All the Right Stuff (14 page)

Sly was supposed to come over in the afternoon, after the regular lunch. Elijah had invited five of the seniors over: Sister Effie, Miss Watkins, Paris B, John Sunday, and Miss Fennell. We planned to have the collard greens soup with white beans, a little ground chicken and garlic instead of ham, and loaves of black bread that a friend of Elijah's from a German bakery had donated. I noticed that the stock he was using was extra clear. I mentioned that to him, and he said he had skimmed it twice.

“Yo, Elijah, you nervous about Sly coming over?”

He always sat closer to the stove end of the table, and I sat either on the side or near the door when we made soup. He looked up at me and then looked away for a moment.

“If you are about ideas,” he said, speaking slowly, “then you accept when someone challenges your ideas, but you don't want your ideas trampled. You want them to represent you well and you want to represent them well, too.”

In other words, he was nervous.

The seniors showed up first. I had cleared away the bowls from the regular soup serving, and Elijah put out a fresh tablecloth and his fancy silverware. For some reason, I thought that Sly wouldn't show up, that he would send somebody over and say that he couldn't make it.

He made it. D-Boy came in with him, looked around the dining room, and then told Sly that he would be outside with the car.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” Sly said as he sat down.

“Aren't you the young man that got that fancy car?” Sister Effie asked. “Blue or something like that?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I bet you that thing cost you a lot of money!”

“It did.” Sly smiled. I could see he was satisfied with himself.

Me and Elijah served the soup the way we always did and put the bread on a platter in the middle of the table. The conversation around the table started with the weather and what the president might do about social security, but the seniors were all peeping over at Sly. Everyone had heard about the police raid on his place and how cool he had been with it.

“This is a really nice place you have here, Mr. Jones,” Sly said. “I see you've either preserved or remodeled the original woodwork.”

“Most of it was in pretty good shape when I bought the place,” Elijah said. “There were a few pieces of molding that needed replacing, but so many buildings were being modernized that it was easy to get replacement molding.

“And you can call me Elijah, if you will.”

“And your soup is delicious,” Sly said. “There's a Spanish restaurant on Twenty-third Street that makes a good collard greens and bean soup, but you've got them beat.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“So, from what you were telling me the other day,” Sly said, “you were interested in me explaining why I didn't think much of the social contract. Would that be correct?”

“I'm open to anything you have to say, Mr. Norton,” Elijah said. “I was just wondering how my friends here would see your argument.”

“Well, sir, you have come to the conclusion that we are all involved in an agreement to help us get along with each other and help us prosper as a people,” Sly said. “And to my best understanding, the agreement you're talking about is really just an agreement to keep poor people poor, hurt people hurt, and people on the bottom of our society from minding that they are down there on the bottom. And if you don't mind me calling you Elijah, I would appreciate if you call me by my street name, Sly.”

“Sly? What kind of name is that for a grown man?” Miss Watkins asked.

“Ma'am, I can't help what people call me,” Sly said. “But right now, I would rather get into Mr.—Elijah's social contract theory. I think it's mostly about theory and not what's happening here in America. Am I right on that?”

“Well, we can certainly talk about what's happening in America and we can talk about the Constitution as a model, if you'd like,” Elijah said.

“Maybe I'm old-fashioned.” Sly leaned back in his chair. “But I have a little problem with a piece of paper that's being held up as a model for everybody when it overlooked the fact that my people were slaves. I guess that doesn't bother you?”

“Son, have you noticed that you're free now?” Miss Watkins leaned forward over the table. “Or are them chains you wearing around your neck holding you down?”

“Lord, lord, I got a hanging jury here.” Sly grinned.

“Sometimes a hanging jury will sharpen your argument,” Elijah said.

“Just before they spring the trapdoor,” Sly said. “But what do you say about those references to slavery in the Constitution, sir?”

“Well, they would have troubled me a great deal if I had been living in the 1700s or the first half of the 1800s,” Elijah said. “And they trouble me now, when I think of how the compromises were formed to allow the existence of slavery when the founding fathers were proclaiming freedom and equality. But the Constitution is not just a piece of paper that we can look back on and say it's wrong here and it's wrong there. It's really a model of an ideal way of living, the best we can come up with. That ideal changed and grew as the country changed and grew. It's what we have now to hold on to and preserve as our basic rights.”

“I think we can give Elijah an amen on that,” Paris B said.

“He got my amen when he walked in the door,” Sister Effie said, rolling her eyes at Sly.

“We got us a piece of paper, Elijah, and we hold it up for the world to see,” Sly said. He was looking over the tops of his glasses. “But we're holding it up for the theoretical world—not the real world. We can argue about it in college classrooms, and in bars if we want to—”

“Elijah don't drink,” John Sunday put in.

“Or dining rooms such as this fine establishment,” Sly said. “But in the real world, aren't half of the people in this country still trying to prove they are at least three-fifths of a human being? Aren't we still running through the streets looking for the same freedom that our great-grandfathers were searching for? If you ask me, I think we can use an underground railroad today to get us out of the ghetto.”

“Go on, boy, you can preach!” Miss Fennell said. “What church you belong to?”

“Right now I'm between churches, ma'am.”

“Church never hurt anybody, Mr. Sly,” Miss Fennell said. “You may be running around in the street, but God can still see your heart.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Umph!” This from Miss Fennell.

