Reminds me of the first chapter -- "Battle Royal" -- of _Invisible Man_ by Ralph Ellison:
***** Then the M.C called to us, "Come on up here boys and get your money."
We ran forward to where the men laughed and talked in their chairs, waiting. Everyone seemed friendly now.
"There it is on the rug," the man said. I saw the rug covered with coins of all dimensions and a few crumpled bills. But what excited me, scattered here and there, were the gold pieces.
"Boys, it's all yours," the man said. "You get all you grab."
"That's right, Sambo," a blond man said, winking at me confidentially.
I trembled with excitement, forgetting my pain. I would get the gold and the bills, I thought. I would use both hands. I would throw my body against the boys nearest me to block them from the gold.
"Get down around the rug now," the man commanded, "and don't anyone touch it until I give the signal."
"This ought to be good," I heard.
As told, we got around the square rug on our knees. Slowly the man raised his freckled hand as we followed it upward with our eyes.
I heard, "These n-words look like they're about to pray!"
"Ready," the man said. "Go!"
I lunged for a yellow coin lying on the blue design of the carpet, touching it and sending a surprised shriek to join those rising around me. I tried frantically to remove my hand but could not let go. A hot, violent force tore through my body, shaking me like a wet rat. The rug was electrified. The hair bristled up on my head as I shook myself free. My muscles jumped, my nerves jangled, writhed. But I saw that this was not stopping the other boys. Laughing in fear and embarrassment, some were holding back and scooping up the coins knocked off by the painful contortions of the others. The men roared above us as we struggled.
"Pick it up, goddamnit, pick it up!" someone called like a bass-voiced parrot. "Go on, get it!"
I crawled rapidly around the floor, picking up the coins, trying to avoid the coppers and to get greenbacks and the gold. Ignoring the shock by laughing, as I brushed the coins off quickly, I discovered that I could contain the electricity -- a contradiction, but it works. Then the men began to push us onto the rug. Laughing embarrassedly, we struggled out of their hands and kept after the coins. We were all wet and slippery and hard to hold. Suddenly I saw a boy lifted into the air, glistening with sweat like a circus seal, and dropped, his wet back landing flush upon the charged rug, heard him yell and saw him literally dance upon his back, his elbows beating a frenzied tattoo upon the floor, his muscles twitching like the flesh of a horse stung by many flies. When he finally rolled off, his face was gray and no one stopped him when he ran from the floor amid booming laughter.
"Get the money," the M.C. called. "That's good hard American cash!"
And we snatched and grabbed, snatched and grabbed. I was careful not to come too close to the rug now, and when I felt the hot whiskey breath descend upon me like a cloud of foul air I reached out and grabbed the leg of a chair. It was occupied and I held on desperately.
"Leggo, n-word! Leggo!"
The huge face wavered down to mine as he tried to push me free. But my body was slippery and he was too drunk. It was Mr. Colcord, who owned a chain of movie houses and "entertainment palaces." Each time he grabbed me I slipped out of his hands. It became a real struggle. I feared the rug more than I did the drunk, so I held on, surprising myself for a moment by trying to topple _him_ upon the rug. It was such an enormous idea that I found myself actually carrying it out. I tried not to be obvious, yet when I grabbed his leg, trying to tumble him out of the chair, he raised up roaring with laughter, and looking at me with soberness dead in the eye, kicked me viciously in the chest. The chair leg flew out of my hand and I felt myself going and rolled. It was as though I had rolled through a bed of hot coals. It seemed a whole century would pass before I would roll free, a century in which I was seared through the deepest levels of my body to the fearful breath within me and the breath seared and heated to the point of explosion. It'll all be over in a flash, I thought as I rolled clear. It'll all be over in a flash.
But not yet, the men on the other side were waiting, red faces swollen as though from apoplexy as they bent forward in their chairs. Seeing their fingers coming toward me I rolled away as a fumbled football rolls off the receiver's fingertips, back into the coals. That time I luckily sent the rug sliding out of place and heard the coins ringing against the floor and the boys scuffling to pick them up and the M.C. calling, "All right, boys, that's all. Go get dressed and get your money."
I was limp as a dish rag. My back felt as though it had been beaten with wires. *****
The narrator finds out later that "the gold pieces" he "had scrambled for were brass pocket tokens advertising a certain make of automobile."
The rich white men who enjoyed the evening's entertainment, however, do give the narrator (who at this point still sees himself as "a potential Booker T. Washington") a "gleaming calfskin brief case" and "a scholarship to the state college for Negroes." The narrator is overjoyed, but that night he has a dream -- a dream about his stolid peasant grandfather:
***** Then later he told me to open my brief case and read what was inside and I did, finding an official envelope stamped with the state seal; and inside the envelope I found another and another, endlessly, and I thought I would fall of weariness. "Them's years," he said. "Now open that one." And I did and in it I found an engraved document containing a short message in letters of gold. "Read it," my grandfather said. "Out loud!"
"To Whom It May Concern," I intoned. "Keep This N-word-Boy Running."
I awoke with the old man's laughter ringing in my ears. *****
Yoshie