Sam's Legacy

by Jay Neugeboren

  “See you, Chief,” the kid said, and winked at Sam—then ran across the street, dodging cars.

  “You got to keep your eyes open. They give you the soft talk, see—but they know what they’re doing. They’re not dumb, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Well—I appreciate your interest.”

  “Okay, Mr. Benjamin,” the cop said, and turned away, walking off in the direction of the Kenmore Theater.

  Sam’s brain spun. He clenched his fists. Sure. Watch your ass, he told himself. He crossed the street, in front of Garfield’s again, then moved on down Flatbush Avenue—past Martense Street, where the New Yorker Café was (the high-class hookers worked from it). At Linden Boulevard he turned right, passed in front of the library, continued to Bedford Avenue. The apartment houses were set far back from the street here—there was no street, in fact—and, as now, for as long as Sam could remember, there’d been the triangle of free space, where Caton Avenue branched off from Linden Boulevard, marked out by white paint and poles set in concrete. Some kids were playing slapball, but Sam didn’t stop to watch. Instead, he turned back, and walked to the library. There was no need to return to the apartment, to have Ben asking him questions, to see Tidewater’s eyes. He didn’t doubt the guy; still, he figured he’d check a few things out, to be sure. He looked in the card catalogue under Negro Baseball and found—other than the names of stars: Robinson and Paige, Campanella and Gibson and Howard and Mays and the rest—only one book that looked as if it would have what he wanted, the title: Only the Ball Was White. He went to the shelf, found the book, sat down at a desk, took his coat off, and began to read.

  The facts were all there, about the history of Negro leagues and players going back before 1900, but Sam discovered that, though he tried to concentrate, his mind kept wandering: the trouble was, everytime he read something that wasn’t just a fact about where and when some guy had been born, he found himself thinking of something in Tidewater’s story. And as soon as he thought of Tidewater’s story, he found that the guy’s words pushed all other words and pictures out of his head. Sam looked in the index, under Marcelle; that part was true; there had actually been a man by that name who’d been a player in the Negro Leagues and had had his nose bitten off. He wondered if, reading through the entire book, he’d be able to figure out which, if any, of the players had been Tidewater, before the guy had changed his name.

  He grew drowsy. The library was cooler than the rummage shop, and the fluorescent lighting, when he glanced up, made him squint—but he felt sleepy nonetheless. He saw no reason to keep reading, and so he closed the book, and put his coat back on. He’d go outside to wake up. He remembered what Tidewater had said about wanting the ball to go so fast it would disappear. That, Sam thought, and found himself smiling, would really be out of sight.

  It picked him up, thinking of a line like that. He walked down the steps, remembering what Tidewater had said about being bothered by having to depend on eight other men. Sam could understand that. Sure. He had to give the guy credit for being able to tell a good story—no matter what name Ben gave to it. What he wondered about, however, was why, since it was out of sight, it wasn’t out of mind. He didn’t press the question, though. If reading Tidewater’s life story was the price he had to pay for getting Ben off his back, he figured he was getting away cheap.

  6

  Sam stood at the living room window, watching the snow fall: everything was white and beautiful now, but by nine o’clock the next morning, he knew, after people had made their way to the subway, to go to work, it would be brown and slushy, slippery underneath. Directly below, he saw Tidewater and Flo helping someone out of a taxi—a girl, in a wheelchair. The girl wore a purple scarf on her head, and Sam saw light glisten from gold threads that were woven into it. He could hear the music—old rock-and-roll records—coming from below. Tidewater pushed the wheelchair forward across the snow while Flo held an umbrella over the girl’s head. It was night. There were circles of luminescent green, like rings around the moon, surrounding the lights of the lamp posts along Nostrand Avenue. At the moment there were no cars or buses passing. Sam could see fresh footprints on the sidewalk.

  Someone was banging on the pipes. Sam listened. The banging stopped, then started again: three times. It was Ben’s signal. Sam touched his fingertips: they tingled. He wondered if, on a night like this, the others would show up. Ben had offered Sam money, again, but Sam had taken his loan—five hundred—from Sabatini. Willie the Lump had passed the envelope to him that afternoon, at Garfield’s, and Sam was supposed to return it—plus one hundred interest—the next day. It was, Mr. Sabatini had assured him, a favor, a way of helping out a good customer in time of need. “Remember,” he heard the man saying, “in the thirties, Mr. Sabatini sold apples.”

