Sam's Legacy

by Jay Neugeboren

  “Listen,” the man said, and his voice, like silk, had something comforting in it, something that made Sam’s eyelids, for a split second, close, that made his mind look toward the end of an endless corridor, the way it would sometimes in the subway, if he was about to nod off. “I can understand that, with the spiel I gave you. Sure. But I wanted to tell you, when I had a chance, that you were right the first time—I work for Sabatini.” Sam saw the man’s gloved hand—a gray glove—slice through the snow, toward him, gesturing. “But I work for the Lord too.” The man’s eyes looked up again, happy. “It comes and goes though, part-time.” He laughed, and the laugh hurt Sam’s ears as it echoed under the marquee. He looked beyond Sam, up, above Sam’s head. “Working for Him, that’s just moonlighting, if you know what I mean.”

  “Lay off,” Sam hissed. “I’m warning you.”

  “Sure,” the guy said, easily. “With Sabatini—that’s temporary too—but you know how it is, having to work off a debt. I keep my eye on a few guys for him, pick up a few bets. If you didn’t have your own man you’ve been using all this time…”

  Sam stood and turned, but the man’s hand held him by the sleeve. “No hard feelings, brother, all right? That’s how come I waited for you tonight—to warn you.” He chuckled under his breath. “Christ teaches us that death is the wages of sin, but I never put much stock in that—you and me, the wagers of sin is what we have to worry about, right?” The man’s left hand held him, while his right hand—in the gray glove—was in front of Sam again, for Sam to clasp in a handshake. “No hard feelings, right, brother?”

  Sam pulled away, then—he couldn’t help himself—he kicked savagely with his foot, heard the man groan even before he felt his toe collide. The shock—inside his shoe his toes tingled—made him vibrate all through his body, and he had to flail at the air, the snow, for a second, to maintain his balance. That really took brains, he told himself at once, turning and moving away.

  He was burning—furious with himself for having shown his anger. At Ocean Avenue, he turned right, walked a block and a half—fast, to make up for the time he’d lost—and found the building, number 275. But what if if had been some old man who’d slipped and cracked his skull? Sam wanted an answer to that question. He walked into the lobby, and the thick warmth, hitting him like air in a steam room, made him dizzy. He took off his raincoat, blew into his cupped hands. He would let the sweat dry—he wouldn’t wipe it off—and that would cool his body down. The light in the lobby was pale orange, and it reminded Sam of the lobby in his old building on Linden Boulevard. The sweat was cold between his thighs. He remembered seeing his grandfather coming home from synagogue on a Friday night, a night like this, his large hooked nose bright red, dripping. He remembered that he’d been afraid for the man, had followed him to the bathroom, watched him as he washed his hands, spat into the toilet bowl, blew his nose, urinated. Sam could hear his grandfather wheezing, he saw the thin lips—like Ben’s—mumbling a prayer. For eating, for washing, even for pissing—they had one for everything in life. Sam sniffed. If you sneezed, the thing to watch out for was your tongue—not to bite it.

  An elderly woman, her hair dyed silver, came down the staircase, stopped when she saw Sam. She carried a plate with pieces of cake on it, and she wore a yellow flowered housecoat. Sam didn’t move. He wondered if his mother would take one of her trips again—across the ocean—to a place in Europe where they packed you in a special kind of black mud, to restore the quality of your skin. She’d explained it all to him once.

  The woman descended to the bottom of the staircase, her eyes on Sam, her plate of cake wobbling. Sam rubbed his hands together and the woman turned, clacked down the hallway in her high heels, her wide bottom bumping up and down. Sam laughed, imagining the expression on her face had he taken a step toward her and shown her his knife. He worked on his fingertips, crossing his arms, against his chest, under his jacket, rubbing his hands beneath his arms, where it was warm. He’d have to be careful—it had been a while, and, even at half-dollar-dollar, if the ante built up and there were a few big hands, you could be in trouble fast. He could hear Ben, laughing, making some remark about Sam having the bathroom to himself now, but he would fool Ben there: he’d use the bathroom, sure, but he’d sleep where he’d been sleeping. With the kitchen there, and the phone, it was more practical. If he didn’t use the other room, he wouldn’t use it, that was all. At fifty-six dollars a month he could afford to waste space. Sam Berman was a real sport, right?

