pre-black. Dickens born and raised. Homo sapiens OG Crip from the goddamn primordial giddy-up, nigger.”
King Cuz’s little soliloquy seemed to impress Ms. R _ _ _, because she uncrossed her ankles, opened her legs just enough to show off some right-wing inner thigh, and then tapped me on the shoulder.
“That big motherfucker play any football?”
“A little running back in high school.”
“Мои трусики мокрые,” she said in lip-licking Russian.
I’m no linguist, but my best guess is that it meant Cuz could penetrate her secondary anytime he wanted. The old veterano strode into the middle of the donut shop, the rubber soles of his canvas sneakers squeaking with every step. “This, you proudly uncool motherfucker, this is Dickens,” and to some beat that only he could hear, he broke into the complex gangster soft shoe known as the Crip Walk. Never turning his back to the crowd, he pivoted on the balls and heels of his feet. His knees together and his hands free, he skipped around the room in tight concentric circles that collapsed upon themselves as quickly as they expanded. It was as if the floor was heated, and too hot for him to stop in one spot for even a second. King Cuz was debating with McJones the best way he knew how.
Want some, get some, bad enough, take some …
Velis aliquam, acquīris aliquam, canīnus satis, capīs aliquam.
As the sparse crowd gathered around the two foes, I did what I’d come to do. I removed my daddy’s picture from the wall and tucked it under my arm. Segregating the city with his photo up would be like having sex in the room next to your parents’ bedroom. Not being able to concentrate. Not being able to be as loud as you wanted to be. I quietly dipped out as King Cuz was teaching McJones, _ _ _ l C _ _ _ y, _ _ _ _ n P _ _ _ _ _, and a dreamy-eyed _ o n d _ _ _ _ z z _ _ _ _ e the Crip Walk. And they were picking it up like pros. Strutting around like old-school bangers. It figures, because passed down from the Masai and stolen from the Cherokee war dances you see on old Westerns, the C-Walk is an ancient warrior dance. One that designates its baggy-pants danseur noble as target. It’s a dance that says, “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” And any nigger in the limelight, even those conservative shills, knows what it’s like to have the bull’s-eye placed squarely on your back.
I was untying my horse when Foy placed a father-figure arm around my shoulder. There was an uptight and nervous look to his goatee that I’d never seen before. His neck was caked with dirt, and a deep stench of body odor wafted over me.
“You riding off into the sunset, Sellout?”
“I am.”
“Long day.”
“That crap about being better off under slavery is too much even for you, isn’t it, Foy?”
“At least McJones cares.”
“Come on, he cares about black people like a seven-footer cares about basketball. He has to care because what else would he be good at.”
Knowing I was never coming back to the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals, Foy gave me the same sorrowful look the missionaries must’ve given the jungle heathen. A look that said, It doesn’t matter if you’re too stupid to understand God’s love. He loves you regardless, just hand over the women, the distance runners, and the natural resources.
“You’re not worried about that all-white school?”
“Naw, white kids need learnin’, too.”
“But white kids aren’t going to buy my books. Speaking of which—” Foy handed me a copy of Tom Soarer, then signed it without me asking him to.
“Foy, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“I know it’s probably urban myth, but is it true that you own the really racist Little Rascals movies? Because if you do, I can make you an offer.”