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By Root 1215 0

your dream came true; or you can play on your guts again an get hustled into jail. Maybe the cat’s a cop or somethin. But screw it, I played him an beat him out of the four, still wonderin if the cat ain’t a hustler I just never met, waitin for him to throw me the okey-doke, but he doubles the bet another time or two and still can’t hit a lick, and finally I think to myself, Billy, this john don’t know the way home, and I cut loose myself and wrapped him up. Man, we started playin for fifty dollars a game, and I’d break and run every ball off that table sometimes, and he’d just be polite and say `Nice shootin, you got talent,’ or somethin, an give me the money and I’d rack the balls again an let him break and he’d go zong! and miscue or bounce the cue ball halfway across the room, and I’d shoot my sixty-one points, and out would come that wallet! I thought it would never end. I thought I was still sittin there having a dream. Finally the cat says, `Thank you for the games, I seem to be broke, could you pay my share of the time?’—lookin anxious like he was violatin the rules; pay his share? I had two thousand fuckin dollars!”

Billy’s laugh was easy, but his eyes glinted with remembrance of his riches. “Two grand.” He looked at Jack. “Did I run back to that crap game, even before I ate breakfast? Is a bullfrog green?”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” Jack said. “You didn’t lose it?” He felt almost sick at the thought. He could almost feel the thick wads of money slipping out of his own pocket.

“Lose it? Lose it? Are you out of your mind? Don’t you know anything about luck? I come into that crap game like a madwoman flingin shit, an won another nine hundred before everybody fled. Man, I just got out of there and trod on Idaho lookin for somebody I couldn’t beat.” He laughed again. “Lose it? Hell no! You think this story’s hard to believe; listen to this: Man, I took that money an thought an thought what to do with it, and I ended up goin to college!” His eyes were bright, almost feverish. “Ain’t that a bitch?”

“Man, do you have any idea how many niggers there is in night school? They’re scared, baby, they quit high school just like I did an go out an face that tough Cholly world and stand around on street corners an sneer, an when they get home they got no money an they wasted all that good sneerin; and up jumps the Army, an they hear their old man yellin around about automation, and it just scares the shit out of em. Night school! That’s the scene! Man, they’re so fuckin dumb, the most of them, they get all worked up and come to these classes, an then act just like they was back in high school, layin around payin no attention an thinkin the teacher’s got it out for em cause they’re black. Most of em. I made it through night school in a year, man, flyin low, spendin my days in Hollywood shootin pool, and I was gonna register at UCLA but this old dream of mine caught hold of me somewhere, and I went home to Seattle. I wanted to go to the University of Washington, right there in Seattle, and live near my folks, all that shit, you know; and man, I got there an my family was gone, every last one. I don’t know where the hell they went. I should have wrote. Anyway, I went to the University, got a conditional acceptance, signed up for a bunch of wild-ass courses like French, biology, history, English composition, you know. Moved into a dorm, bought me some sweaters, dig; went to football games, all that shit, studied like hell, but man, how cold! What did I care?

“I didn’t want to go to college; that was a bunch of shit. It was okay for some of them guys; hell, they was gonna end up runnin the country, you know? College is okay for them an for the cats who want to find some nice safe hole and crawl in it, but that wasn’t me. I know, because I wasn’t there three months before I had me a poker game goin in my room, an I was pushin benny at final time; taught them college athletes how to play nine-ball at the rec hall an was just rollin in money. Sure I studied. All the goddam time I’d be up all night hittin the books, but it didn’t make any