Sam's Legacy (42 page)

Sam had the words right—for a change he was glad he could remember things exactly, that way. He banged on the radiator, as he had earlier—then on the steam pipe. He checked the valve, but it was wide open. He unfolded the blanket that he'd loaned to Muriel and put it across his knees. Then he dialed.

“Hello?”

“You up already?”

“Hey, Sam the Gambler,” she said. He swallowed, glad he had called. “What's the good word?”

“I was just thinking of you,” Sam said. “So I thought I'd call. How do you feel? I mean, after last night.”

“Sure,” she said.

“Sure,” Sam said.

“What's there to say, right?”

Sam shrugged. “You want me to come over later? We could watch the basketball game together. It's like an icebox here. Damned Tidewater—”

“Give me a little time, okay? I got to get things ready.”

“Sure.”

Sam waited. “You get home okay?” Stella asked.

“Sure. The streets were pretty quiet. People read the papers too much.”

Stella laughed. “Last night!” she said, and her laugh was the same as it had been then. “You come over when you want.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “Take care of yourself.”

“Last night,” she said again, and laughed. “You're really a prize.” Then she hung up.

Sam smiled. He could understand what she meant—he would not, if somebody had told him, have believed that he could have said such a thing at a time like that, but it was what had occurred to him. He was glad now that it had. He liked himself—it was the only way he could think of putting it—for being that way. They had been in bed together, in Stella's room (not in the living room), when she had stopped moving and pushed him off. He had heard the sound then too, at the window, and had pulled the blankets back, to cover them. The guy's nose had been pressed against the glass, his eyes bulging, and Sam had had no idea how long he'd been there, watching them from the fire escape. “Oh shit,” he'd heard Stella say. “Shit.” He'd reached down quickly to the floor and slipped his knife from his pants, snapping it open, but there had been no need. The guy's face was gone a second later, and Sam hadn't asked why. He'd turned to Stella at once, figuring she would have been scared to death, but he discovered that she was only annoyed. “Just shit,” she'd said again, and from the way she said it, he could tell that she had been more annoyed that they'd been interrupted than that somebody had been looking in. “I guess,” Sam had found himself saying, as he had put his knife away, “that that's what you got to expect when you live in a neighborhood in transition.”

He hadn't intended to be funny—he had wanted, only, to break the ice, to get his own mind away from what might have happened if the guy had wanted to break in—but his remark had cracked Stella up. She had pressed herself against him and roared with laughter. “Oh Christ, I love you, Sam,” he remembered her saying, and it was the first and only time that she had let herself say it. “Sure,” he'd begun, and she had managed to put her hand over his mouth so that he had not been able to explain himself. He could see her now, her head under him, her hair up—he'd put it there—across the back of the pillow so that it didn't become knotted when she sweated. He had put his head against her chest then, his ear warm against her skin, and had begun laughing with her. “You're my bird, Sam,” she'd said, when she'd been able to stop laughing, and though he hadn't said so, he'd agreed with her.

He made his bed, did his exercises, and was eating breakfast when there was a knock at the door. “It's open,” he said.

“Still taking chances, right, Ace?” Dutch said, coming into the room. Sam sighed, saw that Dutch had, since the last time he'd seen him, grown a beard; it was trimmed close to his face, and his blue eyes, above the black hair, seemed more deeply set than ever. “I mean, what if I'd been some spook looking to hit you for cash?”

Sam motioned to the sofa. “Take a load off your mind. You want some coffee?”

“Okay.” Dutch took his gloves off and blew into his hands. “It's cold as a witch's tit out.”

Sam took a cup down from the cabinet above the sink and poured coffee for Dutch. Shimmy had called two days before, to try to arrange a get-together, to offer Sam money—and Sid had left a message with Flo that same day. “What's up?” Sam asked.

“Nothing,” Dutch said. “I called a few times, but you never seem to be in so I figured I'd stop by—I thought you might want to come by my place this afternoon, to watch the game. The Lakers go against the Bucks, from Milwaukee.”

“No thanks.”

Dutch stroked his beard, his chin toward Sam. “Come on—say something at least. What do you think of it?”

