by Walter Tevis
He could not distinguish individual faces in the crowd very well at first, but they began to come into focus. He was looking for Bert; he did not know exactly why. He should not want to see Bert, but he was looking for him. And then he saw Charlie.
He blinked. It was Charlie, no one else, sitting in a chair by the wall, pudgy, bald at the temples, and with no expression on his face. He started to walk to Charlie, to ask him where he had appeared from, what he was doing there; but he stopped, struck in the face by an insight.
Charlie had come to smirk at him, to see him beaten again. Charlie, like Bert, one of the in-turned and self-controlled—one of the cautious, smirking men. Maybe Fats was like that too, maybe the three of them were brothers under the pink flesh, delighting quietly in the downfall of the fast and loose man, finding the weak spot—suddenly it seemed to Eddie that he himself was a Lazarus of sore, weak spots—and then, having found the place where it hurts, gently probing and pushing and twisting until their mutual enemy, the man with all the talent, was lying on the floor vomiting on himself.
Looking at Charlie he could see himself now as a man crucified, and Charlie as his Judas. He could have wept, and he made fists out of his hands and tightened them until he felt that he would scream with the pain. And then the edge of his vision caught sight of Bert, and immediately he came to his senses and saw what he was doing, playing the loser’s game with himself, the game of self-pity, the favorite of all the multitude of indoor sports….
Charlie eased himself up from the chair and waddled over. His face was serious, his voice quiet. “Hello, Eddie,” he said. “I just got word you were playing up here.”
“Why aren’t you in Oakland?”
Charlie attempted a smile. The attempt was a failure. “I was. Last week I started getting worried about you and flew back. I been hunting you. Around the rooms.”
“What for?” Eddie stared at him; there was something strained about the way Charlie was talking to him. “What do you want me for?”
Not answering at first, Charlie fumbled in his hip pocket and withdrew what looked like a folded-over checkbook and held it out to him. “This is yours,” he said.
Eddie took the book and opened it. It was full of traveler’s checks, in denominations of two hundred fifty each. “What the hell…?” he said.
Charlie’s voice was back to its customary lack of expression, like that of a comic miniature of Minnesota Fats. “When you were drunk up here before and hit me for the money, I held out on you. This is what I held out. A little under five thousand.” And then, abruptly, his face broke into one of his extremely rare smiles, which lasted only for a moment, “Minus my ten per cent, of course.”
Eddie shook his head, letting his thumb run over the thick edges of the blue checks. It figured; it figured, but it was hard to believe: he had just come back from the grave. “So why give it to me now,” he said. “So you can watch me lose?”
Charlie’s voice was soft. “No,” he said. “I been thinking. Maybe you’re ready to beat him now. Maybe you were ready before—I don’t know. Anyway, you ought to find out.”
“Okay,” Eddie said. He grinned at Charlie, the old grin, the charm grin, fast and loose. “We’ll find out.”
He glanced at Fats, who seemed only to be waiting, and then counted the money. There was four thousand five hundred in traveler’s checks, and he had about seven hundred in cash. His whole kitty. Well, here we go. Fast and loose.
Then he looked at the fat man and said, “Fats,” thinking, you fat bastard, “let’s play a game of pool for five thousand dollars.”
Fats blinked at him. His chins jerked, but he said nothing.
“Come on, Fats,” he said, “five thousand. That’s a hustler’s game of pool. It’s my whole bankroll, my life’s savings.” He flipped again through the book of checks, not feeling the pain that doing this caused, and then looked for a moment at Charlie. Charlie’s face showed nothing, but his eyes were alert, interested, and Eddie thought, wonderingly, he’s going along with it. Then he looked at Bert and Bert was smiling thinly, but approvingly; and this too was astonishing and lovely.
“What’s the matter, Fats?” he said. “All you got to do is win one game and I’m gone back to California. Just one game. You just beat me three.”
Fats blinked at him, his face now very thoughtful, controlled, and his eyes as always a kind of obscene mystery.
“Okay,” he said.
Having changed the bet they tossed for the break again, and Fats lost again. He chalked his cue carefully, stepped sideways up to the table, set his hands on the green, the rings flashing, and shot.
