Read Online All the Right Stuff by Walter Dean Myers - Free Book Online Page B

from some old book that was written back before time began.
    It was hot, and 125th Street was jumping. People had set up tables along the sidewalks and were selling books, DVDs, candles, and incense. Every other storefront had a different kind of music blasting out from loudspeakers, and some girls in tight dresses were dancing and showing off their stuff in front of the Apollo. For a moment I thought I saw my father looking at some shoes in a window. It wasn’t him, of course, just some guy with the same build doing what he had liked to do, window-shop on 125th Street. The noise and the excitement of Harlem had always made him happy, even when he didn’t have any money.
    John Sunday was sitting on a folding chair in one of the rooms at La Marqueta. There were fresh fish in every booth, along with baskets of crabs, shrimp piled on ice, and lobsters on the long counter next to him. John himself was a big white man who looked like he had shrunk inside his clothes. They were just hanging loose on him. The stubble on his face made him seem almost gray, but his eyes, kind of pale blue, lit up when he saw Elijah. He smiled and pointed a bony finger at me.
    â€œThis your grandboy?” he asked Elijah. “He’s tall enough to play basketball. You play any basketball?”
    â€œI play some,” I said.
    â€œYou got to watch old Elijah,” John Sunday said. “He’ll steal you blind. He just come around here to see me because he wants to steal one of my recipes. Ain’t nobody can make mullet stew like John Sunday. Ain’t that right, Elijah?”
    â€œSure is,” Elijah said. “How you doing, John?”
    â€œDoing good. Doing good. Sit yourself down,” John said. He reached behind the counter and pulled out another folding chair and a milk crate. “Maybe I’ll tell you some of my secrets.”
    We sat down, Elijah on the chair and me on the crate. It felt a little sticky, and I tried not to think about it.
    â€œJohn Sunday, this is Mr. Paul DuPree, who is helping me over the summer,” Elijah said.
    I shook hands with John Sunday, and he had a good, firm grip.
    â€œJohn came up from Shreveport, Louisiana,” Elijah said. “Shreveport isn’t a bad little town, but it isn’t any paradise.”
    â€œYou can say that again,” John said, shaking his head. “My daddy worked in an icehouse in Shreveport, and so did my brother Billy. Billy was named after a famous preacher used to come around once in a while. We could hear him on the radio Sunday nights, too. When my daddy died right after the war, I went to work in the icehouse. I didn’t go on the trucks, though. I’d stay inside all day, chopping ice into blocks for people to buy. Then, when it was time to go home, I’d go out and the hot air hit me and it was all about whew! And then some more whew!”
    â€œIt gets hot all over Louisiana,” Elijah threw in.
    â€œIt ain’t a bad heat because you don’t have as many big buildings like they do in New York, so it cools off at night,” John Sunday said. “But when you come out of that icehouse into that heat, it was like being hit in the face. More than one man caught pneumonia from doing that. You know a man’s lungs can only take so much switching between hot and cold. Did you know that?”
    â€œNo, I didn’t know that,” I said. He was looking at me with his head turned to one side.
    â€œWell, that’s the truth,” John Sunday said. “I worked for that icehouse from the time I was eleven until I was seventeen years of age. Worked like a dog, too. Work scares some people, but it don’t scare me. I love to work, I truly do.”
    â€œWhy did you leave?” Elijah asked.
    â€œGet on, Elijah!” John Sunday pulled his head back, away from Elijah. “I told you I got that cooking job up in Baton Rouge. What’s your name again, boy?”
    â€œPaul