All the Right Stuff (9 page)

“Yeah, once I got the Section Eight papers filled out like you told me,” John Sunday said. “You don't want no oysters?”

“Got some,” Elijah said.

“Got them shucked and in a tub?” John Sunday said.

“Can't spend all day shucking oysters, John,” Elijah answered.

“Can't play no checkers, can't cook, just what are you good for, anyway?”

“I'm good for a lot of things,” Elijah said. “And you know I'm experimenting with your mullet stew. I'm going to get it, and when I do, I'm going to invite you up to dinner. I'm not going to say a thing, either. I'm just going to sit back and watch you eat it. Then I'm going to whip out my ruler and measure the smile spreading across your face.”

“Oysters in a tub?” John Sunday said. “I don't think so, 'Lijah.”

“You don't have your scrapbook with you, do you?” Elijah said. “Mr. DuPree here hasn't seen anything like your scrapbook.”

The shelf behind John Sunday was filled with sauces in bottles, containers of fish batter, and jars of seasoned salts. Under some bottles of tartar sauce was a big notebook. He pulled it out and handed it to me.

I thought it was going to be something on religion, but it wasn't. He had bought a regular composition book and filled it with page after page of magazine and newspaper articles about Paris Hilton. I looked through the scrapbook. There were pictures of Paris Hilton when she was a little girl, pictures of her with her family, and some pictures of her just about naked.

“I guess you like Paris Hilton,” I said.

“I don't hate her, but I'm studying on her,” John Sunday said. “I figure if I can find out what makes that little girl so famous, I will be the smartest man in the world. Just like some people study on butterflies or different types of roses, I study up on Paris Hilton. She gets on television and don't do much of nothing and everybody is falling all over her. But between me and Elijah, we will figure it out. Won't we, 'Lijah?”

“That we will, John Sunday,” Elijah said. “That we will.”

Elijah stood up and shook John Sunday's hand, and then the two men put their arms around each other for a few seconds before they said good-bye.

Me and Elijah started walking back uptown.
All the way, he was showing me places he had lived or worked or where famous people had lived.

“Bumpy Johnson used to live over on this side of the street,” he said, standing in front of a stand selling caps and cell phone chargers, “and Dutch Schultz used to have his office over on that side. You know who they were?”

“Guys dealing with the social contract?”

“Nope, hoodlums,” Elijah said. “Bumpy was black and Dutch was white and they were both tough guys. That's when everybody was fighting over who was going to control the illegal gambling in Harlem.”

“Who won?”

“The State of New York. They kicked out the hoodlums and took over the betting themselves,” Elijah said. “Only now they call it the lottery.”

“Things are changing now,” I said. “They're building up this neighborhood really fast.”

“Harlem
is
changing,” he said. “But Harlem has always been about change. We don't stand still up here. Only the image that people carry around with them stays in the same place.”

Elijah is a slow talker but a pretty fast walker, and it took us twenty minutes to reach the Soup Emporium. When we got there, Elijah laid out the fish on the table and looked them over.

“Can John Sunday really cook?” I asked him.

“Yes, he can cook,” Elijah said. “There's not much to cooking, Mr. DuPree. Just buy the best food you can afford and don't mess it up too much. People mess up their food by trying to do too much with it.

“He can play some checkers, too,” Elijah went on. “He told you about his little jobs, but he didn't tell you nothing about how he used to hustle checkers over in Mount Morris Park—that's the one they renamed Marcus Garvey Park when they didn't have nothing better to do. Sometimes he used to go down to Greenwich Village and hustle checkers, but they got wise to him quick down there. He still beats them, but he loves to play the dumb old white boy who beats the city slicker.”

“I got to go now,” I said. “We have a game set up against some preppy dudes from Long Island who think they can play ball. I have to go down to Fourth Street and tear them up so bad, their arms will hurt when they even think of playing ball. That'll give you another day to give me an answer to my next question.”

“What question will that be?” Elijah asked. He had already put water in one of the big pots to start cooking the fish.

“The question is, Why can't I live the way I've been living—not stealing anybody's ham sandwiches or anything like that—and not worry about your social contract?” I said. “You know some people who have heard of it, but I know a lot more who haven't, and they seem to be doing all right.”

“
My
social contract?” Elijah shook his head. “Mr. DuPree, I have changed the soup I planned to have tomorrow so I could spend the afternoon answering your question. And now I have to spend the rest of my evening getting a new soup ready when I could be watching television with my feet up, and you tell me you didn't get the answer.”

“What answer?” I asked. “You didn't mention the social contract all afternoon.”

“I took you down to see John Sunday, didn't I? And what you saw in Johnny was a bright man with a good heart who lives like he wants to live.”

“And?”

“I'm sure that John Sunday never heard of the social contract, and I'd be surprised if he's read an entire book in his life.
Any
book. But if you got about ten minutes to look at his life, you won't say anything more about not needing to know the social contract. You got ten minutes?”

“I got ten minutes,” I said.

“Besides just getting along in the world with your fellow human beings, the social contract says how you can succeed in this society and how you can't. It says that our society won't let you succeed by robbing people. You got that?”

“Yeah, but I don't rob people,” I said.

