Haven Kimmel - Something Rising

Jimmy stood at the foot of the table and, using a house cue left propped in a comer, took two practice strokes (never one or three), then sent the cue ball crashing into the gathered tribe. All fifteen balls careened around the table, and the four and the thirteen fell. He was practicing straight pool, even though he’d been saying for years that the days of the great straight players were over, and that the money was now on 8-ball for hustlers and 9-ball for professionals. Cassie didn’t know which he was. Jimmy moved around the table quickly, as if on a preordained path. When the table had been at their house, all those years, she had watched Uncle Bud and many other men play against Jimmy, and she knew her father had a strange and specific style related to his restless grace; he bent at the knees instead of at the waist and didn’t sight down the cue as if down the barrel of a gun. In deep concentration, he made his bottom lip so thin it vanished. She would have never told him or anyone, but she had missed this table fiercely, and even after spending her whole life with a man to whom objects gravitated and then were lost—things that came and went like the stray men Jimmy invited to dinner and a game, who would never be seen again—she had not understood what had happened, how the table went missing and ended up here at Bud’s.

She had been standing in one spot, watching her father, FOR so long that when she heard another key rattle in the ugly green door, she awoke as if from a dream. Uncle Bud stepped in, gently closing the door behind him. As he passed the glass room where Jimmy played, Bud barely gave him a glance, and there wasn’t the comfort of old friendship in the look, either; Jimmy rarely earned such a thing. Uncle Bud had been Jimmy’s childhood companion, they had a long history. And there WERE a few dark moments in the past two dark years when Bud had stepped into their house in Laura’s name, had roughly set things right.

He was tall and dense, with arms the size of hams, and an enormous head on a thick neck. Bud kept his hair, which was going gray, cut so short he looked like he’d gone missing from some secret branch of the military, and he dressed in T-shirts and blue jeans and motorcycle boots and wore a wide belt with a Harley-Davidson buckle. But he didn’t own a motorcycle. There was a wide gap between his two front teeth and his eyebrows sprouted wild. He had a tattoo of Donald Duck on his forearm, the origin of which he would not discuss, and he had formerly smoked cigarettes but had given them up for cigars; Cassie liked the smell. On the whole Cassie faced the world of men with the wariness of the repeatedly betrayed child—Poppy was the only man she trusted—but long ago she had taken to Bud and felt safe in a room he was in. He kept his distance from her.

“Cassie,” he said, surprised to see her. “What are you doing here?”

She shrugged.

“Well, come help me carry these boxes up front.”

The cases of soda were heavy, but in Bud’s arms and against his stomach, they looked like matchboxes. As she passed the glass room for the third time, Jimmy stuck his head out. “Keep her workin’, Bud. That’s why I had children, although I thought they’d be sons.”

Bud ignored him.

Jimmy came out and sat down at the bar. “Give me a cold something.” He turned to Cassie, winked. “I ever tell you how I came into possession of that table?”

Bud sighed, stopped at the refrigerator door as if he might not open it.

“Okay, okay. I may have mentioned the adventure a time or two. Let me say that I stole so much from that man that night, pretty much everything he held dear, that if we’da kept it up, I woulda left with one of his kidneys.”

Bud relented and got Jimmy the beer.

“I’m back at it,” Jimmy said. “Bud, if she bothers you, send her scootin’.”

Cassie watched him go, accepted the cold Coke that Bud offered her. “You want to play, Cass? I’ve got some bookkeeping to do.”

“I can’t. I’m not allowed.”

“Who says? Jimmy? This is my pool hall, those are my tables, including the one he’s playing on which he keeps insisting is his.” Bud shook his head. “Nothing to be done about him.” He took a tray of balls off the rack and dropped a cube of chalk in the middle. “He never taught you to play?”

Cassie shook her head. “But I’ve watched a lot.”

“I know you have. Jimmy loves an audience. Well, come here, then.”

Bud took down a house cue and examined its tip, then chose another. He said ferrule, scuffer, shaper, mushrooming. He put the cue in Cassie’s hand. She had sometimes snuck Jimmy’s cue out and looked at it, but there was a space that Cassie had never crossed between contraband and the legitimately held thing. She crossed it. The cue felt more formidable than she would have guessed, heavy at the bottom like a weapon and delicate at the top, just a stem. Bud showed her how to rack the balls for 8-ball, 9-ball, straight pool, which she already knew, then taught her the difference between an open and closed bridge, then taught her how to sight and where to hold the cue with her rear arm. He said head spot center spot foot spot comer pocket long string foot string center string head string. Kitchen. Head rail side rail foot rail side rail, and for the next four hours, as they lined up shots and hit them, he said a thousand things that Cassie fought hard to remember. When the tip of the cue strikes the cue ball, the forearm of your rear arm should be at a ninety-degree angle to the floor. Play begins here. This is a foul, and this is a foul, and this is also a foul; one of your feet must remain on the floor at all times. This is a mechanical bridge and there is no shame in using it. Chalk your tip before every shot but not until your opponent has missed because it’s rude not to wait. A slice, a thin slice, an impossible slice. The ghost ball, or phantom ball, the ghost table acting as a mirror. Bank shots and combinations and the massé and jumps. Sharking. Speed of stroke, hold the cue lightly, deadstroke. How to will deadstroke, or if it’s always a gift from God. On the cue ball: the vertical axis, the follow, right English, 3:00, low right, the draw, 6:00, left english, 9:00, high left.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Ten.”

“You need to get an Introduction to Physics textbook. No one in Hopwood county is going to teach you physics at this age. Also you’ll need to know something about geometry. Your fool father will say he’s good at this game because he thinks in geometry, but he’s lying. He never even learned geometry, they didn’t go that far in reform school. And this game is about physics, so do that, get a book.”

Cassie nodded. She wished she had her notebook.

“And grow . You’re too short to see what’s happening on the table.”

“Okay.”

“Cassie,” Jimmy said, standing at the bar with his cue taken apart and stowed back in the case, “I’m leaving. Put this stuff away and tell Uncle Bud thank you for the lesson.”

“You’re out of here early,” Bud said, crossing his arms across his wide chest. “I thought you’d still be here when the late crowd arrived.”

“You were wrong.” Jimmy pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Get in the car, Cass.”

“You go on, Jimmy. I’ll take her home.”

“Or I’ll call Edwin,” Cassie said, shocked as she heard herself say it.

“Get in the car, Cassie.”

Bud took a step toward Jimmy. “I’ve got an idea, how about you head on wherever you were going, which was surely not home where you belong, and I’ll take care of getting Cassie back. Sound good?”

The muscles in Jimmy’s face tightened and relaxed; Cassie had seen this many times, he did it when he was furious, as lions yawn before they attack. His whole body was tense. But he said, smiling at the end, “Whatever. Save me the trip.” He walked over and kissed Cassie on top of her head. “Don’t let Bud talk you into playing for money.” He strolled out the front door, unlocked now, even by leaving through a door you didn’t enter through is very bad luck, Cassie almost said something.