All the Right Stuff Read Online Free PDF Page A

man.”
    â€œWhat else do you need to know?”

4
    It was my second week in Elijah’s Soup Emporium, and I was getting used to the routine. Come in at ten, check out what soup Elijah was cooking, start getting ready for the next day’s soup. When the seniors came in at noon, me and Elijah would serve them, then take their plates when they had finished. Elijah would work on the next day’s soup in the afternoon while I did the washing. I was liking Elijah, too. He was always kidding me, but I felt that he had accepted me right away. I realized he was trying to teach me things—no, more than that. He was trying to pass on things he knew.
    â€œThat’s sixteen regulars and four new people,” Elijah said when the last of the seniors had left for the day. “Not bad for summer. When the weather gets cold, we’re going to have close to forty or fifty people coming in for a bowl of soup.”
    â€œIt was good soup, too,” I said.
    â€œI know it was,” Elijah answered. “If there’s anything in this world that I do know, it’s the difference between good soup and dishwater.”
    â€œWhat kind of soup we making this afternoon?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t make too many different kinds of soup here,” Elijah said, cutting up some more onions, which, I think, was his favorite thing to do. “We serve five days a week, and so we have five basic soups and three once-in-a-while soups. Tomorrow the soup is collard greens and ham in beef stock. In the winter, we serve the same soup with a few white beans added for weight.”
    â€œCollard greens soup ?” I asked. “I never heard of it.”
    â€œHasn’t it come to you yet, Mr. DuPree, that there are more than one or two things you haven’t heard of in this life?” Elijah asked me.
    I was trying to think of something good to say when the doorbell rang. Miss Watkins was a regular at the soup kitchen. She always brought her own cloth napkin, which she would spread on her lap before being served. She looked me up and down and then waved a thin dark hand for me to move aside. I stepped back, and she came in and spoke to Elijah.
    â€œI’m going down to the fish market on 125th Street,” she said. “You needing anything?”
    â€œSee if they got some fresh mullet,” Elijah said. “I can use a few pounds. What are you doing out here in all this heat, Miss Watkins?”
    â€œWalking off the rust spots,” Miss Watkins said. “Can’t let myself get too stiff to be about my business.”
    Elijah gave Miss Watkins five dollars for the mullets and asked if she needed anything.
    â€œJust need enough to do to keep the grave from tempting me,” Miss Watkins said.
    She took one of Elijah’s cloth shopping bags with her, to carry the fish in, and left.
    â€œThat woman has seen more in her lifetime than anybody needs to be seeing,” Elijah said. “Good-hearted woman, too. She lost her husband in the war, and a daughter two years later in a house fire. You don’t see many people who have been through as much as she’s experienced who haven’t grown hardhearted.”
    â€œYou think she knows about your social contract?” I asked.
    â€œMaybe, maybe not,” Elijah said. “She might not have the vocabulary in place, but she’s living out her relationship with the world just as nice as you please.”
    â€œOkay, so you’re the man as far as soup goes,” I said. “But I was thinking about those cavemen you were talking about the other day. If that contract thing you talking about was so tough, then how come the cavemen aren’t around anymore?”
    â€œWhat makes you think the cavemen aren’t around anymore?” Elijah asked. “Just because they dress different than what you see in the movies?”
    â€œYou mean they dress different but they’re still around with the same