by Walter Tevis
“I’m going to beat him. He fooled me. He fooled me bad because he knows how to hustle and I didn’t think he did. He probably fooled you too, if that’s possible—for anybody to fool you. But I can outplay him, and I’ll beat him.” And then, “He’s a loser, Bert.”
Bert’s voice was level, but it had no edge to it. “I don’t believe you.”
Suddenly, Eddie turned away from him, looking at the bar and at the fat obscene wooden figures on the bar. “All right,” he said. “Go home. I’ll play him on my own money.” Then he said loudly, to Findlay, “Where’s your toilet?”
Findlay inclined his head toward the stairway. “Upstairs, Mr. Felson. To your right.”
Eddie walked up the stairway, his feet heavy and lifeless under him, and into the huge, high-ceilinged parlor, now empty. He walked through it, on thick and silent carpet, and to the bathroom, from which a light shone.
The room was a small, old one, with lavender-striped paper on the walls. He walked to the toilet and seated himself on the edge of it carefully and for several minutes thought of nothing. Then he filled the lavatory bowl with hot water, took soap and a towel and began washing his face and hands, scrubbing at the creases in his face, getting the greenish dirt off his wrists. There was a brush sitting on the edge of the bowl and he cleaned his fingernails with this. Then he refilled the bowl with cold water and rinsed his face, hands, and wrists. There was a comb in his pocket and he used it to comb his hair, neatly and carefully. He rinsed his mouth with water from the tap, spitting it out into the bowl.
Then he sat down again and began bending his thumbs, slightly at first and then more. They hurt; but they did not hurt very much; not as much as he remembered them hurting a few minutes before. They did not hurt so much that he could not stand the pain, not at all. That’s one excuse, he said, softly. Then he forced himself to think of the times he had played three-cushion billiards before; there had been a great many times, over a period of many years. And Findlay was not very good. That was the other excuse. He got up and looked at himself in the mirror. His face was clear, youthful. And I’m not drunk. And then, still looking at himself, he said aloud, levelly, “You’re going to beat that son of a bitch downstairs. That’s because you’re Eddie Felson, one of the best.” Then he went out and back down to the basement.
When he came back into the room he felt clean, clear in the head. And he felt something else, very slight, a small almost undetectable sensation, a thin, nervous, taut sense. Of power.
Findlay was standing by the bar, elegantly slim, a drink in his hand; and his face, lit by the brilliant lamps over the pool table, looked as if it might crack at any moment, as if the thin smile on his lips would shatter first and then a long, jagged crack might appear under his eyes, spreading downward until pieces of face, like plaster, would chip and fall to the floor. And Bert still was sitting in his chair, solidly planted, like a wise vegetable, keeping his own council.
Eddie walked to the table and picked up his cue, holding it for a moment and looking carefully, with pleasure, at the polished shaft, the silken-wrapped butt, the white ivory point and the little blue leather tip. All of this time a small voice in him was saying, You’ve got five hundred and forty dollars. What if you lose the first game? But he did not listen to the voice, since there was no point in listening.
He looked over at Findlay, and then at the picture, the picture of a man and two women, pink and naked, on grass, over Findlay’s head; and then he grinned at Findlay. “Let’s play,” he said.
Findlay took the opening shot and made it, but missed the next one. Eddie stepped up to the table, bent down, sighted carefully, stroked, and made a billiard. Then he made another; and another. Then he played safe.
Before he shot, Findlay said dryly, “It looks as if you mean business this time.”
“That’s right,” Eddie said.
When Findlay shot, he did not take quite as much care with the elaborate procedure, although he still rippled the little finger as he made his preliminary strokes. But he made a billiard, and then another. He missed the third by less than an inch.
It looked as if he meant business too and Eddie thought with exultation, This is the clutch. I was right. And he stroked with care. He made one billiard, but he missed the next, by a heart-breaking, last-minute kiss.
