“That’s really so big of you!”
“Okay, I’ll leave it alone if you need me to,” I said. “I don’t need to sit here while you put me down.”
“Go on!” Mom said. “I’m listening.”
“Okay, for my father it was harder, and maybe he would have had to be a superhero to handle it,” I said. “Maybe he realized he was up against it and it was making him sick and, like Sly said, he was self-medicating.
“One thing I know is that the social contract, no matter how you look at it, isn’t going to be the same thing for everybody, and for many people, it’s not going to be fair. No matter what Keisha did or didn’t do, it’s going to be harder on her little girl than it should be. But I know this—that if Keisha can really get into it and see how things work, she’s going to be better off.”
“A contract should be fair,” Mom said.
“The way I see it is that it’s fair for the kind of people who draw up the rules,” I said. “So Rousseau and all his friends were looking at the social contract and saying that people who looked like them and who had their smarts could deal with it. The same with Locke and Hobbes and some of the others.”
“I don’t know any of those people,” Mom said.
“You don’t have to know their names,” I said. “You just have to know that they were talking about how governments were set up and how the people had to live. They were talking about people who knew the rules and why they worked and were scoping them out to make sure they were getting a fair deal.”
“They weren’t talking about your father,” Mom said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, that’s it,” I said. “So I know it was harder for my father and for everybody in the world who lived like he did and who didn’t have the … the knowledge, maybe—”
“The right stuff?” Mom asked. “He didn’t have the right stuff, so he was nothing, right?”
“He was a human being, just like the rest of us, but he had a harder way to go,” I said.
“So what do you think of him?”
“Because he was a human being, I have to say he was responsible for his life,” I said. “Good, bad, or indifferent, he had to be responsible for his own life.”
“Even though it wasn’t fair for him?”
“Yeah, even though it wasn’t fair for him,” I said. “But I understand him more now than I ever did. If I saw him walking down the street today, I would have a better idea of who he was than I did before. When he tried to look important, I would know why. I think that’s something. And maybe it’s something I can pass on to my children if I ever have any.”
“You got to understanding Keisha pretty fast,” Mom said.
“I had more tools to work with,” I said. “I think if my father had worked with Elijah, he might have done more with his life.”
“So do you think Elijah is a better man than your father?” Mom asked.
“That’s not fair,” I said. “You know it’s not fair.”
“Neither is your social contract,” she said. “So what are you saying? Is Elijah a better man than your father?”
“No, he’s not,” I said. “He’s a different man, though. He’s luckier, and the circumstances of his life are different, and that’s good for him, just the way what my father ran into was bad for him. Sly is different, too. And D-Boy. We all have to deal with the life we get.”
“Do you love your father?” Mom asked. “And I know that’s not fair, so don’t even go there.”
“No, but I understand him better.”
“That’s not the same,” Mom said.
“I know, Mom,” I said. “I know.”
Mom came over and stood behind my chair for a moment, and then I felt her arms go around me, and it was good. She didn’t bring up Keisha anymore that night, or Elijah, or my father. It was as if she had settled something in her mind, the idea that I wouldn’t go through life hating my father. I remembered what Elijah had said about that, that we learn to forgive those who have come before us. I imagined that one day, if I ever had kids, they would have to learn to forgive me.
What I thought, too, was that Hobbes, and Rousseau, and Rawls and all those people who had written about the social contract had had little to do with people like my father. They were dealing with other thinkers and other people talking about social contract ideals in ways that were only vaguely connected to the life my father had led.
When it came down to it, Elijah and I were talking like that too. We were serving up soup and theory, but when it all came together, when the soup was right and you knew it, then it made you feel good. And when the theory was right and you could see and feel it was right, you knew that maybe—just maybe—you had a chance to make changes in the world.
In the end, for people like my father—like my dad—and like me, and Paris B and the other seniors, sometimes all we could see at the bottom of the social ladder was our struggle to get someplace we could call fair. But if we worked harder and tried harder, we wanted to lift our heads above the rest, and that was good too.
I liked John Sunday, and I even liked George, who had spent half his life in jail, and I hoped good things would happen to them, but I knew I didn’t want to be the same as them. I wanted my share of fair to be what I worked for, and that wasn’t how I had started off the summer. That’s what I learned while I was cutting up vidalias and making stock.
