Sam's Legacy by Jay Neugeboren Page B

register, and then their cans and boxes were moving along the counter, on a black conveyor belt.
    â€œBetween 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?”
    â€œBet?”
    â€œMy 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.
    â€œI was first, remember?” The old woman had one of Sam’s wrists between her fingers.
    â€œHere,” 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—”
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œI 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 into 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