Уолтер Тевис - The Hustler

He had known he would start out losing. That was natural; he was playing a great player and on his own table, in his own poolroom, and he figured to lose for a few hours. But not that badly. Fats beat him two games by one hundred and twenty-five to nothing and in the third game Eddie finally got one open shot and scored fifty on it. It was not pleasant to lose, and yet, somehow, he was not deeply dismayed, did not feel lost in the brilliance of the other man’s game, did not feel nervous or confused. He spent most of each game sitting down and each time Fats won a game Eddie grinned and gave him a hundred dollars. Fats had nothing to say.

At eleven o’clock, after he had lost the sixth game, Charlie came over, looked at him, and said, “Quit.”

He looked at Charlie, who seemed to be perspiring, and said, “I’ll take him. Just wait.”

“Don’t be too sure.” Charlie went back to his chair, on the other side of the table.

Then Eddie started winning. He felt it start in the middle of a game, began to feel the sense he sometimes had of being a part of the table and of the balls and of the cue stick. The stroke of his arm seemed to travel on oiled bearings; and each muscle of his body was alert, sensitive to the game and the movement of the balls, sharply aware of how every ball would roll, of how, exactly, every shot must be made. Fats beat him that game, but he had felt it coming and he won the next.

And the game after that, and the next, and then another. Then someone turned off all the lights except those over the table that they were playing on and the background of Bennington’s vanished, leaving only the faces of the crowd around the table, the green of the cloth of the table, and the now sharply etched, clean, black-shadowed balls, brilliant against the green. The balls had sharp, jeweled edges; the cue ball itself was a milk-white jewel and it was a magnificent thing to watch the balls roll and to know beforehand where they were going to roll. Nothing could be so clear or so simple or so excellent to do. And there was no limit to the shots that could be made.

Fats’ game did not change. It was brilliant, fantastically good, but Eddie was beating him now, playing an incredible game: a gorgeous, spellbinding game, a game that he felt he had known all of his life, that he would play when the right time came. There was no better time than this.

And then, after a game had ended, there was noise up front and Eddie turned and saw that the clock said midnight and that someone was locking the great oak door, and he looked at Fats and Fats said, “Don’t worry, Fast Eddie. We’re not going anyplace.”

Then he pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket, handed it to a thin nervous man in a black suit, who was watching the game, and said, “Preacher, I want White Horse whiskey. And ice. And a glass. And you get yourself a fix with the change; but you do that after you come back with my whiskey.”

Eddie grinned, liking the feel of this, the getting ready for action. He fished out a ten himself. “J. T. S. Brown bourbon,” he said to the thin man. Then he leaned his cue stick against the table, unbuttoned his cuffs, and began rolling up his shirt sleeves. Then he stretched out his arms, flexing the muscles, enjoying the good sense of their steadiness, their control, and he said, “Okay, Fats. Your break.”

Eddie beat him. The pleasure was exquisite; and when the man brought the whiskey and he mixed himself a highball with water from the cooler and drank it, his whole body and brain seemed to be suffused with pleasure, with alertness and life. He looked at Fats. There was a dark line of sweat and dirt around the back of his collar. His manicured nails were dirty. His face still showed no expression. He, too, was holding a glass of whiskey and sipping it quietly.

Suddenly Eddie grinned at him. “Let’s play for a thousand a game, Fats,” he said.

There was a murmur in the crowd.

Fats took a sip of whiskey, rolled it around carefully in his mouth, swallowed. His sharp, black eyes were fixed on Eddie, dispassionately, searching. He seemed to see something there that reassured him. Then he glanced, for a moment, at the neat man with glasses, the man who had been taking bets. The man nodded, pursing his lips. “Okay,” he said.

Eddie knew it, could feel it, that no one had ever played straight pool like this before. Fats’ game, itself, was astonishing, a consistently beautiful, precise game, a deft, quick shooting game with almost no mistakes. And he won games; no power on earth could have stopped him from winning some of them, for pool is a game that gives the man sitting down no earthly way of affecting the shooting of the man he is trying to beat. But Eddie beat him, steadily, making shots that no one had ever made before, knifing balls in, playing hairline position, running rack after rack of balls without his cue ball’s touching a cushion, firing ball after ball into the center, the heart of every pocket. His stroking arm was like a conscious thing, and the cue stick was a living extension of it. There were nerves in the wood of it, and he could feel the tapping of the leather tip with the nerves, could feel the balls roll; and the exquisite sound that they made as they hit the bottoms of the pockets was a sound both there, on the table, and in the very center of his own soul.

They played for a long, long time and then he noticed that the shadows of the balls on the green had become softer, had lost their edges. He looked up and saw pale light coming through the window draperies and then looked at the clock. It was seven-thirty. He looked around him, dazed. The crowd had thinned out, but some of the same men were there. Everybody seemed to need a shave. He felt his own face. Sandpaper. He looked down at himself. His shirt was filthy, covered with chalk marks, the tail out, and the front wrinkled as if he had slept in it. He looked at Fats, who looked, if anything, worse.

Charlie came over. He looked like hell, too. He blinked at Eddie. “Breakfast?”

Eddie sat down, in one of the now-empty chairs by the table. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.” He fished in his pocket, pulled out a five.

“Thanks,” Charlie said. “I don’t need it. I been keeping the money, remember?”

Eddie grinned, weakly. “That’s right. How much is it now?”

Charlie stared at him. “You don’t know?”

“I forgot.” He fished a crumpled cigarette from his pocket, lit it. His hands, he noticed, were trembling faintly; but he saw this as if he were looking at someone else. “What is it?” He leaned back, smoking the cigarette, looking at the balls sitting, quiet now, on the table. The cigarette had no taste to it.

“You won eleven thousand four hundred,” Charlie said. “Cash. It’s in my pocket.”

Eddie looked back at him. “Well!” he said. And then, “Go get breakfast. I want a egg sandwich and coffee.”

“Now wait a minute,” Charlie said. “You’re going with me. We eat breakfast at the hotel. The pool game is over.”

Eddie looked at him a minute, grinning, wondering, too, why it was that Charlie couldn’t see it, never had seen it. Then he leaned forward, looked at him, and said, “No it isn’t, Charlie.”

“Eddie…”

“This pool game ends when Minnesota Fats says it ends.”

“You came after ten thousand. You got ten thousand.”

Eddie leaned forward again. He wasn’t grinning now. He wanted Charlie to see it, to get with it, to feel some of what he was feeling, some of the commitment he was making. “Charlie,” he said, “I came here after Minnesota Fats. And I’m gonna get him. I’m gonna stay with him all the way.”

Fats was sitting down too, resting. He stood up. His chin jerked, down into the soft flesh of his neck. “Fast Eddie,” he said tonelessly, “let’s play pool.”