Sam's Legacy by Jay Neugeboren

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
    â€œWho’s there?” Sam asked.
    â€œMason Tidewater.”
    â€œYeah,” 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—”
    â€œSure,” 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