Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [100]
“But how do you stay away from it? It’s like so safe. Anyway, pool cracks me up. And it aint simple, either. You never were good at it, were you? Maybe you felt it, anyhow. Everything is connected. You know, it’s your turn to shoot. It starts then. You come up to the table, sightin the shot, lookin over the layout, and you can already feel how all the balls, just sittin there on the table, are connected, an you’re connected to them, an your cue is part of your arm, and you chalk up and feel the connection there, and it gets good, man, and I mean good, cause you’re buildin up all that good stuff, you know you can make any shot in the world and the shot is there—it aint somethin you can see but it’s there —that feels good, like, a lush might walk into a bar someplace an when he walks in he’s all pulled apart, but he sees all them rows on rows of bottles and he feels em and they feel him, an he sits down at the bar, all connected to the whole world, an orders his drink, an he throws that shot of liquor back into his throat an it’s like comin in your head. The same for me on a pool table. I can feel it. So it’s there. I sight the shot, bend down, and there’s somethin goin on between me and the cue ball and the object ball and the pocket, and I feel it build up, shoot, and that’s it. You waited for that all your life. The connection is made. The thing is complete. It’s inside you now.
“But, if you miss the shot, the ball hangs up in the pocket or you miscue or somethin, that connection is broken and some of you dies. I’ve felt that, too. I know it’s the truth. Somethin busted and gone, not a run of a hundred balls is gonna bring it back. When you lose you lose forever, an when you win it only lasts a second or two. That’s life. I aint lyin. I aint comin on. Why should I?
“Everythin in the whole fuckin world is connected, I think; and the connection turns you on, an the broken connections burn you out. Suppose like you see this woman, see? You send out a hot line of connecting stuff to her if she’s your action, and if you’re hers, wham, you connect; you don’t have to say a word, it’s there and you both know it. But you know what we really do; we think about other things, or come on or get smart or worry about ourselves, and fuck up the connection. Then do we know it’s gone? No, man, we keep tryin an it just gets worse and worse. It’s like you get this tremendous urge to bust a window with your fist, dig, and if you went ahead and did it right then, wham, for about a half a second there you’d feel like the king of the world; but instead, you get to worryin about cuttin your hand and all that shit, so you hesitate and then get pissed off at yourself and bust the window anyway, only you’re self-conscious about it and don’t get any pleasure out of it at all.”
Billy looked tired and gray, and Jack could not understand why he had been talking like that. Afterward, later, he knew that Billy had already decided, and he was taking this last chance to tell Jack who he was.
“Now, man,” Billy said, “I know how silly a lot of this sounds, dig, a philosophy of the poolhall; but shit, I looked around myself and I asked myself, what is my life, anyway, and the answer was quick and easy, my life is what I got, an if I don’t find anythin important in it, I’m dead. But, you know what it’s like when you get high sometimes and everything seems important? Well, it’s like that. If the way I feel about pool aint important, what the hell am I? So I sat down and tried to think up words for it, and