“Not bad,” Sam said, laughing. “You gonna be a rabbi?”

“Akiba left home at the age of forty, an ignorant man,” Dutch said, his eyes looking out over the rim of his cup, scanning the room. “And he returned, the wisest rabbi in—”

“You're not forty yet,” Sam said, and sat opposite Dutch.

“I told you before,” Dutch said. “You're the one should be a rabbi, the way your mind works.”

“Take a walk.”

“I mean it, Ace.” Dutch leaned forward, on the edge of the sofa. His eyes were beautiful, and as he gazed into them Sam felt the tension leave his body. Poor Dutch, he thought. “The way, when you play cards, nothing interferes—religious men have that kind of concentration. That's why their wives shave their heads and sit on the other side of walls in
shul—m'chitzahs
—so that nothing intervenes between them and God.” Dutch stood and recited: “‘They tell of the rabbis—Elieser and Joshua and Elazar ben-Azariah, Akiba, and Tarphon—who celebrated the Passover in B'nai Brak and were discussing the story of the going forth from Egypt all night long until their students came and said to them: “Rabbis, it is time for the morning prayers.” ‘”

Sam could see Dutch, standing in Hebrew School class when the two of them had been eleven or twelve years old, and he knew that Dutch wanted him to be reminded of the past they shared. “Okay,” Sam said, looking through the window at the fire escapes on the buildings across the street. “I'll ask again—what's up?”

Dutch seemed puzzled to find that he was standing. He took his coat off. “It's warm here,” he said, and sat.

Sam felt far away. “What's on your mind?” he asked. “Come on.”

“Nothing—I just wanted to see how you're getting along since Ben left. That's all. Momma asks about him a lot, how he likes it out there.”

“He hasn't been in touch,” Sam said.

Dutch stood and walked to the window. “Okay. Sure—I'll lay it on the line, Ace—” He turned back. “The word is out that you're in deep, with Sabatini. I wanted you to know that if I could help—in the clutch, count on Dutch, you know what I mean?” Dutch looked at the floor, embarrassed. “I mean, I got a little bread stashed, from before I quit—you can make a touch on Dutch, okay? We don't have to be cagey with each other.” Dutch moved away from the window. “You think it over, and—anytime—you let me know.” He leaned down and put his hands on Sam's shoulders. “I know what it's like when they get mean, Ace—remember that. I know. If I can help spare you.”

“They won't touch me,” Sam said, remembering what Tidewater had once said to him. “I got protection.” He laughed. “Sure. I'm Sam the Man.”

Dutch punched him in the shoulder. “That's my boy,” he said. “Enough said, right? If you need me, you know where to come. Since I've been going to
shul
again we got a little extra power on our side, if you know what I mean. In the mornings, when I put on my
tephillin
, I'll think of you, okay?”

Sam waved him off. “You're bats,” he said, and smiled. “You don't believe a word of it.”

“That's how much you know,” Dutch said. “We're in the same boat, you and me—right, Sam?” Sam shrugged. Dutch's voice was intense, passionate. “Those are your own words—they were, that is, when we used to travel together, right? You and me. But listen—we
are
in the same boat, Sam, and that's why I'm here. That's why I'm in
shul
three mornings a week. We can't just be ourselves. Don't you feel that sometimes? We have to be part of something that doesn't die when we die—I know you believe that, Sam, though you've never said it. If everything begins and ends with just our body, then what's the point, right? What's it all for?”

“You can have kids,” Sam replied simply.

He looked up and found that Dutch was smiling at him. “That's something—sure,” Dutch said, his eyes sparkling. “But not enough. Animals copulate and propagate.” Dutch licked his lips. “What makes us different, Sam? ‘Be thou righteous,' God said to the first Jew, Abraham, and he said no more. But every Jew bears the weight of that command. ‘Who is the righteous man?' the rabbis ask, and they reply: ‘He who doeth righteous deeds.' Don't you see, Ace? We Jews believe in this world. None of that adultery-in-the-mind jazz for us—it's your
life
that matters, what you make of it; it's the fact that you're a Jew, whether you like it or not, and—what I was getting at—that does put you in the same boat, even you. We were studying with Rabbi Zanvel last week—on Saturday afternoon—and we read a passage which made me think of you. Listen. In the Talmud they tell the following story: In a boat at sea one of the men begins to bore a hole in the bottom—for what reason, what personal despair, we know not—but his comrades admonish him. ‘It's my life,' he replies. ‘I am only boring a hole under my own seat.'”

