Free All the Right Stuff by Walter Dean Myers Page A

the throat, he can fight you for his life. You catch him by the job, ain’t nothing much he can do about it.
    â€œAnyway, some of the quality white folks would go out and pick up the black people who worked for them. Some of the quality white ladies who had maids would go pick them up, too. Me, I was living just off downtown toward where the highway cut in, and I drove in to my job. Couple of boys lived near me and I seen them walking and told them to jump on in. I carried them in all through that strike. Lord, I got called all out my name behind that action right there.
    â€œI was called a traitor to my race. I was called everything but a son of God. Didn’t bother me none. People who want to hate you can find something in you they don’t like. They have a talent for doing that. Well, maybe I’m lying a little bit. It did bother me some. What bothered me was that some of the people making the most noise had been raised up by black people.
    â€œWhen the boycott was over and black people were sitting where they wanted on the buses, the whole thing looked a little foolish. Black people still couldn’t ride the buses late at night in case some hooligans had more beer in their guts than they had sense in their heads and would mess with them, but more or less, things stayed calm until the March on Washington. Then it got real ugly.
    â€œWhen I left Montgomery, I missed that tire-changing job because it paid good and you got good tips, but that town had enough ugly tucked up under its belly so that I didn’t mind leaving at all. That whole thing in Montgomery made you start thinking and maybe listening to what the politicians were saying. I’m not a voting man, but if I was, I would have voted for Kennedy in 1964. Of course he was killed before he had a chance to run, but he was all right, even if he was a Catholic.”
    â€œYou come to New York because you heard I was here,” Elijah said.
    â€œCome to New York because I heard you could find a job here in a heartbeat,” John Sunday said. “I walked up to a man on Eighth Avenue and asked him where I could find a job. He looked at me like I was crazy, but another man, I think he was a Puerto Rican or something like that, told me to go over to Fifty-fourth Street and they had plenty of jobs over there. I went and found me a job as a deliveryman. That’s when I met Elijah and taught him how to play checkers.”
    â€œYou—you taught me how to play what?” Elijah was grinning.
    â€œElijah, you know you can’t beat me in no checkers,” John Sunday said. “On the best day of your life, you could not beat me if I could get one eye open and move one finger to push the pieces around the board, and you know it!”
    â€œIf I had the time, I’d beat you two or three games today,” Elijah said.
    â€œIf you had the time, I’d whip out my checkerboard and whip you like a baby boy,” John Sunday said. He had wrapped the fish in newspaper and was putting them in a cloth bag.
    â€œI worked that delivery job at night, and then I got a little part-time messenger job in the daytime,” John Sunday said. “I’ve always been lucky at finding things. I found that job in Montgomery when there wasn’t a whole lot of jobs around, I found that delivery job and that messenger job, and then I found Jesus. All the time, He was sitting in my heart, waiting for me to recognize Him. When I did that, everything in life just seemed to be right. You know—what’s your name again, boy?”
    â€œPaul DuPree.”
    â€œI’m going to call you Paul,” John Sunday said. “Paul, you know some people feel uncomfortable when I talk about Jesus? They don’t feel uncomfortable when I talk about Obama or George Washington, but they get real edgy if I talk about Jesus. Ain’t that something?”
    â€œI know what you mean,” I said.
    â€œWhat I come to know was that