by Otto Penzler
“You break ’em first, old man,” the older melanzana said. “Age before beauty.” He laughed.
The old man bent over the table and sighted the cue ball toward the rack of nine balls he would have to pocket in order to the seven, the money ball. The older melanzana stood at the other end of the table, grinning. “What say we shoot for twenty a game, old man? Give you a chance to win back your money real quick.”
“Make it fifty,” the old man said as he rifled the cue ball into the rack, scattering the object balls, and sinking the five. He looked up to see the melanzana standing at the end of the table, staring at him. He was not grinning now.
“You ain’t hustlin’ me, is you, old man?”
The old man said nothing. He studied the layout of balls. He had easy shots on the one and two, and a long straight-in shot on the three. From there on to the seven, it was an easy run.
“If you want to shoot for twenty, that’s all right with me,” the old man said.
“No. We’ll make it fifty, old man.”
The old man bent over the table and sighted the one ball. It was a straight shot into the corner pocket. He rammed the cue ball so hard into the one that the one hit the leather back of the pocket and bounced out.
The melanzana grinned. “Heh, relax old man. You’re too tight.” He leaned over the table and pocketed the one, then the two and three. The four was a difficult cut shot into a side pocket. The melanzana cut it too much and it bounced off the rail. “Damn!” he said.
The old man made the four, an easy straight-in shot into the side pocket, but his cue ball froze against the rail. The six was across the table against the rail, too. A tough bank shot. The old man hit the six too softly. It bounced off the rail, went to the pocket on the opposite side of the table, and stopped inches from the pocket.
“Either too hard, or too easy, old man,” the black man said. “You ain’t got your rhythm yet.” He pocketed the six but left himself a long shot for the seven. He missed it, sending the seven bouncing off cushions until it came to rest only a few inches from the corner pocket. The cue ball was in the middle of the table.
The black man was shaking his head. “Set it right up for you, old man. A blind man could make that shot.”
“You want to give it to me?” the old man said.
The black man laughed, flashing his gold teeth. “No siree, pops. I’m gonna make you earn it.”
The old man pointed his stick at the pocket behind the seven. “Straight-in,” he said. He bent over and sighted the seven. He hit it hard, slightly off-center, so that the seven hit the corner of the pocket, ricocheted off the opposite corner, came the full length of the table, hit the two far corners and then rolled back toward the pocket the old man had called, and dropped in.
“Damn!” the black man said. “I told you it was your lucky day. Miss you an easy one and turn it into a trick shot.” He reached into his pants pocket for his money.
“That’s not necessary,” the old man said. “We’ll pay up at the end of the day.”
“Suit yourself, old man.”
The old man lost the second and third games, then he won the fourth when he made the seven ball on the break.
“Man, you’s lucky today,” the black man said.
“Winners are always lucky to losers,” the old man said.
The black man blinked, once, twice, then said, “What you say, old man?”
The old man put his head down and chalked the tip of his cue stick. “I said, you got to be lucky to win.”
The black man looked at him. “That’s what I thought you said.”
The old man lost the fourth game when he scratched on an easy shot on the seven. The black man ran out the seven, eight, and nine.
The old man shook his head. “Like I said. Lucky.”
“Lucky!” the black man said. “I run three balls to win and you call it luck?”
“Well, you wouldn’t have had the chance, if I didn’t scratch on the seven.”
“Shiiit! Loser like you, old man, that’s always your alibi. The other guy was lucky.”
The old man bent over the table and racked the balls. He felt his face get hot. Fired by a fucking retard! Condescended to by a fucking melanzana asshole! He straightened up and said, “How about we play for a coupla hundred dollars a game. See if my luck can change.”