The break was good, but not perfect. One ball, the five-ball, was left a few inches out from the rack, unprotected, down at the foot of the table. The cue ball was frozen to the end rail, the table’s length from it. It was an odds-off shot, a nowhere shot; and Eddie’s first reaction was automatic, play it safe, don’t take a chance on leaving the other man in a place where he can score a hundred points. The proper thing to do would be to ease the cue ball down the table, nudge one of the corner balls, and return it to the end rail, letting the other man figure it out from there. That would be the right way to play it—the safe way.
But Eddie stopped before getting ready to shoot and looked at the ball and it occurred to him that although it was a very difficult shot it happened to be one that he could make. You cut it just so, at just such speed and with just so much spin and the ball would fall in the pocket. And the cue ball would split open the rack and the ball game would suddenly be wide open.
It would be smarter to play safe. But to play safe would be to play Bert’s game, to play Fats’ game, to play the quiet, careful percentage. But, as Bert himself had once said, “There’s a lot of percentage players find out they got to work for a living.”
He chalked his cue lightly, with three deft strokes. Then he said, “Five ball in the corner,” bent down, took careful, dead aim, and shot.
And the cue ball—for a moment an extension of his own will and consciousness—sped quickly down the table and clipped the edge of the five-ball, then rebounded off the bottom rail and smacked firmly into the triangle of balls, spreading them softly apart. And while this was happening, the little orange ball with the number 5 in its center rolled evenly across the table, along the rail, and into the corner pocket, hitting the bottom with a sound that was exquisite.
The balls were spread prettily, the cue ball in their center, and Eddie looked at this loose and lovely table before he shot and thought of how pleasant it was going to be to shoot them into the pockets.
And it was a pleasure. He felt as if he had the cue ball on strings and it was his own little white marionette, darting here and there on the green baize as he instructed it by the gentle prodding of his cue. Watching the white ball perform, watching it nudge balls in, ease balls in, slap balls in, and hearing the soft, dark sounds the balls made as they fell into the deep leather pockets gave him a voluptuous, sensitive pleasure. And in operating the white marionette, putting it through its delicate paces, he was aware of a sense of power and strength that was building in him and then resonating, like a drumbeat. He pocketed a rack of balls without missing, and then another and another, and more, until he had lost count.
And then, when he had finished cleaning off the table and was standing, waiting for the rack man to put the fourteen balls back together in their triangle, he realized that the balls should be already racked but they were not, and an absurd idea struck him: he might have already won the game. Fats might never have had a shot.
He looked over to the chair where Bert was sitting. Fats was standing there, beside Bert. He was counting out money—a great many hundred-dollar bills. Fats seemed to be taking an impossible amount of money from his billfold. Eddie looked at Bert’s face and Bert peered back at him, through the glasses. Someone in the crowd of people coughed, and the coughing sounded very loud in the room.
Fats walked over and set the money on the ed
ge of the table, his rings flashing under the overhead lights. Then he walked to a chair and sat down, ponderously. His chin jerked down into his collar for a moment, and then he said, “It’s your money, Fast Eddie.” He was sweating.
He had run the game. He had made a hundred twenty-five balls without missing, and had shot in nine racks of fourteen balls each, making and breaking on the fifteenth ball each time.
Eddie walked to the money, the silent, bulky money. Instinctively, he wiped some of the dust from his hand on the side of his trousers before handling it. Then he took it, rolled up the green paper, pushed it down into his pocket. He looked at Fats. “I was lucky,” he said.
Fats’ chins dipped quickly. “Maybe,” he said. And then, to the rack boy, “Rack the balls.”
Out of the next four games Eddie won three, losing the one only when Fats, in a sudden show of brilliance, managed to score a magnificent ninety-ball run—a tricky, contrived run, a run that displayed wit and nerve—and caught Eddie with less than sixty points on the string. But Fats did not sustain this peak; he seemed to fight his way to it by an effort of will and to fall back from it afterward, so that his next game had even less strength than before.