What some people wanted was sometimes too hard to get, and the stress of trying was sometimes too hard to deal with. I think it was too hard for my father.
What I didn’t know was why you could tell people what they needed to be doing and then just watch them sit and do nothing. Keisha was all about getting up and doing something, getting her game together and moving on, while that girl Sly had brought to lunch, Johnnie, wasn’t doing much of anything. I think she was kind of overwhelmed. Maybe doing well in life was just too hard for some people. That’s not what I wanted, but it was what I was coming to believe.
I didn’t think that Miss Watkins’s pastor was right about not everybody wanting to go to heaven. Everybody was probably down with going to heaven, but some people just weren’t going to bust a move to get there.
I sometimes wonder if I could have taught my father about the social contract. I didn’t think he would really ever take it from me. He wasn’t comfortable with that whole father-son thing, and me teaching him would have been too hard to take. Elijah could have taught him more. Elijah with his patience and with all the thinking that man had done over the years.
Elijah made me bigger over the summer. It wasn’t just having more things to think about. Now I’ve got more room inside my head for other people, and more understanding of what they are about even though I don’t have all the answers. I know a little more about the individuals I met, Sister Effie, Paris B, John Sunday, Miss Watkins, Miss Fennell, and Sly. I really don’t know much more about my father, but I think I would have listened harder if he was still around to talk to me.
Yeah, and I can make some good soup, too.
About the Author
WALTER DEAN MYERS is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, New York Times bestselling author of MONSTER, and winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award. The critically acclaimed author of KICK, LOCKDOWN, DOPE SICK, GAME, STREET LOVE, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY DEAD BROTHER, HANDBOOK FOR BOYS, and BAD BOY, he is considered one of the preeminent writers for children. Walter’s novel SHOOTER is the inspiration for the film Case 219.
His latest picture-book collaboration with his son, Christopher Myers, WE ARE AMERICA: A Tribute from the Heart, is a love letter to the United States that reimagines what it means to be an American. Visit www.who-is-america.com to find out more!
Walter lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, with his family. You can visit him online at www.walterdeanmyers.net.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors and artists.
Other Works
Fr
om Walter Dean Myers and HarperCollins Publishers
Just Write: Here’s How
All the Right Stuff
We Are America: A Tribute from the Heart
Illustrated by Christopher Myers
Kick
Coauthored by Ross Workman
Looking for the Easy Life
Illustrated by Lee Harper
Lockdown
Muhammad Ali: The People’s Champion
Illustrated by Alix Delinois
Dope Sick
Game
Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told
Illustrated by Bonnie Christensen
Street Love
Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage
Autobiography of My Dead Brother
Illustrated by Christopher Myers
I’ve Seen the Promised Land: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Illustrated by Leonard Jenkins
Shooter
The Dream Bearer
Handbook for Boys: A Novel
Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam
Illustrated by Ann Grifalconi
Bad Boy: A Memoir
Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly
Illustrated by Leonard Jenkins
Monster
Angel to Angel: A Mother’s Gift of Love
Glorious Angels: A Celebration of Children
The Story of the Three Kingdoms
Illustrated by Ashley Bryan
Brown Angels: An Album of Pictures and Verse
The Righteous Revenge of Artemis Bonner
Now Is Your Time!: The African-American Struggle for Freedom
The Mouse Rap
Scorpions
Tales of a Dead King
Credits
Cover art © 2012 by Hill Street Studios/Gary Kious/GettyImages
Cover design by Tom Forget
Copyright
Amistad is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
All the Right Stuff
Copyright © 2012 by Walter Dean Myers
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Myers, Walter Dean, date.
All the right stuff / by Walter Dean Myers.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: The summer after his absentee father is killed in a random shooting, Paul works at a Harlem soup kitchen, where he listens to lessons about “the social contract” from an elderly African American man and mentors a seventeen-year-old unwed mother who wants to make it to college on a basketball scholarship.
ISBN 978-0-06-196087-1 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-196088-8 (lib. bdg.)
EPub Edition © APRIL 2012 ISBN 9780062114280
[1. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Conduct of life—Fiction. 3. Social contract—Fiction. 4. African Americans—Fiction. 5. Harlem (New York, NY)—Fiction. I. Title.
PZ7.M992A1 2012
2011024251
[Fic]—dc22
CIP
AC
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12 13 14 15 16 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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Walter Dean Myers, All the Right Stuff
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