"Lord have mercy, last time that happened I ended up in the Cook County jail for a nice long vacation. A tribute to your sharp eyes, young man, and no hard feelings," holding out a ten-dollar banknote.
* * * * * * * * * *
Pynchon sometimes leaves out pertinent detail because he's so mired in the subtext of what he's writing so it's possible that Miles bet on the game. But I don't think so. I'm sure the man is simply offering Miles ten bucks so that Miles doesn't call the cops on what is obviously a scam and not an African divinatory ritual at all. That seems pretty self-explanatory but what else am I going to write about?! A five paragraph digression on how Cook's Country and/or America's Test Kitchen (were these two different shows? The same show? What was going on here?!) were never the same once Christopher "Slenderman" Kimball left to do his own cooking show (which wasn't worth watching either. They truly needed each other)?
Some people might be thinking, "Why would you discuss that PBS show? The guy mentioned 'Cook County', not 'Cook's Country'?" And I can only answer that by mentioning this: when I was doing Lyle's Study Guide for the Literal Interpretation of The Bible for Dumb-Dumbs, I wrote extensively about the television show Lost simply because J.J. Abrams wrote and produced Lost and there was a character in Genesis named Abram.
I suppose I could also write about race relations in America and point out how subservient, apologetic, and polite this man feels he needs to be to a teenaged white boy in an effort to avoid violence and persecution from law enforcement. This Black man points out that for running this game that probably just gets white con men's tables kicked over and then chased away from the neighborhood, he wound up in jail for a long stretch. Then he compliments the kid who could get him in some serious trouble, apologizes ("no hard feelings" is an apology, right?), and then offers him some hush money. A white guy in this situation would probably have just laughed and/or sneered at Miles and told him to get lost.
I've found that people who think minorities expect certain entitlements in our country are already taking for granted those entitlements themselves. Having spent a lot of time in 7-Eleven stores late at night for "business reasons", here's a race-based observation I've made that probably explains what I mean and can probably be expounded upon: white people will come in and ask about day old doughnuts and if they can have them for free while Black people will come in and ask about day old doughnuts at a discount.
People who deny there are two different Americas (at least two!) depending on your race simply aren't observing the world. Their eyes are turned inward, and they just don't care to spend any brain power thinking about anything that doesn't involve and/or benefit themselves. They think people speaking up about systemic bias and oppression are causing trouble because they can't see how the status quo causes so much trouble for people not like them.
But seriously, Christopher Kimball was totally Slenderman, right?
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