Sam's Legacy

by Jay Neugeboren

  When the dishes were in the sink, she got out of her chair and they sat together on her couch, watching television and talking about what had happened the night before. Sam stayed to hear the sports on the eleven o’clock news. The Knicks had won again, against the San Francisco Warriors, and while the announcer read off the high scorers (Stallworth was not among them), Sam wondered exactly how far from San Francisco Ben’s place was. Stella told him that her physical therapist would be there first thing in the morning, at eight o’clock, and Sam said he would go—did she want him to help her get into bed? She said she would manage. Sam thought, before he left, of telling her about what had happened to Steve, but it was too late. He didn’t want to give her bad dreams. It was something that, if he were going to mention it, he should have mentioned when he’d first arrived.

  He kissed her goodnight and left, huddled inside his coat, a wool scarf—his mother had sent it to him from the Virgin Islands seven or eight years before—tight around his throat. Stella had been very quiet, he realized as he walked home—and this pleased him. He liked the way she joked with him—the way she had of putting things—but he liked it that she followed her own advice most of the time and wasn’t always saying things simply to fill the silence.

  Sam enjoyed walking around the old neighborhood at night, when nobody else was out: it was usually like this when he came home from the Garden, or from card games, when there were any. Quieter after midnight, since the buses only ran once an hour then. He walked up Linden Boulevard, smiling. Maybe, shuttling back and forth from his place to Stella’s, and being able to choose between them—to stay in whichever one he wanted, when he wanted—maybe that was what they meant by peripheral privacy.

  Sam turned the corner at Nostrand, onto his own block, and found that he was thinking of what Tidewater had said Rube Foster had once said to him, about the difference between a player who could stay in for the long pull, and one who was only a flash in the pan. Sam remembered how, as a kid, he had become attached to new guys before the season would start—from what the sportswriters would say about them. He could still remember all the names—guys who were going to be the new Bob Fellers or Joe DiMaggios. Now that Sam had seen the sportswriters sucking around dressing rooms and training camps, he resented what they had once done to him—the way they had preyed upon his willingness to believe. Half of them were rummies, though—and Sam had taken a few of their paychecks the time he and Dutch had stayed at Vero Beach together, for the Dodgers’ spring training.

  He crossed the street and saw that there were no lights on in the back of the rummage shop. That was fine with him. What he had thought of asking Tidewater, though, was this: what do you see in me? If the guy had known Babe Ruth and all those other guys, and if the rest of his story was the truth…

  It was all the same to Sam: if what had happened had really happened, or if the old guy had imagined it all. And that included, Sam told himself, the business about the room below the cellar. Sam didn’t have to believe that either. He figured Tidewater had found something there, but who knew what it had really been. Sam breathed in. The city air seemed cleaner to him in cold weather. “Hey Sam—!” He stopped, turned, saw nothing. “Over here! Quick!”

  When Sam realized that the well-dressed man standing in the darkness of the entrance to the TV repair shop was his Bible Man, he felt himself tense slightly. But Sam walked toward him. “I came to warn you,” the Bible Man said. “They got a small contract out for you. They—”

  Sam laughed easily. He saw that the man’s eyes were bright, alert, and he studied the guy’s clothing. He wore a green felt hat, a rich brown tweed sportscoat, and even in the shadows Sam could see light glisten from the shine on his black shoes. “You’re doing okay, I see.”

  “Sure,” the man said. “I’m on easy street now—it’s why I’m here. Believe me when I tell you I’m not selling anything this time—I’m giving things away.” The man’s coat opened, and light flashed in Sam’s eyes from a diamond stickpin. “I’m grateful to you, Sam, for helping me out that night, in the snow. I don’t know what might have happened if you hadn’t come by. That was my low point.”

  Sam was wary. “You said you were there to warn me, that night.”

  The guy moved forward, eager. “That’s just the point—why I’m grateful to you, don’t you see? You made me be there, instead of somewhere else. And if I’d been somewhere else—”

  “I got to get going,” Sam said. “I’m glad you’re out from under.”

