Sam's Legacy

by Jay Neugeboren

  “Sure,” Sam said, remembering what Flo had said. “Come on in.”

  Tidewater leaned the mop against the wall, placed the bucket to the side of the door, then entered, carrying the envelope. “Sit down,” Sam offered, gesturing to the couch. He thought of Steve and the conversation they’d had—and he remembered, in Steve’s store, having thought of Tidewater and his father. “You want some coffee or something?”

  Sam saw that Tidewater’s eyes were taking in the apartment; it might, he realized, have been his first time inside—Sam didn’t know what went on when he was gone and Ben was alone. Maybe Ben had thought things out in the same way, about being friendly with the guy: what did it cost you, after all, if you had the time? Tidewater took one step into the room and stood to the side of the door, stiffly. He seemed taller than usual. Most people would have taken him for six-three or six-three-and-a-half, even though he was probably six-two. The thinness of the man’s cheeks, the length of his neck, the way his arms hung almost to the tops of his kneecaps, and those long slender fingers—like a musician’s—things like that could give the illusion of extra height. Sam sat down in the easy chair. “It’s about your father,” Tidewater said. “He’s worried about you.”

  “What?” Sam looked away.

  “Can I help in any way?”

  “I look out for myself,” Sam said. Tidewater didn’t move. “Look—if you want to talk, sit down.” His eyes on the manila envelope, Sam thought of asking Tidewater if his inheritance was in it. “It makes me nervous, you guarding the door there. Nobody’s gonna steal anything.”

  “This is important,” Tidewater said, and his voice was cool. He moved forward, noiselessly, pulled a chair from the table, and sat. “There was a time,” he said, “though you might not believe it, when I could have been of some use to you. Perhaps Ben has—”

  “He said something once,” Sam said.

  Tidewater’s eyes closed, and Sam’s own eyes widened, watching the man’s face—it was as if, he thought, there were two huge marbles under the eyelids. Holy rollers, you might call them, he thought, but the joke only annoyed him. Inside his mouth, he ran his tongue over his gums. “You’re worried about your father,” Tidewater stated. “That—”

  “Ben can take care of himself.”

  “That you might not see him again if he leaves for California,” Tidewater continued. The man’s voice was strong, and Sam didn’t like it. “We all hope, of course, that he’ll have many years ahead of him. Still—”

  “Cut the gas,” Sam said. “I got things to do. What’s on your mind? I mean, like I said before, Ben told me you wanted to see me.”

  “You’re right,” Tidewater said, and Sam saw the man smile slightly, pleased to hear that his message had been delivered. “He’s worried about you and I thought you should know. It might affect—well, I thought you should know. That’s all.”

  “Now I know,” Sam said, standing.

  “He’s making a mistake, of course. He should stay here—with you, with all of us.”

  Sam tried to get the wheels to spin faster inside his head, to figure what the guy was after. So Ben was worried about him. Flo too. And the Bible man, and now Tidewater. The whole world was out to save Sam Berman’s ass. That and twenty cents…“He’s his own man,” Sam said. “It’s all the same to me.”

  “He’s making a mistake. You’re staying on, which means that you must know it’s a mistake. That is why I’m here, you see—we have something in common now, Sam.” Tidewater looked up, his eyes large, and then he laughed suddenly, with a bitterness that surprised Sam. “You’re my farewell gift from him, don’t you see?”

  Sam moved backwards. “Listen, I don’t have the time for this. I get enough of it from—”

  “That’s just where the words came from,” Tidewater said, and he leaned back in the chair. “From your father. There’s no reason not to tell him my feelings: that I wanted him to stay—he knows what our friendship means to me, what discovering one another again, after all the years…” Tidewater’s voice trailed off, and Sam relaxed, made himself concentrate on the fact that Tidewater was, like Ben, just another old man. “But what he does not—and will not—know, is that you are my farewell gift to him.”

