Sam's Legacy (27 page)

“I don't blame you for going,” Sam said. “I told you before.”

“I was imagining it this morning—Katimsky telling me that he was living in Africa already, but…” Ben held Sam's arm. “I shouldn't try so hard, should I? But I'd like—” His voice was low, intense. “I'd like to give you things you could remember—it's why I asked you to come with us this morning, why I try to be clever, with theories and—”

Sam heard a wild screech. In front of the meat department he saw packages fly in the air. “Forgive me,” Ben was still saying. “I'm happy that—” Sam saw an old woman in a long gray coat, her nails in the face of one of the butchers, blood under her fingers. The butcher tried to cover his face. Sam pulled hard—Ben's grip had become stronger—and in a few steps he was there, grabbing the woman's arms. Packages of ground beef were scattered on the floor, shopping carts converged on them. “Him! Him!… It's him! Him! Him!…” the woman cried. Her voice rose, her nails tore strips from the man's face.

“Please,” the butcher whimpered. “Please.” Sam pried at the woman's wrists, but she was hanging on for life. Her eyes protruded from great hollow sockets, her jaw trembled. “Him! It's him!”

Sam let go of one wrist, used both hands on the woman's other one. He knew what adrenaline could do, when a person was excited. He heard another old lady shriek. “Murder!” she cried. Two of the store managers, in white shirts and striped ties, were on the woman's other arm. A short man—not Ben—his own wife's arms around his waist, was tugging at the woman from the middle. The other woman wept.
“Gottenyu
! Stop, darling…
Genug
… Ethel, darling… Ethel…somebody stop her please!” The old woman hung on, tears streaming down her face, her mouth open so wide that Sam could see the back of her throat.

“Him!… Him…him…” She seemed frozen. “From the camp—!” she blurted, and with this, her grip loosened. Sam pried one hand off, and when the woman tried to move forward again, he held her.

The butcher backed away, and Sam saw the red splotches on his apron. The man's hands stayed across his eyes. “Are you all right, William?” one of the store managers asked. The old woman wailed, and when her friend threw her arms around her, Sam let go. The two women sobbed, their bodies pumping in great bursts.

“Thanks, mister,” a voice said to Sam.

The old woman's friend tried to explain: “She says he was there, in an office, checking suitcases—”

The butcher walked off, led by one of the managers. Blood trickled from under his fingers. “She's crazy—I didn't do nothing. She's crazy. I work hard.”

“It's all a mistake, folks,” the manager said. “She must be mistaken. He's been with us for years—a fine man, with—”

“It's him…” the woman sobbed. “Oh! Him…him.” Then she broke down again, mumbling in Yiddish. Sam pushed through the crowd. Some of the women—black and white—were crying, handkerchiefs at their eyes. Above full shopping carts, old men nodded their heads sadly.

Sam looked for Ben, but he wasn't in the meat department. He heard the manager saying that he could prove things, that he'd call for a doctor. “It's him,” the woman repeated. Sam was breathing hard—he saw a hand, and realized that Ben was, at a checkout register, waving to him.

Sam stood at his father's side while a boy rang their groceries up, then packed them in two shopping bags. “You take that one, sonny boy—with cans—and I'll take the light one.” He smiled. “Everybody left to see what the excitement was.”

Outside, people were going the other way, through the entrance, to see what had happened. Ben patted his coat pockets. His voice was low, confident. “While the attention of the crowd was turned to the attack on Bel-Air's ace butcher, Ben Berman saw his chance at once, and—”

“No,” Sam said, sharply. “No.”

“But I've explained,” Ben said. “And I did it more for you—how will I ever use all this up in a week? You bring me luck, Sam Junior. You—”

But Sam walked fast, the bag cradled in his arm, forgetting his father, thinking of the wish he'd made in Simon's apartment: for his life to go more slowly. He crossed against the light, between cars, cans jiggling against his chest. When he arrived at the store, Flo opened the door for him. Sam saw women shopping, Tidewater pushing a piece of furniture across the back room. “She's here,” Flo said, her cheeks flushed. Sam stepped inside, keeping the shopping bag in his arm. He looked out the window, but couldn't see Ben. “I asked her to come while I was away.”