“You can't succeed by intimidating people, and for the most part, you can't succeed by going downtown and playing basketball against some other young men who think they can play. You still with me?”

“Go on.”

“The social contract says you can make it if you have the tools that our society needs so that everybody is happy with you. So you need an education. You need to get some skills that you can take to the marketplace, and you need to understand enough about your assets to turn them into something you can get well paid for.” Elijah said. “But John Sunday was bragging on how hard he's worked in his life, as if that was the only important thing. Hard work by itself isn't worth two cents on a rainy day if it doesn't give you a good life.

“When his wife left him, he thought she had gotten too many big dreams in her head. He didn't figure out that just because he was doing the best he could, it still might not have been enough to satisfy the needs of a family. I'm not saying she should have left him, but I can understand it.

“The social contract gave John a chance to have his voice heard, but he didn't vote. He didn't understand that what he did as a young boy, working hard but not getting an education, was going to affect him all his life. John has a good heart, and he's got more courage than most people, and he's trying to ignore the social contract. He's knocked around in little no-paying jobs all his life and still doesn't have a clue that the problem is not just him, and that there's something else going on.

“None of those jobs he had gave him a pension plan, and now he's in his eighties and he's still working in that fish market to make ends meet. I had to help him get welfare benefits so he wouldn't be homeless. He didn't have the information he needed to do it on his own. Now he's ending up being just like those crabs. Sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the water to get hot.”

“You think that's fair?”

“It's fair, Mr. DuPree, but it's not easy,” Elijah said. “Our social contract says that there shouldn't be anything blocking your way to the good life. But if you don't get up and get it or if you don't know what's out there to get, then that's your problem.”

“I think that's wrong,” I said.

“And if you feel something is wrong, you have to vote to put people into office who are going to give you a better deal,” Elijah said. “But you need to know what they're talking about and figure out what that better deal is. John Sunday is a good man and a smart man in his way. But he's running outside the social contract, and he's not getting anywhere. There's nothing dumb about John Sunday, but he's never going to get much further than he is now.”

“You also said the social contract protects people whether they know it or not,” I said. “How come it's not protecting him?”

“It protects him against things that threaten the tribe,” Elijah said. “Like crime, or an enemy invasion. It doesn't protect him against ignorance.”

“And you're okay with that?”

“Mr. DuPree, I'm not always comfortable with it,” Elijah said. “But if I truly believe that people are smart enough to learn and to take care of themselves, I have to accept it.”

I left Elijah and started walking home. What Elijah was saying about John Sunday had me down. What I wanted was a system where everybody had enough to get by and could do their own thing. It didn't make a lot of difference to me that what Elijah said made sense. It wasn't fair and Elijah knew it wasn't, but he kept coming back to it like it was the only thing happening.

Just up the street, there was a fire and a car accident in front of the fast-food joint on Frederick Douglass. I went into the house, and Mom had made fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

“Are you learning to cook anything beside soup?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said. “I can just change the amount of stuff I put in the soup and make stews, though. When it gets toward winter, I'll make some stews for you.”

“When it gets toward winter, you'll be in school and finishing your college applications,” Mom said.

“Hey, Mom, do you think Richard knew what he was doing?”

“Your father?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think he had a plan for how his life was going and how he fit in and that kind of thing?” I asked.

“I don't know if he did or not. Half the time I don't even know what I'm doing,” Mom said. “I go to work every day and try to do a good job. Then I come home and try to take care of the house. I don't do much else. I just try to do the right thing and work with what feels right for me to do. You know what I mean?”

I did, but it made me really sad. It didn't make me as sad about Mom because I thought she was doing all right, even though I knew her job at the clinic wasn't all that great. She liked it, though, and it was helping people and she was holding things together. But when I started thinking about my father, I wondered if he just didn't know enough about life to get over. If he didn't know, who was supposed to tell him?

I was close to being mad at Elijah. That was stupid, I knew, but I was still close to it.

It was hard getting to sleep. Real hard.

Saturday morning.
I discovered Mom never really sleeps. I think what she does is to go into her bedroom every night and wait until I fall asleep and then assume her alternate identity as Alertia, the wonder girl. I had been out Friday night playing ball in Brooklyn with Terrell and some of the guys. When I hit the bed, I was exhausted and aching from being hacked. I had planned to sleep right through Saturday and get up sometime late Sunday night.

“Caroline's in town,” Mom announced. “We've been invited to lunch.”

“We going?”

“Yes. I haven't seen that girl for nearly a year,” Mom went on. “Can you believe that?”

I could, and I did.

Caroline, Mom's older sister, had married and moved to Madison, Wisconsin, ten years ago. She used to call a lot at first, but then that kind of tailed off except for around the holidays. I knew she had a son who was older than me, but we had never hooked up in any serious way. Mom said that Caroline and Anthony were in New York for the weekend to go to some kind of film festival.

I didn't think Mom was going to be all that comfortable with the visit. She loved her sister, but Caroline's husband was a successful black doctor, and Mom's husband had been in jail for a good part of their marriage.

“The lunch is at twelve thirty,” Mom said. “Why don't you wear your suit?”

“Because my suit is a fall and winter suit and it's too hot to wear it in the middle of summer,” I said. “I'll wear my blazer.”

“Does it need pressing?”