  “You can be too, Sam. Just listen to me a minute. It’s simple.” Sam waited. He thought of how he would tell the story to Stella: that, with the way they were all—Dutch and Shimmy and Sid and Flo and now his Bible Man—ganging up on him, to save him, he might as well have had muscular dystrophy. But he couldn’t, in his mind, hear Stella laugh. He remembered hearing Ben tell the Rabbi that Tidewater might as well have been Jewish, but nobody had laughed then either. “You brought me to my senses. Listen. They say the greatest thing in the world is to gamble and win, right?—but we know that the next best thing is to gamble and lose.” Sam saw the humor in the saying, and laughed with the man. “So I thought about that. How come, I asked, if I always wanted to win, I always wound up losing? Suppose, I thought—and it seemed crazy and right, there in the snow, after you’d kicked me—I just turned things upside down. Suppose I wanted to lose, I asked myself? I must’ve had some of that bible stuff in my head too, the way I get when I’m out of it—but didn’t Christ say that we should not lay up treasures for ourselves on earth?” He held Sam’s sleeve. “Just another second, friend—and then you get going, but fast.”

  “Sabatini?” Sam asked.

  “I told you—I’m off his payroll. I gave him my theory and asked for a big stake, and I fooled him—he gave it to me, figuring it would put me that much further into his debt. Where, he must’ve asked himself, was the gambler ever born who wanted to lose? But I had the answer. Suppose I didn’t gamble with the money myself?” Sam stepped into the doorway, to get warm. “I went across the bridge, to Jersey, to a private club where they have a wheel, see, and I took a young guy with me—not a gambler—and gave him a grand, with instructions to lose it as quickly as possible. I stayed at his side. For his work, I told the guy he’d get a hundred a night. The kid was sweet, a college kid, and I let him bring his girl. They had a ball—throwing the money all over the table, and getting cleaned out in thirty-five minutes. The next night I gave him another grand and—he was improving, see?—he lost that in ten minutes.” The Bible Man chuckled. “On the third and fourth nights he went under within fifteen minutes, and we sat around drinking the rest of the time. Then, on the fifth night—to tell you the truth, I didn’t believe it—he won forty thousand, and when he did, I took the stuff and got out of there, and I’m not going back.”

  “Sure,” Sam said, and thought: tell me another story.

  “I paid back Sabatini, told him that this gambler had retired, and I’d like to help you out too—just tell me how much—”

  “Forget it,” Sam said, and started walking away. “I’ll get out my own way.”

  “But use my theory,” the guy said, following him.

  “Sure,” Sam said. “One of these first days.”

  “I was serious about the other thing too,” the man called. “Be careful. Please—”

  Sam looked back and waved. Why shouldn’t he use it? What, after all, did he have to lose? He laughed to himself, pleased with his own words, but he tried to keep his mind not on what had or had not happened to the guy, or on what Sabatini might or might not do, but on Stella, on how he’d felt when he was with her, and on what he would do about her when things changed.

  He heard the sound of shoes clicking on the sidewalk—metal taps on the heels—and saw a tall man approaching him, from the opposite direction. Under the lamplight Sam could see that the man was dressed in a Chesterfield coat. Sam thought of what it would feel like, were he to run his cold fingers across the velvet co
llar. He turned to go into his building, one hand on the doorknob.

  “Excuse me—”

  Sam turned. The man reached him in a few quick steps. His hair was silver at the temples, his mouth thin, his chin almost pointed, and he spoke very clearly—as if, Sam thought, he might have been English.

  “I wonder if you could help me—” The man reached into his sidepocket and took out a business card. He looked into Sam’s eyes—the two men were exactly the same height—and his tongue flicked his upper lip. “Oh yes,” he said. “I see now.”