Sam looked down, saw Stella's face, smiling at him. She sat in a regular chair—not a wheelchair—and her hands were resting on the checkout table. Sam wondered why he hadn't seen her from outside, or when he'd come in. He felt the anger inside him rise again. “Somebody had to watch the store,” Flo said.

“Sure,” Sam said, and he nodded to Stella. “I mean, it's good to see you again, but I got to get upstairs and—”

“Of course you do,” Flo said. “I see Ben coming now. You go on.”

Stella could, he knew, tell that he was confused, uncomfortable. He was glad at least that she said nothing—that she hadn't been the one to give out the old line about somebody watching the store. But it didn't mean that he was obliged to hang around, to have Ben start in on everything that had happened. “I'll see that Stella gets home all right,” Flo said, “and then Mason and I will be up to—”

“We bought the food,” Sam said, and felt foolish. Flo led him to the door. He looked at Stella and smiled weakly, gesturing with his shoulders—as if explaining to her that there was nothing more to say.

“Sure,” she said, and laughed. “Good-bye and good luck, Sam.”

Her laugh made something in him relax. “Sure,” he repeated, without wondering about what was going on in Flo's head. “Good-bye and good luck.”

The following morning, alone in the apartment, Sam thought of Stella. Outside, he knew, if he'd wanted to look, the line of shoppers probably stretched to the corner. She had been prettier than he'd remembered her. But it was, of course, easy to see himself with a girl like that: like trying to imagine what guys like Gehrig or Campanella or Stallworth had felt when things had been darkest. Tidewater too, Sam told himself, and as the man's pale face—as pale as the Rabbi's—fixed itself in his mind, he recognized the knock at the door.

“How's tricks?” he asked, letting him in; it was almost as if, he thought, he had summoned the guy to him simply by thinking of him.

“Good,” Tidewater replied. He held a manila envelope in his right hand, and again he seemed shy and embarrassed. “I'm not interrupting anything, I hope. Things are going smoothly below and—”

“Sure,” Sam said, motioning Tidewater into the easy chair. “I was just getting ready to call my stock broker. Sit down and take a load off your mind.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Sure,” Sam said.

“You look flushed.”

Sam shrugged. “I take care of myself.”

“Perhaps all that walking yesterday, in the cold—”

Sam laughed, remembering, then spoke sharply: “What's on your mind?”

“This,” Tidewater said. “I'd like you to read it sometime before your father leaves. It's the second part. You needn't say anything when you're done—just that you've read it. I promised Ben…”

Sam heard the edge of bitterness slip into the man's voice. “Just leave it,” he said. “I told you I'd read whatever you wanted me to, right?”

Tidewater placed the envelope on the kitchen table and backed to the door. His long face bothered Sam. “I mean, I told you that before.” He could tell that the guy needed him, that he had the upper hand, but the knowledge didn't please him. The difference—between the guy now and the guy then—made Sam uncomfortable. When it came down to it, he didn't really understand how a man could be just like any other man in every way—could be less than other men—and, in a uniform on a playing field, be so much more than other men. He didn't doubt the guy's story, but he wondered what the exact difference was: between the guy's life and the story of his life. “I like sports stories,” he offered.

“Ah,” Tidewater said, breathing out and smiling. He stepped away from the door, back toward Sam. “If you have any questions—if there is something on your mind—” The whites of his eyes grew large. “They won't harm you,” he stated. “I promise that.”

“There was a Negro kid I went to public school with named Barton,” Sam said. “But he wasn't a good athlete.”

Tidewater held Sam's hand in his long fingers. Sam's head was blank. “It means a lot to me, your reading this—your taking over for your father.”

Sam winced, and walked to the sink. “You don't have to watch over me, like—” Like Ben was what he was going to say, but he stopped himself. Tidewater too, he was certain, had made the connection: that if they were both taking Ben's place, then somebody—to use the guy's own words, about Brick Johnson—was getting into somebody else's skin. “If you're gonna run your mouth, how about some coffee?”

“No thank you,” Tidewater said. “My Barton was not a great athlete either—though he was the fastest man on the team, a superb fielder who could move equally well to his right and left.” Sam put water on to boil. “I used to think of Barton and Jones as twins, though Barton was short and dark, a deep nut brown color, while Jones was tall and light. But they both had scars, do you see?”

