All the Right Stuff Read Online Free PDF

contract?” I asked.
    â€œNo, they turned in that old contract for a new one,” Elijah said. “Now put these greens in the sink and wash them good.”
    â€œThey look clean to me,” I said. “I think they wash them in the vegetable market.”
    â€œMr. DuPree, please do an old man a favor,” Elijah said, speaking slowly. “I know you’re sitting on that stool to keep it from floating away, but get up and go wash the greens as I asked you.”
    Washing collard greens isn’t too bad because the leaves are broad and you just have to run water over them to wash away any grit that might be left on them. I started doing that while Elijah cut up the ham shoulder.
    â€œDid you invent collard greens soup?” I asked.
    â€œNo, but I was raised on it,” Elijah said. “Way back in slavery days, the only things that people had to eat was what they could raise themselves and what the master gave them. Collard greens were a good, healthy crop. If they could get a piece of smoked pork to season it, then they were doing all right. The right stuff for eating didn’t have to be expensive.”
    â€œThe right stuff?”
    â€œThat’s what we’re doing, Mr. DuPree,” Elijah said. “We’re taking all the right stuff, putting it together, and making something wonderful.”
    â€œYou mean the soups?” I asked. “Or you mean bringing people together?”
    â€œBoy, did you just grow a few inches right in front of my eyes?”
    â€œWhat you mean?”
    â€œWhat I mean is that you’re a pretty sharp young man,” Elijah said. “I’m going to have to get a little deeper with my social contract theories with you.”
    â€œYeah, okay,” I said. “But check this out. I had American history in the seventh and ninth grades. We didn’t have anything about social contracts. And we didn’t have anything about cavemen in America, either.”
    â€œAll right, I’ll take back what I said about you growing,” Elijah said. “But some men in England way back in the thirteenth century started talking about a social contract—”
    â€œNo, I said America,” I said. “You know, the United States.”
    â€œKings and queens and lords and ladies and barons and whatnot,” Elijah said, ignoring me. “And these men looked around and noticed that the king had all the rights and the barons wanted some for themselves. If the king said jump, you said, ‘How high?’ If the king said, ‘Lay down and die,’ you laid down and at least closed your eyes. So some fellows got together and talked about getting a set of rules to give all free men an even break. What they dreamed of was a contract that restricted some of the powers of the king.”
    â€œAnd the king was all right with that?”
    â€œWell, he was all right with it when he saw that the people were thinking about cutting his head off if he wasn’t all right with it,” Elijah said, grinning.
    â€œThat was over in England someplace?”
    â€œYes, it was. But after that, the English started thinking that they could influence the way government worked and began trying to make laws based on what they thought was fair for everybody,” Elijah said.
    â€œThat was good,” I said.
    â€œTo a point,” Elijah said. “It was good in some ways and bad in other ways.”
    â€œHow come nothing I say is completely right?” I asked Elijah.
    He turned slowly and looked at me. “I was wondering about that myself,” he said.
    Just then a knock came on the door, and a shiny-faced brother asked if Tony was in.
    â€œTony lives on the next floor,” Elijah said. “You can go up there and play as many numbers as you want and leave as much money with Tony as you need to.”
    The shiny-faced brother looked at me, then looked at Elijah, touched the front of his cap, and walked