Sam's Legacy (52 page)

It did not even bother me that, hitting in our half of the seventh, and receiving a standing ovation from the crowd, I found that my desire to murder the ball was gone. With Bingo on first base—he had singled—Jack Henry, now coaching at third, gave me the hit-and-run sign. The ball was low, but Bingo was moving with the pitch and I protected him, striking at the ball and pushing it behind the runner, toward the hole between first and second. The first baseman got the ball, too late to get Bingo, but in time to toss to the pitcher covering at first base, and I was out. Moore stiffened after that, and we could not move Bingo in from second base. The seventh inning was over, we still led 1 to 0, and I had only to face six more men.

Now, with each pitch I threw, the crowd roared its approval. I had never felt stronger. I struck out Gehrig and got Meusel on an easy popup to the shortstop. Lazzeri, next up, the smartest of the Yankee players on the field, choked up on the bat as I went into my motion and tried to punch the ball to right, but he did not gauge my pitch correctly and the ball, snapping upward, hit the handle of his bat and looped harmlessly to Massaguen at second. Massaguen squeezed the ball into the pocket of his glove and ran from the field, shrieking with joy. His face had never been so beautiful, and I thought, but for an instant only, not of the supposed magnificence of his forebears, but of what the auctions for them must have been like.

The bench during our half of the eighth inning was totally silent. Nobody sat next to me, nobody spoke to me, and yet there was in their avoidance of me, I felt, not merely the custom of the game, but what I hoped was a new respect for me, a kind of friendship now, after the few years we had been together, despite the fact that we had shared little in those years other than the games themselves. I wanted them to hurry, and they did. Moore was still pitching strongly—we had a total of only six hits against him, including my home run—and he gave up no more in the bottom of that inning. Kelly, Kinnard, and Johnson went down easily, on a strikeout, a fly to left field, and a grounder to third base.

As the ninth inning began, Johnson lingered for a minute in the dugout, and I wondered if Jack Henry were going to put one of the younger utility players into the outfield for him. But I saw Jack push him gently from the dugout and I was, I found, pleased to know that he would be with me for the last inning of the game. He trotted by, looking into the sun, which was now behind the right field wall, shining into the eyes of the batters—something a pitcher could not be unhappy about. He stopped at the mound, as if he were going to say something to me, and I smiled at him, hoping he would. But he seemed to change his mind, and it was only when he had continued on that I heard him laugh ing, and the laugh made me uneasy. I shrugged and tried to pay it no mind. I was, I told myself, beyond that—free of it, also.

I felt loose. I listened to Jones and Barton and Massaguen and Dell and Bingo talking to me. I enjoyed the feel of fresh perspiration sliding down my back, under my uniform. Combs was first up and I had no trouble with him. He went down swinging on four pitches, and I was two outs away from a perfect game. Ruth slumped in the corner of his dugout, thinking, I imagined, of what he would do after the game—of drinking and whoring and eating. Gehrig studied me in his sullen way, and I almost wanted to call to Ruth, to tell him that I understood why he hated a man who was so narrow, who took and gave no pleasure in life. “Cheapest bastard I ever met,” had been Ruth's judgment, and it was, as I knew from what other baseball men were saying, an understatement. Bengough was at the plate now, and I recalled what he had done the last time. I glanced briefly at Jones, who played even with the bag at third. The fans were silent. I felt my heart beating and I glanced down, to see if it was making my uniform flutter. I wound up and fired, and the pitch was true. Bengough swung late, however, and the ball cracked weakly against the upper side of his bat—an easy fly to right field. “You take it!” Kinnard yelled toward Johnson, and Johnson stood there, in position, and pounded his glove once as he waited for the ball to come down. I heard the scream—from which of my teammates I cannot say—a long painful “Nooooo,” even before the ball had fallen, some five feet in front of Johnson, upon the outfield grass. I could not believe my eyes. The moan from the crowd was genuine, heartsick. Johnson merely shrugged and picked up the ball, tossing it to the infield. Bengough, amazed, stood safely at first base.

