The Hustler

by Walter Tevis

  Eddie asked the withered man behind the counter for a package of cigarettes, and when he got them asked quietly who the man on the back table was.

  The old man grinned like a conspirator and wheezed, in the obscene voice that some old men have, “That man’s a real pool hustler,” he said. “That’s Bill Davis from Des Moines. Probably just come from up at Bennington’s. He’s one of the real big boys.”

  Eddie had heard of him somewhere; he was supposed to be, as well as he could remember, a small-time hustler.

  “What’s his game?” he asked.

  “How’s that?”

  “What’s his best game? What does he play?”

  “Oh.” The man behind the counter bent closer to him. “Straights,” he said. “Straight pool.”

  That’s nice, Eddie thought, walking back toward where the man was practicing. But then you had to be steady to play good straights. He was not certain that he could trust his hands that much yet. Maybe it would be smarter to try getting him into a game of one-pocket. In one-pocket you depend more on brainwork and on patience—qualities that you don’t have to rely on your hands for. And every straight pool hustler plays one-pocket; the old man was sure to know the game. And, then, that made Eddie wonder, suddenly, if the tall man would know him, Fast Eddie Felson, by reputation, or had seen him play somewhere else. The thought of it, of losing his first chance for a good, workable game in weeks, made him suddenly feel tight, even nervous. But in a moment he laughed at himself; he was thinking as Bert must think, analyzing, planning out the angles, figuring the odds. It amused him to think of little, tight, lip-pursing Bert, sitting on one of those stools back there, eating potato chips and telling him how he had everything figured out. But then, Bert did drive a new car. Every year.

  He leaned against the near table and watched Bill Davis shoot out a rack of balls. When Davis finished he racked up the fourteen of them into the triangle and attempted a straight-pool break shot off the fifteenth, banking the colored ball into the side of the triangle and trying to make it skid off into the near corner. The ball hit the rail a few inches short of the pocket. Davis worked with great intensity at the shot, bending over the cue ball grimly, and then swooping down on it like a hawk. When he had missed he let out his breath in a great gasp, and began wiping his forehead.

  Eddie tried to look sympathetic. “That sure was a tough one,” he said.

  The man turned around, facing him, looked at him a moment, and then grinned. His teeth were huge, white and even. Eddie wondered if they were false. “You sure right,” the man said. His voice practically boomed, and he spoke with a thick accent. “That shot is sure one tough shot of pool.” His voice was loud and he spoke with what sounded like great conviction, earnestness.

  Eddie smiled at him. “You can’t make ’em all.”

  “That’s right. You sure can’t make ’em all.” The voice and the grin were both enormous, and Eddie was a little dumbfounded by them. “I only wish you could. I been playing this goddamn game fifteen years and I sure don’t know one man yet make all those goddamn balls, I sure don’t.” The man’s voice was softer now, and Eddie was relieved, although he still was not certain what to make of him. It struck him that perhaps Davis should be a con man of some kind; he seemed to be one of the most trustworthy types Eddie had ever seen—his voice vibrated with honesty and seriousness.

  Eddie watched him rack the balls and then he said, “You like to play a game or two?”

  “Sure, I like to play. What game?” He slammed the rack on the table and began piling the balls fiercely into it. His hands were huge, strong-looking, and rough, and he handled the balls as if they were golf balls.

  “Is one-pocket all right?”

  “Fine.” The man fished vigorously in his pocket and withdrew a half dollar. He threw this in the air, over the table. “Which side comes up?” he said.

  “Tails.”

  It came up heads; Davis would break. In one-pocket, unlike straight pool, the break is an advantage; with it you can nudge a good many balls over to the side of the table where your scoring pocket is, and if you know how to do it right you can invariably leave the other man perfectly safe—without a possible shot.

  The man began chalking his cue and said, “You want to play for some money? A few dollars?”

  Eddie grinned. “Ten?”

  The old man raised his eyebrows, which were gray and very shaggy. “Fine.”

