Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [11]
The houseman thought about that, and had to grin. “Well, I guess not,” he said.
I’m entertaining, aren’t I, Billy thought, and for a moment he felt a twinge of disgust with himself; he knew what he was doing was just a form of uncletomming. But the hell with that; it got him what he wanted. Maybe they started out by tolerating him, but they ended up respecting him, because the only thing that counts in a poolhall is how well you shoot.
“Let’s see your money,” Billy said. At once he wished he hadn’t; it just slipped out of him. But the houseman didn’t get mad; he laughed and pulled out his roll.
“New hustler in town,” he announced to the crowd that was beginning to gather.
“Little boy black,” Billy chanted as he came back from the bin with a cue, “will take your jack!”
That got a few laughs, and Billy could feel the tension in the room lessening. He hoped the houseman was one of the best, and he hoped, of course, that he could beat him. It would help.
At sixteen, Billy Lancing was already a brilliant pool player. He had the smooth stroking action only the young and the great ever get, and a young sharp eye, and above all, and what made him great, the inner necessity to win the money; because money meant everything in the world to Billy. He had learned how to play pool at the YMCA, and after the first rudimentary difficulties with bridge and stroke and eye, saw that for some reason or other, nobody else at the Y could beat him. He discovered that he had a talent. And he knew that down at the colored poolhall three blocks from home men played pool for money. At the age of fourteen he made his debut at the colored poolhall, and after the grown men got over laughing at the picture of him leaning over the table, outsized cue in his hand, they saw that he was winning all the games and taking all the money, and cute or not, he was a menace. The owner of the place took care of that, and barred Billy for being underage. So he went downtown to the Two-Eleven, shivering with fright. Of course they threw him out; and that made him angry. He came back, and they threw him out again, and then he bet one of the men who took him down the elevator that he could beat him in bank pool, and the two of them rode back up again, both angry, both silent, and played on the number one table with everybody watching, and Billy got so far ahead in the first game (playing ten miles over his head in cold anger) that he made his last three banks contemptuously one-handed; and from then on he was the official mascot of the Two-Eleven poolshooters, and eventually, the best of them. A regular child prodigy, one of them called him.
The houseman won the toss and Billy broke the balls safe, but it was not a good break and the houseman started to run, six, ten, fourteen balls, and Billy reracked and the houseman fired in the loose ball and broke into the pack, spreading the balls all over the lower end of the table, and the houseman ran another ten balls before he missed. A total of twenty-five on the wire; half the game. But Billy was not worried; he was in action, and action was what he liked best. If the houseman had run fifty and won the game it would not have bothered Billy, as long as he had money in his pocket to back his play, and as long as he had his right arm. He leaned against a table and watched the houseman shooting, seeing the bright Kelly green of the new felt, the way the overhead light glowed off the balls, and beyond the table the seeming darkness of the rest of the poolhall, sensing the perfect security of knowing where he was and knowing he belonged there. Finally the houseman missed and wired his score. Billy advanced on the table, chalking his cue and sizing up the layout at the same time.
One of the watchers said, “Hell, John, you aint run so many balls in your life.”
The houseman grinned and said, “Keep the fuck outen the game, bigmouth.”
“You shootin over your head,” the watcher said.
Another, younger voice said, “I’ll give anybody two to one John beats the nigger.”
Billy turned quickly and