Sam's Legacy Page 5

  Where was Ben hiding himself? Sam checked frozen foods, then the produce department. He turned right, around a display of beer in dark store-brand, no-deposit no-return bottles, then cut around a cornucopia of picnic supplies, paper plates and cups spilling into a green plastic basin.

  “Excuse me,” he said, trying to get through a traffic jam.

  “Sure, darling. Here, let me squeeze myself a little this way….”

  The woman giggled, and Sam slipped past her, past flour, sugar, salt, baking needs, around and into the next aisle, and Ben was there: in paper goods, his cart almost full. Sam stopped. He was surprised somehow to see how short the man was. Ben had a box of tissues in each hand, balancing them, comparing the weights. He glanced toward Sam but didn’t seem to notice him. Hunched up in his raincoat, Ben seemed smaller than ever, his face very gray in comparison with the brown and black faces around him. He was wearing his reading glasses and his nose seemed especially big, hooked out above his thin mouth. Bent over, the man was no more than five-feet-four—he’d shrunk a full inch during the past few years. Sam could see things like that, he could usually estimate somebody’s height to within a half inch. He felt dizzy, and he wondered momentarily if it were possible, gazing this way—half-hypnotized by the noise and the warmth, by the music and the colors—to actually see his father shrink. All but the nose and the ears. They were—Dutch had once pointed this out to him—the only parts of the body that continued to grow after the rest had stopped.

  A woman’s cart banged into Ben’s, but he didn’t budge. Sam watched him put one box of tissues back on the shelf and place the other on top of his shopping cart. Don’t! he wanted to call out. It’s too full, Ben! He felt wide awake now. Ben seemed stuck—between his basket and the shelf. Sam moved forward, past toilet paper, sandwich bags, plastic wrap, aluminum foil, paper toweling, hot cups, paper plates, plastic silverware. Ben turned to the shelf, his elbow knocking the box of tissues to the floor.

  Sam moved quickly, but Ben had already bent over—and as he retrieved the box of tissues, Sam saw that his father had had something in his right hand all the while, palmed, and that, shielded now by the tissues and the shopping cart, his face to the shelves, he had slipped it quickly into his coat pocket.

  Ben wheeled off, turned right. The guy was out of his mind, Sam told himself. What if…he stopped: the questions spun around inside his skull, but they made him angry, not dizzy. He pushed to the end of the aisle, turned right around the stack of cereal boxes, and saw Ben, in front of the gourmet specialties. A small black jar dropped into his left coat pocket. Sam watched Ben’s face: it was flushed, happy—the gray color was gone. Sam lagged behind. Ben went past frozen food, ice cream. Sam moved closer. Ben looked over his shoulder, smiled.

  “Sure,” Sam said.

  “I know,” Ben said at once. “I said a half-hour. But Mr. Kwestel stopped me on the way here, to talk about his daughter. She’s in the hospital. You went to school with her, didn’t you?” Ben wheeled away, Sam following him, cutting around cartons filled with boxes of soap flakes. “At any rate, she’s in Meadowbrook Hospital, on the Island, and it’s such a long trip for him….”

  Ben shrugged, let his eyelids close, indicating by the expression on his face the difficulties life could bring. “Listen,” Sam began. “As long as—”

  Ben’s expression changed. “I know. On my trail, Sam Junior—but you didn’t escape Ben Berman’s eagle eye.” He lifted a can of peaches from its pyramid, on sale at forty-one cents, and dropped it into his cart. “I know you don’t like to come inside, and that is the reason I apologized.”

  “Listen—”

  Ben shook his head sideways, his eyes closed. He moved an index finger to his lips, the fingertip grazing his nose. “Shh. We’ll talk later. Dairy products now—I always buy them last. To minimize spoilage.”

  Sam breathed through his lips, unable to hide his irritation. The sooner his father flew away, the better. If he loved Tidewater so much, he could take him with him, let him sweep out the shuffleboard courts. Ben put a container of milk, a half-pound of whipped butter, a container of sour cream, and a package of farmer cheese into his cart. “Do you want anything special—some cheese? The longhorn is good, as is the mild cheddar—”

  “I just want to get my butt out of here.”

