“If you puke in my car, I will beat’cha ass, and I don’t care who yo’ daddy is, whiteboy. Don’t nobody come puking on Goober! Nossuh! And you gonna be cleanin’ it, son, not me! Nuh-uh. Goober don’t clean up no whiteboy puke. No, he do not!”
The cop car drove slowly through Ann Arbor. Goober paused his rant only when he saw a paira college-age girls stumbling drunk as turtles into they house. “Hmmm-hmm…” Goober made a noise like he disapproved of them but also enjoyed looking at ’em. The girls was giggling all over each other. They mighta been at the party Jimmy was just at, the one at the team house. Jimmy couldn’t tell cuz he didn’t really remember faces that well, plus it was dark and the world was blurry.
Blurry and wobbly. That’s what’s wrong with the world today. It’s both blurry and wobbly. President Clinton oughta fix that.
“Offisshuh, I got… don’t… mah team,” Jimmy said. “The foooootball.” He was having trouble putting those words together into a sentence. But he felt sure the gist was coming across.
“You on the football team? Oh… Jimmy Spokes, yeah.” Officer Goober said. He didn’t follow the local team as closely as some, but he’d heard that name. He connected it now to the name James Spokes on the ID. “You is Jimmy Spokes. Coach Marshall gonna pop a gasket if I tell him you was drunken-scootin’ around town in the middle of the night, son. Prolly lookin’ for females to grope. Nossuh! Nuh-uh!”
“I waaaant… a cake,” Jimmy said emphatically. “A shocolate… gannnnash and, uh… German-“
“A cake? Boy, you crazy!” Officer Goober said as he pulled into the parking lot of the police precinct. “Crazy-ass whiteboy, ain’t no cake! No cake here!” He chuckled. The click-blink-click-blink of the turn signal seemed impossibly loud to Jimmy. It sounded like a rave.
When he parked and opened up the rear door of the cop car, Officer Goober wrinkled his nose yet again — he did that a lot, it seemed — and he grunted.
“Don’ arreshhh me.”
“You not under arrest, son. Don’t fight me and you won’t be in no trouble. You can sleep it off in the drunk tank,” Goober said. “I won’t tell yo’ coach if you just go sleep it off. And don’t puke on me. I will not hesitate to beat a whiteboy ass if he puke on me, nosirr-” He kept going, possibly having forgotten he already went off on this topic, as Jimmy hefted himself outta the cop car and lurched after him towards the precinct. “Goober do not play that way, nuh-uh. Beat’cha ass any day of the week and twice on Sundays, ya hear?! You a big’un too, son, you can take a beating. Swear to God, I will put that to the test, and yo’ mama cam come watch if she wanna. I’ll take her out fo’ tea and crumpets and a nigga dick after, sure will-“
The precinct was a maze of little rooms and doors that needed to be unlocked, fluorescent lights glaring and turning Jimmy’s joyous drunkenness into a splitting headache. Jimmy turned ruddy and pale. He was suddenly very worried he’d puke on Goober, not cuz he felt like it but cuz Goober was still going on about the terrible things he’d do to any whiteboy who puked on him.
“-and I don’t care if the city gin up a lynch mob, swear to God! No football team got nothing — I arrested a Kuwaiti nigga, billionaire sunna bitch, he ain’t shook me! Nossuh, son! No prince gonna grab a waitress in Goober’s town, nuh-uh! Bet’cha mama’s left titty on that!”