All the Right Stuff (16 page)

“So, Elijah.” Sly folded his hands in front of himself as if he was going to pray or something. “Here we have a small gathering of people who have had a range of experiences. Some of them have spent years in either jail or the prison of poverty. Johnnie Mae is living in a society that offers her little hope of getting ahead and little hope of finding her way into that door that is marked
AMERICAN DREAM
. And it seems to me that your social contract theory works against them. Not for them. And the greater good that you spoke about the other day scoots past these brothers and this sister and leaves them permanently in a kind of limbo. So what good is the social contract?”

“Sly, you want a simple answer, and the truth is that there isn't one,” Elijah said. “But let me break it down as much as I can to a few points.”

“Go on, Elijah,” Sister Effie said. She was leaning forward in her chair.

“The social contract protects these people as much as it does me, or anyone here,” he said. “It guarantees their fundamental rights—”

“The right to be poor and suffering in the richest country on earth?” Sly asked.

“The right to be poor and suffering in the richest country on earth, but free and with the hope of doing better,” Elijah said.

“So if there aren't any jobs out here—and there aren't,” Sly said, “then they are reduced to being semislaves. We don't have to worry about the horrors of slavery because they aren't official slaves, just sort of semislaves. And if the government, in its quest for the greater good, decided not to give Johnnie Mae food stamps, she might have to sell her body to whoever bid for it on the street to feed her children. But she would have hope while she did it, wouldn't she?”

“Individual stories don't change the whole,” Elijah said. “And it's the whole that holds the promise for these young people. They see this is a rich society, the same as you do. And they want to be part of it. But they've gone off course—”

“That's the truth,” Sister Effie said.

“So Binky went off course when he was trying to keep his nose clean and do the right thing, and now he's got a record,” Sly said. “Plus he had the humiliating experience that one out of every four young black men has, of being locked up like an animal and treated like an animal, in your social contract system. That could affect his whole life, and you say it's all right because of some vague sense of a whole system.”

“I didn't say it was all right,” Elijah said. “I said a system exists, and it's not perfect. It can't be perfect because it's put in place by human beings.”

“I don't see you suffering too much, Mr. Sly,” Sister Effie said.

“That's because I've turned my back on the social contract, sister,” Sly said. “Because I recognize it as what it is for a poor man—volunteer slavery.”

Sly could run his mouth. He had his arguments down, and they were good. And the people Sly had brought along sounded convincing. They didn't look like bad people. They were as ordinary looking as anybody you saw on the street.

The conversation kind of died down for a while, and then Paris B started talking about the food and everybody said how good it was. Sly said he was thinking of opening up a restaurant in Harlem.

Even though we had stopped discussing the social contract, it was on everybody's mind. I watched Binky and Johnnie Mae talking. They seemed to be having a good time. George was checking his watch, and I wondered if he was thinking about selling drugs or something.

“Honey, can I ask you a question?” Miss Watkins again. She had reached over and put her hand on George's arm. “When you were out there using them drugs, did you know they were messing your life up?”

“I did to an extent, but I didn't see no doomsday on the horizon. You know what I mean?” George said. “I could handle my weight, but what the justice system threw down on me snatched away my whole life.”

“According to Mr. Sly over here, drug people don't have to be thinking about going to jail or anything like that,” Sister Effie said. “Isn't that what you're saying, Mr. Sly?”

“He shouldn't have to, and he wouldn't have to if the social contract was fair,” Sly said. “But I don't see any fairness in condemning a young man for life because he's made a mistake that didn't hurt anybody but himself. And I don't see slamming Johnnie's children because of the ups and downs of her life.”

“Yo, Sly, I'm seeing something different here,” I said.

“Run it, youngblood!”

“Okay, so what I'm seeing is that the social contract is out there, and you either deal with it or you don't,” I said. “If you don't, then whatever happens,
happens
! It's as if you become a universal victim. Anything that comes your way can mess with you. It's almost as if you're in the middle of the street and there's a gang war going on. Bullets flying everywhere, and you're just standing in the middle of the street hoping nothing hits your butt.

“My man over there said he knew drugs were illegal, but he jumped into that scene and took his chances and lost,” I said. “Nestor hooked up into the same scene and yes, you can criticize it, throw rocks at it if you want, but he knew the program, so him saying that he's been kicked around is right, but did he really expect everyone to stand up and give him a hand for breaking the law?”

“You're strong, but you're wrong, my brother,” Sly said. “For Nestor to follow the social contract that Elijah is running, he has to have the same incentives, and the same opportunities as that dude down on Wall Street making millions of dollars a year and looking down his nose at people in this neighborhood. Or are you saying that people who live in Harlem are supposed to be getting their butts kicked?”

“You have to give him credit for being a man,” I said. “And along with that credit comes the duty to step up and get in the game. He may not have the best first step in the world, but he's still got to deal.”

“I'm dealing, my brother!” Nestor raised his voice.

“Oh, what you doing, baby?” Miss Watkins asked.

“And wasn't the social contract there for all of these young people?” Elijah asked. “Could they have used it to their advantage?”

“What contract he talking about, Sly?” Nestor asked. He had a piece of chicken in his hand and pointed toward Elijah with it.

“He's talking about a theoretical contract between the people and the government that is supposed to be for everybody's benefit,” Sly said. “Me and the brother at the other end of the table are disagreeing about whether the contract is really benefiting poor people or just keeping them poor.”

