Sam's Legacy

by Jay Neugeboren

  I never played baseball again. I never saw my brothers or my mother or my sister again. I never saw any of the players from the Brooklyn Royal Dodgers again. I thought, several times, when touring Negro teams would come to the towns I was living in, of going to the ballpark and watching them—but even when I wore a moustache, I had no desire to take the chance of being recognized, even though I believed that my act would probably not, by those who had known me, have been held against me. I lived, in the years after that, in many towns, and held various jobs. For five years during the Depression, I was fortunate enough to find a job as a night watchman at an oil refinery in Livingston, Texas. I lived for thirteen years in the town of Scotlandville, Louisiana, outside of Baton Rouge, where I gave piano lessons and was tutor to the children of wealthy Negro families. I changed my name and was never, so far as I know, hunted by the authorities. During the Second World War, I taught briefly in a boys preparatory school in New England, where I succeeded in passing as a white man. The things that led me to do so need not be mentioned here; I left the school, declaring what I was, after a year and several months.

  In 1964 I returned to Brooklyn and secured my present position as janitor. It is a position, I know, which many other stars from my time in the Negro League have also held. My choice, in several ways, has proved to be fortuitous, and I find at the end what I did not expect to find when I started to set these thoughts down: that, except for the fact that I have not been able, over the course of my life, to sustain those friendships which might have been begun in my earliest years, I regret nothing.

  IV

  Sam the Gambler

  “See how different I am from that miserable creature by the river!—all because you found me and brought me to the very best.”

  “It was my good chance to find you,” said Deronda. “Any other man would have been glad to do what I did.”

  “That is not the right way of thinking about it,” said Mirah, shaking her head with decisive gravity. “I think of what really was. It was you, and not another, who found me, and were good to me.”

  —George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

  13

  Sam believed in Tidewater’s story. Nobody, he told himself, could simply have made all those things up. He walked along Bedford Avenue, staying close to the buildings, and he found that he was not trying to forget the things that he’d read. He’d been glad, though, when he’d finished the story, that Tidewater had not been there. This way he’d been able to get out without having to go into any explanations, and without having to have the guy try to protect him in some way.

  He turned left on Clarkson Avenue and, a second later, felt the lights of a car, turning the same corner, on his back. He held tightly to his knife and kept walking. The car passed. Sabatini would have somebody keep an eye on the rummage shop, and he’d do what he could to get his money—it was, Sam knew, bad policy to ever let even a single customer get away free—but, with what he owed, Sam was still small fry. There’d be no stakeout, especially at this hour of the morning, when the city was still. Sam saw no lights on in any windows of the apartment houses which lined both sides of the street, no reflections from television sets. Listening to his own footsteps, he remembered Ben’s theory on how to deal with muggers, and he smiled, imagining Ben using his voice in front of a class of middle-aged women as he froze a fake assailant in his tracks.

  He opened the outside door to Stella’s building with the key she’d given him, took the elevator to her floor, and let himself into her apartment. He took off his coat, left it on the couch in the living room, then took off his shoes and tiptoed into the bedroom. He waited, so that his eyes would become accustomed to the darkness, and as he waited he imagined that he could see Tidewater’s eyes bulge, when he had opened the door and found Johnson standing there. He’d been right about that too—about what he’d said to Tidewater about steering clear of a guy like Johnson.

  He saw the wheelchair next to the bed, and the outline of Stella’s body under her covers. She didn’t stir. Sam moved forward and knelt next to the bed.

  “Hey, Sam—I was just thinking about you.”

  He leaned forward and pressed his cheek to her forehead. “I wanted to see you before I left.”

  She turned from her back to her side, facing him, and he could see her eyes. He reached under the cover and took her hand in his. “I’m glad you came,” she said.

  “I want to be gone before the morning, though,” he said.

  “Don’t take any chances.”

  “I came to tell you that I’ll try to come back.”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s all,” he said. “I just wanted you to know. I mean, I owe them a bundle and I have to make that up first. But if I do—”

  “Why don’t you come closer?” she said. “I can’t see enough of your face.”