  When he got up to the head of the table to break the balls he bent down stiffly, pumped his cue stick vigorously several times, stopped, aimed, pumped again, and then shot. His concentration was so great that a large soft vein, purplish, stood out on his forehead. The break was very good, although not perfect.

  Eddie decided that, from the start, there would be no point in playing down his own game. He was not certain, anyway, that he would be able to win even by playing his best. There would be no point in throwing off, underplaying himself, just to set up a big game or two that he might lose.

  So he played carefully, using his open-hand bridge and his awkward hold on the cue, and shot the best that he could. Any ten-dollar bills that he could pick up he could use. He played cautiously, making most of his shots defensive, trying for a ball only when he was certain he could make it, and he beat the man by a close score—eight to six.

  They played another and Eddie won that. The man was good, but wild—and not smart enough. He lost the third, but won the one afterward. When they had finished that game, Davis grinned at him and said, “How come you shoot flat hand? You sure too goddamn good to shoot like that all the time.”

  “I hurt my hands. In an accident.”

  They kept on playing and after a few hours Eddie had won ninety dollars. But his hands were beginning to ache, and he began to shoot stiffly, afraid that he would put pressure on one of his thumbs and the pain would stab through it. The old man’s vigor did not abate: he was one of the professionals like Minnesota Fats—although not nearly as good—in his tireless, consistently good game. And he was funny. Once, in the middle of a game, Davis was bending rigidly over the cue ball at the end of the table, concentrating, his forehead vein purplish, on a difficult shot, when suddenly he drew back and stood erect, his great hands on his hips, staring toward the center of the table. Eddie looked and saw a small black insect walking unconcernedly across the green, in the line of the old man’s shot. The thing was the size of a gnat, with no wings.

  Davis was staring at it, his eyes bulging apoplectically. Finally, the bug stopped, turned around, and began walking back the way it had come.

  Davis glared. “You little black son of a bitch,” he said, “You had your goddamn chance, you sure had.” Then, suddenly, he swooped forward, and with the small end of his cue stick extended, delivered a very rapid series of short taps, as if trying to hammer the bug through the table. Then he bent forward and, with deliberation, flicked the corpse off the table, using a massive thumb and forefinger. “That’s teach you good, you son of a bitch,” he said.

  And playing him, Eddie slowly became aware of something he had not been aware of about himself for a long time: of how much he enjoyed playing pool. Things of that kind, things that simple, can be forgotten easily—especially in all of the questions of money and gambling, talent and character, born winner and born loser—and they can come as a shock. Eddie loved to play pool. There was a kind of power, a kind of brilliant co-ordination of mind and of skill, that could give him as much pleasure, as much delight in himself and in the things that he did, as anything else in the world. Some men never feel this way about anything; but Eddie had felt it, as long as he could remember, about pool. He loved the hard sounds the balls made, loved the feel of the green wool cloth under his hand, the other hand gently holding the butt of his cue, tapping leather on ivory.

  And then, after he had won three games in a row, the big man grinned broadly, toothily, at him and said, “I quit you now. You too goddamn good.”

  “Sure,” Eddie said, grinni
ng. He took the final ten from him and, putting it in his billfold, hardly noticed the tugging of acute pain in his hands. Everything, it seemed, about this game had been perfect: they had even quit at the right time. He was not certain; but he figured that he had won at least a hundred and a half. He could use it.

  “You want a drink?” he said to the other man, affably. They had drunk nothing but coffee during the playing.

  “Sure.” His voice boomed out again, like it had done at first, “You buy me a martini?”

  “Be glad to,” Eddie said.

  They went to the back room and washed their hands, getting the grime and chalk off them. The big man washed as he did everything else, like a zealot. “What’s your name, anyway?” he said. “You shoot so goddamn good I should know your name. For next time.”

  Eddie laughed. “Felson,” he said. “Eddie Felson.”

  “Eddie Felson?” The big man thought about this for a moment. “Sure.” In the little washroom, his voice could have broken mirrors, cracked porcelain. “Somebody told me about you. Fast Eddie, is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Say” He held out a huge hand. “My name’s Bill Davis. From Des Moines, Iowa.”

