All the Right Stuff (5 page)

“So the people from England just decided that their contract was going to be the bomb and they forced it on everybody else?”

“There were really a number of social contracts going on at the same time,” Elijah said. “And that's always the case, Paul. There was the one contract for the well-off white men; there was one for white women; there was one for Native Americans and another for people from Africa. But the one with the most weight was the one for white men, because that gave them all the advantages they thought were their due, and that was the best way for their society to get on with their business.”

“Yo, Elijah, I think you just messed up my whole day!”

“Now you're learning, boy. Put those greens in that big pot and then reach under the cupboard there and get a fourteen-ounce can of tomatoes and add that to the pot,” Elijah said. “That's to get some acid on the greens. Some people put vinegar in their greens, but you don't want vinegar in your soup, do you?”

I opened the can and put the tomatoes in one of Elijah's huge pots. He had finished cutting up the ham he wanted—it looked like about a half pound—and he added that to the tomatoes.

“You want me to stir it?” I asked.

“No, Mr. DuPree, I think you're stirred up enough for one day. It'll let you know when it's ready for stirring,” Elijah said.

“Okay now, where were we? Oh, yes, it's around 1775, and the British men are getting restless. They're thinking that they're under Great Britain's thumb, and they're tired of it.”

“1775?”

“That's right, and you know what happened next?”

“The Revolutionary War,” I said.

“All those people standing up in Philadelphia and Boston and New York talking about how they needed to be free,” Elijah said. “It makes your head spin and your heart light just to read their speeches or hear somebody recite them. They were forging themselves a new social contract. A lot of the stuff in the new contract was the same as the old deal, but a few things were different. They were going to make sure that everybody would have some kind of voice in the government. What's more, the people of this country were going to elect their ruler. What's that called?”

“A democracy,” I said.

“No, sir, that's called a lie,” Elijah said. “Women couldn't vote, children couldn't vote, and black people couldn't vote. So what they were really saying was that the white men in this country were going to rule it.”

“So the social contract is about getting over on everybody else,” I said. “I know you're going to say that's wrong, because that's your nature, but that's the way I see it.”

“That's the way a lot of people see it,” Elijah said. “They think that there can't really be a social contract because somewhere along the way, somebody is being forced to accept it. But people over the years who have been thinking about this idea of a social contract think we can do a lot better than just ‘getting over.' They break it down to the two points we've been discussing all along. And when you think about them, they make a lot of good sense. If you learn these two points, then you got something going for yourself.”

“So what are they?” I asked.

“The first point is that you can do anything your mind can dream up and your body can perform,” Elijah said. “Just anything in the world.”

“We're getting back to the ham sandwich?”

“That we are,” Elijah said, nodding slightly. “And the second point is that you give up that right to do anything you want because you've figured out that there's a better way for society to function.”

“I can go for it. But you just ran down to me that the people who came to America back in the day messed over the people already living here,” I said. “And I know all about slavery, and I know no brothers from Africa signed a contract saying they didn't want to be free.”

“It must be the aroma from the collard greens,” Elijah said, “because your thinking is getting clearer and clearer.”

“Yo, and let me run down something else,” I said. “Say you have a thousand dudes living on an island, right?”

“Go on,” Elijah said.

“And they're happy with their little social contract, and all of them are getting the same amount of food to eat, and the same television channels, and the same amount of minutes on their cell phones, okay?”

“Go on, Mr. DuPree.”

“I think there would still be a problem,” I said. “Because sooner or later one of those people would figure out that he could live a little better than the others if he could find a way to take somebody else's food or snatch up their cell phone minutes. That's the way people are!”

“That's true, Mr. DuPree,” Elijah said. “So we need to watch each other very closely. When we elect a government, we need to watch that government very closely and know exactly how it's supposed to be working. You don't enter a contract with your eyes closed.”

“I don't know if this social contract business is good or bad,” I said.

“You'll make up your mind sooner or later,” Elijah said. “Sooner or later.”

I knew I would if he had anything to do with it.

We served the soup, and I listened as Miss Watkins told about how her husband had been wounded in the Second World War and Mr. Pickens said he had been drafted to go to Korea but got out of it because he had a bad eye.

“You should have served your country,” Miss Watkins said. “And you should have been proud to do it!”

Miss Watkins was a feisty old lady and I liked her. In fact, I liked most of the seniors who came to Elijah's. What I thought was that they liked Elijah and felt good being there. I was feeling good about being there myself.

I met up with Terrell
and we walked down to Morningside Park to play some ball. We got into a few games and got creamed. Terrell's game was never that good, but somehow he was getting worse. He was almost as tall as me, and I thought he was getting out of shape.

“We should have won that last game,” Terrell said as we turned up my block.

“We would have won if you passed the ball once in a while,” I said. “You were shooting with two and three guys hanging on your arm.”

“Yo, man, I was in the zone!”

“In the zone?” I watched as Terrell went up for an imaginary jump shot. “You weren't even in the right zip code!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Terrell said. “I had to hurry my shots because you weren't getting any rebounds.”

“I don't even see how that works together,” I said, wondering how my rebounding made him hurry his shots.

“Hey, check this out!” Terrell lowered his voice. “Ain't that D-Boy across the street?”