“Hot damn! You hear that, Reeshaad! The old man loses a game and he wants to raise the bet. A real hustler, ain’t he? Why not, huh? What you got to lose, old man. Nuthin’ but money ain’t gonna do you no good, the time you got left. Shit, yeah, we’ll play for a hundred.” He bent over the table while the old man fumbled with the rack. “You gonna take all day, old man,” the black man said. The old man racked the balls loosely, not tight. When the black man fired the cue ball into the rack, only two balls broke loose. The black man straightened up and banged his cue stick on the floor.
“Now you go give me a fuckin’ house rack! Or is you just too old to rack the balls tight?”
The old man said nothing. He bent over the table, sank the one ball, and sent the cue ball ricocheting around the table until it landed against the unbroken rack, and split the balls apart.
“Another lucky fuckin’ shot,” the black man said.
The old man looked up at the grinning black man, his flashing gold teeth, his stupid grin, not getting it. He smiled at the black man, chalked the tip of his cue stick, and bent over the table. The two ball was tight against the rail far from the corner pocket. The old man sighted his cue ball, then cut it into the two ball so delicately that he almost missed it. The two ball began moving slowly down the table, hugging the rail, and fell into the corner pocket. The three ball was only inches from another corner pocket, but the cue ball was behind the four ball, blocking his shot on the three.
“Tough break, old man. You’s snookered,” the black man said.
The old man didn’t hear him. He was standing straight up, aiming the tip of his cue stick down at the cue ball. He stabbed down at the cue ball with a short stroke. The cue ball squirted around the four ball, then curved back toward the three ball and knocked it into the pocket.
Before the black man could say anything, the old man was sighting the four ball. A long straight-in shot. He eased back the cue stick, once, twice, three times, and then with a smooth, maddeningly methodical stroke, sent the cue ball straight into the four. The cue ball stopped on a dime and the four went straight into the pocket. The old man felt his heart beating in his breast now that he was playing the way he used to. Hard and ruthless. He pocketed the five ball in the side pocket, drew the cue ball back off the opposite rail until it was only inches from the six, a short straight-in shot. The seven was against the rail at the far end of the table. The old man hit the cue ball very low, rifling the six into the pocket, and drawing the cue ball back the full length of the table until it, too, was against the rail a few inches away from the seven. A straight-in shot, but very difficult because both balls hugged the rail. The old man sighted his shot. He aimed the tip of his cue stick high and to the right on the cue ball so that it would hug the rail when it hit the seven. Then, before he shot, he looked up at the black man and smiled. He was still smiling at the black man, not even looking at his shot, when his stick swung smoothly forward. The cue ball rolled against the rail, tapped the seven ball, stopped, while the seven ball rolled slowly toward the pocket and dropped in.
The old man straightened up. The black man was staring at him. The old man noticed, for the first time in an hour, the younger black man staring at him, too, through his dark sunglasses.
“You hustlin’ me, old man,” the older black man said.
The old man looked at him in the eye. “We gonna play, or what?”
The black man began to unscrew his stick. “I don’t think so, old man. I ain’t no fool.”
“Quitting?”
The black man gave him a faint smile and shook his head. “You tryin’ to rile me, old man? Damn, you be an old white
dude, but you got a young man’s balls.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You got balls, or what?”
The black man glared at him. “Yeah, I got balls, old man. But I got me some brains, too. I ain’t playin’ with you no eight and nine spot.”
“I don’t need your spot,” the old man said. “I’ll play you straight up.”
“I said, I got brains, old man. I know when I’m in over my head.” He put the two pieces of his elaborately carved cue stick into his black leather case, and snapped it shut.
“All right,” the old man said. “You win. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll play you jack up. I’ll shoot one-handed. Is that enough of a spot for you?”
The black man shook his head and smiled across at his friend. “You hear that, Reeshaad? Fuckin’ old white dude tryin’ to embarrass me. Play one-handed, thinks he can still beat me.” He looked back at the old man as he opened his case again and began screwing his cue stick together. He went to the end of the table and began racking the balls.
“Your break, old man.”