And Fats’ one victory did not affect Eddie, for Eddie was in a place now where he could not be affected, where he felt that nothing Fats could do could touch him. Not Eddie Felson, fast and loose—and, now, smart, critical, and rich. Eddie Felson, with the ball bearings in his elbow, with eyes for the green and the colored balls, for the shiny balls, the purple, orange, blue, and red, the stripes and solids, with geometrical rolls and falling, lovely spinning, with whiffs and clicks and tap-tap-taps, with scrapings of chalk, and the fingers embracing the polished shaft, the fingers on felt, the ever and always ready arena, the long, bright rectangle. The rectangle of lovely, mystical green, the color of money.
And then when Eddie had won a game and was lighting his cigarette Fats spoke out grimly with words that Eddie could feel in his stomach. “I’m quitting you, Fast Eddie,” he said, “I can’t beat you.”
Eddie looked across the table at him, and at the large crowd of men behind him. There stood Minnesota Fats, George Hegerman, an impossibly big man, an effeminate, graceful man. One of the best pool players in the country, George Hegerman.
Then Fats came around the table, ponderously, gave Eddie fifty one-hundred-dollar bills—new ones, fresh from the bank—took his cue down to the front of the room, and placed it carefully in its green metal locker. He turned and looked back at Bert, not looking at Eddie. “You got yourself a pool player, Bert.” Under the armpits of his shirt were large dark stains, from sweat. For an instant, his eyes shifted to Eddie’s face, contemptuously. Then he turned and left.
Men began to get up from their seats and stretch, began to talk, dissipating for themselves the tension that had been in the room for hours. Eddie’s ears were buzzing, and his right arm and shoulder, although they were throbbing dimly, felt lightweight, buoyant. Vaguely, he wondered what Fats had meant, speaking to Bert. He turned and looked at Bert, smiling to himself, his ears still buzzing, his hand still holding the thick sheaf of new, green money.
And Bert sat small and tight. Bert the mentor, the guide in the wilderness, with the face smug and prissy, the glasses rimless, the hands soft and sure and smart—Bert. Bert, with the gambler’s eyes, reserved, almost blank, but missing nothing.
Bennington’s was almost empty already. It must have been very late. Eddie rolled the sheaf of bills into a fat cylinder and pushed this carefully down into his pocket, still looking at Bert. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Charlie, still sitting; and down at the front of the room Big John, the man with the cigar, was taking a cue stick out of the rack and inspecting its leather tip, thoughtfully. Behind Bert, Gordon, the big man with the glasses, the man who was always in Bennington’s, was still sitting, his hands folded in his lap.
Eddie grinned at Bert, tiredly. He felt very happy. “Let’s get a drink,” he said. “I’m buying.”
Bert pursed his lips. “I’ll buy,” he said, and then, “with the money you owe me.”
Eddie blinked. “What money?”
Bert peered at him a moment before he answered. “Thirty per cent.” He smiled tightly, thin-lipped. “It comes to forty-five hundred dollars.”
Eddie was staring at him now, the grin frozen on his face. Then he said, softly. “What kind of a goddamn joke is that?”
“No joke.” What had been barely a smile left Bert’s face. “I’m your manager, Eddie.”
“Since when?”
Bert seemed to be peering at him with great intensity, although it was impossible to tell exactly how his eyes looked behind the heavy glasses. “Since I first adopted you, two months ago, at Wilson’s. Since I started backing you with my money, since I taught you how to hustle pool.”
Eddie drew a breath, sharply. After letting it out, he said, his voice level, cold, “You little pink-assed son of a bitch. You never taught me a goddamn thing about hustling pool.”
Bert pursed his lips. “Except how to win,” he said.
Eddie stared at him, and then, suddenly, laughed. “That, you son of a bitch, is a matter of opinion.” He turned away and began unscrewing his cue, holding the butt of it tight to keep his fingers from trembling. “It’s also a matter of opinion whether I owe you a nickel.”
Bert did not answer for a minute, and when Eddie had finished with the cue and turned around he saw that Gordon was now standing by Bert’s chair, his arms together behind his back, looking at Eddie and smiling slightly, like a sporting goods salesman.