They played it safely and with great attention to detail, and Eddie played the best game of three-cushion billiards he had ever played in his life. But when it was over, Findlay had won. He had won by only two points, but when Eddie handed him the five hundred dollars he had to look at him and say, “That’s all of it. I’m broke.”
Findlay’s eyebrows rose gently, and Eddie could have kicked him in the stomach for the gesture. “Oh,” he said, taking the bills and smoothing them out with his fingers, “That’s unfortunate, Mr. Felson.”
Eddie looked at him coldly. “Who for, Mr. Findlay?” He began unscrewing his cue.
Then Bert, who was sitting behind him, said, “Go ahead and play him, Eddie. For a thousand a game.”
Eddie turned slowly, looking at Bert’s face, searching, for a moment, for a trace of a smile. There was no smile, nothing. “What brought you to life?” he said.
Bert pursed his lips, looked at Findlay, looked back at Eddie. “I think maybe the odds have changed,” he said.
“What am I—a race horse?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“Well, now,” Findlay said, “it seems as if you might know something, Bert. You’re making me think I should be careful.”
“A raise in the bet usually has that effect,” Bert said.
“And you know something?”
Then Bert smiled, very slightly. “It’s like in poker, Mr. Findlay. You’re going to have to pay to find out.”
Findlay stared at him a moment and then made a gesture with his hand. “Perhaps I won’t have to pay at all, Bert,” he said. “Perhaps I know something too.”
Bert was still smiling. It was exactly as if he were sitting behind a large, round table, holding five pasteboard cards in his small, pudgy hand.
“Let’s find out,” he said.
Eddie was still looking at Bert and, for a moment, he felt as if he would like to pat him on the back, buy him a drink, or something.
And then Findlay was saying, “All right, Bert, we’ll find out. For a thousand a game.” He finished his drink and set it down, carefully, on the edge of the bar, next to the piece of sculpture.
Then Findlay pointed a thin finger at the belly of the man in the little group of intertangled people—a little, paunchy belly with a deeply carved navel that caught the bright light from over the pool table—and said, “Have you noticed, Bert—this fellow here bears a striking resemblance to you. It seems almost as if you might have modeled for the artist.”
Bert pursed his lips. “It’s possible,” he said.
For the first time that day, Eddie laughed. He laughed loudly and long. Then he said, “You’re a comedian, Bert. A real comedian.”
Findlay stared at him amusedly while he laughed. When Eddie had finished he said, “Let’s play billiards, Mr. Felson.”
From the first shot Eddie knew he had him. The three balls were standing out on the green now like jewels—machined, honed and polished gems, and the feel of the balls had come to him completely. And the long table—he liked the long table now, liked the long rolls of the heavy balls, the inexorable way that he could make them roll, ponderously, down the table and across, banking off the rails and into other balls. It was a fine game, a sedate, chesslike game, and he saw it now for what it was, a game that he could understand and control and that he would, eventually, win at.
He won. And he won the next game. And, after that one, a very close and tense game, he began to hear the little reasonable voice that said, You can ease up now, it isn’t that important, and he forced the voice to shut up. And doing this, forcing himself to bear down even harder, to concentrate even more, it began to be clear to him that what Ber
t had said about character was only a part of the truth. There was another thing that Bert had only partly seen, had only partly communicated to him, and this was the fixed, unvarying knowledge of the purpose of the game—to win. To beat the other man. To beat him as utterly, as completely as possible: This was the deep and abiding meaning of the game of pool. And, it seemed to Eddie in that minute of thought, it was the meaning of more than the game of pool, more than the five-by-ten-foot microcosm of ambition and desire. It seemed to him as if all men must know this because it is in every meeting and every act, in the whole gigantic hustle of men’s lives.
The squirrel’s voice, the voice of his own cautious, uncommitted ego, had told him that it wasn’t important. He looked at Findlay, at the vain and sensual face, the sly, homosexual eyes; and it seemed astonishing to him now that he had not seen how necessary it was to beat this man. For it was important. It was very important.