The old man put one hand behind his back and held the end of the cue stick with his other hand. He balanced the cue stick on the edge of the table. He jabbed the stick forward. The cue ball rolled down the table, hit the rack without force, and knocked out only a few balls. One of them was the nine. It stopped in front of the corner pocket. The one ball was only inches in front of it. An easy combination shot.
The black man stepped up to the table, sighted his shot, sent the cue ball into the one which hit the nine which dropped in.
They played in silence now. The black man won two games in a row. Then the old man won a game. The black man won the next three games and then the old man won a game. Neither of them spoke. They moved around the table in silent concentration. The old man felt his arm getting tired. He miscued on an easy straight-in shot on the nine and lost. He scratched on the eight ball in the next game, and lost. He felt his one-handed stroke getting shaky, his arm heavy, numb. He could sustain his stroke for a shot or two but then he could feel his arm tremble with fatigue. He was breathing heavily. His head was swimming. How much was he down? Five hundred, a thousand? He couldn’t keep track. He wanted to be home in bed, resting. He was so tired.
The black man was preparing to break the balls again. He looked at the old man, and said, “What say we play for two hundred a game, old man? Give you a chance to win back your money.”
The old man nodded. “Fine with me,” he said. He laid his cue stick on the table. “Where’s the John?”
The black man pointed his stick at a door marked GENTS. The old man shuffled toward the door. Just as he opened it he heard the black man call out from behind him.
“Don’t you be takin’ too long, old man. I have to be sendin’ Reeshaad in there lookin’ for you.”
The old man sat down on the toilet seat to catch his breath. He felt sick to his stomach, light-headed, dizzy. He couldn’t focus. Everything was swimming before his eyes, spinning around him as if he were on the merry-go-round at the fair where he used to work. He tried to force everything to stop spinning. Things began to slow down, the urinals, the mirror, the sink, the old metal steam radiator up against one wall. He stared at the radiator for a long moment until it had stopped moving. He saw, high above the radiator, a window covered with grime. He tried to remember something from his past. He forced himself to remember. Then he stood up. His legs were shaky. He took a few deep breaths until his legs stopped shaking, then he walked over to the radiator. He raised one leg and put his foot on the radiator. He held it there a moment as he looked for something to grab on to so he could hoist himself up. Once he was standing on the radiator he could open the window, crawl out, and get to his car. But there was nothing for the old man to grab on to. And even if he could stand on the radiator, what would he do? Pull himself up to the window with his arms? He was an old man, for Chrissakes. He had no strength left. He took his foot off the radiator and sat down on the toilet seat. He stared into the dirty mirror over the sink. Images began to form in the mirror. Blurry-gray at first, and then more sharply defined. He stared into the mirror at the faces from his past. They were smiling at him. His cronies. Mustache Pete. The French Canadian. The rednecked farmers. The Hialeah blonde. The bearded lady and the Geek. His mother. Rose. He smiled back at them all, long gone, waiting…
THE GREAT. THE GOOD AND
THE NOT-SO-GOOD
H.R.F. Keating
Goodwood racecourse, set amid the Sussex Downs, which are of course gently rolling hills, Ups rather than Downs, has been in existence since 1801. It was then that the Duke of Richmond, one of the Great of the land, offered the use of his huge park surrounding Goodwood House to the officers of the Sussex Regiment, of which he happened to be colonel, when they needed somewhere to race their horses. As the years went by, successive Dukes improved and improved the course until Glorious Goodwood, as they call it, rose to be one of the most delightful of all England’s race meetings. Perhaps, however, jockeys and trainers may secretly think of it as Would-it-were-good because the course, running as it does not on the ideal level but over a distinctly undulating track with some sharp bends in it, can put even the most fancied runner into an ignominious last place.
But back in 1952 the then holder of the dukedom permitted the first public-address race commentary anywhere in Britain to boom out across his private park. And it was at that time—if the following account is true—that the Not-so-good came on to the scene. Luckily, however, 1952 can also be called the Year of the Seven Old Ladies, who, although they had their faults like all of us, could reasonably be called, too, the Seven Good Old Ladies.
