The Hustler (23 page)

The balls were spread prettily, the cue ball in their center, and Eddie looked at this loose and lovely table before he shot and thought of how pleasant it was going to be to shoot them into the pockets.

And it was a pleasure. He felt as if he had the cue ball on strings and it was his own little white marionette, darting here and there on the green baize as he instructed it by the gentle prodding of his cue. Watching the white ball perform, watching it nudge balls in, ease balls in, slap balls in, and hearing the soft, dark sounds the balls made as they fell into the deep leather pockets gave him a voluptuous, sensitive pleasure. And in operating the white marionette, putting it through its delicate paces, he was aware of a sense of power and strength that was building in him and then resonating, like a drumbeat. He pocketed a rack of balls without missing, and then another and another, and more, until he had lost count.

And then, when he had finished cleaning off the table and was standing, waiting for the rack man to put the fourteen balls back together in their triangle, he realized that the balls should be already racked but they were not, and an absurd idea struck him: he might have already won the game. Fats might never have had a shot.

He looked over to the chair where Bert was sitting. Fats was standing there, beside Bert. He was counting out money—a great many hundred-dollar bills. Fats seemed to be taking an impossible amount of money from his billfold. Eddie looked at Bert’s face and Bert peered back at him, through the glasses. Someone in the crowd of people coughed, and the coughing sounded very loud in the room.

Fats walked over and set the money on the edge of the table, his rings flashing under the overhead lights. Then he walked to a chair and sat down, ponderously. His chin jerked down into his collar for a moment, and then he said, “It’s your money, Fast Eddie.” He was sweating.

He had run the game. He had made a hundred twenty-five balls without missing, and had shot in nine racks of fourteen balls each, making and breaking on the fifteenth ball each time.

Eddie walked to the money, the silent, bulky money. Instinctively, he wiped some of the dust from his hand on the side of his trousers before handling it. Then he took it, rolled up the green paper, pushed it down into his pocket. He looked at Fats. “I was lucky,” he said.

Fats’ chins dipped quickly. “Maybe,” he said. And then, to the rack boy, “Rack the balls.”

Out of the next four games Eddie won three, losing the one only when Fats, in a sudden show of brilliance, managed to score a magnificent ninety-ball run—a tricky, contrived run, a run that displayed wit and nerve—and caught Eddie with less than sixty points on the string. But Fats did not sustain this peak; he seemed to fight his way to it by an effort of will and to fall back from it afterward, so that his next game had even less strength than before.

And Fats’ one victory did not affect Eddie, for Eddie was in a place now where he could not be affected, where he felt that nothing Fats could do could touch him. Not Eddie Felson, fast and loose—and, now, smart, critical, and rich. Eddie Felson, with the ball bearings in his elbow, with eyes for the green and the colored balls, for the shiny balls, the purple, orange, blue, and red, the stripes and solids, with geometrical rolls and falling, lovely spinning, with whiffs and clicks and tap-tap-taps, with scrapings of chalk, and the fingers embracing the polished shaft, the fingers on felt, the ever and always ready arena, the long, bright rectangle. The rectangle of lovely, mystical green, the color of money.

And then when Eddie had won a game and was lighting his cigarette Fats spoke out grimly with words that Eddie could feel in his stomach. “I’m quitting you, Fast Eddie,” he said, “I can’t beat you.”

Eddie looked across the table at him, and at the large crowd of men behind him. There stood Minnesota Fats, George Hegerman, an impossibly big man, an effeminate, graceful man. One of the best pool players in the country, George Hegerman.

Then Fats came around the table, ponderously, gave Eddie fifty one-hundred-dollar bills—new ones, fresh from the bank—took his cue down to the front of the room, and placed it carefully in its green metal locker. He turned and looked back at Bert, not looking at Eddie. “You got yourself a pool player, Bert.” Under the armpits of his shirt were large dark stains, from sweat. For an instant, his eyes shifted to Eddie’s face, contemptuously. Then he turned and left.

Men began to get up from their seats and stretch, began to talk, dissipating for themselves the tension that had been in the room for hours. Eddie’s ears were buzzing, and his right arm and shoulder, although they were throbbing dimly, felt lightweight, buoyant. Vaguely, he wondered what Fats had meant, speaking to Bert. He turned and looked at Bert, smiling to himself, his ears still buzzing, his hand still holding the thick sheaf of new, green money.

And Bert sat small and tight. Bert the mentor, the guide in the wilderness, with the face smug and prissy, the glasses rimless, the hands soft and sure and smart—Bert. Bert, with the gambler’s eyes, reserved, almost blank, but missing nothing.

Bennington’s was almost empty already. It must have been very late. Eddie rolled the sheaf of bills into a fat cylinder and pushed this carefully down into his pocket, still looking at Bert. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Charlie, still sitting; and down at the front of the room Big John, the man with the cigar, was taking a cue stick out of the rack and inspecting its leather tip, thoughtfully. Behind Bert, Gordon, the big man with the glasses, the man who was always in Bennington’s, was still sitting, his hands folded in his lap.

Eddie grinned at Bert, tiredly. He felt very happy. “Let’s get a drink,” he said. “I’m buying.”

Bert pursed his lips. “I’ll buy,” he said, and then, “with the money you owe me.”

Eddie blinked. “What money?”

Bert peered at him a moment before he answered. “Thirty per cent.” He smiled tightly, thin-lipped. “It comes to forty-five hundred dollars.”

Eddie was staring at him now, the grin frozen on his face. Then he said, softly. “What kind of a goddamn joke is that?”

“No joke.” What had been barely a smile left Bert’s face. “I’m your manager, Eddie.”

“Since when?”