“Sure,” Sam said, and while Tidewater talked on, he thought of himself and Dutch, playing baseball together at the Parade Grounds.

“Jones was our talker. He had, perhaps, even less talent than Barton, but he loved the game more than any man I knew. His lanky body was always moving, and his tongue, as he would have been the first to admit, was more restless than his body.” Tidewater's finger moved swiftly across his forehead. “He had a scar three inches long—here, above his left eye—the result of sitting up too quickly one cold morning, having forgotten that, as was often the case, he and some teammates were sleeping for the night under their car.” Tidewater laughed bitterly. “He felt blessed to be with us after his experiences in the southern leagues, and he kept his bankbook with him at all times, even when playing.”

Sam sighed and sat down to listen. The guy's voice did, at least, replace other things in his head. “Like Jones, Barton had played from the age of fifteen in the southern leagues—he was forever expressing his gratitude for the chance given to him to play with us. Off the field he stayed so close to Jones that Johnson called him ‘Little Johnny's sister.' His shins were covered with scars that seemed to fold in and reach to the bones, from what childhood illness, I never discovered.” Tidewater's color in his cheeks faded, even as Sam watched him. “I never recall having had a conversation with him.”

“Look,” Sam said. “If you got things to take care of, I'll take a look at the story you left. You don't got to—”

Tidewater opened the door. “I'm grateful,” he said. “If you have any other questions—”

Sam thought of saying that he hadn't asked one in the first place, but didn't. “Hang loose,” he said, and closed the door behind the man, listened to the quiet footsteps disappear down the stairs. Sam supposed the guy was—the expression was rich—making book on him.

Sam laughed, took the sheaf of papers out of the envelope and sat in the corner of his couch, leaning his elbow on the arm rest. Sometimes, when he'd thought about being in deep with Sabatini's henchmen, he'd been comforted by the picture of their astonished faces when Ben would say things to them: the big voice from the little man. While they were working him over, for as long as the pain would last (he had always imagined it taking place in the apartment), Ben would have been there, booming sentences at them. But Tidewater's eyes were even better protection. If—Sam liked the way things balanced—the local guys had left him alone until now because they knew he'd be protected by Sabatini, maybe Sabatini would have to leave him alone now because he'd be protected by the local guys. He had nothing to worry about. Sure, he laughed, not fooling himself: he could still do what he wanted—watch TV, take in a movie, or a game at the Garden, or go for a walk in the neighborhood, talk with Steve or Flo, or, as he would do right now, he could afford to settle back and relax on a Saturday morning with a good book.

MY LIFE AND DEATH IN THE NEGRO AMERICAN BASEBALL LEAGUE

A SLAVE NARRATIVE

C
HAPTER
T
WO

As maggots make their homes in the open wounds and sores of elephants, and with their deadly secretions cure these beasts, so Johnson's remarks made their home in my skin, and gave strength to my young right arm. After my first game, and loss, I won my nine remaining starts during the 1923 season, and, through the spring and early summer of 1924, pitching three and sometimes four games in succession, and on occasion pitching both games of Sunday doubleheaders, I won twenty-six games while losing only two. I was now eighteen years old—the golden boy of our league—and my pitching feats had become so talked about on the Negro baseball circuit that, whenever we were to play in the big cities—Cleveland, Chicago, Washington, Pittsburgh—Jack Henry would have to promise, for the sake of the gate, that his young star would be on the mound. The people always love a star, and, for more reasons than I could ever recount or know, I was glad to be that star, I wanted to shine for them, to burn brighter than any man who had preceded me or would come after.

I might have been as good a pitcher as I was had Brick Johnson not been there—the fires within me were probably sufficient—but his presence made certain that these fires never diminished. His eyes and his voice found me often during that life I lived when I was not in motion on the mound, and, piercing me as they did, I must believe that they released within me those venomous juices which gave life to my passions and health to my body. And yet, remembering now how I felt then, and seeing the smallness of what it was that I was doing (I was only a boy throwing a ball), I fear that those passions which I believed were burning with such force may only, like thorns under a pot, have been crackling. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so, the Bible reminds us, is the laughter of the fool; this also is vanity.