Sam's Legacy (10 page)

“Sure, whatever you say, Sam,” the man said softly, as Steve brought him his cup of coffee. “Everybody has his periods, right? I know how it is—I just saw you in here so I thought I'd—” He put his hand out, leaning from his stool, balancing himself by holding onto the counter with his left hand. “No hard feelings, okay? I won't pull…” Sam walked away, not looking back. “No hard feelings,” the guy repeated.

Sam turned, glared, and, unable to stop himself—how he hated his lack of control—he said, in a voice he hoped afterward had not, in the general chattering, been noticed by anybody else, “And lay off with that Christ bit, hear? For your information, I'm a Jew.”

Sure, he thought outside, in the air: guns for the Arabs, sneakers for the Jews. He stalked across Nostrand Avenue, heading toward Flatbush, his head burning. The two of them, his Bible man and Tidewater, they should go live in the desert together. He saw the guy's pasty face under an Arab headdress, and the headdress made him see his father, in the white and black
talis
…he wondered what they'd looked like as boys, one tall and thin, the other short and stocky. He walked faster, passing the Bel-Air supermarket, trying to think of the depressions his feet made in the sidewalk, trying to stop the chain of pictures that was starting to march across the screen inside his head. He heard the sound of money jingling. Shit, he thought to himself, it was too late to cross over. He should have remembered. In front of the Granada Theater, rolling himself into Sam's path on a wooden dolly, was another one of the regulars—the new regulars, since the neighborhood had started changing. Sam tossed a dime into the guy's cup without looking into his face. The dog yipped at Sam, its tail wagging furiously. He suspected that they'd pinned the guy's legs up in some way, to his ass, the way they did to actors in the movies when they played one-legged soldiers returning home—but the dog was real enough, rocking back and forth on its belly like a seal, pulled forward on its own small dolly by a rope attached to its owner's set of wheels. The guy pushed off, shoving his hand—his knuckles—against the sidewalk, propelling himself back under the arcade. Had the dog been born that way? Or—anything was possible—in the hope that it was just what his act needed, had the guy… Christ! he thought. You are really heading for deep waters, thinking up that kind of picture.

Still, he had the feeling things were happening on purpose somehow. Those were the words which occurred to him. Sure. If he'd crossed over, he bet to himself, the guy probably would have been waiting for him in another spot anyway. Sam knew something about the way streaks worked, after all, and it wasn't luck—at least not in the way most guys used that word—which made the difference.

4

“Who's there?” Sam asked.

“Mason Tidewater.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Just a second. He placed the sheets of paper on which he'd been figuring things inside the
Post
, put the
Post
back in the rack. The ideal profession—that was really rich. His grandfather had, from the grave, become a joker too.

Sam opened the door. Tidewater stood there, a mop in one hand, a manila envelope in the other, a bucket next to him on the floor. Muriel looked at the two of them from between two posts of the balcony which separated the landing from the stairwell. “Your father is downstairs at the moment, but I carry my—the tools of my trade, as it were—as a precaution.” He licked his narrow lips. His tongue was orange. “I'd like to have a word with you. I asked Ben to tell you—”

“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.”