I looked across the street and saw D-Boy sitting on a stoop. He had his do-rag down across his forehead, almost to his shades. I looked at my side of the street and saw Sly standing on my stoop.

Everybody knew Sly and nobody knew Sly. He was around the hood a lot and rode in a fantastic machine, and D-Boy was his bodyguard. Some people thought he was into drugs and some said he was part of the black mafia. Everybody gave the dude his propers and nobody moved up on him too quick. He had known my father and had sent flowers to the funeral.

“Don't say nothing stupid,” I said to Terrell.

“I'm not,” Terrell said, voice low, eyes getting big. “I heard that D-Boy will shoot you if you even look hard at Sly.”

We had reached my stoop, and I asked Terrell if he wanted to come in.

“No, I got to pick up my sister from church,” he answered.

“She goes to church in the evenings?” I asked.

“The building fund has a meeting,” he said. “I'll call you later.”

Terrell lived on the hill. I watched him walk to the corner, and then I started walking into my building.

“Hey, Paul, what you doing with your young self?” Sly was about six feet two, well built, and wore frameless glasses on the end of his nose.

“Same old, same old,” I said.

“You need to make twenty-five dollars in a hurry?” Sly asked. He had a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

“No.”

“Why, you got rich since the last time I saw you?” Sly looked at me sideways.

“I got a job,” I said. “It gets me over.”

“Where you working?”

“At a soup kitchen,” I said. “Well, sort of a soup kitchen. This guy makes soup every day for senior citizens.”

“You talking about Elijah Jones's place on 144th Street, across from the school?” Sly asked.

“Yeah, you know him?”

“Yeah, I know him,” Sly said. “Old man, got that old man thing going on. You know, catch some holiness before he passes on. What do they say these days? Getting right before the sunset.”

“He's okay,” I said.

“He's talking to you about Jesus and getting saved?” Sly asked.

“No, about something called the social contract,” I said.

“The social contract?” Sly's eyes kept shifting up and down the street. “Yeah, yeah, I'm hip to that scene.”

“No, this isn't like a real contract—” I started.

“It's an agreement between people to surrender some of their rights so that they can live in peace with one another,” Sly said. “That's what he told you?”

“You know about the social contract?”

“I don't go around in a cap and gown, so I'm supposed to be stupid or something?” Sly asked.

“I didn't say that,” I said.

“I studied the social contract at Grambling,” Sly said. “But when I see young brothers like you scared to make twenty-five dollars, I can tell it's not working. The social contract has you running scared, right?”

“No.” I could feel my heart beating faster.

“Yeah, it does,” Sly said. “That's what it's supposed to do. Set up a bunch of rules so that some people can stay on top and be comfortable while people like you and me can learn to get comfortable on the bottom. Elijah's making the bottom feel good, but it's still the bottom.”

“I see you've been talking to him,” I said.

“I used to rap to him some when I was your age,” Sly said. “Liked him, too. He taught history in the public school system and did odd jobs to make enough money to buy a little real estate. I saw how he and a whole lot of people like him went around smiling and telling people how they're blessed.”

“I don't think he's that religious,” I said.

“Yeah, he is.” Sly checked his watch. “You scratch a do-gooder and they got a religious streak somewhere in them. So you want to make the twenty-five dollars or not?”

“What do I have to do?”

“First, wipe the scared look off your face,” Sly said, smiling. “The cops see a black teenager walking down the street looking scared, they're liable to arrest you on the spot. Then go to the corner store, buy a bottle of soda, and go up to Broadhurst Avenue and give it to the first brother you see looks like he can use a cold drink. Then come back here and tell me what he said when you gave him the soda.”

“That's all?”

“That's all,” Sly said.

Sly went into his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to me. I was scared to take it and scared not to take it. I wanted to look over at D-Boy to see what he was doing, but I didn't want Sly to see me doing it.

Finally I took the money, then I took a deep breath and walked to the corner store. I could feel Sly's eyes following me, and I couldn't even walk cool. I bought the soda, made sure it was cold, then took it up the hill.

Broadhurst was crowded, but I saw a dude who looked kind of down and out, and I walked up to him.

“Yo, you want a soda?”

He took the soda and just looked at me.

“So, what you got to say?” I asked him as he twisted the cap off the soda.

He took a long, slow drink, then gave me a mean look. “I ain't saying nothing,” he said. “I didn't ask you for no soda.”

“Okay.” I shrugged and turned.

“Yo, pretty boy!”

I turned back.

“Go to hell!” he said.

I went on back down the hill and saw that Sly was still on the stoop. All the way down the hill, I was looking for plainclothes cops. I was thinking that me taking that soda up the hill might have been a signal that the coast was clear or something or some big drug deal was going to go down.

When I got to the stoop, I handed Sly back his change.

“What did he say?” Sly asked.

“First he said he didn't ask me for a soda so he didn't have to say nothing,” I said. “Then he thought about it and said, ‘Go to hell!'”

“What he was saying was that if you got money, you can look down on folks and act like you're doing them a favor,” Sly said. “But that brother knew that when you left, he still was going to be standing there and still didn't have anything going on. And he wasn't buying into your social contract, either. He just wanted to let you know that. Here's your twenty-five dollars.”