  “Relax,” Ben said.

  “Yeah. I’ll live longer. I know all about it.”

  “Some pickled herring, though,” Ben said, taking a jar of Vita herring, cream-style. “Nothing else—you’re sure?” Sam glared. “I bought a leg of lamb, we can have it tonight. And some—but you’re tired of waiting, aren’t you? Come.”

  They moved toward the checkout registers, Ben in front, humming. When it was their turn and Ben had begun unloading the cart, one of the kids who had been hanging around approached them. “Carry your stuff home for you, mister?”

  Ben smiled. “I have my son with me,” he said.

  The kid looked at Sam, showing nothing, then moved away. The old woman, Sam saw, was still there, sitting on her Pepsi-Cola case. He heard the sound of the register, and then their cans and boxes were moving along the counter, on a black conveyor belt.

  “Between twenty-one fifty and twenty-two dollars, I predict,” Ben said. Sam watched another kid take a paper bag from under the counter, snap it open, and begin to pack their goods into it. Why did they all look so sleepy-eyed? “Want to bet on it?”

  “Bet?”

  “My dollar to your fifty cents, since I’m an old hand at this. I say twenty-one seventy-five.” Ben paused. “Come. Be a sport.”

  Sam scanned the bags, the remaining items. He was stuck: if he said no, his father would have won anyway; if he said yes, at least…“Twenty-three even,” he stated.

  They stood, side by side, waiting. The girl, black and heavy-set—pregnant? Sam wondered—with scarlet lipstick at the outer edge of wide lips, tapped away at the buttons: total, subtotal, tax. The figures spun, the machine whirred. Ben leaned into Sam, across the counter, his narrow head level with the girl’s breasts, and the register rang, stopped: twenty-three twenty-six.

  Ben reached up, patted Sam on the shoulder. “You win, sonny boy.” He slipped a dollar into Sam’s hand. Sam felt warm. Ben paid the girl, and his change exploded into a tin cup. On a machine clamped to the register, high, to the left, the girl typed their total, waited; the machine moved by itself again, and then a strip of green stamps rolled out. The girl tore them off, handed them to Ben, looked toward the next customer.

  Ben gave the boy who’d packed their bags a dime. The boy tipped his baseball cap to Ben. “Thanks, Cap’n,” the boy said.

  “I was first, remember?” The old woman had one of Sam’s wrists between her fingers.

  “Here,” Ben said, loading a shopping bag into Sam’s right arm. “Can you take two?” He sighed. “I should buy a carry-cart. I know—”

  “I can take another one,” Sam said. The woman tugged at his wrist. “She asked me before I went in—for the green stamps.”

  Ben stared at the old woman, his face blank. “So?” he asked Sam. “Did you buy anything?”

  “I chip in. Sure. Fifty-fifty.”

  Sam stood there, a shopping bag in the crook of each arm, Ben’s thin mouth set tight, the woman hissing at his side. “You find them, then, and give your friend your half, all right?” Ben picked up their bag and walked away, the electric-eye door opening for him.

  Sam set one bag down on the counter, tried to pry the woman’s fingers from his wrist, but her grip was tight, like iron. “You all promised,” she said.

  Were people staring at them? He shook his head, blinked. He felt furious, dizzy—and he didn’t like the mixture. He didn’t trust himself when he was this way, when things were blurred and he lost concentration. “I didn’t,” he said, and looked into each bag. “Not really.” Damn his father’s beady eyes! He reached into his side pocket. “I have to go. Here—here—” And he pushed the dollar bill Ben had given him i
nto her hand. The woman let go, looked down at the green paper, then shoved it back into Sam’s palm. “I want stamps.”

  Sam had already picked up the bag and was heading for the exit. “Dumb pickaninny!” the woman shouted after him. Outside, Sam saw that Ben was at the corner, in front of the Lincoln Savings Bank, waiting for the light to change. Across the street, in front of Al’s Lock Shop, a black policeman was talking to two tall teenagers. They had their hands out, palms up, showing that they were clean. Above them, where Ryan’s Billiard Parlor had been, the windows were covered now with posters of ferocious-looking black men and signs saying that black was beautiful.