  “I can’t stay long—I told you.”

  “Come closer and get warm. It must be cold outside.”

  Her thumb moved gently along the palm of his hand and he laughed. “Hey,” he said. “I mean it. Don’t start up with me tonight—I got to get going.”

  “Come on, Sam the Gambler,” she said. “Get warm first, next to me.”

  Sam sat on the edge of the bed and lifted her head to his lap. “I read the rest of his story,” he said.

  “So?” Her voice was cold.

  “So nothing. I read it is all. I mean, I know I read it. I wanted to do it for him before I left, and—”

  “You don’t have to explain.” She snuggled against him. “I’m just jealous, I guess. I want all of you, Sam.”

  “Sure,” he said, and laughed. “You and Sabatini.”

  “Flo said you weren’t hurt too bad.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I didn’t worry about you. I thought you’d appreciate that.” She moved backward so that she was leaning against him, her head on his shoulder, her cheek pressing his hand to his chest. “I have great confidence in you.”

  “Listen,” Sam said. “I came here to tell you something, so don’t take my mind off—”

  “You told me,” she said. “You’ll come back.”

  “That’s not all,” he said. He was, for some reason he couldn’t understand, suddenly angry with her—so angry he wanted to hurt her, to crush her, to see her helpless and in pain. And yet, the words which had been in his head, from the time he’d finished reading Tidewater’s story, were there, and he let them out: “I love you, Stella. Even if—”

  “Shh…”

  He tried to understand why he had said what he had, and he saw himself on the night things had begun, feeling his heart swell for Stallworth. That, he had thought, had been so easy—feeling for a guy he’d never even have to touch, and yet here, taking a chance at leaving a place he’d been safe in, and touching her, it was easy too, and he wanted her to understand, he wanted to give her words which she could listen to while he was gone. “If I get a stake, and a game,” he went on, “—I think I have things figured right—and if I do, I’ll—”

  “Lie beside me,” she said. “Your hands are still cold.”

  “I’m not promising anything,” he said.

  “Oh Sam!” she said, and if he hadn’t felt her tears running across the back of his hand he would have thought she was laughing at him. “I love you so, Sam. Please. Get warm. Hold me for a while.”

  “There’s no time. I got to be back before—”

  Her leg moved against his. “Please—”

  “I mean it.”

  “Please.”

  “I’ll fall asleep.”

  “I have an alarm clock.”

  Sam shivered, and remembered how cold he’d been, walking with Tidewater and Flo and Ben. He imagined that the empty lot, where the Negro men had been huddled around the leftover chimney, was the field where Ben and Tidewater had played when they’d been boys. “Just for a few minutes then.”

  “You’re my bird, Sam,” she said.

  After a while, when he felt m
ore relaxed than he had before, he spoke to her about the other thing that had been on his mind: about what had happened to him, in his head, the first time his tongue had touched hers, but the story didn’t bother her. She held him tightly and whispered: “See—didn’t I tell you I knew I shouldn’t trust the guy?”

  When Sam entered the basement, he saw light coming from under Tidewater’s door. He opened the door without knocking and saw Tidewater sitting at the table in a red plaid bathrobe.

  “I was worried about you,” Tidewater said.

  “I had to see somebody,” Sam said. “I figured they wouldn’t be keeping an eye on me at three in the morning.”

  “I brought your valise down for you, as you asked me to.” Sam took his coat off and sat down. “Would you like some tea, before you leave? It’s already made.”

  “Sure,” Sam said, and blew into his cupped hands. “I read the rest of your story,” he added.

  “Do you know what your father’s favorite story was?” Tidewater said. He stood at the stove. “When I was a boy and I heard the less educated colored people singing—for a year or two of my life I believed that the famous spiritual concerned hunters who had gone out in search of game, and had found only birds.” Tidewater’s eyes flickered with light, and Sam could see his father’s eyes, smiling with the man. Tidewater spoke carefully then, in a dialect Sam had never heard him use, humming the tune: “I’m gonna lay down my bird, den…”

  “Sure,” Sam said. “I see what you mean. Ben liked that stuff.”

