Уолтер Тевис - The Color of Money

The kid playing Gunshot now finally shot the three ball down the rail and missed. He shook his head and grimaced, probably blaming the table or the cloth or the lights, telling himself one of the weary stories of how he had been cheated of the ball. Oliver stood and walked slowly over to the table, limping slightly. When he bent to shoot, his back was to the bleachers; his unshined black shoes were run over at the heels; and there was a small hole in one of his socks. The kid had been lucky and left him safe. Oliver tapped the three ball lightly, trying to snooker the other player behind the five. But the tap was too strong, and the white ball bounced off the rail and out from behind the five, leaving the other man open on the three. Oliver scowled and seated himself.

Suddenly Eddie remembered something. That night in Oakland thirty-five years ago, after Gunshot Oliver had collected the last of the fifty-dollar bills—had broken the bank, such as it was—the man who lost to him said, “You shoot the best straights I’ve ever seen,” and Oliver had smiled faintly at him. “Have you ever seen Minnesota Fats?” he asked quietly. It was the first time Eddie had heard the name.

“I’ve heard of him,” the loser said.

“The best in the country,” Oliver said.

Fats was dead. It had seemed impossible then that a player like Gunshot Oliver—a man who calmly pocketed balls that Eddie had thought could not be made, a man who played position by moving the cue ball around as though it were a chess piece to set where he wanted it—would, by invoking a name, imply a level of play even beyond his own. Eddie had never played Oliver, had never seen him since that time, but in a few years he had moved beyond him, had learned to make his own chessman of the cue ball. Oliver was right about Fats. There were levels above levels, and Fats was at the top. Now he was in a fresh grave near Miami, probably under a headstone that read GEORGE HEGERMAN and gave dates, with no indication of the lovely stroke that had died with him.

Babes Cooley clipped the nine into the side, making it register in the pocket. He looked innocently at the seated man whom he was playing and said, “It just keeps on getting worse.”

Eddie wanted to shout at the arrogant young bastard, imagining him for a moment in his brash blue nylon playing straight pool against Minnesota Fats, being ground to helplessness by age and skill and experience. He sat there on the narrow bleacher seat, crowded in by a rapt audience of men, furious at Fats for being dead.

Cooley slammed the nine in on the break, said, “Ohhh yes !” and broke again after the balls were racked. He pocketed two on the break, but the one ball took a bad roll and froze itself to the bottom rail. The cue ball stopped at the top of the table. The one was nine feet away and the cut required was paper-thin. He would have to go for a safety. Okay, you son of a bitch , Eddie thought.

Cooley frowned, stepped to the end rail, set his bridge hand down on the wood, set the cue down decisively and stroked. The concentration of his thin body was sudden and remarkable. He took one practice stroke and then speared the cue ball. It flew down the table, whispered against the one ball and flew back up, dying in a cluster of balls. The one slid along the bottom cushion and plopped into the corner pocket. Someone in the crowd whistled and then there was loud applause. Eddie did not clap; he merely gripped his cue case harder. He would have avoided that shot and Fats might have missed it.

On the other table, Gunshot Oliver had begun to shoot. Eddie turned his attention back to that game. Oliver ran the four, five and six. When he made the six he brought the cue ball off the cushion and split the nine ball away from the seven beautifully, setting it up for the run-out. It was a straight-pool player’s shot, the kind of thing Eddie himself did almost instinctively. Oliver pocketed the seven, eight and nine. There was polite applause. But on the eight and nine his stroke lacked something; the cue ball, though it found places where the next shot could be made, did not have the sureness of movement that Eddie remembered from Oakland. Oliver stroked stiffly and the ball looked somehow dead as it rolled into positions that were barely adequate.

The referee began to rack the balls. Abruptly Eddie rose and stepped down from the bleachers. He tucked his cue case under his arm and walked away.

“The kids make me nervous,” he said into the phone. He lay on the freshly made bed in his Holiday Inn room, by his unopened suitcase.

“They don’t have your experience,” Arabella said.

He hesitated. “I’m fifty years old, Arabella. I watched Babes Cooley playing a half hour ago and I wanted to kick his punk ass. I’m old enough to be his father.”

“You’re still upset about Fats, aren’t you?”

She was right. “I thought I was going to learn some things from him.”

“Maybe he didn’t have anything more to teach you.”

“Maybe not.”

The poolroom was something like his own had been, but larger. It sat between a Big Bear supermarket and a fabric store in a faded shopping center directly across the interstate from the Holiday Inn. You drove over a cloverleaf, parked in front of the supermarket and pushed through glass double doors. On a gray, cigarette-burned carpet sat two rows of eight pool tables. In the aisle between them, three rows of temporary bleachers had been erected to face the tables on the right. The two tables at the far end were for the players to warm up on; the two near ones were covered with heavy plastic. The four in the middle were where the tournament games were played.

The eight tables on the left as you came in were in regular service, with the poolroom’s ordinary customers shooting their games and pretending to ignore the men who came in the door with expensive cue cases and sharp clothes. The tournament tables had a white card on the side of each, facing the bleachers. Most of the evening spectators were crowded in the bleachers near the table whose card displayed a “1”; Eddie’s first game was on Number Four. Eddie took his Balabushka out, slipped the empty case under the table and began to warm up. One bleary-eyed old man watched him dispassionately; no one else paid any attention.

After five minutes a clean-shaven young man with glasses and a white shirt came pushing through the space between the bleachers. He held out his hand to Eddie. “I’m Joe Evans,” he said politely. “You must be Mr. Felson.”

Eddie shook the hand. “Do you want to warm up?”

“A little,” the young man said.

There was a wooden chair for each of the players against the wall, separated by a small table that held a pitcher of water, an ashtray, a plastic shaker of baby powder and a towel for sweating hands, and a few fresh cubes of chalk. Eddie sat in one of the chairs and watched Evans.

The young man spread out the balls and began to run them in rotation, starting with the one. He was not very good; that was apparent immediately from his tight stroke and the self-conscious grimace on his face when he missed. He was playing as if for an audience, although no one was watching except Eddie and the old man in the bleachers. Eddie had seen this kind of player before: Evans’ emotional concentration was on not making a fool of himself. He was not thinking about winning, only about looking good. It would be simple to beat him.

It was simple. A few times during their match Evans had opportunities, but he blew them. Eddie could see his mind working from watching his face, trying to talk himself into shots, trying not to think about what he was leaving for Eddie if he missed, generally letting his head get in the way. A few times Eddie felt genuinely sorry for him, at the way he beat himself; but most of the time he was annoyed. Eddie played him methodically, shooting nine-ball as though it were straight pool; he beat him ten to four. During the last few minutes, a half-dozen latecomers, unable to get seats near the hot game on Table One, came to the bleachers near their table and watched. There was mild applause when Eddie won the tenth game. That was it until tomorrow; he was now one of the sixteen winners.