“It must be the aroma from the collard greens,” Elijah said, “because your thinking is getting clearer and clearer.”
“Yo, and let me run down something else,” I said. “Say you have a thousand dudes living on an island, right?”
“Go on,” Elijah said.
“And they’re happy with their little social contract, and all of them are getting the same amount of food to eat, and the same television channels, and the same amount of minutes on their cell phones, okay?”
“Go on, Mr. DuPree.”
“I think there would still be a problem,” I said. “Because sooner or later one of those people would figure out that he could live a little better than the others if he could find a way to take somebody else’s food or snatch up their cell phone minutes. That’s the way people are!”
“That’s true, Mr. DuPree,” Elijah said. “So we need to watch each other very closely. When we elect a government, we need to watch that government very closely and know exactly how it’s supposed to be working. You don’t enter a contract with your eyes closed.”
“I don’t know if this social contract business is good or bad,” I said.
“You’ll make up your mind sooner or later,” Elijah said. “Sooner or later.”
I knew I would if he had anything to do with it.
We served the soup, and I listened as Miss Watkins told about how her husband had been wounded in the Second World War and Mr. Pickens said he had been drafted to go to Korea but got out of it because he had a bad eye.
“You should have served your country,” Miss Watkins said. “And you should have been proud to do it!”
Miss Watkins was a feisty old lady and I liked her. In fact, I liked most of the seniors who came to Elijah’s. What I thought was that they liked Elijah and felt good being there. I was feeling good about being there myself.
5
I met up with Terrell and we walked down to Morningside Park to play some ball. We got into a few games and got creamed. Terrell’s game was never that good, but somehow he was getting worse. He was almost as tall as me, and I thought he was getting out of shape.
“We should have won that last game,” Terrell said as we turned up my block.
“We would have won if you passed the ball once in a while,” I said. “You were shooting with two and three guys hanging on your arm.”
“Yo, man, I was in the zone!”
“In the zone?” I watched as Terrell went up for an imaginary jump shot. “You weren’t even in the right zip code!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Terrell said. “I had to hurry my shots because you weren’t getting any rebounds.”
“I don’t even see how that works together,” I said, wondering how my rebounding made him hurry his shots.
“Hey, check this out!” Terrell lowered his voice. “Ain’t that D-Boy across the street?”
I looked across the street and saw D-Boy sitting on a stoop. He had his do-rag down across his forehead, almost to his shades. I looked at my side of the street and saw Sly standing on my stoop.
Everybody knew Sly and nobody knew Sly. He was around the hood a lot and rode in a fantastic machine, and D-Boy was his bodyguard. Some people thought he was into drugs and some said he was part of the black mafia. Everybody gave the dude his propers and nobody moved up on him too quick. He had known my father and had sent flowers to the funeral.
“Don’t say nothing stupid,” I said to Terrell.
“I’m not,” Terrell said, voice low, eyes getting big. “I heard that D-Boy will shoot you if you even look hard at Sly.”
We had reached my stoop, and I asked Terrell if he wanted to come in.
“No, I got to pick up my sister from church,” he answered.
“She goes to church in the evenings?” I asked.
“The building fund has a meeting,” he said. “I’ll call you later.”
Terrell lived on the hill. I watched him walk to the corner, and then I started walking into my building.
“Hey, Paul, what you doing with your young self?” Sly was about six feet two, well built, and wore frameless glasses on the end of his nose.
“Same old, same old,” I said.
“You need to make twenty-five dollars in a hurry?” Sly asked. He had a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.
“No.”
“Why, you got rich since the last time I saw you?” Sly looked at me sideways.
“I got a job,” I said. “It gets me over.”
“Where you working?”
“At a soup kitchen,” I said. “Well, sort of a soup kitchen. This guy makes soup every day for senior citizens.”
“You talking about Elijah Jones’s place on 144th Street, across from the school?” Sly asked.
“Yeah, you know him?”
“Yeah, I know him,” Sly said. “Old man, got that old man thing going on. You know, catch some holiness before he passes on. What do they say these days? Getting right before the sunset.”
“He’s okay,” I said.
“He’s talking to you about Jesus and getting saved?” Sly asked.
“No, about something called the social contract,” I said.
“The social contract?” Sly’s eyes kept shifting up and down the street. “Yeah, yeah, I’m hip to that scene.”
“No, this isn’t like a real contract—” I started.
“It’s an agreement between people to surrender some of their rights so that they can live in peace with one another,” Sly said. “That’s what he told you?”
“You know about the social contract?”
“I don’t go around in a cap and gown, so I’m supposed to be stupid or something?” Sly asked.
“I didn’t say that,” I said.
“I studied the social contract at Grambling,” Sly said. “But when I see young brothers like you scared to make twenty-five dollars, I can tell it’s not working. The social contract has you running scared, right?”
“No.” I could feel my heart beating faster.