They all lived in a village at some little distance from the racecourse, a flourishing place with its green large enough for games of cricket, two pubs and even, modern miracle tucked away behind the ancient village church, a bright and shiny red telephone box. Whenever the weather was fine enough it was their custom to come out and sit in a row on two benches that were set side by side at the edge of the green almost in the shadow of the church and opposite the pub called the Fox Goes Free, which—if that indeed is the pub in question—was decidedly appropriate because it was thanks to these old ladies that one cunning fox, of the two-legged variety, failed in the end to go free.
Every day that it didn’t rain, and sometimes even when it did, well wrapped in macintoshes, the seven of them would sit, morning and afternoon, chattering away, ignoring, when there was a cricket match on the green, any of the red leather balls that occasionally whizzed over their heads and equally ignoring, as they were on this day, the streams of motor cars clattering past in clouds of exhaust fumes on their way to the start of the five-day race meeting in the grounds of their distant ducal neighbor. Nothing disturbed them as they talked and talked.
Three of them, Mrs. Alford, Mrs. Beastock and little Mrs. Capper, had something of the characteristics of those three brass or plastic monkeys you sometimes see perched up on a mantelpiece: one with two little paws blocking its ears, Hear-No-Evil; one with paws blocking its eyes, See-No-Evil; and the third with paws crossed carefully over its mouth, Speak-No-Evil. Certainly no one in the village had ever heard hopping-about, squirrel-like Mrs. Capper say anything unpleasant about anybody, while fat old Mrs. Alford was so deaf she could hear really neither evil nor good, and Mrs. Bea-stock, who often gropingly wore both her pairs of spectacles at the same time, would, so they said, have missed a murder even if it were committed under her very nose.
The three who habitually sat on the other bench, Mrs. Damworthy, Mrs. Emery and Mrs. Finders, were the very opposite. Mrs. Damworthy was known for somehow getting to discover every little piece of wrongdoing that besmirched the village, whether it was the curious disappearance of a hen or the stuck-together closeness of a girl and a boy. For discovering them and speaking her mind about them, loudly. Mrs. Emery was a thin rake of an old dear whom it was almost impossible not to
rub up the wrong way whatever you happened to say to her. And as for bustling-about Mrs. Finders, she was so interested in everything in the village that she was possessed always of a fund of information, some of it sometimes near the truth.
So how did these six very different old ladies, all of them almost completely ignorant about the events that took place in the Duke of Richmond’s park every Goodwood Week, contrive to stay together year in year out without any huffy departures? The answer lay in the lady who would seat herself between the two parties, sometimes squeezing onto one bench, sometimes onto the other. Old Lady Bentt, shriveled and thin almost as the ancient crook-handled walking stick without which she could go nowhere, was rumored to be a distant descendant of Lord George Bentinck, the notorious gambler who in 1824 won a race at Goodwood for which, it was jokingly laid down, every rider had to wear a three-cornered hat, a tricorne, commonly called a cocked hat (the Cocked Hat Stakes is, of course, still run at Goodwood today). But aristocratic as she might be, Lady Bentt was certainly a lady in very, very reduced circumstances, poorer most probably than any of the other six on the two benches, widows though they were. However, what she had retained was her ability to say, in a little piping voice, what should and should not be done. And it was this that kept the gossip circle—only it was a straight line—from ever breaking up.
It was this, too, that in the end caused the fox not to go free. As he very nearly did.
• • •
“That chap hasn’t shown his face here before,” old Mrs. Bea-stock, sitting with deaf Mrs. Alford and ever-kindly Mrs. Capper, pronounced as a young man with the swept-back greased hair, long sideburns and the tight trousers that marked out the Teddy Boy, the much-fancied look among the 1950s riffraff, brought a noisy motorbike to a halt just behind the two benches. Leaving it propped up, he lifted from the back a big strung-together box or crate and staggered away with it.