  Sam’s breath seemed to go even before he heard the sound in his stomach. He saw the man’s gray leather gloves, stretched across his fists, and he wanted to reach into his sidepocket, but he couldn’t. He gasped for air, doubled over, his hands wrapped around his middle. A gloved hand pressed his jaw, pulled him up straight, and Sam heard the back of his head crack against brick, so that in the darkness, with his eyes closed, points of light sprayed outward. “You’ll pay up now, yes?” Sam moved forward, to butt the guy with his head, but he had no chance. The blows pounded against him again, below, where the air was already gone, in sharp, rapid bursts. Sam wanted to cry out but couldn’t, and the thought of what he must have looked like—with his mouth open and no sound able to come from it—made him hurt. He spun around, light flying in circles, and knew that he was falling to the sidewalk; he heard the sound of metal clicking down the street, away, and then he felt somebody else touching him. He was on his back, his eyes closed, his knees at his chest. Somebody loosened his belt buckle. “There, there,” he heard Tidewater say gently. He’d expected the Bible Man. “You’ll be all right. It’s just your wind. There, there…” Sam could not open his eyes. He wanted to touch the back of his head, where it stung. He felt as if he were sinking beneath water, far below the surface—he saw young boys curling in the water, blood flowing from their ears: South Sea Island pearl divers from movies he’d seen when he had been a boy. He watched a boy’s body turn over, in slow motion, long strands of black hair trailing through the water as the boy struggled to get to the surface. The boy had a knife between his teeth, and Sam felt his own teeth biting down on it. The blood, expanding in the water, looked like dust. Sam thought there was somebody with Tidewater, but he didn’t know what made him think so—he couldn’t tell if he were seeing a shape or hearing a sound. “There, there,” Tidewater said, lifting Sam’s hips from the sidewalk, the way trainers did to football players on television. Sam heard strange sounds coming from his own throat, and he wanted to curse Tidewater for finding him. “There, there. You’ll be all right. You’ll come with me now.”

  12

  Flo sat across the table from Sam, in Tidewater’s room, explaining her program to him. Sam could tell from the way she spoke that she thought he would be especially interested in the figures. The rummage shop had raised, net, thirty-two thousand dollars during the previous year, and all of this money had gone to support what Flo called the program in independent living. The aim was to get as many of the muscular dystrophy patients as possible out of the hospitals and into apartments. Two of the boys Sam had seen at the Tuesday night parties, for example, were students at NYU, and they were living together in downtown Manhattan. Within the past three years there had been two marriages in which both husband and wife were wheelchair patients. With money that Flo was able to obtain from welfare and medicaid, in addition to the money the shop raised, the program was now able to support seventeen people in independent living. The most interesting statistic, Flo pointed out, was that it cost approximately seventy-five hundred dollars to maintain a couple in an apartment for one year, while, in a hospital, the cost for the same two people would have been over fifteen thousand. Where the patient’s family could contribute money, the money was accepted. Stella did not, Flo noted, receive any money from the organization.

  Things worked out best, however, Flo explained, when there were two living together. The program provided housekeeping service during the day, usually for five hours, and a person came in the evening—at nine—and stayed through the night. The day person would prepare and serve lunch and supper, clean up, see to the couple’s various needs. Transportation to and from work or school was arranged and paid for by the organization. The night person would undress and bathe them, put them to bed, and in the morning would dress them and give them breakfast. The couples were extraordinarily devoted to one another, and it was, Flo claimed, amazing to see what they would learn to do for themselves and for one another.

  Most important, though, were the effects on their personal lives—the way in which, in Flo’s words, living in the world had lifted their spirits. There was a psychologist working with the program who had known the patients before, and even in those instances in which they had been living at home, and not in hospitals, he had described the change that independent living had wrought as miraculous. Flo asked Sam to imagine the difference it would make in somebody’s life, and Sam nodded. It was, he realized, the first time since he had been living there that he had heard Flo talk about why she devoted so much of her life to the store. In a way, Sam was surprised. He would, if he had thought about it, have figured that she would have been more interested in raising money for research—to find a cure for the disease that had killed her husband and two children—but she had, he saw, only a passing interest in research, and hearing her go on about her program, and imagining the difference—between life in a hospital room and life in an apartment—he saw her point. While the doctors worked in their laboratories on cures, and while other women helped raise money to finance the organization’s research projects—money which amounted each year to millions of dollars—it was still, as Flo put it, important to pay attention to the living. Otherwise, what was it all for?