  Sam checked his wallet, touched his sidepocket, then slipped his rubbers on over his shoes, took a sports jacket out of the closet—a brown tweed that must have cost a hundred dollars new, but which Flo had put aside for him three years before, for eight dollars—then his raincoat. He reached for his wallet, counted out six fifty-dollar bills, folded them, and put them in his sidepocket, next to his knife. Sabatini would play it straight with him, he felt certain, but with low stakes—half-dollar-dollar—you were bound to be in with deadbeats. He locked the door.

  Muriel sat on the first step, holding a rubber doll. “You see the snow?” Sam asked her. Muriel looked up at him, without smiling, and said nothing. She had on a clean dress—pink—and black patent leather shoes. Flo, he figured, must have given them to her. Sam reached down, to smooth the girl’s curls, and, to his surprise, she didn’t flinch. “You like the music, huh?” he said. She looked at him with her large brown eyes. “You wanna come downstairs and dance?” Muriel stood and walked around the landing to her own apartment. He picked up her doll, which she had left on the top stair, and started toward her. “Hey, you left—”

  She pushed, and her door opened. Sam stood there, offering the doll to the empty corridor. He put it down, then went below, his raincoat draped over his shoulder. He walked around the staircase, to the back, knocked on the door. The music was fierce—much too loud—nobody would hear him. He turned the doorknob and the sound from the phonograph, scratchy, struck his face like waves crashing toward shore. The back room was packed solid with furniture, tables moved in from the front room. Ben, standing at the opening between the two rooms, saw his son, motioned to him with a finger. Sam pushed a chair aside, squeezed past some furniture.

  “Flo wanted to speak with you before you went out,” Ben said.

  Sam nodded. Directly in front of him five wheelchairs were lined up, side by side, their backs to him, and in the wheelchairs five bodies were bobbing up and down, to the music. The racks of clothing were pushed to the sides, and in the middle of the floor, Sam saw the heads of several couples moving, stiffly. He kept his eyes away from them. The record—Little Richard screaming his lungs out—changed; another one fell in its place: Johnny Ace singing “Pledging My Love.” Sam could remember dancing to it, at a Jewish center after a basketball game; he could feel his leg wedged between the legs of a girl wearing a cashmere sweater, his erection pressed against the inside of her thigh.

  “I’m glad you hadn’t left yet,” Flo said. “Come—I want to introduce you to somebody—”

  “I can’t stay long,” Sam said. “I got something on tonight.”

  “Please,” she said, and took his hand. He moved around the outside, between racks of coats, next to the groups of parents who were talking with each other. Marion was serving—pouring punch from a big pitcher into paper cups. Johnny Ace, Sam remembered, had killed himself backstage, playing Russian roulette. The song, coming out after his death, had been his biggest hit. Sure. That told you a lot. Sam kept his eyes away from the couples in the middle of the floor. Marion smiled at him. Tidewater stood at the door, dressed in a jacket and tie, watching the snow.

  “This,” Flo was saying, “is Stella.
”

  Sam nodded, looked down. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, began to put out his hand, realized what he was doing, and stuck it into his sidepocket. He blinked. The girl’s face was beautiful: she wore the purple scarf around her back, and her hair—jet black—fell straight to her shoulders. She sat very straight in her wheelchair, and smiled at him. Her lips were full, her teeth a yellowish white—and her smile, like Flo’s, made Sam feel warm, made him want to smile back. From his angle, he could see the fillings in her bottom teeth. She kept her arms on the handles of the wheelchair. She wore a white blouse, and her breasts, Sam could see, were large. Under the purple scarf, around her shoulders, a tan sweater was pressed against the back of her chair. She wore black slacks, and her shoes touched the floor.

  “Flo’s told me all about you—you’re Sam the Gambler, right?” she said.

  Sam looked at Flo. “I guess,” he said.

  Flo reached down and gave Stella a hug. “She’s like my own daughter,” Flo said.

  “Two mothers beat one, right Sam?” the girl said.