My stomach turned over and there must, I know, have been tears in my eyes. Jones was at the mound and I saw that there were in his. “Oh honey, I'm so sorry,” he said. “But you still—you still…” He knew he was not allowed to finish the sentence. I had not, of course, given up a true hit, but it did not matter. There was nothing to say, or to do. I did not look to the Yankee dugout, for I did not, really, care what he was doing, or whether or not he was happy at my fate. An unknown player—not even a Yankee player—was pinch-hitting for the pitcher Moore, and I worked as swiftly as I knew how. Three pitches to him, and then three more to Dugan and the game was over. We had won, 1 to 0, I had hit the winning home run, I had struck out Babe Ruth three times, I had struck out eighteen men in all, I had proven everything I had ever dreamt of proving, and yet…

The players ran by me to the locker room. I stood at the mound. Some boys were on the field, pulling at my glove. One of them leapt up and snatched my hat, running off with it. They asked me questions and spoke to me in Spanish and pigeon-English, but I heard nothing. I stood there, letting them touch me until they had had enough.

It is impossible to say how much time had passed, but when the stands were empty and the field was clear, I saw that Ruth was still sitting in his dugout, watching me. The playing field, without the fans and the players, seemed excessively quiet. I stepped down into the dugout and he stood. I wondered what it was that I had had to say to him. “You pitched good,” he said. “I always said you were the fastest pitcher I ever faced.” He smiled, and I felt something stir in me; I remembered what he had said to me the night before, about coming when he called, and I tried to wake myself. “But you're a real idiot, playing in your league. I told ya that a long time ago.” I was breathing hard. “Ya know how much money I got?” I said nothing. My glove dropped to the ground. “C 'mon—take a guess. I mean, a guy's got to have real brains, with an arm and a face like yours, to spend his life with a bunch of niggers.” He smiled, to see if he were reaching me, provoking me. He laughed then, in his choir boy's voice, and said what I wish to God he had never said. “You're just a make-believe nigger anyway. Everybody knows that—”

I swung and felt the bone of his chin against my knuckles. My blow had moved so quickly that I had not seen him react. He flopped sideways, his stomach banging into the bench, and his head knocking against it before he fell to the floor.

“Sure now, you got real brains.” I turned around and saw that Johnson was standing in the dugout, at the far end. He walked toward me. He was still in his uniform, which meant, I thought, that he had not dared—after his misplay—to go into the locker room. He looked down at Ruth, over my shoulder, and he laughed. “Dumb nigger,” he said. His chin almost touched my shoulder. I glared at him, remembering what he'd done. “Sure now,” he said, shuffling backward. “Old Brick lost the ball in the sun.” Then he howled with laughter, finding his remark so funny that, a second later, he was doubled up, sitting on the Yankee bench, and clutching at his stomach. “Oh, I seen your face, fair ass. I seen it. Old Brick just went and lost the ball in the sun. But I seen your face—” He glanced down at Ruth, lying there like a sleeping child, his head to one side, his right arm caught under it. “Better not get caught here, though—he's still the big boy, no matter what.” He chuckled to himself and started to stand, as if he were finished with what he had come for. “He told the truth, though. You're a make-believe nigger all right. I been watching. Only you ain't just a make-believe nigger—” He was laughing at me. “That's what been shown to you today.” His voice shifted, and he did not smile: “You just plain make-believe, from start to finish. I seen that.”

I saw the ball drop from the sky, and I saw him standing there, hands on his hips, pounding his glove once, and then letting the white spot fall in front of him. I had his head pressed against the concrete wall, and my fingers were locked on his throat. His huge chest swelled and his hands were on my forearms, but I was, for once, too strong for him. He gagged, and I thought I heard him apologize to me, but I could not let go. I heard his voice, telling me what he had waited to tell me. I had mattered enough to him for that—and for what he had done on the field. There was no more. I squeezed and would not look at his face, though I believed, at the time, that I could feel his blackness seeping into my fingertips. His chest collapsed, and he stopped struggling.