Sister Effie said we should have a vote, and I knew she was ready to vote for Elijah again. The thing that came to my mind right away was that if you thought you didn't have to deal with the social contract, whether it was good or bad, you were going to have a problem. In fact, you were going to be a victim of whatever came your way.

We were getting ready to vote again, but it never happened.

Paris B was explaining to Sly's friends how we had voted at the Soup Emporium and how Elijah had won, and I was mentally counting how many votes Sly and Elijah would get this time around, when the door crashed open.

BLAM!

Everybody jumped. We turned and looked toward the door and saw two big dudes come busting into the room.

“Where's Sly?” The guy was wearing dreads, a painted denim jacket, and black pants.

“We're not open until later this afternoon,” Sly said, standing. “Now if you'll just be so kind as to take your ass on out of here—”

“I ain't going nowhere, punk!” Dreads opened his jacket, and I could see he was cut. “I came here yesterday to get some goods, and your flunkies talking about all I can get is what I can carry in a damned garbage bag.”

“Yo, man, I asked you politely to catch the other side of the door!” Sly was pissed.

“I told you I ain't going nowhere until I get what I need,” Dreads said, coming toward where the table was set up. “I think you're just fronting for the white man, anyway. You trying to keep the
people
down and yourself on top!”

“Lord, don't shoot nobody!” Sister Effie called out.

I turned and saw D-Boy coming across the room with an Uzi in his hand, shoulder high, pointed right at Dreads. Dreads turned and saw the gun and threw both hands up.

What happened next was scary. I watched as Sly tried to hold down his temper. He was light enough so we could see him turn red and then go pale. Sister Effie was shaking her head and John Sunday was halfway crouched over, as if he was ready to dive under the table.

Dreads and his buddy left in a hurry. D-Boy put down the Uzi, grabbed his jacket, and left. I didn't know what he was going to do outside, but I was glad it wasn't aimed at me, whatever it was.

I felt excited on my way
to the Soup Emporium. I wanted to tell Elijah what I had figured out about the social contract, about how it was different for people who were active and those who weren't. He might have wanted to talk about Sly and D-Boy and the Uzi, and I promised myself I would hold off until he finished what he had to say about that scene.

On the block, there was an argument between some guys on a street-cleaning truck and a brother who didn't want them throwing dirt on his machine.

“You don't clean worth a damn, anyway,” the brother was saying. “All you doing is spreading the dirt around and kicking up germs in the air!”

“We'll give you a ticket for interfering with our job,” the street cleaner said.

Too much. I ducked into Elijah's, hung up my jacket, and started washing up.

“How you doing?” I asked.

“Still here,” Elijah said. “What kind of soup you thinking about making today?”

“You want to go with the collard greens and ham?”

“You buy collard greens?”

“No.”

“So what kind of soup you thinking about making today?”

I looked in the vegetable bin and saw we had potatoes, celery, carrots, and green peppers. In the refrigerator, we had frozen smoked neck bones, ham hocks, and chicken breasts, plus a bag of bones for stock.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked. Just then the doorbell rang. “I could go buy some collard greens if you wanted me to,” I said as I started toward the door.

It was a little after eight, and sometimes the guy who reads the meter came that early, and I was going over in my head what we needed for collard greens and ham soup. It wasn't the meter reader. It was Keisha.

“I called your mother and she gave me the address,” she said. She was holding CeCe on her hip.

“What's up?”

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I answered.

Keisha walked inside and started looking around the Soup Emporium. I motioned for her to go into the kitchen. Elijah looked up.

“Elijah, this is Keisha Marant,” I said. “She's the one I'm mentoring in basketball on Fridays.”

“How do you do?” Elijah stood up and nodded his head toward Keisha.

“Keisha, this is Elijah Jones, and he runs this soup emporium,” I went on. “We serve soup—real good soup to senior citizens, five days a week.”

“That's sweet,” Keisha said. “I like soup.”

“Mr. DuPree is just trying to decide what soup we're going to have today,” Elijah said.

“I can't stay,” Keisha said. “I just wanted to come by and tell you face-to-face that I won't be coming on Fridays anymore.”

“Why are you quitting now?” I asked. “I thought you needed to work on your shot.”

“It doesn't make that much difference,” Keisha said. CeCe was trying to put her fingers in Keisha's hair, and she put her daughter on the floor.

“Either they take me with the game I got or they won't take me. I can only be who I am.”

“What's the problem with your game?” Elijah asked.

“Keisha is quick and aggressive,” I said. “Which is good, but one coach said that if she had a better outside shot, she would be more effective.”

“Give the opposing player something else to think about,” Elijah said.

“You know basketball?” Keisha asked.

“Not really,” Elijah said. “But it does make sense, doesn't it?”

“A lot of things make sense,” Keisha said. “But I'm not going to do them all.”

“Besides making soup, we also spend a lot of time discussing the social contract,” Elijah said. “Have you ever spoken to Paul about that?”

“He tried to run it past me,” Keisha said. “I don't think he knows too much about it.”

“Yo, Keisha! Lighten up! I know more about it than you do!” I said.

“Who cares?” Keisha said. CeCe had put her arms around her mother's legs, and Keisha was rubbing the little girl's back. “Look, I've got to split. I think I can cop a job for the rest of the summer, and I can definitely use the money.”