Dutch sat back against the sofa, and Sam wanted to reach out a hand, to help his friend. “Don't you get it?” Dutch said. “We read that portion of the Talmud so that I could come to help you, Sam. It was no accident. I know it. You do understand, don't you?”

Sam shrugged, and crossed one leg over the other. Then something clicked. He smiled: “Sounds boring to me,” he said.

Dutch groaned. “Be serious,” he said, sitting forward. “Save that stuff for your old man. Listen to me: ‘Yes,' his comrades say, ‘but when the sea rushes in we will all be drowned.' Don't you see? ‘And so it is with Israel,' the rabbis comment. ‘It's weal or its woe is in the hands of every individual Jew.'” Dutch paused. “I believe there was a reason we studied that passage just before I heard about you and Sabatini. Things like that don't just happen.”

“I don't buy it,” Sam said, and then, before Dutch could say anything else, he stood and continued: “Anyway, I don't want to kick you out but I got something in the works for this afternoon.”

“We're in the same boat,” Dutch said again, and he stood also, reciting the line as if he were in a trance. “You and me.”

“I look out for number one,” Sam said. “If everybody did the same, we'd all do okay.” He stopped, considered what he'd said. “I mean, those who want to go around helping others—like Flo—that's okay for them. But there are a lot of birds, if you want the truth, who, if I found them next to me, I'd heave them right over the side.”

Dutch smiled. “Then think of it another way.” He picked up his coat. “If I was in trouble, wouldn't you be there? Haven't you—you remember the times—haven't you been there to bail me out of a lot of tight spots?”

Sam decided. “Christ—you're in trouble now, Dutch,” he said. “But I don't have the time. I'm sorry.”

Sam saw Dutch's eyes move swiftly, from side to side. “Me?—I haven't been near a game or a bookie for months now. You—”

Sam shook his head. “It's all the same. All that stuff you gave me going out to Herbie's, about why you quit. And this rabbi jazz—you don't make sense, Dutch, if you want the truth.” Sam sighed. “I mean, some of it makes sense, by itself—but playing all those games against yourself, and—I
know
you, Dutch, that's all. With your mother never going out and—” Sam opened the closet door and took out his mackinaw. “If I had the time, maybe we could—I don't know. I mean, what good would words do?” Sam faced his friend, slipped his arms into the sleeves of his coat. “Anyway, you've been through stuff like this before. You'll—” He paused, nodded. “You'll probably pull out of it yourself, right?”

“Probably?—what do you mean probably?” Dutch's body seemed to sag. He put his coat on. “I said it before—you're the one who should've been the rabbi.” They walked onto the landing, and Sam locked the door. Muriel was sitting in front of her door, sucking her thumb and holding a blanket across her lap. “It's not like you think, Ace—you should come to
shul
some time on a Saturday afternoon, with the other men. It does me a lot of good—picks me up, if you know what I mean—arguing with these guys about things.”

“You were always a good arguer.”

Muriel slid backward, closer to her door. Sam waved to her, but Muriel did not respond. Her sandy curls were tangled. “It's not like you think, Ace—” They opened the door to the outside and Dutch shuddered as the cold air hit him. “Sure, I got things on my mind—I couldn't hide that from you—but it's true why I stopped by. About Sabatini, I mean. My own stuff can wait.”

Sam stood with Dutch in the doorway. Dutch's eyes were tearing, from the cold. “Sure,” Sam said. “I believe you, Dutch.”

“What I like about it is the idea of taking a break from life—I mean, the idea that you stop once a week and rest, that you take a break and think a little about what it's all about. That makes sense, doesn't it?”

“It makes sense.”

“But it makes more than sense,” Dutch went on. “Because we—the Jewish people—we've been doing it, stopping this way to think about life once a week, for over two thousand years. My father and my father's father—”