“Well, I’m going to be so regular,” Lucius declared, “nobody’ll be able to stand next to me!”
“That’s a terrible thing to say!” Corey said. But, amidst more laughter, Elsie — and Dr. Corey — were laughing too.
Was there any way to tell them about the man on the bridge, Sam wondered, without telling about the man on the boat? Should he even try? If he was a friend of Toomer’s, maybe Clarice knew him —
But here, in her enthusiasm, Clarice got to arguing with Lucius about something, and Sam was waiting for a lull into which to interject some mention of the strange fellow he’d met that afternoon, with his strange tales and talk — when Elsie, who’d slipped into the kitchen, came back in with a cake in her hands — with candles on it!
Dr. Corey and Elsie began to sing.
Hubert, leaning on his forearm again, and Clarice and Lucius — with his healthy baritone — joined them:
Why then, he wondered, as he stood to blow out the flames (“Make a wish!” Clarice was saying, beside him. “Don’t forget, Sam! Make a wish…!”), had Hubert told him there wouldn’t be any birthday for him? Was it Hubert’s notion of punishment for coming in so late? Or had Hubert wanted him to think nothing would happen to make it more of a surprise when it did? He glanced at his brother, leaning way back in his chair now. With Hubert, sometimes, you couldn’t tell.
But even as Sam looked up, Hubert brought his chair legs forward, leaned down, and reached under to come up with a grin and a big box wrapped in red paper, though there was no ribbon around it: “And this is for you — though you don’t deserve it…! Coming in here an hour-and-a-half late the way you did!”
While Sam tore the paper off, Hubert explained:
“Now Mr. Horstein said to tell you that any one you already had, or didn’t want, you can bring back and he’ll exchange it for another one that’s the same price.”
It was a whole box of magic tricks!
While Sam was taking out the card deck with the shaved corners and the metal hoops — some whole, some gapped — and the picture frame with the secret compartment, other presents were coming out from behind the sofa, from the bedroom, from under the settee cushion: a sweater (from Corey), gloves (from Elsie), a book of poems, with photographs of colored people down south sitting around the woodstove playing banjos or walking to church (from Clarice) — and a fountain pen (from Lucius).
“Is Sam going to do some magic tricks for us now? Hubert’s been telling us how you’re getting all interested in magic. Are there any of ’em you know already? Come on, you’re going to put on a show for us…?”
But Corey said: “Now Sam has already told us, he needs to practice his magic before he can perform it. Right now, he’s just learning it — exploring it.”
Elsie said: “He just got it tonight. You have to practice before you can perform,” and backed, with dishes, into the kitchen.
“Oh.” Lucius glanced at Hubert. “I see.”
Hubert didn’t say anything.
Just then Sam looked down into the box of paraphernalia. The one trick Mr. Horstein had inadvertently duplicated (or had Hubert duplicated it maliciously?) was the false, metal thumb.
“Oh. I have this one — already!” Sam picked it up from the box, trying to sound nonchalant and accusatory at the same time.
Hubert sucked his teeth. “Hey — I told him you had that one and to leave it out! He must have misunderstood me.”
“Oh.” Well, he felt a little better knowing it was not, then (probably), maliciousness.
Lucius sat, drumming his big, manicured fingers on the peach cloth. Sam pictured magic dice, spinning and dancing between them.
Then Elsie came out of the kitchen again carrying a silver tray, mirror bright, on which stood half a dozen little wine glasses — and a dark bottle.
“Well,” Dr. Corey said. “Isn’t this a treat! This is Elsie’s blackberry wine — that she made herself last summer. We picked the berries together, when we went out to Asbury Park.”
“We certainly did,” Elsie said. “And bottled it ourselves, too.” She put the tray down on the table. “Now who would like a glass?”
“I’ll have some,” Hubert said, laying one forearm on the table. “You want some, Clarice?”
“Oh, yes,” Clarice said. “Thank you.”
“I’ll have some,” Sam said.
“I’ll have some too,” Lucius said. “But I do have to mention — I mean as a lawyer, now. Hubert’ll back me up. You know this is — strictly speaking — completely against the law!”
“Against what law?” Dr. Corey said.
“The eighteenth amendment,” Lucius said. “We got prohibition, I hope you remember!”
“This is not against the law,” Elsie said. “This isn’t moonshine. This isn’t bathtub gin. This is homemade blackberry cordial — it’s not going to hurt anybody!”
“When the revenue officers cart you off, you better tell them that!” Lucius laughed.
“Now, if you don’t want any, Lucius, you don’t have to have any. Maybe you think we shouldn’t — ?”
“Now I’m not saying that! I’m not saying that at all!” Lucius’s large hands waved above the table. “I’m just saying — ”
“We are not breaking any law,” Dr. Corey said. “This here is medicinal.”
“That’s right!” Elsie said, as if the idea had just hit her. A smile replaced the moment of worry on her face. “This is medicinal wine. A glass of this after dinner will absolutely help with the digestion. You know, Papa always takes some after Sunday dinner — ”
“Mama too,” Dr. Corey said.
“Well, I can just see the police now, breaking in on one of them speakeasies around on Lenox Avenue and the doctors breaking out their prescription pads — ”
“If it will make you feel better,” Dr. Corey said, “I will write you a prescription for it — ”
“No,” Lucius said. “For me? No — you don’t have to do that.” And his arm, which had been moving to the laughter like a conductor’s, dropped its pinstriped coatsleeve on the table — the original, Sam realized, of the gesture Hubert performed so frequently.
Beside the red and blue wrapping-paper-and-tissue ruins of his birthday, Sam looked at his twenty-nine-year-old brother, with whom he’d spent fewer days in his life than he had with any number of his friends. Leather gloves, magic tricks, book, pen: this birthday, because of Hubert, had been completely unexpected, and was now over — three days before it had actually occurred.
Lucius said he’d walk with them back to Hubert’s — the argument with Clarice had quieted to an intense conversation over some fine point of the Jim Crow laws. When they came downstairs, they found there’d been an unexpected shower that, because of their laughter inside, they’d missed. But the sidewalks were wet — or, at any rate, drying in patches now. Tall Lucius and diminutive Clarice strolled together under a street lamp, over glimmering, puddled pavement, her skirts swinging back and forth below her calves, the heat of their conversation enough to keep the two of them twenty paces ahead.
The box of tricks under his arm (with the other presents inside it), suddenly Sam said: “… I get it now!”
Hubert said: “Get what?”
“Nothing,” Sam said. “It wasn’t anything. Just something that… well, nothing.”