  Sam drew a deep breath. Maybe this was how the two of them had passed all those hours in Tidewater’s room, below the rummage shop, trading words and riddles. Maybe things like that happened when you got to Ben’s age, he thought. It was no skin off his back. Maybe, one morning, he’d even find Tidewater in the living room, wrapping black straps around his pale arms. Sam blew through his lips, sideways. That would be rich.

  “Here,” Tidewater said, and held the envelope toward Sam. The man’s voice was soft again. He seemed hesitant, embarrassed. “I’d planned to share this with your father, but he has forfeited his chance. ‘My son,’ he said to me, ‘will take my place.’ If you have the time, then, I’d like…”

  He set the envelope down, on the kitchen table. “It’s something I’ve been working on which I hope you’ll read. It has to do with baseball.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. He tried to figure, quickly, which would be the easy way out. “Ben said something once, about when you were young. He looks up to you.”

  “Ben knows much of what is in here—I’ve shown him sections from time to time. Perhaps, after he leaves, you’ll come to my apartment sometime, and we can talk.”

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

  Tidewater stood and approached Sam, his eyes bulging forward, revealing his anger. “Do not talk to me like that. I told you before: your father is worried about you. I’d like to help. He’s making a mistake.” Sam watched the man’s tongue, how it flicked his lips, his teeth. He saw a streak of darker skin inside Tidewater’s mouth—he’d seen it before: the man with the two-toned tongue, he’d called him. Tidewater’s breath, sweet like honey, washed over Sam’s face, but Sam stood his ground, looked straight into the man’s eyes. It was relaxing him—a surprise—simply to see the guy get carried away, out of control. The envelope was in front of Sam’s chin, held forward, and Sam tried to imagine what would happen between them, after Ben was gone, if he refused to read it. There was Flo to think about too; she might feel sorry for the guy. “It’s important to me that you read it, that you know. When you’re done, you do not have to say anything if you don’t want to, though I would welcome your reaction. Please? I—”

  “Sure,” Sam said, and he took the envelope. What would it cost him, except a few hours, and once it was out of the way, maybe the guy would let him be. “I’ll take a look at it.” There was no point in saying anything about Ben’s leaving—but he could understand that too: how upset the guy might be, and how Flo might take his side.

  “It is the story, not of my life, but of one part of my life—the part that was most crucial for me. I hope—”

  “You don’t have to explain,” Sam said. “I said I’d take a look.”

  Tidewater was sitting again, his head back, as if dreaming. Maybe Ben had had this figured too, Sam thought—maybe it was just another favor he needed from Sam, one which, with his ways, he couldn’t have asked for directly. Sam wondered if Ben had told the hospital story to Tidewater, and if that was the reason the guy seemed to trust Sam so much. Then too, Ben might have bragged about Sam’s knowledge of sports—he was a father, after all. Sam held the envelope and listened…

  “My earliest memory—or what I remember as being my earliest memory,” Tidewater was saying, “is connected with your father, you see. It is of a game we played on the weed-grown lawn of an old wood house situated across the road from our own houses—did he tell you that we lived, for several years, side by side?—and behind the houses and gardens of our neighbors.” He stopped. “Has Ben—or Andy—ever told you about their house, the one—”

  “No,” Sam said, and unfastened the metal clasp on the envelope.

  “Not the house they lived in—but the house we played in: it was the
last one before the open fields and all the neighborhood children used it for their games. Ben remembers. The game he and I would play had to do with one of us standing on the porch at twilight and trying to discern the movements of the other—who would be creeping through the grass and weeds toward the front porch. I remember that I would keep my back turned, my eyes resting on my forearm, until the shout would come from him—‘Ready!’ I remember also the great joy when one of us would discover the other, and I remember most of all the feeling of crawling on my stomach, through the grass, over stones and debris, of creeping closer and closer to the front porch without being detected, and of seeing, my head raised inches from the dirt, Ben’s socks rolled down over his shoe tops, and his scabbed knees.”