  He laughed, heard his laughter echo in the lobby, and wondered if the woman was looking out at him from a keyhole. He felt—from the cold, he figured—the way he sometimes felt during the middle of a game, his mind unattached, so far ahead of him, spinning so fast, that it was as if he were watching himself playing. Playing cards—he had the feeling that it was just what he was doing to pass the time, as it were, while he…while he what? He’d figured that out too, once, that if you were passing time it meant just that: you were going by it, watching yourself in a dry run, a practice game, while you figured out how you would play the cards when the real game began. He shivered. It wasn’t the kind of thing he needed to be reminded of, the feeling he had of being there and not there at the same time, but it was what he saw: himself watching himself playing cards, as if—the sensation was so strong he felt he could touch it—it wasn’t his own life, as if what you were doing was just to get the lay of the land so you could figure out what to do with your life the next time around. He heard Tidewater describing the feeling he’d had when he was on the mound, and he pressed his eyes closed, tried to sweep away the picture of the guy, behind him, holding his raincoat, whispering to him. He saw Stella, watching them both. He’d be careful, all right. He took his hands from under his jacket, wiped his nose with the back of one, then opened the door to the elevator. The numbness was leaving. He stepped into the elevator, and the outside door creaked.

  Sam pressed a button for the fourth floor, but nothing happened. He looked around, saw the sign—IN EMERGENCY, PRESS HERE—in large lettering; he studied the compartment—it was no more than three feet square. He looked up, saw the trap door, the screws you’d have to take off if you wanted to get out. He was in shape, though—he could fit through the small opening: good luck to anybody—all his old buddies—with a pot belly. He pressed the button again, and, still, nothing happened. Sabatini didn’t fool Sam, either—one player was sure to be one of his henchmen, sizing Sam up, seeing if they wanted to move him up in class, like a thoroughbred, to bigger games. Sam saw himself at once, draped in bright silks; he could feel his stomach straining as somebody’s legs straddled his back. Shit! He slammed his palm against the control board, the buttons, heard something in the compartment rattle, then realized his error: it was the old-fashioned kind of elevator. He’d forgotten to draw the iron gate closed. A sitting duck, out of luck, that’s who he was. Sam the Lamb. He measured things, drew the gate closed, slowly, watched the iron latticework expand. Something above clicked, whirred, the elevator bumped, then started upward.

  They’d have their eye on him tonight, but it wasn’t that that was bothering him—he’d play his game, no matter who was watching—but the business about moving up in class. That was when the smart money bet on a horse, the first time it moved up or down—but seeing himself in silks, his feet turning to hooves, that was really great, that took brains. His mind was slightly high, the way it should be before a game—but the rhymes and pictures, the pictures and voices, words conjuring up images, images sending him voices, and himself going nowhere fast—he didn’t need any of it. He closed his eyes, tried to imagine the feel of the cards against the sides of his fingers. When he was in shape, playing regularly, his fingers did the counting for him: he could gauge things that way, especially with a fresh deck; he could lift it to any number of cards he wanted, feel for the slightest nick in the side of a card. The elevator stopped, he got out, sniffed in—his left nostril was still stuffed—and rubbed his hands against
the sides of his pants, to dry the perspiration.

  He found apartment 4G—no name on the door—and pressed the buzzer.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Mr. Benjamin,” he said.

  The door opened, and a hand—dry and cool—was thrust into his own. “Simon’s the name. Simon Schwartz. Glad you could come—it’s a real bitch out tonight.”

  Sam passed the guy, smelled something sweet, like roses. The guy was an inch or so shorter than Sam, about the same age, had dark black hair slicked back, a wave in front, and he wore a maroon-colored silk smoking jacket, tied at the waist with a sash. His eyes were clear, alert; he looked, Sam thought, as if he’d just come back from a holiday—clean-shaven, sun-tanned, relaxed. “Come on,” Simon said. “You must need a drink on a night like this—what’ll it be? Scotch? Bourbon?”

  Sam said nothing, followed the man down the hallway. Simon took Sam’s raincoat, hung it in the closet. Sam waited, then followed again. The living room, sunken, had a card table set up in the middle, chips already stacked on the table. To one side, liquor bottles and glasses were lined up on a silver-rimmed cart. Simon wheeled the cart to the center of the living room, next to the card table. The carpeting, fire-engine red, was thick and soft, and the room was diffused in a purple light, through silk lampshades. Simon smiled at Sam, lifted a stopper from a crystal decanter and poured two drinks. His teeth were too white, Sam thought, as if they’d been capped, the way movie stars and old women had them done. Sam saw that there were only two folding chairs set up at the table.