  Eddie took the hand apprehensively, afraid the man would squeeze it. But he shook gently, aware, apparently, of the soreness. “You’re one damn fine pool player. When you get your hands fixed up you must be one of the best.”

  “Thanks,” Eddie said.

  “Maybe I should buy you a drink.”

  “That’s okay, I can afford it,” Eddie said, grinning.

  ***

  The martini glass seemed lost in Davis’ hand. He gulped it and then set the glass down on the counter. For a moment Eddie was afraid he would slam it down as he had the pool triangle, slivering glass everywhere. “You know,” he said, “if I had the chance to learn how to shoot pool when I was a boy I would be one damn fine good pool player myself.”

  “You shoot good right now,” Eddie said.

  “Sure. Sure, I shoot good. I beat most people I play. But I’m an old man. I was an old man first time in my life I saw a pool table. Fifteen years ago. First year I come to the States to live.”

  “You mean there aren’t any pool tables where you come from?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe some. But in Albania—I come from Albania fifteen goddamn years ago—I’m always a working man. Mechanic. I save my money and come here to buy a business. I buy a garage. No goddamn good—nobody makes money in a garage. So I buy a poolroom, cheap, in Des Moines, Iowa. Now I’m sixty-eight years old and I’m just learning to play this goddamn game of pool.” Then he grinned, his big, horsy teeth flashing, “But I like it. It’s the best goddamn game there is.”

  It seemed impossible that the man could be sixty-eight. He should be tired, if he were, or vague. But the deep lines in his face, like ruts, and the thousands of tiny, fine lines between the heavy ones were the kind that took years to grow. The man was impossible, some kind of natural phenomenon.

  Abruptly he got up, slapped Eddie on the back, said, “You sure a goddamn pool player, Eddie Felson.” Then he walked out the door, taking big strides, his back stiff, erect, his arms swinging, stiffly, at his sides….

  ***

  By the time Eddie got home he felt great. He had stopped in a drugstore to pick up a box of candy for Sarah, and when he got there he woke her up and handed the box to her.

  “What in hell is that?” she said, her voice thick with sleep and liquor.

  “Candy,” he said. “Whole damn box full of it. For you.”

  She was sitting up, slumped, in bed, her hair falling over her forehead and her eyes gluey. She blinked, “What in hell’s the idea?”

  “A present. A gift.”

  She tossed it loosely down to the foot of the bed, and then fell over on her side, away from him. “Just what I need,” she said. And then, “Where have you been? Shooting pool?” He could not tell if it were sleepiness or bitterness in her voice, but the tone of it was dead.

  “That’s right.”

  Abruptly, she rolled over and looked at him, balefully. “Eddie…” and then she rolled back. “Never mind. You wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

  His voice had become very cold. “I probably wouldn’t,” he said.

  14

  For several days he practiced, working at it doggedly each time until the pain in his hands became too great for him to continue. It did not make him feel good to do it, but there was a kind of cathartic effect. And it was like the old days in Oakland—those years when he had practiced daily with concentration and intensity, back when to become a great pool hustler was, for him, the finest and the best thing for him to want of his life. He did not have as much of the certainty or the conviction, now—although to think of himself as an insurance salesman or a shoe clerk would have only been absurd—but the game, and the hard, absorbing, almost religious practicing were a reminder to him of what he was, of what he had been and was going to be. And it kept him from thinking, kept him from being irritated with all of the vague issues that had been pestering him since the day he had walked into Bennington’s, and even before.

  One afternoon he was shooting on the back table at Wilson’s, lining the balls down the middle of the table and knifing them into the side pockets, when Bert came in.

  Bert was wearing a conservative—or cautious—brown business suit. When he saw Eddie his thin lips pressed into a slight, thin smile. “Hello,” he said.

  Eddie slammed a ball he had been aiming at into the side pocket. Then he leaned gently on his cue and said, “Hi. Where’ve you been?”