It was important who won and who did not win. Always. Everywhere. To everybody…
***
After Eddie had won the third game, the third thousand-dollar game, he began to see a strange and wonderful thing: Findlay started to crumble.
He began to drink more and sit down more between shots, and when he got up to shoot there was a kind of haughty weariness in his movements. Occasionally he laughed, wryly—Sarah’s kind of laugh—and Eddie could hear in Findlay’s laugh the words, almost as if they were spoken to him, It doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make any difference because, no matter who wins, I’m better than he is. And Eddie knew that he was seeing now what Minnesota Fats had seen when he himself had fallen apart under pressure and self-love. It was a fascinating, a disgusting, frightening, and contemptible thing to watch. And Findlay did not quit, and Eddie knew now that it was because there was no way for him to quit, that he was being drugged, was drugging himself into playing, game after game, as if something were going to happen, as if it were going to turn out that, somehow, it was all untrue, and that he, Findlay, had somehow come out of it all serene and happy and important.
Findlay crumbled, fled, fell, oozed, and became disjointed; he became petty, vain, and ridiculous; but he did not quit for a long time. When he did quit it was almost nine o’clock in the morning and he had lost a little more than twelve thousand dollars.
Leading them upstairs, he smiled wanly at them, and said, “It’s been an interesting evening.” He looked very old, especially in the face.
Eddie looked at him for a moment, intently; and it seemed that there was something pathetic and yet eager in the faint smile on Findlay’s thin and now almost bloodless lips. Then he looked away. “It sure has,” he said.
They left the house then, walking out, shockingly, into sunlight and the smell of wet grass….
***
Before Bert started the car he counted off for Eddie his share of the money—three thousand dollars. The bills were beautiful with the old magical color; and Eddie, whose senses still seemed so acute that there was nothing that could not be seen by him, responded with sensitivity and depth to the fine, impeccable lines of engraving, the sharpness of detail, and the excellent, tasteful numbers in the corners of the bills. Then he put the money in his pocket.
Outside the window, in Findlay’s drive, the air was clear and cool, with a faint mist. The sun was bright, but low. There were birds, discordant, adding to the sense of unreality. Eddie could see orange and yellow tinges on the leaves of trees, and could feel an edge in the air. Summer was ending. It was a fine and strange morning, full of imminent meaning.
He looked at Bert and said, “Well?” And it occurred to him then, looking at Bert, that there was nothing more for Bert to teach him; that he had learned, in this game that his hands and arms in their soreness were still remembering, a lesson and a meaning of his own, and that there was nothing more to do with Bert except to cut loose from him, to become free of him.
And when Bert did not reply, Eddie said, pushing him, “You think I’m ready now for Fats?”
“What about the thumbs?”
“The thumbs are all right.”
They were on the road that led to town, and Bert drove them in silence for several minutes before he answered. “If you’re not ready now you never will be.”
Eddie lit a cigarette, cupping his hands against the wind. His body seemed to feel tense and relaxed at the same time, but the sun on him was warm, pleasant. “I’m ready,” he said.
20
For the first three hours of the trip north Eddie did not say anything. They were in Ohio by mid-morning. Traffic was very light. It was very strange to be riding in this big car in the autumnal morning, his body dimly aching from the long night’s work, his eyes grainy and yet alert, and to be driving toward Chicago. Two months before he had driven to Chicago, with Charlie Fenniger. That seemed now to have been a long time ago. What would Charlie be doing now? Opening the poolroom in Oakland, brushing the tables? Charlie had been his friend for a long time. Once, years before, he had admired Charlie, had thought Charlie was a first-rate pool player.
And Bert, what about Bert? Bert, like Charlie, was a teacher and a guide—a guide not to pool playing, but to gambling. Bert knew the wheels that turned in gambling and the wheels within the wheels. You could never really pin down a man like Bert, get hold of him, find out exactly what his meaning was. But Bert was necessary, if only because of his intelligence and strength—as, in a different way, Sarah had once been necessary, during the time that his own world had been tilted and confused. Even Sarah—weak, losing Sarah with more of her twisted than just her leg—was a tremendously necessary person. Or was Sarah a loser, or only a person who was not in the game because she did not understand the rules? But who knew the rules? Bert, if anyone.