  “Here,” Simon said, handing Sam a glass. “This should warm you up.” The man’s voice was light, young. Sam thought he looked familiar—like somebody he’d known from high school, somebody he’d played basketball with in the schoolyard. “I saw you looking at the table—you’re right: the other guys called and chickened out—a night like this, I’ll tell you the truth, I didn’t really expect anybody to show.” The guy kept his eyes on Sam, sipped from his glass, toasting to Sam first. “I wouldn’t have blamed you.” He motioned to the card table. “Look, whatever you say—I mean, if you want to play anyway, one-on-one, I’m ready—”

  Sam almost laughed out loud, the guy was so obvious, but he’d save his laughs. You never knew, until later, why a guy put something up front at the beginning. There was an ice cube in Sam’s glass, floating in a red liquid. Sam didn’t drink. “And I appreciate your coming…” Simon said. “Ahead of time too, but if you’d waited another half-hour you probably couldn’t have made it. It’s freezing fast—I could tell from looking at the fire escape.”

  “Ahead of time?” Sam asked.

  Simon pushed back the cuff of his smoking jacket. “It’s only five after nine—they told you nine-thirty, right?”

  Sam thought of the clock on the Holy Cross tower; he tried to show nothing, to return Simon’s look, but he saw the drink move, in his own hand, so that some of it almost sloshed over the side. He kept himself from looking at his own watch. He tried to inhale slowly, to get his breath back. It didn’t matter, even if the guy worked for Sabatini—or, anything was possible, if Sabatini worked for the guy; Sam could smell it, and it wasn’t roses. Sure. Something was up, and he’d been the last to get the word.

  “I mean, whatever you say,” Simon said. “We could wait till nine-thirty, you get a chance to warm up that way. I know what it’s like just coming in from the cold.”

  “No,” Sam said. He felt dizzy—Tidewater’s warning, Ben’s games, Flo making him meet Stella—he wanted his life to go more slowly. He felt himself swaying forward, as if he might faint: too much was happening too fast, and Sam saw no point in trying to figure it out. Don’t bet what you don’t know. Sure. He needed time to get his bearings, to figure why they were shifting the odds on him. In the meantime, the best thing was to follow his own rule: when you don’t know, lay low. “No,” he said again.

  “No what?”

  “No.”

  “Whatever you say, Sam,” the guy said, and put his drink down, on an end table. “But drink up first—warm yourself before you head back home. I’ll tell you the truth, it’s probably just as well—if we got into a good game, by the time we were done, how would you get home? Even the taxis won’t come get you on a night like this.”

  Sam put his drink down. “No.”

  The guy rushed by Sam, bent over. “I didn’t mean to press you before—” He seemed too apologetic. Sam walked from the living room. “Whatever you say—like I said.” Simon opened the closet, took Sam’s coat off a hanger, held it for him. “Some other time, right?”

  Sam said nothing, walked to the door. Simon bustled alongside him, reached the door first, unlocked a series of three locks, one above the other. The guy, his eyes looking down, seemed much older to Sam suddenly. “I mean,” Simon said. “You know who to get in touch with—and, let’s face it, I can say it to a guy like you, it’s not so easy to get games anymore. Times are really changing.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, softly, unable to sustain the anger he’d felt a few minutes before. Outside, he pressed the button for the elevator, turned his eyes away, heard Simon’s door close. Sabatini had been testing him in some way—Sam was sure of it—but it didn’t matter. He’d done what he had to. He’d had to decide quickly, and he hadn’t hesitated. There were a few things Sam knew, without anybody’s help, and one of them was how to tell when somebody else was playing you for a sucker; even in a two hundred dollar silk robe, a deadbeat was a deadbeat. The guy’s eyes had seemed, in the darkness, as Sam had glanced back from the outside hallway, to be wet. Sure, Sam thought, descending: It was rough all over. Even the dogs were bitching.