  Bert took a seat, adjusting his trouser legs as he sat down. “Here and there,” he said, with no particular tone of voice.

  “How’s business?”

  He pursed his lips. “Business is slow.”

  There was nothing else to say just then. Eddie began shooting the balls again, conscious that Bert was watching him and, in all probability, judging him.

  When he had finished out the rack, Bert spoke, “Why the open-hand bridge? Is there something wrong with the hands?”

  Eddie grinned at him. “An accident. At Arthur’s.”

  He expected Bert to say something to the effect of “I told you so,” but Bert did not. He said, “Oh?” and raised his pale eyebrows. “You seem to do all right that way.”

  “Fair.” Eddie began racking the balls. “I’d say my game was maybe twenty per cent off. Maybe more.”

  “If that’s right you aren’t in too bad a shape. What happened? They step on your hands?”

  “Thumbs,” Eddie said, shooting. “A big bastard broke them.”

  Bert seemed interested. “Man named Turtle Baker?”

  Eddie couldn’t help looking surprised. “You know everybody, don’t you?”

  Bert seemed very pleased with this. “Everybody who can hurt me,” he said, pursing his lips again, “and everybody who can help me. It pays.”

  Eddie began working on corner pocket shots, the thin cuts where the cue ball must be given a natural roll. Finally he said, “You should give me lessons.”

  Bert looked at him thoughtfully. “Sign up.”

  Eddie did not answer but went back to the shooting, flicking the colored balls on the side with the white ball, making them edge gently into the pocket, while the cue ball went hurtling around the table. The shot was a pleasant one to shoot; possibly it was the combination of sped and slowness, and the inevitability of the motions when it was shot right. Then, finally, when he had finished with the fifteen balls, he looked up at Bert again. “Where do I sign?”

  Bert adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses on his nose. “For Lexington?”

  “For anywhere you say.” Eddie grinned. “Boss.”

  Bert’s eyes were wide, seeming even wider under the thick glasses. “What happened to you?”

  “Like I said. My thumbs.”

  “I don’t mean the thumbs. You already told me about the thumbs.”


  Eddie thought about this a minute. Then he said, “Maybe I’ve been thinking.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “About how maybe I’m not such a high-class piece of property right now. And about how maybe playing for a twenty-five per cent slice of something big is better than playing for nickels and dimes.”

  “Well,” Bert said, leaning back in his chair, his small hands folded delicately on his lap. “Of course, with your hands in the condition they’re in…”

  Eddie grinned. “You can come off that right now. You know damn well I can beat your Findlay, thumbs or no thumbs. And they didn’t break my ‘character’ at Arthur’s. That’s what you said was wrong with me, remember?”

  “I remember,” Bert said. He paused a few minutes, apparently in deep concentration, his little pink hands with the impeccable fingernails twitching mildly in his soft lap. Finally he said, “All right. Day after tomorrow. Seven o’clock in the morning.”

  Eddie blinked at him. “Seven in the morning? What in hell for? I haven’t been up at that time of night since I was going to Sunday school.”

  Bert smiled. “You should never of quit going to Sunday school. You’re the type. You look like you’ve got morals.”

  “Thanks. You look like Santa Claus.”

  “Oh, I’ve got morals too. I was brought up right. Only you look like you’ve got the good kind of morals. Anyway, you get up and meet me just like going to Sunday school, day after tomorrow, right here at seven o’clock. That way we can drive to Lexington in a day.” And then, his voice more easy, “I don’t like to get up at seven either.”

  “Okay,” Eddie said, “I’ll bring my cue.”

  “And one more thing,” Bert said. “I’m paying all the expenses and I’m taking all the risks. So while you’re with me you’ll play it my way.”

  “I figured to,” Eddie said, not looking up at him. He bent down, concentrating on a long shot on the four ball, which sat, a quiet sphere of dull purple, in the middle of the table. He took careful aim, swung powerfully, and hammered it into the far corner pocket. The cue ball came to a dead stop. He looked over at Bert.