  Tidewater coughed lightly, the back of his hand to his mouth. Sam was sitting on the couch. It was the first time he’d ever heard the guy go on at such length, yet he found that he was not surprised. If Tidewater had known Ben that far back, then, Sam reasoned, he had known Sam’s grandfather too. Sam lifted the sheaf of papers part of the way from the envelope. “It is a feeling,” Tidewater continued, “—the crawling forward at twilight—before which I can find no memory.” Sam was, he admitted, curious now about what the guy had written, but he said nothing: when things were moving like this—in ways you hadn’t foreseen—the best thing was to keep your mouth shut and let the other guy show his hand. “Of what should have been a significant event—the birth of my younger sister Elizabeth—I have no recollection; I remember her only from the time she was walking and talking, which means that the game with Ben must have preceded this memory, and so, I reason, all others until then.

  “Ben knows this,” Tidewater said, his voice suddenly sharp. “What he does not know, however, is that, after he moved from our section—to East New York, where only Jews lived—the house we played in was torn down and the land cleared. I remember watching the process with daily sadness, thinking of him, and when a secret chamber was found in the cellar of the building, and bones in the chamber, I did not find the discovery strange. There was no other evidence—neither clothing nor papers, nor shoes, nor eating utensils—but the conclusion in the neighborhood was that the bones had been those of a runaway slave, hiding out on his way to Canada and freedom. My chief thought at the time, though, was of Ben, and I ached for some way to share the good news with him—the news that our house had been a haunted house, and that we had, creeping through the grass at twilight, been braver than we had ever imagined.”

  Tidewater stood suddenly. “There is more, but you will read what I have written.” The man filled his chest with air, reached out with his long arm, and opened the door. “You’ll forgive me, of course. I’m grateful for your time.” He picked up his bucket. “I had wanted to tell your father what I have just told you, but there is more—the story has had, here, a new ending, and Ben will not know what it is.” The man’s eyes shone, happier than at any moment since the day Sam had first seen him meet Ben. Sure. Sam had to give himself credit. He was replacing his father already. Sam moved into the doorway. The line of Tidewater’s frail back curved slightly, and Sam was reminded again of the man’s age. “I know,” Tidewater said, very gently, and he sighed, sounding like Ben. “You’re worried about him also. Who would not see it, after all—that you care. I’m grateful.”

  Muriel had not moved from her position between the wooden posts. She stared at the two men; then, her hands gripping the posts, she pulled herself to a standing position and leaned over the railing to watch Tidewater descend. Sam did not hear the man’s shoes. On the ground floor, Tidewater disappeared around the bend, under the staircase. Muriel looked at Sam. “How’s tricks, kid?” he asked. She said nothing, stuck her middle finger into her mouth, at the side, so that Sam could see it wiggling against the inside of her cheek. In another ten years, would she, he wondered, have breasts like her mother’s? There was a streak of something dark—dirt? chocolate?—under her chin. The color of her lips seemed paler than the color of her cheeks. Her hair fell in sandy-colored curls, to her shoulders.

  Sam pulled the pages from the envelope, riffled their edges with his thumb. He thought of his account with Sabatini, and reminded himself to tear up the sheet of paper on which he’d been figuring his finances, so that Ben wouldn’t find it. Don’t bet what you don’t have—the first rule, and he’d gone against it. It showed you how smart he was getting. Ben knew what he was doing, giving him away now.

  Sam didn’t smile at his own joke. He didn’t mind letting Tidewater think he’d replaced his own father; but that, in some way, Tidewater felt that he was going to take care of Sam now, that he too was taking Ben’s place—it didn’t make any sense. The door to Muriel’s apartment creaked. “Sure,” he said, and turned to walk back into his apartment before the grandmother could see him. “Never take candy from a stranger, you hear?”

  MY LIFE AND DEATH IN THE NEGRO AMERICAN BASEBALL LEAGUE

  A SLAVE NARRATIVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  I consider the high point of my life to have been that moment on the fifteenth day of February, 1928, in the city of Havana, Cuba, when, after I had pitched and hit my team, the Brooklyn Royal Dodgers, to a 1 to 0 triumph over a team composed of players from the New York Yankees, George Herman “Babe” Ruth mocked me again for having chosen the life that was mine, calling me a “make-believe nigger,” whereupon I slammed my fist into the pasty flesh of his dark face and struck him down; it was a blow I should have struck long before that day, and one which, filling me momentarily with joy, would lead, on that same afternoon, to my own death as a player in the Negro American Baseball League.