  7

  In a world of birds, Sam thought, Tidewater would be king. Sam liked that idea, and as he walked along Flatbush Avenue, toward Dutch’s street, he laughed out loud. Tidewater had spoken to him that morning, promising to give him the second part of his story before Ben left, but Sam wasn’t sure he wanted it. What he would have wanted, if not for the fact that he knew where it could have led, was to put a question to the guy: why was it that none of the Negro teams he’d talked about, and none that Sam had heard of, or read of in the library book, had named themselves after birds, the way white teams did. There were the St. Louis Cardinals, the Baltimore Orioles, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Hawks, the Red-birds—even the Brooklyn Dodgers, Sam knew, had at one time been called the Brooklyn Robins.

  Still, Sam reasoned, the guy was in a class by himself; you had to give him credit. Sam turned right, walked down Lenox Road, toward Bedford Avenue. Compared to Tidewater, all the other birds in the world were pigeons—and as soon as the thought had occurred to Sam, he saw himself, one of them, on the top shelf of Sabatini’s shooting gallery. Sure. There were clay pigeons and stool pigeons, sitting ducks and dead ducks, mockingbirds and jailbirds. Sam knew all about it. He remembered the jokes, from high school: there were guys with wood peckers, guys with two in the bush and your bird in her hand, and his own father, he realized, smiling, and seeing him aboard an airplane, was the original Jewbird. Sam laughed again, at that idea; he was really—the word was there—flying, thinking this way, because when it came down to it, he wasn’t a bird at all; he was Sam the Lamb, and he knew it.

  He crossed the street, went into the lobby of Dutch’s apartment house. Stella had been on his mind, too, and he didn’t like it—especially now, having to be with Dutch, having to see the old crowd. A lot of the athletes who’d become sick, like Campanella and Stallworth, had been divorced by their wives, even though the newspapers didn’t go into that part of things too much. Sure. It was one thing to love a crippled kid in a TV telethon, or an athlete in a wheelchair; but if you had to touch them all the time…

  Sam buzzed. “Who’s there?” Mrs. Cohen asked, through the intercom.

  “It’s me—Sam.” He spoke into the grating.

  “Come on up, darling. Dutch isn’t ready yet.”

  Sam walked into the lobby—the checkered floor, made of huge squar
es of marble, green and cream-colored, and the walls—a yellow-orange stucco—seemed especially cool to him. He thought of Simon’s lobby. A doorman, sitting in a corner, was asleep on a wooden chair, his head to his chest. Sam took the elevator to the third floor, got out, walked down the corridor. There was no point in going into that—how they’d tried to set him up—with Dutch. He’d keep his mouth shut and listen, and the time until Ben’s take-off would be that much shorter. He buzzed again, heard clicking sounds (Mrs. Cohen was looking through the hole, he knew—a one-way mirror, in the center of the door), then the sounds of locks turning.

  When Sam had entered, he watched her fasten the locks again. She kissed him on the cheek, sighed: “You can’t be too careful these days. Mrs. Lebowitz, on the fifth floor, was mugged last week right in front of her door. They took her diamond ring—which came from her grandmother; who knows how valuable it was…” She led Sam through the dark foyer, into the living room. “But I say, thank God they took the rings and left her fingers!”

  Mrs. Cohen sat down in an easy chair, and motioned to Sam to sit across from her. “Dutch—Sam is here!” she called. The living room was large and there was a baby grand piano in the far corner of the room. Dutch had been the pianist for the school orchestra when they’d been at Erasmus together—and he’d put himself through a year of college by playing at weddings and bar mitzvahs. “Tell me how you’ve been,” Mrs. Cohen said. “You’ve been hiding yourself from us lately. I said so to Dutch.”

  “I’ve been fine, Mrs. Cohen,” Sam said. “My father’s moving to California soon—to visit his brother Andy. I think he’s gonna stay out there.”

  It amazed Sam, when he thought about it, that such a little woman could exercise such control over Dutch. But she made him feel uncomfortable too, and he wasn’t even her son; he always had the feeling, sitting there, that they were both thinking of Dutch’s father; as if the man had died so recently that you couldn’t bring the subject up. Mrs. Cohen never mentioned him; the man had kicked off before Sam and Dutch had even known one another. Still, it was what he felt whenever he sat there, looking down, watching the gold and blue birds swirl around the corners of the oriental rug. Sure. As if Mrs. Cohen, who never left the apartment—Dutch still did all the shopping and errands—was…was what? Sam stopped. He didn’t owe her anything, either, he told himself.