All the Right Stuff (13 page)

“Is that a metaphorical three?” Elijah asked. “I thought you only got two points for a basketball shot.”

“Elijah, what world you living in, man?” I asked him. “They got a three-point line on the court, and if you shoot farther out than that line, you get three points!”

“I believe you,” Elijah said, smiling. “Just checking.”

“Anyway, I'm helping her with her outside shot, but she's so down on herself that I don't know if she's going to make it or not. She says the same thing that Sly says, except that she makes it personal. She says that the rules aren't for people like her, who have her kinds of problems.”

“You believe that?” Elijah asked.

“I think I do,” I said.

“When you first walked into this place, did you think you would be serving soup to senior citizens, soup that you made, and seeing the smiles on their faces?” Elijah asked.

“No.”

“Mr. DuPree, I've told you this before,” Elijah said. “But you and me and Sly and people like us have to think harder than people who give up and declare their lives are a failure or stop trying. Life is going to be harder for some people. It's going to be harder at different times in our lives. But if you're not ready to die today, then you're going to be responsible for tomorrow, whether you like it or not. You want to go home and think on that some?”

What I wanted from Elijah was a simple answer I didn't have to think about, but I knew he wasn't going for that. He expected more from me. I guess I expected more from me, too.

There was excitement on the block.
Police cars blocking the intersections on both ends and a fire emergency truck parked in the middle. I saw Terrell, and he waved me over.

“They came down on your boy,” he said, excited.

“Who?”

“Sly, that's who,” Terrell said. “About umpteen dozen cops ran in that place he's opening. SWAT team dudes, some FBI guys, everybody. They were in there an hour and then they came out and started asking everybody questions about where they get their prescription drugs.”

“Prescription drugs?”

“There's some kind of underground drug thing going on, and they thought Sly was in on it.”

“They arrested him?”

“No, there he is, leaning up against his car with his arms folded.”

I looked over toward the front of The Woods and Terrell was right—Sly was just leaning against the car.

We waited for almost forty-five minutes before the cops and firemen started leaving. Sly never moved.

“Whatever they were looking for, they probably didn't find it,” Terrell said. “Unless you're hiding the goods. You got some prescription drugs on you?”

“You know I don't have any drugs on me,” I said.

Miss Watkins came over to me and pulled my head down so she could whisper in my ear. “Elijah wants to see you,” she said softly.

I asked Terrell to wait for me and went over to see what Elijah wanted.

“The senior grapevine has it that Mr. Sly is bringing in prescription drugs from Canada, Mexico, Korea, and India,” Elijah said. “He's giving them away free to people who need them.”

“To get high?”

“No, because they need them. He thinks he's providing a service to the people of the neighborhood,” Elijah said. “The drugs are so expensive. But they didn't find any drugs in the place he's opening.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It's not in the social contract,” Elijah said. “I can't tell you what to do about Sly, but you need to be careful. I don't want to say anything bad about him because I don't have the whole truth, but I want you to be careful.”

I couldn't believe Sly would do something so out there. Or maybe I didn't want to believe it.

“Would you get pissed off if I told you what Sly says about you?” I asked.

“Go on, give me the bad news,” Elijah said.

“He says you're tap-dancing on a rainbow and telling the world it's the bridge to the good life.”

“He said that?” Elijah leaned back and folded his arms. “I like that, Mr. DuPree. I really do. He's right on the money, and I like the phrase ‘tap-dancing on a rainbow.' The social contract has to be some person's or some group's ideals, their rainbow. Maybe if you and me and a hundred thousand other people make that rainbow strong enough, we can walk across it. What do you think?”

When I arrived at the Soup Emporium the next day, Elijah was frying up onions and spices.

“Black bean,” he said. “You remember the spice that goes into the onions to add some depth to the soup?”

“Curry?”

“Cumin,” Elijah said. “Is your head filled with Mr. Sly today?”

“Thinking about my father again,” I said. “My mom put a picture of him and her on the mantle in our living room. He was standing with a beer in his hand. That's the only picture she has of them together. When he was alive, I didn't think about him much. He and my mom split, and he was either on the streets hustling or in jail. You know what I want?”

“To find a way to fit your father into the social contract,” Elijah said. He turned the heat down under the pot, then poured in the stock and stirred it gently, the way he did. “And make him seem like he's not such a bad person.”

“You're right,” I said.

“Shortly before the Second World War, my father decided that he was going to make some extra money harvesting cane over in Louisiana,” he said. “It was winter—that's when they harvest cane—and my schooling time. He didn't care a bit for education. He had a habit of pushing his hat to the back of his head and spitting on the ground whenever he heard about a black man getting an education. I was about eleven, and the two of us took a freight train across the state to where they were hiring people to cut down the cane. Lord, that was some hard work, and I hated every minute of it and I was hating my father, too. Sometimes, when he wasn't around, I would push my hat to the back of my head the way he did and spit on the ground with just an image of him in my mind.

“But after he got tuberculosis and died, I started feeling different about him. From a distance, he didn't seem so bad. I wrestled for most of my young life over whether I hated that man or loved him. Isn't that something?”

“So what did you finally decide?”