  I was known by another name then, and was often called, for my abilities (though never to my face), “the Black Babe”; if things had been otherwise, however, he might have been named for me, and he often admitted as much in the privacy of our friendship. He called me a fool on that day, though, for he knew what was common knowledge at the time—that if I had chosen to hide my origins (as, I should note, others did, including two—an outfielder and a second baseman—whose bronze busts reside in the Cooperstown, New York, Hall of Fame), I could easily have done so, and I could thereby, as he put it, have had it all.

  But what will seem now to have been a then unfashionable pride in my origins, and what might seem here a too fashionable retelling of history, is really neither. The facts of the time, and of my life, were simpler. As anyone could know who would bother to investigate, it was common, in post-season games, for teams of blacks—raggedy and illtrained and part-time as we often were—to defeat the best of the white major leaguers. In after-season barnstorming, men like Bruce Petway threw out Ty Cobb regularly; pitchers such as José Méndez and Smokey Joe Williams beat Plank, Coombs, and Mathewson, Alexander, Mar-quard, and Bush; and teams such as the Indianapolis ABC’s, the Birmingham Black Barons, the Bacharach Giants, and the All Nations regularly defeated those men popularly called World Champions. It was often our pleasure, against white teams, when the game was put away, to whip the ball around the infield before getting the batter out at first base.

  I was “the Black Babe”; they called John Henry Lloyd “the Black Wagner”; the great Andrew “Rube” Foster received his nickname for defeating Rube Waddell 2 to 1 in a nineteen-inning pitcher’s duel. And yet, I wonder if the irony of stealing the names of those players who (though defeated by us) remained synonymous with greatness to the general public did not, even then, turn ultimately in our favor. Would it have changed what we were, and what they knew they were, had they been forced to take on our names, had Ty Cobb been named for “Cool Papa” Bell, or Lou Gehrig for “Rap” Dixon? Would it change the feel of the hardball in my hand, or the earth under my spikes, or the endless conversations (in which I did not join) that went on in the back seat of Jack Henry’s old Buick, as we made our way from town to town, making four games on a good Sunday, during the years 1923 to 1928.

  We were called the Brooklyn Royal Dodgers then, yet I was the only player who h
ad been born and raised in Brooklyn, and of my birth and parentage I will say a few words, for riding in the back seat of Jack Henry’s car, I was, as I had been since my earliest memory, a pale face among dark faces.

  My father, whose family name I give here as Tidewater, was exceptionally intelligent and talented, a light cocoa-colored man born in 1856, who had been a house servant on a large plantation in Garley, South Carolina, and who, in 1882, upon the death of his master (with whom he had stayed, even after the war), was given passage money, references, and sent north with an introduction to a man in Brooklyn, Mr. Christopher Tanner, who found employment for him as a carpenter and furniture maker.

  Mr. Tanner lived in a large wood house, in the section of Brooklyn now known as East Flatbush, but known to me when I was a boy as the Dutch Highlands, and I recall with great vividness the soft velvets and brilliant leathers of his sitting room, where several times a year we would be invited for tea, after which my father—who had a fine voice, and could read Latin with ease—would recite the poems of Horace, Ovid, and Catullus, and each of us, my father’s children, would recite a poem we had learned by rote. I can still, if required, recite the simpler love poems of Catullus, and, in the slowest of cadences, that poem of Ovid’s (stolen by Marlowe and embellished by him with unnecessary repetition) which contains the slow and beautiful line O lente curritc noctis equi.

  My father was, like myself, a tall man in his time, standing straight at what must have been six feet two inches. His head was long, his hair, which I inherited, soft and straight, and his lips (again my inheritance), wide and narrow—a gift through his mother, of his master’s father, from whom I received my original name.