“Yeah, it does,” Sly said. “That’s what it’s supposed to do. Set up a bunch of rules so that some people can stay on top and be comfortable while people like you and me can learn to get comfortable on the bottom. Elijah’s making the bottom feel good, but it’s still the bottom.”
“I see you’ve been talking to him,” I said.
“I used to rap to him some when I was your age,” Sly said. “Liked him, too. He taught history in the public school system and did odd jobs to make enough money to buy a little real estate. I saw how he and a whole lot of people like him went around smiling and telling people how they’re blessed.”
“I don’t think he’s that religious,” I said.
“Yeah, he is.” Sly checked his watch. “You scratch a do-gooder and they got a religious streak somewhere in them. So you want to make the twenty-five dollars or not?”
“What do I have to do?”
“First, wipe the scared look off your face,” Sly said, smiling. “The cops see a black teenager walking down the street looking scared, they’re liable to arrest you on the spot. Then go to the corner store, buy a bottle of soda, and go up to Broadhurst Avenue and give it to the first brother you see looks like he can use a cold drink. Then come back here and tell me what he said when you gave him the soda.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all,” Sly said.
Sly went into his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to me. I was scared to take it and scared not to take it. I wanted to look over at D-Boy to see what he was doing, but I didn’t want Sly to see me doing it.
Finally I took the money, then I took a deep breath and walked to the corner store. I could feel Sly’s eyes following me, and I couldn’t even walk cool. I bought the soda, made sure it was cold, then took it up the hill.
Broadhurst was crowded, but I saw a dude who looked kind of down and out, and I walked up to him.
“Yo, you want a soda?”
He took the
soda and just looked at me.
“So, what you got to say?” I asked him as he twisted the cap off the soda.
He took a long, slow drink, then gave me a mean look. “I ain’t saying nothing,” he said. “I didn’t ask you for no soda.”
“Okay.” I shrugged and turned.
“Yo, pretty boy!”
I turned back.
“Go to hell!” he said.
I went on back down the hill and saw that Sly was still on the stoop. All the way down the hill, I was looking for plainclothes cops. I was thinking that me taking that soda up the hill might have been a signal that the coast was clear or something or some big drug deal was going to go down.
When I got to the stoop, I handed Sly back his change.
“What did he say?” Sly asked.
“First he said he didn’t ask me for a soda so he didn’t have to say nothing,” I said. “Then he thought about it and said, ‘Go to hell!’”
“What he was saying was that if you got money, you can look down on folks and act like you’re doing them a favor,” Sly said. “But that brother knew that when you left, he still was going to be standing there and still didn’t have anything going on. And he wasn’t buying into your social contract, either. He just wanted to let you know that. Here’s your twenty-five dollars.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“No, it’s not okay,” Sly said. He put the money into my shirt pocket. “When a young man is afraid to deal with his fellow man, it means the system has you so brainwashed that you’re afraid to follow your mind. You put your mind in your pocket and follow the system. The same system that your friend Elijah is calling the social contract.
“You think you know something when you’re talking about philosophy, but that brother you gave the soda to knows a lot more than you.”
Sly stepped off the stoop and got into a car I hadn’t seen pull up. He rolled the window down and beckoned for me to come over to the car.
“So you know all about the social contract, Rousseau, Hobbes, and all those old dudes?” he asked.
“I know some about it,” I said. “I don’t know those guys you’re talking about. But I think I would like to know more.”
“That’s good,” Sly said. “Only fools don’t want to learn more about everything.”
He rolled up the window. And he was gone.
I really had to pee bad.
I wondered what Sly thought about my father. He thought the dude who told me to go to hell knew something. Maybe he would have thought my father knew something, too.
6
I knew that Elijah was laying traps for me. Old people like to do that to young people. They set you up to say something and then jump all over it. I thought what Elijah said was interesting, and the way he said it, talking about ham sandwiches and stuff, was funny. But thinking about it when he wasn’t around was still confusing. When I got to the emporium in the morning, I had a bunch of questions ready for Elijah.
“The way I figure it,” I said after I walked through the door, “is that either everybody follows the social contract bit or nobody follows it. I’m not going to play by some rules if there are people going around doing what they want to do.”
“Good morning, Mr. DuPree,” Elijah said. “I see that young mind of yours has been working overtime. It’s got you so riled up, you can skip right past ‘good morning.’”
“Good morning, sir,” I said. “But I mean what I said. About the ham sandwich. I think if somebody takes my sandwich, I should feel free to take theirs.”
“The soup of the day is oxtail,” Elijah said. “It’s been on since five this morning and it’s smelling pretty good. Did you know there was a time you could buy oxtails for twenty cents a pound? They were the same as bones or spare ribs. Now they cost you as much as prime beef.”
“Well, I guess maybe there’s a shortage of oxen,” I said. “The less there is of something, the more it costs.”
“Oxtails don’t have anything to do with oxen,” Elijah said. “They have to do with cows and bulls. It just doesn’t sound so good saying ‘bull tail,’ now does it?”