  Sam could feel the heat rising from his collar. “I guess,” he said.

  Stella laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said, and looked down. “I’m embarrassing you, right? I shouldn’t—”

  “Excuse me,” Flo said. “There’s a car.” She came close to Sam, kissed him on the cheek. “If I don’t see you before you leave, good luck tonight—”

  “You have a game on?” Stella asked. Sam watched Flo walk outside, Tidewater next to her.

  “Yeah,” Sam answered.

  “Poker?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well—five’ll get you ten, right?”

  Sam blinked. “What?” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “I’m sorry,” he said, then looked at the girl. “I mean, with—my head’s full, that’s all. My head’s full.”

  The girl nodded. Sam felt an urge to touch her hair, the way he’d touched Muriel’s—but then he thought of the girl’s legs, of how she probably had to be hoisted in and out of bed, and he felt himself tighten. “You don’t have to say anything,” Stella said, not looking at him. “It’s like—well, going for a no-hit game, right? You don’t want to say anything or you jinx it.”

  “Something like that,” Sam said.

  “We could dance,” Stella said, “but we can’t.” She moved her shoulders sideways and her left hand fell from the arm of the chair, into her lap. She left it there. “You have nice eyes.” Sam looked into her face. “Don’t mind me,” she said then. “I just talk sometimes. We could dance but we can’t—that was a great line, don’t you think?” She sighed, closed her eyes. Sam saw that she used no make-up on her eyes, and he noticed—for the first time—that she wore no lipstick. She strained, managed to lift her left hand, to let it fall on the arm of the chair. “I only came because Flo insisted.” She laughed. “What I mean is, Sam the Gambler, you shouldn’t mind me. If you have—business, right?—you go on ahead. You don’t have to be polite.” She tapped with her fingers on the arm of the chair. “I was thinking—with a machine like this, you could really, like they say, wheel and deal—”

  Sam found himself laughing with her. “I’ll have to tell that one to Ben,” he said. “He likes to play with words.”

  “And you—?”

  “Wheel and deal, that’s pretty good. You got to have a sense of humor, right?”

  “Your eyes are nice when you laugh. Flo said they were. She notices things.”

  The music blasted toward them, Sam Cooke singing “Bring Your Sweet Loving to Me.” “What’d you say?” Sam said, leaning over, close to her. He could smell perfume—light, sweet.

  “They killed him—Sam Cooke—they shot him dead with three bullets in 1964 in a Hollywood hotel—do you remember?”

  “Baseball’s healthier,” Sam said.

  “That’s good,” Stella said. “Flo said that too—about your way of putting things.”

  “You live around here?” Sam asked, then covered the first question with a second. “I mean, what do you do—? You work—?”

  “Is that your father there—the little man talking with Marion?”

  Sam nodded. “What do you think of her?” Stella asked. “I mean, how do you figure it? Two sisters like that—”

  Sam shrugged, watched Ben, behind the row of wheelchairs, moving his mouth. “It takes all kinds,” Sam said.

  Stella gestured with her head, backward. “My sweater’s falling, could you fix it?” She leaned forward, and Sam reached behind, lifted her sweater from where it had become crumpled. “Lift the scarf first.” Sam lifted the scarf, placed the sweater around Stella’s shoulders. His fingers touched her blouse, and he could feel her warm skin beneath. He glanced at her face, saw that her eyes were closed. Great, he thought to himself. Sam Berman Junior scores again. Stella leaned back. “Thanks,” she said. “I live down by Flatbush Avenue, on Clarkson, and—don’t ask me how—I work too—as a commercial artist.”

  Sam rubbed his thumb across his fingertips. He remembered, at Hebrew School once, when he’d been ten or eleven years old, being called into the Rabbi’s office. It was a small room, smaller than Ben’s bedroom, and Sam could see the desk, overflowing with papers and letters and Jewish newspapers; he could see the UJA tree plaques and certificates on all the walls. The Rabbi had heard the other boys calling him Sam Junior. Was Sam aware that Jews did not name sons after fathers? Sam had explained to the Rabbi—had given him the whole routine—but the Rabbi had not laughed. “All right,” he could hear the man saying, waving a hand, dismissing him. “I’ll believe you this time.”

