All the Right Stuff

by Walter Dean Myers

  “What?”

  “I’m not going to have a good life,” Keisha said. “I’m dreaming about playing basketball, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Not really. So all your little rules don’t mean diddly-squat to me.”

  “Then why are you here practicing your shot?”

  “For the same reason I buy a lottery ticket every month,” Keisha said. “Maybe a miracle will happen.”

  We didn’t say anything else. When I looked at Keisha, she had a hard face on, but she was tearing up. I put my arm around her, and she leaned against me.

  We sat for a while longer; then she got up and went over to where the basketballs were.

  “You going to feed me?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I got up and tossed her a ball. She shot it, a high arcing shot that fell cleanly through the net.

  13

  “When I was a boy, we used to use lard,” Elijah said. I had picked up the ingredients he had listed, and he was watching me make soup. “Now we use butter or oil.”

  I was browning the chicken with the ham, garlic, and butter, and it was smelling good. When Elijah told me I was going to do the cooking, I was surprised, but I thought I was ready. I kept the pieces turning like he told me, but I was having trouble talking about the differences between soup and stew and pushing the pieces of chicken around in the pot at the same time.

  “Don’t let it burn,” he said. “Burned meat never tastes good.”

  I finished browning the chicken and ham, added the chopped parsley, salt, West Indian pepper, and thyme, and stirred it around the pot until Elijah signaled me to stop. The smells from the garlic and pepper and meat cooking filled the room.

  “Now you have to add the stock and water,” he said.

  “How much stock and water should I add?”

  “When does it stop being soup and start being stew?” Elijah asked.

  I looked at him to see if he was kidding. He wasn’t. I didn’t know what to say, so I just shrugged.

  “In my way of thinking, you need to have two and a half cups of liquid for each serving when you begin your soup,” Elijah said. “If that cooks down to two cups per serving, you’re just about right. Your friend Mr. Sly might think that less stock and more ingredients is better, and I don’t dispute that for what he might be making. But Elijah is serving soup. Soup doesn’t fit everybody’s needs. Stew goes a lot further. I know that and you know that. But if I were making stew, I might run into a problem. Maybe I couldn’t afford it five days a week. And if I did make stew, somebody out there would want dessert. Maybe they would want some rice to go with the stew. Maybe, even, they might want some soup to go with it.”

  “So what are you saying? Stew doesn’t cut it?”

  “No, what I’m saying is that people who come here benefit from my serving them soup. They get companionship, they get some good soup, they get some nourishment for their bodies, and they get something to do in the middle of the day. In other words, there is a benefit to a great number of people within my little social contract.

  “Now, I only allow senior citizens to come here for soup. Some folks don’t like that. They think I’m discriminating, and in a way, I am. In my soup emporium, I am the ruler. What I say goes. People who come here and enjoy the soup let me make the rules. I’ve been told that I should have the soup at a different time. I’ve been told I should have different soups.”

  “So you’re saying you can’t please everybody?”

  “Some days I can’t please anybody,” Elijah said. “But they’ve given me the right to choose and they’ve given up their right to choose in my little kingdom here.”

  “I got you,” I said. “They’ve made a contract with you to get the soup. Did you have a meeting or something?”

  “What they probably did is the same thing the cavemen did,” Elijah said. “They looked around, saw something was working, and bought into it.”

  Elijah got up and turned down the heat under the large frying pan so that you could just see the flame.

  “How come Sly doesn’t buy into it?”

  “Because man is a wonderful creature,” Elijah said. “He’s vain, he’s cocky, he has a belief in himself so strong that he creates his God in his own image. Sly can see what I do, and he can see what benefit it brings. What he can’t see is why he needs to limit himself to what an old man does in a small way. The best part of Sly is his wanting to be more than everybody else.”

  “The best part?”

  “When ambition goes right, it’s the soul of progress, Mr. DuPree. When it goes wrong, it can create all kinds of misery,” Elijah said. “People like Sly start seeing their ambition as the purpose of life.”

  “You just think about that or you had it all figured out before?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking for a few years, son,” Elijah said. “A few years.”