“No, sir, it doesn’t.”
“Now getting back to what you were saying about the social contract.” Elijah slowly stirred the soup and waved his hand over the large pot to get some of the smell. He looked at me and smiled, and I knew he thought he had made some good soup. “I agree with you one hundred percent. If anybody walks away from the social contract, then we should all walk away. I think that Thursdays and Fridays are the best days. What do you think?”
“The best days for what?”
“For robbing and killing people and taking their ham sandwiches or their money or their televisions,” Elijah said. “Because that’s what we’re talking about, aren’t we? Killing people and taking their stuff?”
“I didn’t say that, Elijah, and you know it,” I said. “What I mean is that if somebody is going to think it’s okay to take my stuff, then, you know…”
“What do I know?” Elijah asked. “I know a lot of people believe they should be able to follow wherever the wind pushes them. Look at all the fellows and gals in prisons and jails today. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them are stone guilty, and they know it. They have wiped their feet on the social contract. You look at them close, and all their lips are greasy from somebody else’s ham sandwich. And now you’re telling me that because they’re doing it, then you got to do it, too.”
“You hear me say that?” I asked. “Because I didn’t hear me say that. What I said was if you’re going to take my stuff, then I think that I have the right to take yours.”
“I’m agreeing with you. I’m on your side. Now let’s me and you look around and see who is not doing their part on the social contract we’re talking about,” Elijah said. “We got all these people running around stealing and shooting people. How about them?”
“They’re not following the social contract,” I said.
“How about the people doing the kidnapping and the hijacking?” Elijah asked. “What we going to do about them?”
“They’re not following the contract,” I said.
“How about the woman who fakes a fall in the department store so she can sue and get some money?” Elijah asked.
“What you mean, how about her?” I asked.
“Well, she’s stealing from the insurance company, which is going to raise your rates, so that’s a good thing or a bad thing?” Elijah asked.
“That’s a bad thing,” I said.
“That enough for you to throw away your copy of the contract?”
“Not by itself, but if everybody is doing it … that’s different,” I said. “The Bible says, ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.’”
“I’m glad you’re reading the Good Book, Mr. DuPree,” Elijah said. “But that doesn’t stop me from not knowing whether you’re going to follow the social contract or not. Because it seems to me like you’re looking around to see what everybody else is doing first, and then making up your mind as things go along.”
“You have to do that,” I said. “Don’t you have a right to protect yourself?”
“A fundamental, inalienable right, sir,” Elijah said. “You certainly have a right to protect yourself and what belongs to you. But what you’re telling me is that if everybody in the tribe doesn’t follow the contract, then there can’t be a contract, and that bothers me. It bothers me because there’s always somebody who wants to walk their own way, or who looks at the contract and says, ‘Hey, I can get an advantage out of this situation.’”
“Okay, so I know this guy who was telling me that all the social contract does is to make little people like me scared to step out of line so the people in charge can do whatever they want to do,” I said. “And he studied the social contract in college.”
“So he should know something about it,” Elijah said.
“He does know something about it,” I said. “I was thinking about what he
said and what you said and it’s almost the same thing, but he looks at it differently than you do. You said we were giving up our right to do anything we wanted, and Sly said the same thing, except he was saying that the people on top never have to give up their rights, just the people on the bottom.”
“Hobbes,” Elijah said. “A lot of people study Hobbes, but they don’t really understand him.”
“I’m talking about Sly,” I said. “He’s a big dude, wears those little glasses.”
“I’m talking about Thomas Hobbes,” Elijah said. “He was one of the first men to talk about the social contract. You can look him up on the internet.”
“You use the internet?”
“Mr. DuPree, I am a black man with gray hair, a touch of arthritis, and a thirst for knowledge. I am not a dinosaur!”
“Yes, sir.”
“And this fellow you’re talking about is right. Hobbes was trying to make sense of how people can live together successfully, but he thought that most people couldn’t make their own decisions. In his version of the social contract, the people on top of the heap had to decide the best way for society to live. If you let people make their own decisions, life would end up being poor, nasty, and short.”
“That’s what Sly said!”
“When you say Sly, are you referring to Mr. Edward Norton? Young man who drives around in a fancy car and has a bodyguard?” Elijah asked.
“He said he used to talk to you,” I answered. “You know him?”
“I know his family and yes, I used to talk to him at times,” Elijah said. “His father was a preacher, and so was his grandfather. Edward, or Sly, as he likes to be called, was always a bright young man. But one morning he got up and looked in the mirror and saw himself in a new light. He saw the same thing that a lot of other people, including Hobbes, saw—that maybe the social contract was good for most people, but the people on top didn’t really have to worry about the people on the bottom.”
“And Sly sees himself as one of the people on the top?”
“That he does, Mr. DuPree. That he does. But Edward is a young man who thinks, and that’s good.”