Nobody Bats a Thousand
Page 30
Kane smiled and went to the bar to collect his winnings.
“Just like old times,” Lucky said. “You haven’t changed. You are still the shakiest good player I’ve ever seen. One minute you’re knocking ‘em dead, lights out, and the next you can play as bad as a cross-eyed retard. Must be lack of real killer instinct. Some people have it, most don’t, and some can fake it for awhile, once in awhile.”
“Well, my mother still loves me.” Kane looked up and down the bar. Three here, two grouped there, the oldest guy in the room sitting alone at the end of the bar. They all had the look and lines of laborers and blue-collar survivors, a wide span of ages, but all had drifted past the wildness of youth, and all saw their after work smoke and beer or two or three or four to be as natural and necessary as their daily bread.
“Buy all these old boys a beer, one for me, one for Rob and one for yourself. Everybody but Mr. Cool over there.” Kane nodded in the direction of the player in gold ten feet away. “He doesn’t play nice.”
“You were lucky, buddy. I killed you in that second game. Let’s go again.”
“No matter how good you are at anything, you can always run into someone better…or luckier. You should trust me on that one, pal.” John smiled, picked up his change and returned to his table.
“Forty bucks for fifteen minutes work, not bad, huh?” Kane said to his brother-in-law.
“Big deal, John. I’ve seen you lose forty in an evening remember? Where I come from that ain’t winning. That’s just breaking even.”
“Lordy, lordy, Robbie. Don’t you know that’s the real bottom line?” Kane killed off his old beer and slid the empty away from him. “When I worked with the terminally ill, I doubt you could relate to them, none of them could fit into a five-year payment plan on a new truck, but that’s definitely one lesson I learned from them. That no matter who you are, no matter what you have, no matter what anybody has, the bottom line is we are all just breaking even. Nobody wins, nobody comes out ahead. Nobody gets out alive.” He smiled to himself, and then drank deeply from his fresh victory beer.
About twenty minutes later, surprisingly feeling just a little drunk, Kane left Lucky’s and went home. When he got there the house was quiet, his mother sitting upright in a big stuffed chair in the living room, was dosing in the light from the TV. John could not remember seeing her nap before bedtime. Obviously she was wearing down more than she would admit.
He went into his father’s room. An unburdening light was spread throughout from the small lamp next to his bed. John pulled up and sat on the wooden stool and waited a few tense seconds, waiting for the rising of a blanketed chest, a sign of breath, a sign of life. The breath came. John expelled a breath of his own.
He continued to stare at his old man, the blanket and sheet still pulled tight under his chin. A few moments later the old man blinked, and then opened his eyes; a thin, sullen corpse suddenly coming to life.
“John.” He blinked. “How long have you been sitting here?”
“Just a few minutes. I was over at Lucky’s. I saw Lucky, and Rob stopped by.”
“That old Lucky is a good guy.” He paused. “And Rob’s all right.”
“Oh, come on, dad. We’ve both known him since he was a little kid. Rob’s the kind of guy who’ll spit in your face and tell you it’s raining.”
The old man’s eyes drooped; his lips formed a slight smile.
“Hey, I won forty bucks shooting pool.”
“You did!” The old man smiled more. “Great.”
“Yeah, I set him up and watched him fall, playing with his money. You would have loved it.”
“You never play with their money. Once you win it, it’s yours,” the old man’s voice was wavy and soft. “I’ve told you that before.”
“Only a couple of hundred times.”
“Playing pool, playing pool and playing the horses, two things I always loved to do, but I never got a chance to do as often as I wanted. And I was pretty good at both.” Another weak smile. “Too bad you can’t make a living shooting pool or betting on the nags.”
A tense half-minute of silence passed.
“Yeah, that’s too bad. So, how do you feel?” John asked.
No answer. His old man had already fallen back to sleep. John waited apprehensively until he saw another breath. Looking at his dad made him feel helpless and hollow, a hollow carcass, a drunken shell. He squinted his eyes, tightened his jaw and tried to force himself to cry. The tears still would not come.
He got up and began to leave but paused in the arch of the doorway. One more time, for a full minute, he stared at the old man lying still and peaceful, the slow breaths moving in and out. Then using the wall switch next to him, John turned off the small lamp, and the room went black, as black as a sunken cave on a moonless night.
The End
DONE
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