Kentucky Straight: Stories

by Chris Offutt

  “That ain’t no scratch,” Quentin said.

  “The cue ball busted me in the nose,” Jesse said. “He cheated some way.”

  The room became very quiet. Porter pulled Sue out of range and joined the two men from the river. Players moved from the back tables, holding cues, staring at the strangers. Everett realized everyone was waiting for him to deny Jesse’s accusation, but he didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure that how he’d won was fair.

  The riverman threw money on the table.

  “It was a clean game,” he said. “That little piss-ant’s looking to get hurt talking that way.”

  “Pay up,” Quentin said to Jesse. “Or you’re all done shooting here.”

  “I ain’t got but sixty dollars.” Jesse spat pink and looked at the men behind him. “I’m good for it. Who’ll cover me till next week?”

  No one spoke. Everett understood that they weren’t backing him up, or Quentin either. It was Friday night and they didn’t like Jesse. Whatever happened, they would enjoy.

  “Take something off him,” the riverman said. “Fancy cue stick, maybe. What size boots you wear?”

  Everett shook his head. Winning no longer mattered, and he wished Sue wasn’t his sister.

  “You got to take something,” Quentin said.

  “Gun rack,” Everett whispered.

  Quentin jerked his head to the door. “Red pickup,” he said.

  The three men led Jesse outside. Quentin unplugged the jukebox and began turning off lights. “Closing time,” he said.

  The players left, snickering at Sue as they passed. Everett forced himself to look at her. She sagged against the table.

  “Your face is all marked up with blue,” she said.

  “It’s just chalk.”

  His voice echoed in the vacant room. A hand-printed sign was taped to the far wall, its yellow edges curling. NO FIGHTS, the sign read, NO GAMBLING. LADIES WELCOME. Someone had killed a bug against it.

  “Need any money?” He pointed to the table. “I got plenty.”

  “No,” she said. “I ain’t about to start taking it now. Not off you anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “You ever see a girl in here before?”

  Everett shook his head.

  “Well, I’m the first, then,” she said. “I’m fit for it, don’t you think.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know,” she said. “Don’t go playing like you don’t. I’m sick of it. Sick to death of it from you and everyone else.”

  “Of what?”

  “You know that, too.”

  Everett placed the cue on the table. He pushed the stick and it rolled smoothly with no bow, a good cue. He wanted to run, but couldn’t; the pool hall was where he ran to. His head hurt.

  “Not me,” he whispered. “I never done it.”

  Sue stepped forward and slapped him in the face.

  “No, you never did, did you! And don’t go getting brigetty over it either. Many’s the time you could have, but you never. You just looked at me with that old eye, like I wasn’t no better than one of them hogs. Well I am, Everett. I’m here to tell you. I am!”

  Everett’s cheek stung and his head was throbbing. He wished he’d done it with her, too. He’d missed something that everyone knew more about than him. Now he’d never have the chance.

  The riverman brought the gun rack in and set it on the pool table. The sound of Jesse’s truck came through the door. Gravel scattered against the pool hall before his tires squealed on the blacktop.

  Porter came inside and slipped an arm around Sue’s waist.

  “You coming, honey?” he said.

  “Where to?”

  “Wherever.”

  Sue stared at Everett, and Everett nodded.

  “He’s my brother, Porter,” she said. “My best brother.”

  “Good pool player, too,” the riverman said. “Your all’s family sure grows them good.”

  “Only him.” Sue tugged Porter’s arm. “Come on, let’s go to Rocksalt.”

  “I don’t know, honey. Night like this, we might wake up in the pokey.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “They ain’t got a woman’s jail and they won’t put me in with men. I can do what I damn well want. I’m freer than any man I ever met.”

  They left the pool hall laughing. Dead gnats and ashes littered the worn felt on the table. Quentin mopped blood from the floor.

  “If the cue ball goes off the table,” Everett said, “when’s it no good?”

  “Out of play, you mean?”

  Everett nodded.

  “When it hits the floor,” Quentin said. “Cue ball’s like me—alive till it’s down.”

  He continued mopping the pale spot in the dirty floor. Tomorrow night it would be covered with grime again. Everett had never seen the pool hall clean, just mopped in patches that never overlapped.

  “What’ll you take for that stick?” Everett said.

  “It’s yours.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “You put more quarters in these tables than any man on the creek. Take it and hush up about it.”

  Everett held the cue, a standard stick like a million others, pale yellow with a brown butt. He tore away the taped paper bearing his name, crumpled it, and dropped it into a bucket. He watched the paper trying to unfold. It didn’t quite make it, stuck in tobacco spit.

  “I’m leaving here,” he said.

  “Comes a time, son. Comes a time. I stood gone nine years once.”

  “But you came back,” Everett said.

  “It ain’t the same as it is here.”

  “I know it.”

  “You will,” said Quentin.

  Everett plugged in the jukebox and pressed L-8. Boxcar Willie told him about the Rockies, the Great Salt Lake, and the Navajo. Quentin flicked snuff at a bucket, ringing loud in the empty room. He lifted his cap and rubbed the bald rectangle on top of his head.

  “Go on,” he said, “if you’re going to.”

  Everett stared at him, nodded once, and left. He strapped the gun rack in his rear window and placed the cue stick in the slots. The shadowy hills crowded the road as he drove away. At the mouth of his hollow, he stomped the brake, bounced up the dirt road, and parked beside the hog pen. He studied the fifty in the cab’s dim light. It was Grant. He remembered a grade school teacher saying that Grant was a drunk. Everett stepped out of the truck and moved his hand along the fence until he found a barb. He twisted the bill around the wire, each time forcing the metal sliver through the paper. His father would find it in the morning. The picture even looked a little like him.

  From the blackness of the pen came a gruff snort. If Sue could do whatever she wanted, so could he. He unlatched the narrow gate and worked it through the mud until he made a small opening. The runt could go if it wanted to. It would probably get killed on the road, but it would die here anyway. He drove slowly out of the hollow, the pool cue rattling in the gun rack. At the blacktop he headed west, trying to imagine living in a world without hills.