But there was the rule—possibly the only real rule—that he had had to learn himself, the rule that Bert had not actually told him, the one that had come to him with such clarity when he had been playing Findlay, the rule that was a command: Win. And yet maybe that was what Bert meant by character—the need for winning. To love the game itself is a fine thing; it is loving the art you live by. There are many things to love in the art—the excitement of it, the difficulty, the use of skill—but to work at it only for those would be to be like Findlay. To play pool you had to want to win and to want this without excuses and without self-deception. Only then did you have a right to love the game itself. And this reached further. It seemed to Eddie now, sitting in Bert’s car, his body sore and his mind tremendously aware, that the need to win was everywhere in life, in every act, in every conversation, in every encounter between people. And the idea had become for him a kind of touchstone—or a key to the meaning of experience in the world.
But as he became gradually more tired, more hypnotized by the steady movement of the sunlit road before them, the awareness and the insight began to fade, leaving, as these things always do, a few new ideas, or prejudices. And, possibly, a little more knowledge of what his own life was about….
After a while he dozed for a few minutes, and then wanted to talk. There was something he had wanted to ask Bert….
“Say,” he said, his voice drowsy now, “where does Fats get his bankroll?”
For a while he thought that Bert was not going to answer him at all, and he was about to ask the question again when Bert spoke. “I saw him beat a whorehouse operator named Tivey out of thirty-six thousand dollars. Tivey had heard about Fats and wanted to try him at one-pocket. That was about eight months ago.” Bert looked thoughtful. “He makes a mark like that once a year or so. There’s always somebody who likes to gamble with the best. And then,” Eddie could see him grin slightly, “there’s always people like you. What did he take from you?”
“About six thousand.”
“I didn’t think it was that much.”
“Maybe it wasn’t. My partner was holding it.” And then, “What do you think Fats makes a year?”
“Hard to tell,” Bert said. “One thing you probably don�
�t know about him, he hustles at bridge too. And he owns property. I went in with him myself once on a piece of property, a Chinese restaurant, and we did all right.” Bert was silent for a minute, driving, his eyes straight ahead. “Fats is smart. He gets along.”
“Like you?”
“Maybe.” And then, pursing his lips and looking straight ahead, “He does better than I do. I think maybe he’s got something I don’t have.”
“What’s that?”
Bert seemed to be concentrating with tremendous attention on his driving, although there was no one else on the road. Then he said, “Fats is a very talented man. He always was.”
For quite a long time, Eddie did not say anything. They stopped and bought sandwiches and beer and then, back in the car, Bert said, “Why all the questions about Fats? You thinking of replacing him?”
Eddie grinned faintly, “Not replacing, exactly. More like joining his club.”
“It’s a hard club to join. There aren’t fifty top pool hustlers in the country who make a living at it.”
Fifty sounded like a small number, but it sounded right. “Maybe,” Eddie said. And then, “We’ll see.”
***
When they were coming into Chicago Bert said, “Where do I let you out?” It was three o’clock in the afternoon.
After trying to think for a minute, Eddie said, “Where do you stay?”
“At home. On Sullivan Avenue.”
Struck by the word “home,” Eddie stared at him. “Are you married?”
“Twelve years.” Bert adjusted his glasses with one hand, the other on the wheel. “Two girls in school.”
“For Christ’s sake!” Eddie said. And then, “Let me off at a hotel. Any hotel, maybe near the Loop somewhere.”
***
The hotel was in a part of town he was unfamiliar with. When he got out of the car he stopped and said, “You coming up to Bennington’s tomorrow?”
“What time?”
“I don’t know. After lunch, I think.”
“Okay,” Bert said. “I’ll meet you here for lunch at two. Then we’ll go see George together.”