  Some of the stock I was going to add was in the refrigerator and some, with the oysters, was on the stove. I put the chicken and ham and spices from the frying pan into one of Elijah’s two big soup pots. Then I listened to him complaining that I should have put some of the stock in the frying pan and gotten all the bits from the meat cooking.

  I cooked the chicken on high and had to add some water as it cooked down. Two hours later, I turned the heat down, took out the chicken parts, and forked the chicken off the bone.

  “There’s not much fat to skim on your broth, so your chickens must have been old,” Elijah said.

  “Yo, Elijah, we actually going to serve this today?”

  “Either we do that or you stand up and tell everybody to go home,” Elijah answered.

  It was hard to fork the meat off the chicken bones because the chicken was really hot. But I got it off and into the main stockpot, and it was smelling even better. I was getting excited. It was like having a big basketball game for the championship, but nobody knew how I was getting ready for it.

  Forty-five minutes before we opened the doors, Elijah had me add the oysters to the soup.

  “You have to be gentle with them,” he said.

  I took some of the broth from the soup and put it in a bowl to add the last of the spices. The filé powder had to be stirred as it mixed, and Elijah wanted it so there weren’t any lumps.

  “I can’t see if there are lumps or not,” I said.

  “If you care enough, there won’t be any lumps,” Elijah said. “It’ll be smooth.”

  I stirred steady until it seemed ready to me, then poured it into the soup pot. Taking the wooden spoon from Elijah, I stirred some more.

  “Taste it,” Elijah said.

  To me, it was good. Maybe even great. I could hardly wait until the seniors arrived.

  “I remember back in Wilmington, North Carolina, when shrimp gumbo saved a man’s life,” Sister Effie said.

  “Ain’t no gumbo saved no man’s life!” Cranky old Mr. Peters turned his head and humphed. “That’s just one of them stories that—”

  “Do not tell me what I have seen with my own eyes, Mr. Robert Peters!”

  “I know ain’t no gumbo has saved a man’s life!” Mr. Peters said.

  “It was just past the Fourth of July, and this young black man got into an argument with an old white man right there on Jackson Avenue,” Sister Effie said, her soup spoon about six inches over her bowl of my soup. “The white man was a sheriff or something like that and was so mean he could look a hound dog in the eye and stop its heart. Anyway, Markie, that was the black boy’s name, knocked him down and all the white people around that end of Wilmington was mad and they decided to hang that poor boy.

  “His mama was real upset, and she didn’t know what to do. She was praying and pleading and going on, but that didn’t move the hearts of them white folks none. Then his aunt Carrie brought two bowls of gumbo to the jail, and she asked them to let him eat that bowl of gumbo before he passed on, and she put the other bowl down in front of the sheriff. The sheriff sat him down and watched as Markie started eating his gumbo. Wel
l, when Markie had finished that bowl, it gave him so much life, he stood up and said, ‘Come on and hang me!’

  “That old sheriff came over and said he should have shot Markie and saved the rope from stretching. But Markie looked him right in the eye—you hear me? He looked him right in the eye and said he didn’t give a damn, and that sheriff said he didn’t give a damn either and he wouldn’t even bother hanging him. And that’s how that gumbo saved that boy’s life.”

  “That gumbo didn’t save that boy’s life,” Mr. Peters said. “They were always talking about lynching somebody down there, but once they got cooled off, they didn’t bother none with it most of the time. That’s what happened. Gumbo didn’t save nothing!”

  Everybody was enjoying themselves. I looked over at Elijah, and I could tell he was pleased with himself. His little piece of the social contract was working just fine. But what I liked mostly was that they were eating my soup the same as they ate the soup made by Elijah.

  I didn’t look into Elijah’s face because I knew I would seem stupid grinning.

  When everybody left, I asked Elijah if I could tell him about a girl I knew, and he said yes.

  “On Fridays, I’m mentoring a girl,” I said. “She’s seventeen and she’s had kind of a rough life. When she was young and going to school, her home life was so messed up she couldn’t study. She got bad grades, and after that she got a baby, and I think—I know—she’s pretty defensive. I’m mentoring her in basketball. She’s a good ballplayer, but they’re telling her she needs a three-point shot.”

  “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.

  14

  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.