I looked around to see if anybody had seen me. Ruth was still unconscious, snoring now, his body rising and falling in the trench of the dugout. Johnson did not move. My own body was slack, but I had not yet released all my hatred. “Oh honey,” I heard Jones say, “he was a bad man, but he wasn't that bad.”

I looked at Jones. “I just come out here to see if you was okay,” he said, standing on the grass. “—where you was, that was all.” He was dressed in street clothes, a jacket and a tie. He came forward and bent over Johnson, listened at the man's chest. “Oh honey, he was a bad man, but he wasn't that bad. You got to get out of here.” He pushed me, but I could not move. “Everybody's gone, in our place.” Ruth moaned. “Don't just stand there, honey. I'll take care of this.” Kneeling, between Ruth and Johnson, he looked up at me. “You got the money?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“We'll get you out of this place—I mean back to America, or somewhere—you wait for me outside. Ain't nobody gone to come back here for a while.” I stared into Johnson's face, and it seemed wildly absurd to me suddenly to have dressed this old black man in a boy's costume. Jones was trying to pull me away. “You got to move, honey. You got to get out.”

I felt tired. I thought that I felt as old as Johnson must have felt, still running and throwing with boys half his age. But I had no will—I let Jones tell me what to do. I returned to our locker room and put on my street clothes. I went with Jones, in a taxi, to our hotel, where I picked up my valise and my money. He made sense. He had, he told me, been through similar things before. Nobody was much interested when one nigger killed another.

He found somebody at the waterfront who took me into a boat, below deck. He gave me advice—he told me to change my name, to lay low, not to play baseball again. In a few years, he said, it -would—except among players in the Negro American Baseball League—all be forgotten. Thanks to me, he hoped to own his house in Flatbush by the end of the next season. He wished me luck and kissed me good-bye, and I went below deck, not talking to the men who carried me across the water. I slept. When I awoke it was night. I was transferred from the boat I had been in to a rowboat. I gave more money. At the pier—I was told that I was in a town called Naples, Florida, some seventy miles up the western coast—I gave away more money, and was driven to a hotel where all my meals were brought to me; I stayed for three weeks. I did not look in the newspapers to see if there had been any report. I tried, during those weeks, to consider what had happened, but it was difficult to feel anything, either for what I had done to Johnson, or for what I had done to myself.

I never played baseball again. I never saw my brothers or my mother or my sister again. I never saw any of the players from the Brooklyn Royal Dodgers again. I thought, several times, when touring Negro teams would come to the towns I was living in, of going to the ballpark and watching them—but even when I wore a moustache, I had no desire to take the chance of being recognized, even though I believed that my act would probably not, by those who had known me, have been held against me. I lived, in the years after that, in many towns, and held various jobs. For five years during the Depression, I was fortunate enough to find a job as a night watchman at an oil refinery in Livingston, Texas. I lived for thirteen years in the town of Scotlandville, Louisiana, outside of Baton Rouge, where I gave piano lessons and was tutor to the children of wealthy Negro families. I changed my name and was never, so far as I know, hunted by the authorities. During the Second World War, I taught briefly in a boys preparatory school in New England, where I succeeded in passing as a white man. The things that led me to do so need not be mentioned here; I left the school, declaring what I was, after a year and several months.

In 1964 I returned to Brooklyn and secured my present position as janitor. It is a position, I know, which many other stars from my time in the Negro League have also held. My choice, in several ways, has proved to be fortuitous, and I find at the end what I did not expect to find when I started to set these thoughts down: that, except for the fact that I have not been able, over the course of my life, to sustain those friendships which might have been begun in my earliest years, I regret nothing.

IV

Sam the Gambler

 

 

“It was my good chance to find you,” said Deronda. “Any other man would have been glad to do what I did.”

—George Eliot,
Daniel Deronda

13

Sam believed in Tidewater's story. Nobody, he told himself, could simply have made all those things up. He walked along Bedford Avenue, staying close to the buildings, and he found that he was not trying to forget the things that he'd read. He'd been glad, though, when he'd finished the story, that Tidewater had not been there. This way he'd been able to get out without having to go into any explanations, and without having to have the guy try to protect him in some way.