Bert seemed to be peering at him with great intensity, although it was impossible to tell exactly how his eyes looked behind the heavy glasses. “Since I first adopted you, two months ago, at Wilson’s. Since I started backing you with my money, since I taught you how to hustle pool.”

Eddie drew a breath, sharply. After letting it out, he said, his voice level, cold, “You little pink-assed son of a bitch. You never taught me a goddamn thing about hustling pool.”

Bert pursed his lips. “Except how to win,” he said.

Eddie stared at him, and then, suddenly, laughed. “That, you son of a bitch, is a matter of opinion.” He turned away and began unscrewing his cue, holding the butt of it tight to keep his fingers from trembling. “It’s also a matter of opinion whether I owe you a nickel.”

Bert did not answer for a minute, and when Eddie had finished with the cue and turned around he saw that Gordon was now standing by Bert’s chair, his arms together behind his back, looking at Eddie and smiling slightly, like a sporting goods salesman.

“Maybe,” Bert said. “But if you don’t pay me, Gordon is going to break your thumbs again. And your fingers. And, if I want him to, your right arm. In three or four places.”

For a moment, he was hardly aware of what he was doing. He had, instinctively, backed up against the pool table, and he was gripping the weighted, silk-wrapped butt of his cue stick in his right hand.

Bert was still peering at him. “Eddie,” he said quietly, “if you lay a hand on me you’re dead.” Gordon had his huge, meaty hands at his sides now, and was standing slightly forward of Bert’s chair. Eddie did not move; but he did not release his grip on the cue. He looked around, quickly. Charlie still sat impassively. Big John, heeding nothing, was practicing now on the front table, shooting a red ball up and down by the rail. Over the big door was the clock. It said one thirty-five. He looked down at the cue butt in his hand.

“You’ll never make it, Eddie,” Bert said. “And Gordon’s not the only one. We’ve got more; and if Gordon doesn’t, one of them will.”

Eddie stared at him, his head a buzzing confusion. “
We?
” he said. “
We?
” And then, suddenly, he began laughing. He let the cue butt fall on the table, and gripped the rails, trembling, with his hands, and laughed. Then he said, his voice sounding strange and dim to him, “What is this? Like in the movies? The Syndicate, Bert—the Organization?” The buzzing seemed finally to be leaving his ears and his vision was clearing, losing its fuzziness. “Is that what you are, Bert: the Syndicate Man, like in the movies?”

Bert took a minute to answer. Then he said, “I’m a businessman, Eddie.”

It did not seem real. It was some kind of melodramatic dream, or a television show, or an elaborate game, an indoor sport….

And then Bert said, his voice suddenly softening, as it sometimes could, after the clutch was over, “We’re going to make a lot of money together, Eddie, from here on out. A lot of money.”

Eddie said nothing, still leaning against the table, his body strangely relaxed now, his mind clear with dreamlike clarity.

And then Charlie said, “You better pay him, Eddie.”

Eddie did not look at him, keeping his eyes on Gordon, especially on his hands. His voice was soft, controlled. “You’re not in this, Charlie?”

Charlie did not answer for a minute. Then he said, “No, I’m out of it, all the way out. But they’re in, and you’re gonna have to pay.”

Eddie let his eyes move from Gordon’s hands to Bert’s face. “Maybe,” he said.

“No,” Bert said. “Not maybe.” He pursed his lips, and then adjusted his glasses with his hand. “But you don’t have to pay it now. You can think about it for a couple of days.”

Eddie was still leaning against the table. He lit a cigarette. “What if I leave town?” he said.

Bert adjusted his glasses again. “You might make it,” he said. “If you stay out of the big towns. And never walk in a poolroom again.”

“And if I do pay it?”

“Your next game will be about a week from now—with Jackie French. We’ve already talked to him about it, and he wants to try you. Then, next month or so, there’ll be people coming in from out of town. We’ll steer some of them to you.”

Eddie felt very steady now, and the buzzing was completely gone from his ears, the trembling gone from his hands. “That’s not worth thirty per cent, Bert,” he said.

Bert glanced up at him quickly. “Who said it was? Who said it had to be?”

Eddie’s voice was calm, deliberate. “Why don’t you and Gordon go out and roll drunks, if you’re in the muscle business?”

Bert laughed softly. “There’s no money in rolling drunks. And just how pretty is the business you’re in?” Then he stood up from his chair and bent, brushing the creases from his trousers. “Now let’s go have that drink.”

“You go ahead, Bert,” Eddie said. Then he picked the pieces of his cue up from the table, and began putting them in their leather case. He looked up at Gordon. “You run this place, don’t you, Gordon?” He snapped the lid of the case and tossed it to Gordon, who caught it silently. “Find me a locker to keep that in.” Then, looking at Bert, he said, “You better go on home—to your wife and kids—Bert.”

“Sure,” Bert said, peering at him intently, his voice flat. “But remember, Eddie. You can’t win them all.”

Eddie looked at him and then grinned, very broadly and easily. “No,” he said, “but neither can you, Bert.”

Bert continued looking at him for a minute. Then, saying nothing, he turned and left, walking purposively and slowly past the big oaken door.

***

About twenty minutes after Eddie and Charlie had left, Henry, the colored janitor, began to cover the tables with their gray oilcloth covers. After he had done this he closed the windows and pulled the heavy draperies together over them, so that it was extremely still, tomblike, in the huge room. Then, before locking up, he stopped to watch Big John shoot his eternal practice shot one final time for the evening.

Big John, ready to leave, ready to return to his obscure bed in some unknown hotel, shot with firmness and resignation, his pink arm stroking quietly and surely. The tip of his cue struck the cue ball, the cue ball hit the three, and the three-ball, red and silent, rolled up the green table, hit the cushion, rolled gently down, and into the corner pocket.