“That life is like walking between two tall buildings on a tightrope. For some, the rope is wide enough and the walk is easy. For others, it's narrow and hard and maybe there's a strong wind blowing through their days,” Elijah said. “But in the end, we learn we can forgive most people. The cushion of mortality makes their wrongdoing seem less dark, and whatever roads they traveled seem less foolhardy. In the end, I understood that I needed to make peace with his memory. As a thinker, though, I knew that if I was going to accept his humanity, the idea that he was more than an animal, I also had to accept him being accountable for his life.”

“You think that's what I'm doing now?” I asked. “Trying to figure out if my father was responsible for his life?”

“You want me to run downtown to the easy answer store so I can answer that question?”

“Yes, I do, Mr. Elijah Jones,” I said.

“I have some leftover beef trimmings I'm going to dice and put in the beans today,” Elijah said. “If we dice them up fine, it'll add flavor but won't be too heavy.”

“I got you, right?” I said. “You don't want to answer.”

“I need you to find your answer, Mr. DuPree. I can give you mine and Sly can give you his, but you really need to work it out for yourself.”

“I think that maybe there is no answer,” I said. “Maybe this is just one of those questions that people like to argue about—like are the Red Sox better than the Yankees, or who should win the Oscars.”

“My good friend—and he is my good friend—John Sunday hasn't figured it out, but I think you will. I think you will.”

Elijah went back to his cooking, and I wondered whether he had changed his mind and was getting discouraged with me as far as the social contract was concerned. What really convinced me was when he took out something long and thick from the refrigerator that looked like a scallion and didn't get on my case when I didn't know what it was.

“It's a leek,” he said.

“A
what
?”

“A leek,” he said. “It rhymes with squeak. It looks like a large scallion, but understanding the difference in taste makes you a cook, not somebody just destroying good food.”

“What's the difference?”

“A slight difference in taste, the way it flavors other foods, how many things you can do with it,” Elijah said flatly. “You eat a thousand onions, then you eat a thousand leeks, and you got it.”

“So you going to have this in one of the soups soon?” I asked.

“I was thinking about it,” Elijah said. “Right now I'm trying to figure out what soup we're going to prepare for Mr. Sly when he comes here next week.”

“Sly? Sly is coming here?” I looked at Elijah to see if he was kidding. What he was doing was peeling carrots. “Why?”

“I saw him on the street this morning,” Elijah said. “And I asked him if he would like to come here one afternoon and present his case to some of the senior citizens, and he agreed.”

“Why?”

“Because I believe in the wisdom that age brings sometimes,” Elijah said. “I'd like to see how Sly deals with some of our people.”

“And why would he show up?”

“Why would the great man show up at our humble abode?” Elijah looked up at me. “Great men like to make sure that they are really as great as they think they are. A great triumph is good, but a small triumph is very satisfying, too. It should be an interesting encounter.”

I don't like confrontations with people, and I really didn't want to have one between Elijah and Sly. Sly was too cool to do anything stupid to Elijah, but I didn't think Elijah could stand up to him. I liked Elijah a lot, but if somebody could be bigger than the social contract, it was Sly. Sly talked a good game about how the system worked against black people and poor people, but anybody could talk.

When I got home, Terrell called and asked me if I wanted to go out and get some pizza. I said I didn't and he asked me was it because of all the soup I was eating all day. I didn't know if it was or even if I ate that much soup during the day. Elijah had taught me to taste everything I was going to have other people tasting, so I never went home hungry.

“I got to ask you something about Keisha,” Terrell said.

“What?”

“How's she doing?”

“Good,” I answered. “I have her shooting threes over the volleyball nets, and she's hitting thirty-five to forty percent all the time.”

“Yo, Paul, are you going to try to—you know—get with her?”

“No, I'm supposed be mentoring her,” I said. “Not getting into her pants.”

“Man, if I were you, I'd give it a try,” Terrell said. “It's not like you're taking her someplace she ain't been.”

“Maybe I don't want to take her to someplace she's been,” I said. “Maybe wherever she's been wasn't too cool. You think about that?”

“I guess,” Terrell said. “You want to play some ball this weekend? I heard some guys were going to have a run out in Brooklyn this coming Saturday. Real early, though.”

“I'm in,” I said. “We'll hook up at my house.”

“Got it!”

When Terrell hung up, I thought about the conversation and if I was scared to try to get with Keisha. Actually, I thought that Keisha liked me and thought I was somebody special. I didn't want to mess that up. I picked up the phone and called her.

“Hey, Paul, what's going on?”

“Did you mean what you were saying about my first step?” I asked. “You think it's too slow?”

“It's not too slow,” Keisha said. “You don't
have
a first step.”

“Keisha, that's cold.”

“It's cold, Paul, but it'll make you free.”

I didn't appreciate Keisha dissing my first step, but I was beginning to like her a lot. I thought about what Terrell had said about getting with her, and I knew in my heart that things would change between us if I tried to mess with her. We were actually working out a little social contract just between the two of us.

I went back to the internet and started reading an article on the social contract by John Rawls. It was too hard for me to understand completely, but I saw he was dealing with the same ideas—what was justice all about and what was fairness all about—what me and Elijah and Sly were talking about, and that turned me on. There was a whole world out there of people thinking about things I hadn't known about just a few weeks before. I wondered what else was out there I should be knowing about.