Joe Lansdale: Captains Outrageous

Marlie owned and ran the place. She was noted for her uneven temperament. I had seen her use a taped axe handle to subdue rowdy customers, and she had a mean left hook and she didn’t mind kneeing a man in the balls either. Saturday nights, the Rec Center could get pretty rowdy, and so could Marlie.

Marlie always looked as if she were about to break out into a string of obscenities. Which, of course, she often did. Stuff like: “Quit fuckin’ up that pool cue, you limp-dicked cocksucker,” and “Do that again, motherfucker, gonna wake up peein’ through a tube.”

She had a girlfriend who looked like a Vogue model.

Leonard and I were the lousiest pool players ever produced. We were playing colored and stripes. I was stripes, Leonard was colored. He thought that was funny.

I took a shot and knocked my last striped ball in the hole, eased around to shoot in the black one. Leonard had two colored balls left, red and green, and neither in a good position. I grinned at Leonard as I lined up the shot, an easy one.

I boosted the ball with the stick. It went in the hole. I said, “That’s another ten cents you owe me.”

“Damn,” Leonard said. “What is that now, forty cents?”

“Fifty.”

“You’re not countin’ the first game, are you?”

“Why not?”

“That was a warm-up game.”

“You didn’t say anything about a warm-up game. Did he say anything about a warm-up game, John?”

John shook his head, said, “And you owe me all the games I beat you, Leonard. Don’t try and weasel.”

“I’m not weaslin’.”

“I call it weaslin’. Hap?”

“Weaslin’.”

“I just think you ought to have least one warm-up game,” Leonard said.

“John, we do that, does that mean I don’t owe you first time you beat me?” I said. “Could that be a warm-up game? You want to do that, I’ll go with Leonard.”

“Everybody owes,” John said.

“Yeah, you say that,” Leonard said, “ ’cause you’re the only one hasn’t lost a game.”

John said, “My turn. It’s you and me, Hap. Loser racks.”

Leonard fed some quarters into the slot on the side of the table and the balls were released. Leonard gathered the balls, racked them.

It was my break, but I let John go first. He burst, and I never so much as picked up my stick after that. He ran the table. When he was finished twenty minutes later, he said, “Ten more cents.”

I looked at Leonard. “Give him a dime out of the money you owe me.”

John held out his hand and Leonard gave him the ten cents.

“That’s a beginning,” John said.

Leonard bought beers for himself and John, got me a Sharps. We sat at a table and watched some women shoot pool. One of the women, a blonde with black roots, had a large but well-formed butt, like the kind R. Crumb draws. The other one was tall and thin with brown hair and big doe eyes. They were in their thirties, attractive. They were interested in two guys at the bar, however, and they were playing pool with them in mind, moving their butts so that those two got a good view.

I kept an eye on them, just in case I might pick up a few pool-shooting tips.

Leonard said, “It’s so interesting to watch a straight guy work. The way you casually observe those women, check the men out over at the bar, know they are the object of those two gals’ attention. Then I get to see you feel sorry for yourself because the women don’t know you’re alive. It’s all so… curious. And pathetic.”

“Yeah,” John said to Leonard, “like you haven’t been checking those guys out over there.”

“I suppose,” Leonard said, “I did turn an eye in their direction.”

“I think it was both eyes,” John said. “Don’t turn it there too often, okay?”

“Okay,” Leonard said. “Besides, those guys are straight.”

“Well, don’t overdo the looking anyway,” John said.

Leonard reached out and gave John’s hand a pat, then turned his attention to me. “So he offered you one hundred thousand dollars and a month off from the plant? And a month for me?”

“Yep.”

“He didn’t happen to offer me a month off from the aluminum chair factory, did he?” John said.

“Sorry, John,” I said. “He doesn’t own the aluminum chair factory.”

“Maybe he’ll buy it,” John said.

“It could happen,” I said.

“I’m guessing since the owner’s name isn’t Deerstone, then there isn’t a Deerstone,” John said.

“There was. He sold out to Bond nearly twenty years ago,” I said. “But they kept the name because it had commercial value.”

“We get our jobs back when the month’s up, I reckon,” Leonard said.

“Of course,” I said. “Frankly, I feel funny taking his money. You know, I didn’t intend to, and I tell myself I did it for the guy and because Charlie convinced me, but I know deep down, hell, not that deep, that I did it because I wanted the money.”

“Hap, you’re about the least money-oriented sonofabitch I know,” Leonard said.

“That’s because winning all your dimes, I don’t have to worry about money.”

“You don’t worry about money,” Leonard said, “because you’re goodhearted and haven’t got enough brains to worry about it. Hell, you didn’t do what you did for money. That was just an unexpected end result. You don’t need to feel guilty because you took it. You’d have done it had you known the girl was a pauper and that motherfucker was not only going to fight you like a tiger, but was going to win. You’d have gone on ahead anyway.”

“I’ll take all that as a compliment. Except the lack of brains part.”

The blonde with the black roots and the big firm butt was on our side now, the rear of her white shorts pointed in my direction. They were not only short shorts, but they flared dangerously and I could see some of the soft meat up there and a hint of pubic hair. I shifted subtly in my chair for a better look.

“Your turn to buy,” Leonard said to me.

I took a last look at the shorts and what was in them and went over to the bar. Marlie came up, “What’ll it be?”

I sat on the bar stool, said, “Two Miller Drafts, a Sharps.”

“You drink the Sharps, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“I like it.”

“It ain’t a diet thing?”

“I like it.”

“It ain’t a diet thing and you drink it?”

“I like it.”

“Why?”

“There’s no alcohol in it.”

“Hell, I thought that was why you drank beer, ’cause there’s alcohol in it.”

“Sharps isn’t beer. Not really.”

“You’re tellin’ me.”

“Can I just have the Sharps?”

Marlie finally got the beers and the Sharps. She said, “Those two gals, the one with the big ass, she’s making my clit hard.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Them’s the facts,” Marlie said. “Problem is, the blonde, the one with the dirt in her part-”

“Dirt?”

“The black roots.”

“Oh.”

“She’s interested in the guy at the bar there, one turned toward her, smiling. She’s interested in his tuber, which, from the looks of those pants, is about the size of a banana.”

“I didn’t think that sort of thing interested you.”

“It don’t, but I check out the competition.”

“Well, no offense, but you can’t compete with that if that’s what she wants. I mean, you know-”

“Hap, you can’t compete with that either.”

“How would you know?”

“Like I said, I check out the competition. I first saw you, I just passed my eye over you. You don’t worry me none.”

“Oh, thanks, beat up on the heterosexual. Besides, aren’t you with Miss Vogue?”

“Hey, what can I say. I got a rovin’ eye. I get older, I’m startin’ to realize I like my women a little trashy. I don’t even mind they smell a little.”