“Maybe,” Bert said. “But if you don’t pay me, Gordon is going to break your thumbs again. And your fingers. And, if I want him to, your right arm. In three or four places.”
For a moment, he was hardly aware of what he was doing. He had, instinctively, backed up against the pool table, and he was gripping the weighted, silk-wrapped butt of his cue stick in his right hand.
Bert was still peering at him. “Eddie,” he said quietly, “if you lay a hand on me you’re dead.” Gordon had his huge, meaty hands at his sides now, and was standing slightly forward of Bert’s chair. Eddie did not move; but he did not release his grip on the cue. He looked around, quickly. Charlie still sat impassively. Big John, heeding nothing, was practicing now on the front table, shooting a red ball up and down by the rail. Over the big door was the clock. It said one thirty-five. He looked down at the cue butt in his hand.
“You’ll never make it, Eddie,” Bert said. “And Gordon’s not the only one. We’ve got more; and if Gordon doesn’t, one of them will.”
Eddie stared at him, his head a buzzing confusion. “We?” he said. “We?” And then, suddenly, he began laughing. He let the cue butt fall on the table, and gripped the rails, trembling, with his hands, and laughed. Then he said, his voice sounding strange and dim to him, “What is this? Like in the movies? The Syndicate, Bert—the Organization?” The buzzing seemed finally to be leaving his ears and his vision was clearing, losing its fuzziness. “Is that what you are, Bert: the Syndicate Man, like in the movies?”
Bert took a minute to answer. Then he said, “I’m a businessman, Eddie.”
It did not seem real. It was some kind of melodramatic dream, or a television show, or an elaborate game, an indoor sport….
And then Bert said, his voice suddenly softening, as it sometimes could, after the clutch was over, “We’re going to make a lot of money together, Eddie, from here on out. A lot of money.”
Eddie said nothing, still leaning against the table, his body strangely relaxed now, his mind clear with dreamlike clarity.
And then Charlie said, “You better pay him, Eddie.”
Eddie did not look at him, keeping his eyes on Gordon, especially on his hands. His voice was soft, controlled. “You’re not in this, Charlie?”
Charlie did not answer for a minute. Then he said, “No, I’m out of it, all the way out. But they’re in, and you’re gonna have to pa
y.”
Eddie let his eyes move from Gordon’s hands to Bert’s face. “Maybe,” he said.
“No,” Bert said. “Not maybe.” He pursed his lips, and then adjusted his glasses with his hand. “But you don’t have to pay it now. You can think about it for a couple of days.”
Eddie was still leaning against the table. He lit a cigarette. “What if I leave town?” he said.
Bert adjusted his glasses again. “You might make it,” he said. “If you stay out of the big towns. And never walk in a poolroom again.”
“And if I do pay it?”
“Your next game will be about a week from now—with Jackie French. We’ve already talked to him about it, and he wants to try you. Then, next month or so, there’ll be people coming in from out of town. We’ll steer some of them to you.”
Eddie felt very steady now, and the buzzing was completely gone from his ears, the trembling gone from his hands. “That’s not worth thirty per cent, Bert,” he said.
Bert glanced up at him quickly. “Who said it was? Who said it had to be?”
Eddie’s voice was calm, deliberate. “Why don’t you and Gordon go out and roll drunks, if you’re in the muscle business?”
Bert laughed softly. “There’s no money in rolling drunks. And just how pretty is the business you’re in?” Then he stood up from his chair and bent, brushing the creases from his trousers. “Now let’s go have that drink.”
“You go ahead, Bert,” Eddie said. Then he picked the pieces of his cue up from the table, and began putting them in their leather case. He looked up at Gordon. “You run this place, don’t you, Gordon?” He snapped the lid of the case and tossed it to Gordon, who caught it silently. “Find me a locker to keep that in.” Then, looking at Bert, he said, “You better go on home—to your wife and kids—Bert.”
“Sure,” Bert said, peering at him intently, his voice flat. “But remember, Eddie. You can’t win them all.”
Eddie looked at him and then grinned, very broadly and easily. “No,” he said, “but neither can you, Bert.”