  Sam clenched his fists. Marion stood in front of him, offering some punch. Sam shook his head. “How about you, Stella?” Marion asked.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Here,” Marion said, and Sam took a paper cup from her left hand, and held it while Marion poured. “Are you enjoying yourself?” Marion asked. “I know the others are much younger, but—”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Stella said. Marion looked down, smiled weakly, and walked off.

  “Why do people always have to say things is what I want to know,” Stella said. Sam saw something angry in the girl’s eyes, something that drew him toward her. “Look—if you don’t mind, you’ll have to feed me that stuff—but if you mind, drink it yourself. Believe me, coming here, I could use something stronger.”

  “I don’t mind,” Sam said, and held the paper cup to her lips. Her chin touched the backs of his fingers, and he was amazed—confused—at how soft she was. More than that—he felt his heart tighten—he knew that, despite everything, he was, below, being aroused. “Then I got to go,” he added.

  “Listen,” she said. “Flo gets an idea sometimes, I wouldn’t make too much of it. You concentrate on your game. I’ll be okay here.”

  “You want some more?” Sam asked. He saw her lick the drops of punch from above her upper lip.

  “You’re a real gentleman, Sam the Gambler. You can come calling if you want. Sure—come see my etchings.” She laughed again, but there was something almost mean, Sam felt, in her laugh. “Go on. I’ve kept you too long already—and your old man is giving us the eye. I’d offer you my hand, but…”

  “It’s been…” Sam couldn’t find a word.

  “If you pull three ladies, think of me, okay?”

  “Sure,” Sam said to her, but he hadn’t moved. He heard Sabatini, emphasizing the special low interest rate he’d given Sam: “I’m no loan shark, Mr. Benjamin.” That was true enough, Sam figured, because—when he’d been a kid he had thought that was what it meant—he knew who the lone shark was. “I get the picture,” he added.

  “I mean,” she said, and whispered so that he had to bend closer. “Where’s it get you in the end is what I want to know, right Sam?” She swayed to the right; then, with a great effort, she lifted her left hand and let it fall, her palm slapping against the leather cushion on the arm of the chair. “Oh damn! Just get out of here—I
never should have come, you should leave me, I’m sorry. I’m sorry and we know all the rest, right? Don’t mind me, Sam the Gambler. Good-bye and good luck. You be real bad tonight—”

  She turned her head away, toward the window, and Sam followed the direction of her eyes; Tidewater was glaring at him—it was as if, he felt, lines of white light were moving across the room, through the music and noise; he felt something physical enter his own eyes, and then Tidewater looked away, at Ben.

  “We’ll see you around,” Sam said to Stella. His eyes searched the room once more, for Flo, for Ben—but he saw neither of them. Marion smiled at him. He figured he knew what she’d like from him. Sure. If he wanted, he could be a real winner. Ben had the right idea—get out while you could. Sam put one arm into the sleeve of his raincoat, at the door, and found that Tidewater, silently, had taken his raincoat and was holding it for him. “Be careful,” Tidewater whispered. “Be careful tonight.” Sam slipped his arm into the other sleeve. Across the street, next to Mrs. Cameron’s building, through the falling snow, Sam saw a cop frisking somebody. If he found some hard stuff on the guy, he’d probably sell it, Sam figured.

  He waited, for a few seconds, in the doorway of the rummage shop, trying to relax, to forget Tidewater’s voice. It was a relief, just being away from the sound of the music. He’d asked Stella where she lived, when she’d said what she had about Sam Cooke, because the only baseball player he could think of who’d died that way had been Hugh Casey, the Dodgers’ great relief pitcher when Sam had been a boy; Casey had shot himself in the head just a few blocks away, in the back room of his bar and grill, on Flatbush Avenue. The bar and grill still had his name on it, near where they’d torn down the Patio movie theater. The policeman’s back was turned to Sam. Maybe he wouldn’t sell the stuff—if he found anything—maybe he’d use it for himself. Sure. There were a lot of them who’d had the brains to try it for themselves and who were strung out good by now. People didn’t think about such things, with cops, but if you thought about it, it figured. Sam lifted the collar of his raincoat, walked out into the snow.