  “I wanted to be so different, Sam, do you understand?” The man was pleading with him, bending his narrow body across the table. “It’s all over now, but I wanted it to be so different.” Tidewater took Sam’s hands in his own, and Sam did not try to stop him. Tidewater’s face was old, Sam saw—older than the number of years the man claimed he had. “As different as I was, yet my true vanity lay in this, do you see? That I also wanted to believe that my life—my story—was, with its difference, only the story of my people. Do you understand?” His voice sounded sweeter than ever to Sam. “That must be how I survived all those years—thinking that what I was saving was something precious. Yet now that…” He stopped, letting Sam’s hands go, and he gave Sam his cup of tea. “Was I not mad?” he asked, “to have wanted to see in the conditions of my own life, marked forever by my face, the conditions of those whose lives were also marked by things outward, by things so opposite that—”

  He broke off and began laughing, at himself. “I begin again,” he said. “And you’ve heard my words move along that road, after all.” His chin dipped down. Sam waited. If Tidewater had pressed him—had asked—he would have told him that he understood now what he had not understood before—about why, given his birth and the color of his skin, he had chosen the way he had chosen. He knew what Tidewater had meant when he’d written what he had about his head being full. Stella had promised to wait for him. Take care, Sam the Gambler, she’d said to him. “Pushkin was a mulatto, and Dumas an octoroon, most probably.” Tidewater laughed bitterly, then bent over and whispered: “Let your father go, Sam—let him go. Let him desert us. You will return, when you can. I know it. The transition doesn’t bother you, does it? It is why I have given my story to you. Without offense, you are the city, Sam, don’t you see? Despite your leave-taking—”

  Sam sipped his tea and shrugged. “I’ll take care of myself,” he said. “And I’ll be back, if I can. You’re right about that.” He thought of Ben, if he’d had possession of the story, making a joke about the fact that the ball which had fallen in front of Johnson had been hit by a Jew. “What I mean is, I’m glad I read the story now, and I appreciate being able to stay down here while—”

  “I wanted to be so different,” Tidewater was saying. “And yet I have been useful. You are not the first to stay here. In recent years I have done what I could to help young black men who are now the age that I once was—boys who, like myself, are angry and in flight, and do you know what? If I could control their lives, my instinct would be—am I mad, or merely foolish?—to have them, here, study things which are useless.”

  “I better get going,” Sam said.

  “Latin, for example,” Tidewater said, holding Sam by the wrist. “It is not difficult to figure out why, after all, I would not have them, proud as they claim they are of the color of their skin, spend their lives learning only of things which pertain to that color. But I say nothing to them, Sam. I shelter them and feed them until it is time for them to move on. At the least, though, I find myself explaining to myself, one would never confuse one’s knowledge of Latin with those things, armed with which my young men believe they can change the world. Do you see?”

  Sam shrugged, slipped his wrist from Tidewater’s grasp. “Ben’s the expert when it comes to theories,” he said.

  “I wanted to be so different,” Tidewater said again, standing, getting Sam’s coat for him, “when the truth was, all the while, that—excelling as I did in music and sport—I merely possessed those characteristics, in high degree, that my race possesses.” He laughed wildly, but spoke very softly. He held Sam’s coat for him and Sam slipped his arms into the sleeves. “I had natural rhythm, Sam. I had grace. I was a childlike creature. I was, until the end, inwardly enraged and outwardly docile. I knew, in the end, what my place was, didn’t I?” Tidewater sighed. “But you know all this. What I thought I was saving—what I coveted—was not nearly so special. You know me—who I am—after all.”

  He looked away, as if trying to remember something. “I wanted to be so different, and yet, though without my youth, of course, I’m still—keeping you here—the same man I was, as it were.” He looked at Sam. “Sometimes I think, in my fancy, that if I could, I would give one long cry, and ride that cry to the other side. If I could.”

