all?â
âThatâs all,â 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 didnât 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 Slyâs eyes following me, and I couldnât 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.
âYo, you want a soda?â
He took the soda and just looked at me.
âSo, what you got to say?â I asked him as he twisted the cap off the soda.
He took a long, slow drink, then gave me a mean look. âI ainât saying nothing,â he said. âI didnât ask you for no soda.â
âOkay.â I shrugged and turned.
âYo, pretty boy!â
I turned back.
âGo to hell!â 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.
âWhat did he say?â Sly asked.
âFirst he said he didnât ask me for a soda so he didnât have to say nothing,â I said. âThen he thought about it and said, âGo to hell!ââ
âWhat he was saying was that if you got money, you can look down on folks and act like youâre doing them a favor,â Sly said. âBut that brother knew that when you left, he still was going to be standing there and still didnât have anything going on. And he wasnât buying into your social contract, either. He just wanted to let you know that. Hereâs your twenty-five dollars.â
âThatâs okay,â I said.
âNo, itâs not okay,â Sly said. He put the money into my shirt pocket. âWhen a young man is afraid to deal with his fellow man, it means the system has you so brainwashed that youâre 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.
âYou think you know something when youâre talking about philosophy, but that brother you gave the soda to knows a lot more than you.â
Sly stepped off the stoop and got into a car I hadnât seen pull up. He rolled the window down and beckoned for me to come over to the car.
âSo you know all about the social contract, Rousseau, Hobbes, and all those old dudes?â he asked.
âI know some about it,â I said. âI donât know those guys youâre talking about. But I think I would like to know more.â
âThatâs good,â Sly said. âOnly fools donât want to learn more about everything.â
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 wasnât around was still confusing. When I got to the emporium in the morning, I had a bunch of questions ready for Elijah.
âThe way I figure it,â I said after I walked through the door, âis that either everybody follows the social contract bit or nobody follows it. Iâm not going to play by some rules if there are people going
Learning to Kill: Stories