Atlantis: Three Tales (10 page)

Sam slid the oversized magazine into the top drawer, wondering whether he'd really have the patience to wait for the next two installments before reading it in a night.

The first of Mr. Horstein's tricks he'd bought was the magic coin that disappeared. Actually, the trick was just a length of black elastic with a clip on one end you could fasten up your sleeve and a bit of gum on the other that you could stick to any quarter or nickel. But now, as he kneaded the stickum, he realized it was losing its adhesion. More and more times it pulled loose from the coin, letting it fall to the rug as often as it snapped the metal glittering from sight.

The most effective trick—and the most expensive (eighty-five cents)—was a little guillotine in which you could cut a cigarette in half; but if you put your finger through the same hole, you could make the blade slip aside so that it appeared—magically—to pass through your finger, leaving it unhurt and whole.

The third one—though it had cost only a dime—didn't work at all: a hollow, metal cup in the form of a thumb's first joint. Smoking a cigarette, without letting anyone see, you secreted the false thumb in your fist. Then you took the cigarette and poked it into your fingers, putting it out on the bottom of the metal cup the false thumb made. You kept packing the cigarette in, until it was inside your fist completely. Finally you used your other thumb to tamp it down further—only you slid your thumb into the false metal one, got it seated good—then opened both your hands.

The cigarette had disappeared. And nobody was supposed to be able to see the thumb cap (with the cigarette inside) over your real one.

The cap was large enough so that, when Hubert tried it on, it just fell off. And Hubert's hands weren't small. Still, Sam's own thumb was too big to wedge into it. Also, the thumbnail on the cap didn't look like the broad, oversized nails curving down over Sam's fingers. And it was painted a luminous pink, that, when Clarice examined it, she said didn't look like anyone's skin color she knew—black, white, gray, or grizzly!

Hubert had suggested Sam ask Mr. Horstein for his dime back. But
then, though he liked Mr. Horstein, he was still a little afraid of him (he
was
a Jew, after all), and a dime wasn't a lot.

Sam pushed all three tricks off the dresser, into the drawer on top of
Weird Tales
, and closed it.

And, for Clarice, he put on his suit jacket. And his cap.

“Remember—” That was Hubert, reading the paper in the wing chair; he had folded it back to an advertisement for a new kind of suitcase, made from something called . . . Naugahyde? “Elsie wants us all over there by four.” Hubert looked across the dark room from under the tasseled lamp. “Since your birthday's this coming Tuesday, she and Corey are probably going to do something a little special today. So don't you be late, now.”

When he asked the man behind the bars how to get to the Brooklyn Bridge from the station, Sam was told he should have gotten off at City Hall—which was closer. This was the old stop (Brooklyn Bridge) for workers who repaired the bridge—not for people who wanted to walk across it. But if he went two blocks to the east and turned left, he'd come to the walkway.

Beyond the Oriental ornateness of the Pulitzer Building, he saw the structure between—and above—the swoop and curve of trolley tracks, the girders of the El.

It really
was
immense!

He turned left onto Rose Street, which took him down under one of the bridge's stone archways. The arches left and right were walled and windowed, with padlocked doors.

Did people live there, in the base of the bridge? Sam turned into the stone underpass.

Hung from the middle of the overhead stone, its rim painted fresh green, a wooden sign read:

BRIDGE WALKWAY

Beside it was an opening in the stone. The stairway's walls were close set. As he stood there, two colored girls with gingham showing from
under their yellow cloth coats ran down. He glimpsed their shiny shoes, their white socks over their little-girl ankles, bare little-girl legs above—and smiled, as they descended toward him, out of the shadow, laughing—while an older sister in a straw hat with a grownup-looking bluejay feather came down behind, more sedately. She was almost as old as Clarice—and, from the way she turned her shoulders and nodded so faintly without a smile, clearly considered herself to look smart.

And (he turned to look after her) she did.

Then all three were gone.

He was left only his own smile and their brief memory. Shrugging his suit jacket together, putting his big, country-boy hand against one stone wall, he started up.

And came out onto the concrete ramp rolling toward the first stanchion. Beyond green rails, cars passed left and right of him—along with a trolley. As its troller crossed beneath sustaining guys, its antenna jangling under the overhead wire, sparks spit down. Rocking away toward Brooklyn, a cart lagged behind, its gun-gray horse and its colored driver, in his gray slouch brim, impassive beside the electrical crackling, the blue-green shower of light.

Between him and the traffic, a cable thick as an oil drum lifted slant and vertical cords toward the double vault of stone. Sam started forward, walking toward where the cement flooring gave way to wood. And as hundreds on hundreds of thousands of pedestrians had thought so many times before, Sam thought: Lord, this is marvelous!

At first it seemed the walkway stopped when it hit the bridge's stanchion. But when he got closer, some white boys, one copper-haired and none more than fourteen, ran
round the central stone column, down—those were metal
steps
up to the higher level, not a ribbed green metal wall—the stairs. Check these off.

Braithwaite died in 1962. Angelina Grimké in 1958. Fenton Johnson in 1958 also . . . . Effie Lee New-some was doing poorly this past summer, I was told by a lady from Wilberforce, but she was still alive. Her address has been Box 291, Wilberforce, Ohio.

Nanina Alba's address is 303 Fonville Street, Tuskegee, Alabama. Shall I write her for bionotes, or would you like to? . . . There is a Charles E. Wheeler, Jr. listed in the Chicago telephone directory, but I can't get an answer there—yet. Will try again. I am not sure (in fact, I doubt) this is the poet . . . . Jean Toomer is still in a nursing home in Doylestown, Pa. His wife Marjorie Toomer can be reached at their home, “The Barn”,
R. D
. 2, Doylestown.
She will answer letters promptly
. I have visited her twice. She is active for civil rights. Jean's literary disappointments after
Cane
were shattering. He tried desperately to repeat that artistic achievement (but not as a Negro) and failed . . . . I persuaded her and him to give his papers and literary effects to Fisk. A large collection. There is now a chance that
Cane
may be reprinted along with some of Jean's unpublished writings . . . . The sonnet by Allen Tate is perfect for
The Poetry of the Negro
. His background as a Fugitive and redhot
I
'
LL TAKE MY STAND
er adds to its effectiveness. As Countee said about himself, Allen's “conversion came high-priced,” no doubt . . . . and there are letters from him in the Toomer Collection. Hart Crane was trying to arrange for the two (Toomer and Tate) to meet. In any case, we can now see that the early anti-Negro expressions of the Fugitives probably reflected guilt feelings, as this “Sonnet at Christmas” makes clear in Tate's case. . . . By the way, I also sponsored Frank Lima for his Opportunity. We should let him pass for colored, if he wishes. I thought he was Puerto Rican at the time. Nobody would object to a Mexican identifying as a Negro. Not even a black muslim or a black panther. And I will not object to a couple or so poems by Mason Jordan Mason so long as we make it plain in the biographical note that at least we are not sure. He certainly writes in Negro, as Karl Shapiro says of Tolson. And he's good.

I don't expect us to find anything
from the Allen Ginsberg cabal that meets our criteria. So why don't we close the door now.

Beside the steps stood a wooden booth with a glassed-in window, before which were the same brass bars he'd become familiar with in front of tellers at the bank and clerks in the subway's change booths and post offices. Below the wooden shelf with its worn depression for the change to slide into, was another sign—

—faded and flaking. But perhaps the toll was not in effect today—or, indeed, had not been in effect for some time: the booth was closed; no one sat behind the bars to collect.