  “Now,” Flo said, putting her coffee cup down on the table. “If I have the strength, my next job is to try to sell the program to other groups—in other cities.” She sighed. “But it seems so foolish sometimes—going around and explaining to people, using the psychologist’s report, showing them the breakdown financially—it seems so foolish to have to. Shouldn’t it be obvious? Shouldn’t it, Sam?”

  “Sure,” Sam said. “It makes sense.” Flo looked away, as if daydreaming. “I mean,” Sam went on, “if you treat somebody like a human being, then chances are he’ll act like a human being.” He shrugged, feeling confused somehow, not by what he was saying, but by what he was feeling: he was drawn to Flo, he knew, despite the fact that she was almost twice his age, and despite the fact of what had been happening with Stella. He was aware that he was forcing himself not to look at her chest, at the fullness of her breasts inside her blouse. He remembered what Ben had said, about remarrying. She seemed so wrapped up in her program, and in the store, that he found it difficult to imagine what her life was like—what her face looked like—when she was not doing something that had to do with it. And yet—what made him uncomfortable—he sensed that she did have some other life about which he knew nothing. “Anyway, that’s what I think,” he added.

  “That’s lovely, Sam,” she said, and put her hand on top of his. “The psychologist says the same thing—only it takes him thirty pages.”

  “But if you go around to these other cities—” Sam stopped. “I mean, what about the store?”

  “Marion,” she said. She took her cup to the sink and rinsed it. “And Mason. They’ll manage without me.” She looked at him from over her shoulder. “And we’ll have to think of other things, if the program is to grow. The store has been wonderful, but we can only raise so much.”

  “I’ll make my own move in a day or so,” Sam said.

  “You’re lucky Mason was there. If not, I—”

  “No,” Sam said, with certainty. “I’ll tell you the truth, I’m surprised they even bothered, for what I owe them. There’s guys—not big shots either—just ordinary guys with jobs who’ll put ten grand on a game, and who get a hundred grand into the hole. I’m just peanuts to them.”

  “Still,�
�� she said. “You’re right to get away now.”

  Sam nodded. “They can get mean,” he admitted. “I’m just surprised they bothered with me.” He stood, thinking that Flo was leaving. “Anyway, all they did was give me a cut on the back of my head and knock the wind out of me.” She moved from the sink to the door, across the small room, and Sam felt that she wanted him to say more. “I don’t mind staying here, with him. I’m used to a small place. Is he upstairs now—I mean, while you’re visiting with me?”

  “No,” Flo said. “I thought he’d be here, with you.”

  “He’ll show up,” Sam said. “You can count on him.”

  “Is there anything you need—anything you’d like me to bring down?”

  Sam shook his head sideways. “He takes care of everything. We get along okay—but, like I said, I’ll make my move in a day or two. Staying in one place—it’s leaving yourself wide open, like a sitting duck.”

  “And Stella?” Flo asked.

  “Sure,” Sam said, and he was not surprised by the suddenness of her question. “I think about her a lot.”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s all,” Sam said. “I don’t have to say anything else.”

  “That’s right,” Flo said. Her voice was cold.

  “I mean, you yourself just said she’s not part of the program—” Sam laughed.

  “You’re just like your father,” Flo said. She stepped across the room to where he sat, in the corner, and she put a hand on his shoulder, then bent over and kissed him on the forehead. He stared at her blouse, his nose an inch from her left breast. “You take care of yourself.”

  “Sure,” Sam said. “I got brains.”

  Flo laughed, and opened the door to the cellar. Sam smelled dust. He heard her footsteps on the wooden stairs. In a hole was right, he thought to himself, looking around the room and thinking of the store above. He didn’t like the idea of being in a room without windows. He didn’t like the idea of others—Flo and Tidewater—keeping a lookout for him. The deck of cards that Tidewater had left for him, unopened, lay on the table where Tidewater had placed it, next to the jar of pencils. That had been a mistake—telling Tidewater that everything would have worked out if only he could have had a game now and then, because the truth, Sam realized, was that he wasn’t much interested any more. Instead of cards, he thought of Stella.