  Sam said nothing. Tidewater went upstairs and checked the street for him. It was just past five. Tidewater returned to tell him that there was no danger. Sam picked up his valise and then, at the door to the cellar, leaned forward and offered the man his cheek. Tidewater kissed him. They did not speak. Sam could have given himself reasons—what, when he thought about it, did it cost him, after all—but he did not want to. The air outside was ice-cold, so that his skin felt as if somebody were sticking needles into it. He walked for several blocks. In front of Garfield’s he managed to get a taxi. He sat in the back seat, hugging himself for warmth. The sliding glass partition that separated him from the driver was locked with a key. The glass was bullet-proof. The cashbox, next to the meter, was bolted to the dashboard.

  14

  Sam knew that the tiny rectangle of bluish-green directly below his window was a swimming pool; he knew that the small objects farther away, which looked like houses, were houses; he knew that he was seeing lawns and streets, churches and community buildings, palm trees and parks; he knew that the small figures he could see far to his left, on the golf course, were the figures of men; and he knew that the brightly colored buildings, grouped together beyond the private homes and churches and community buildings and lawns and streets and parks, made up the shopping center—and yet, whenever he looked at the place from his window on the seventeenth floor, and even when he had, on his first day there, walked around at ground level, it all somehow seemed less real to him than it had in the brochure. That was why, he would have explained if Ben had asked him, he had stayed inside since his arrival.

  Sam turned away from his bedroom window, expecting to find Ben there—but Ben, he knew, had gone in order to leave Sam alone for the evening. Sam walked across the plush green carpeting; when Ben paced back and forth there each morning, reciting his prayers, Sam did not hear steps—and it did not, in truth, bother him that Ben put on his tephillin there, with the curtains drawn, while Sam lay in bed. It had, of course, been a mistake—coming here; still, if he made a killing tonight, it all would have turned out for the best. If not, since he had let Ben put up the stake for him—two thousand dollars—he himself would have lost nothing. Alt
hough he had, in the three weeks since he’d arrived, done nothing except eat, rest, and listen to Ben and Andy, he felt tired. Tidewater’s story was on his mind. He wondered: would Ben have been happier if Sam were to lose Ben’s two thousand dollars? Would he have then felt that their accounts were, finally, even?

  The doorbell rang. Sam looked at his watch—it was exactly eight-thirty. He wiped his right hand along his pants to make sure his palm was dry. He felt something heavy on his chest, but knew that the feeling would pass. Stella had given him luck, and he believed that he was all right. He’d kept up with his exercises, every morning after Ben had put away his tephillin and left the room. Sam walked from their bedroom, through the living room, then along the corridor. From his second day there, having heard the story from Ben, Andy had been pushing him, had been saying that he could set up a game, whenever Sam gave the word. Flo had written to Ben before Sam’s arrival, about what had happened. “A woman who loses her husband is called a widow,” Andy had said at breakfast on Sam’s second day there. “And a man who loses his wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is an orphan, but—our father told us this—there is no word for a parent who loses his child. Do you see?”

  “Sam Berman?”

  “That’s right.”

  The man looked into Sam’s eyes, and Sam stared back. Here we go round the mulberry bush, he thought. The man’s hand was in his, the palm dry. “Sol Pinkus is the same, Sam. Pinkus with a ‘k’ in it. So, let me ask you something—how are you feeling, son?”

  “Fine. Come on in and I’ll take your coat.”

  The man was almost as tall as Sam, but much heavier. Sam estimated his weight at two seventy or two seventy-five. He was older than Sam had expected him to be: in his early sixties, possibly more. His upper lip was tucked inside his lower one, so that the inside flesh of the lower lip showed. His nose was large, red, bulbous. Flaps of skin hung down around his chin; his eyes were wide-set, brown, his eyebrows straight. Sam let him go ahead, and he noticed that the man leaned backward slightly as he walked, his shoes pointed outward. He heard him breathing heavily, through his nose. The man struggled out of his coat—a heavy wool overcoat, despite the warm weather outside—and gave it to Sam. Underneath he wore a brown herringbone sport jacket—the cut was old-fashioned, with thick shoulder pads that made him seem even wider than he was.