“Now, let me get this straight.” Paris B dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Elijah, you want us to hear what Mr. Sly here was saying, and you and him don't agree on it. Is that right?”

“I just wanted to know what you thought of his arguments,” Elijah said.

“And the debate is—as far as I'm concerned—does the social contract work for everybody, or does it keep certain people on top and the rest of us on the bottom?” Sly said.

“How are you on the bottom driving that big fancy car?” Sister Effie asked. “Or did you move the bottom somewhere from where you usually see it?”

“I'm not on the bottom because I don't follow the social contract,” Sly said. “The social contract, according to our friend Elijah over here, says that I'm supposed to give up my rights as an individual to do whatever it is I need to do to get over, in return for what society is willing to hand over to me. I think poor people have been giving up too much and not getting anything back in return.”

“Jesus said, ‘Do unto others the same as you would have others do unto you,'” Miss Fennell said. “Is that the same as the social contract?”

“It's pretty close,” Elijah said, “but I think Sly is talking more about our relationship with government, not the social contract in a strict sense. We hire our government—we don't have a contract with it.”

“It amounts to the same thing,” Sly said. “There are rules and laws that the people on top benefit from and the people on the bottom lose out on. If some banker gives you a shaky mortgage that puts money in his pocket and takes money out of your pocket, then that's all right. If a teenager takes money out of the banker's pocket, even a few dollars, he's going to jail. Do you think that's right?”

“They should both go to jail,” John Sunday said.

“Now we are agreeing,” Sly said.

“What's your answer to that, Elijah?” Paris B asked.

“I agree that the social contract that we have isn't perfect, and maybe it can never be perfect, but we need an ideal to live by,” Elijah said. He was gesturing with his finger and he looked a little more confident. “If you have an ideal, something to hold your fellow men to, something that you can ground in law, then you have something that's precious. And when somebody tries to violate your rights, or take away your civil liberties, you have the privilege of righteous anger, and the assurance that in a fair legal system, you can do something about it.”

“That's kind of like being married,” Sister Effie said. “At least you have some rights and know a little about what to expect. These young people just living together don't have much to hold on to.”

“I agree with that,” Elijah continued. “And the social contract gives us a basic way of getting along with each other and making life enjoyable. Without some kind of a social contract—some agreement to examine and hammer into the shape that we need to extend the human dream—we'd be living the same way the animals live, by instinct and cunning. And I don't think that's the best that man has to offer.”

“Now, what are we giving up again?” Sister Effie asked.

“The right to do anything we want to anybody we want,” I said. “So you don't take my ham sandwich and I don't take yours. That way, we both can get along.”

“Is this for old people or is it for everybody?” Sister Effie asked.

“Acting decent is for everybody,” Miss Fennell said. “That's what it sounds like to me.”

“But when you give up something, you need to get something back in return,” Sly said. “What I'm asking is whether the people right here, around this table, are getting enough in return.”

“In return for what?” John Sunday asked.

“I think he means for being decent and not taking somebody's sandwich,” Miss Fennell said. “I think if everybody just acts decently, that's enough for me.”

“Elijah, I was half ready for you today,” Sly said. “I thought I was ready, but I see I was only half ready. I'm saying to you that this—and by ‘this,' I mean the United States and the western world—is not the theoretical heaven you're painting it to be. And you're coming back to me by saying it doesn't have to be—the model is good enough. Am I right?”

“No, that model isn't good enough, sir,” Elijah said. “But maybe, just maybe, the fight to build that model is the best thing that we have.”

“Elijah got to get another amen behind that,” Paris B said.

Sly looked down at his soup plate and then back up at Elijah. The corners of his mouth were tight, and I was getting a little nervous.

“What you got to say now?” Sister Effie asked. “You getting quiet all of a sudden?”

“No, ma'am,” Sly said. “Just thinking. I have to ask Elijah one question, and I don't think he'll be able to answer it.”

“Yeah, he can,” Sister Effie said.

“Elijah, if this social contract you've been talking about is the salvation of the world,” Sly said, leaning back in his chair, “why are black people still on the bottom of the ladder? We were on the bottom when this country was formed, and we are still scratching around in the mud trying to keep our bodies and souls together. And before you answer, I would like to point out what Karl Marx said. That as long as one class of people holds the keys to who works and how work gets done, they also hold the key to who succeeds and who don't succeed. To me, this is what's happening today, the same way it happened in 1789. We were slaves then and we aren't much removed from that state today. How do you explain that? Or do you just see black people as being inferior?”

“I see the struggle that you're pointing out,” Elijah said. “I see the contending points, and I see that there's never a guarantee of fairness. But if you don't cope with the problem of the social contract, however it exists, you become a victim of whoever imposes their will on you.”

“Man, you are slippery,” Sly said. “You're placing all your bets on theory. I got to change the balance of this jury. Suppose all of you come over to my place next Wednesday for lunch.”

“You have a restaurant?” Paris B asked.

“I'm opening up a new business down the street,” Sly said. “It's not going to follow the social contract, and it's going to benefit a lot of neighborhood people. I'll cater lunch. Can you bring your people to my place, Elijah?”

“I think I'm obligated, sir,” Elijah said. He was sounding confident.