  The light changed. Ben crossed the street. Sam took long strides, feeling the shape of a large can in his left palm, through the bag. The bag in his right hand—boxes mostly, cold cereal probably—was lighter. Sam hurried, but Ben managed to stay ahead of him, by half a block. On his block, the line of people in front of the rummage shop was as long as it had been when he’d left. The cop twirled his billy club, the leather strap stretching from his wrist. Sam had—a mistake—cut diagonally across the street and had to decide now whether to backtrack to the corner and go around the line, or to try to cut through. He saw Ben, in front of the door, waiting.

  A woman nodded to him, stepped back. “Let the boy go through—he lives here. I seen him working in the store.”

  Sam mumbled a thank you. “Man, that boy got himself a real load.” It was a man’s voice. Ben was holding the door open for him. Sam moved into the dark hallway and mounted the stairs.

  Ben unlocked the door and they entered their apartment. Sam put the bags down on the kitchen table—the tear in the bag, he saw, was where the can of peaches had been, but it was only two inches long. He’d been in no danger. “Are you out of your mind?” he said to Ben, his hands on his hips. He was breathing hard, but he wasn’t winded. His mind was clear.

  “Calm yourself,” Ben said. “Here. Let me put the dairy products and frozen food away. Then we’ll talk.” He went to the refrigerator, opened the door, and put a bag of groceries on top of the stove. “You can empty things onto the table, I’ll do the rest. Believe me, Sam, I appreciate your coming. I know I could pay one of the boys, but—”

  Sam tore his jacket off, moved toward his father. “Listen, cut the small talk, and don’t tell me not to get my balls in an uproar. What the fuck are you trying to do to me? You just tell me that!”

  Ben rearranged things in the refrigerator, making room. “To you?—nothing. Your touch is as good as it always was. I have great confidence in you, Sam. When I’m gone, I know you’ll get by. I didn’t, in truth, expect you to beat me, but…”

  Sam stepped around the coffee table, in front of his sofa-bed. Ben stood, put his hand up, stopping Sam in his tracks. Ben’s eyes danced. “I saw you there, you know, looking for me, before—”

  “And you went ahead anyway—?” Sam felt some sweat trickle down the small of his back.

  Ben’s eyes flickered; he seemed to realize for the first time that he was still wearing his raincoat. He touched the pockets. “Oh that,” he said, as if he hadn’t understood until now what Sam was angry about. “Don’t let it bother you, sonny boy. I’ve been doing that for years—ever since I went on social security. It’s nothing to worry about, believe me.” He smiled, and Sam saw the kindness in his father’s eyes. “I’m sorry you found out. You have your own things—your worries—to think about, I’m sure.”

  “Not so fast,” Sam said, as Ben turned away from him and put the butter onto the top shelf of the refrigerator.

  Ben looked at him, steadily, then sighed. “I should have mentioned it before this, not to alarm you.” He closed the refrigerator door and walked to Sam, taking his son by the arm, leading him to the kitchen table. “Sit,” he said. “Sit,” he repeated, pressing Sam’s arm. Sam sat. Ben pushed the shopping bags to one side of the table, stroked his chin, then came to Sam again, putting his hand on his son’s shoulder, touching Sam’s neck with his fingers. “All right. I’ll explain: prices rising the way they have, a retired man like myself, living on what amounts to virtually a fixed income—I know you chip in with your share and, believe me, I’m grateful for all you’ve done, I can never say how much—but it’s really, the way I figure it, the only way to keep up with inflation.”

  Sam blinked. “To what?”

  Ben took a can of Alaska king crab meat from his left coat pocket and set it on the table, a bottle of multi-vitamins following it. “Watch: a dollar eighty-nine, and a dollar twenty-nine makes three-nineteen.” Sam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Ben produced a bathtub stopper from his other pocket, and a jar of imitation caviar. He read the prices to Sam, adding them up as he went along, putting the tax on at the end. “…On a total of twenty-three twenty-six, that’s over ten per cent, right? Which puts me well ahead of the annual rate of inflation.” He wagged his finger at Sam. “But remember, in the spring and summer, I can’t wear a coat without arousing some suspicion—so we can consider this,” his small eyes twinkled, “a kind of lay-away plan.”

