Nigger by Dick Gregory & Robert Lipsyte

Author:Dick Gregory & Robert Lipsyte
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

• • •

“Dick, wake up now, the movie’s over.”

“Wasn’t sleeping, baby.” I’m not about to tell her her I was starring in a little movie of my own.

I start the car and slip it into gear and the tires just whine. We don’t move. First, second, reverse, first again. We’re stuck in the snow. I get out of the car and walk around it. The back tires have spun themselves deep into the ice and slush. A lot of other cars at the drive-in are stuck, too. Seven white boys, mean-looking cats in jeans and boots and black leather jackets with a million zippers, are pushing the cars out, I watch them. They swagger up to a car whose tires are spinning and one of them says, “Okay, mister, you’re next. Five bucks.” They get their five, and they all get around the car and push it out toward the gate. Then they turn to another car. If the first car gets stuck again before it gets out on the highway, the seven cats will push it again—for another five. I don’t even have a dime. I get back into the car.

“We’re hungry,” say the little kids in the back. I have to get them home quick. The tires whine some more.

“Okay, mister, you’re next. Five bucks.”

“Thanks anyway,” I say, “I think I can get it out myself.”

The windshield is steamed up, and the tires spin and whine some more.

“It’s getting awfully cold, Dick,” says Maryann’s mother. “Why don’t you let those boys push us out?”

“I regard this as a personal challenge, man over the forces of nature,” I tell her.

“We hungry,” say the kids.

“Man must triumph over nature. I must get this car out myself or perish in the attempt,” I say.

“But it’s only snow,” says Maryann’s mother.

“Yeah, but it’s white snow,” I say. A very good line, but no one laughs. The tires keep spinning.

“Well, you’re ruining the tires,” says Maryann’s mother, angry now.

Then I get out of the car, and I walk over to the seven white cats with all their zippers. I might as well be a fool out here than in that car. I just look at them, and I say: “How in the world can you start out right and end up wrong? I’m not trying to steal anything and I’m not trying to do anything shady, but this is what happened. . . .”

And they stand there quietly in the snow, around me in a circle, and people are shouting and honking their horns and waving money. I explain the whole thing to them, I tell them the whole story about my girl’s car and her mother and the gasoline and the Scotch and the hot dogs and dollar day, and they look at each other and nod their heads and the biggest of those cats says: “Get back in your car, mister, and roll down your windows so we can get a grip.”

And I am almost crying as they are

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