  Sam shoved his chair back and stood, the rubber stoppers on the chair legs squealing against the wood floor. “You’re out of your mind,” he said. He picked his jacket up from the sofa, where he’d thrown it. “You eat by yourself, you hear? And if you do this again, you’ll—you’ll have more than inflation to worry about…. Sure.” Sam wanted the words to come out quickly, like machine gun fire, but he felt that his tongue was in the way. His father had the words, the voice. “I don’t care what you say, you don’t fool me. You’re not gonna do me in, do you hear? And that’s what you’d like—to have one of those TV cameras spot you and then—and then—” He searched for words.

  “Do you in? Listen, sonny boy, I’m not out to take anything that’s not coming to me.” Sam’s hand was on the doorknob, Ben’s hand on top of his. “But they’ll screw you any way they can, and I’m telling you that plain up and down. Do you in? Tell me, if you’re so smart, what defense does a man my age have against the automatic workings of an economy that’s endlessly inflating?” Ben laughed, angrily. “They won’t do me in, either, do you hear? I’ll make my own specials, damn them!”

  “You do what you want, I’m getting out.” Sam set his teeth. “You don’t fool me.”

  Ben lifted Sam’s hand from the doorknob. “Relax, Sam. With all the, you’ll pardon the expression, shvartzehs they have to keep their eyes on, they never give an old man like me a second glance.” Pulling Sam back into the room, he whispered: “How do you think we’ve been eating so well? Answer me that! Granted you chip in, but—well, if you calculated sometime, you would have seen, long ago-”

  “Look, Ben—”

  “Trouble budgeting, folks?” Ben said, his voice moving down, into its favorite register. “Steal! In these days of soaring costs and run-away inflation, we all do our best to make ends meet. Your money will go farther when you steal. Remember—”

  “No,” Sam said, and got to the door before Ben could stop him. “No. You don’t fool me. Not for a minute. I don’t need one of your routines.” He stepped into the hallway and, hoping to wound his father, found something to say which he thought would do the trick. “I’m glad Andy’s hurrying—that he sent for you. Sure. Inflation being what it is, what’ll he be worth if he kicks off in a few years?” Sam laughed, felt the laughter, sharp, as it moved from his throat and across the threshold to his father.

  “I—I don’t understand,” Ben said, sitting down at the table. “I think I get your drift, but, what I mean is, in exact terms, it doesn’t make any sense, Sam—what you’ve just said.”

  3

  Something was up. The Knicks had now won their ninth game in a row, Stallworth was playing well—coming in as their sixth man sometimes, ahead of Cazzie Russell—but when Sam had telephoned Mr. Sabatini to put something on their third game (as planned, he had not bet on the second game), Mr. Sabatini had, for the first time in six years, refused to take his bet. “I’m
sorry, sweetheart,” he had said. “I’d like to help you out, but the Knicks are off my board until further notice.”

  Sam had telephoned again, before each succeeding game, but the reply was always the same. Whatever was up—Sam’s guess was that Sabatini couldn’t farm out enough of the action to cover himself: the Knicks were not only winning, but they were having an easy time with the point spreads—Sam couldn’t do anything about it. He figured that any other bookie who would handle bets of three hundred and less would be in the same boat as Sabatini; Sam would bide his time, then, and when the Knick window was open again, he’d be there. The season was long.

  He leafed through the newspaper, from back to front, checking the results at Aqueduct, not for the horses, but to see what the previous day’s number had been: the last three digits of the day’s mutuel take gave you the Brooklyn number. Six, eight, and six. Double six. The numbers men wouldn’t like that. It was trickier to figure the Manhattan number—you had to put together the payoff prices on the winning horses in the first three races to get the first digit—then the same with the fourth and fifth races for the second, then the sixth and seventh. Sam never bothered. Only suckers played the numbers anyway. He checked the point spreads on the pro football games, the pro basketball games, some college games. “Look, sweetheart,” Sabatini had said the last time Sam had called, two days before, when the Knicks had been at home against the Celtics. “I’m not the Bank of Israel. Three of my colleagues went on unemployment last week because they handled the Knicks.” That was rich, Sam thought—the Bank of Israel. A lot his father knew.