The story below eventually became Chapter 2 of my 1994 novel The Ballad of Gato Guerrero. By then, the story had undergone significant revision. But here's the original, or at least as much of the original that I could find after a mind-bending search of dog-eared manilla file folders, bent and dusty flash drives, and old, almost frozen computers. I should be more organized about my writing. Too late now?
The graphic is Mike's Pool Hall by renowned artist Emigdio Vasquez. I bought this art many years ago from Rueben Martínez of Librería Martínez Books and Art Gallery in Santa Ana, California.
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EIGHTBALL
© Manuel Ramos
Denver, Colorado, 1985
Thick smoke floated above the heads of the pool players. The sharp crack of ricocheting balls echoed in the numbing din of jukebox music, the shouts and hollers of drunken men celebrating their talent on the shabby green surfaces, and the barely audible sighs of wasted time.
Bennie watched men saunter around the pool table to the beat of Fifties rhythm and blues. He snickered and groaned each time they shot, whether the shot was made or missed, and Bennie knew he hated where he was but this was the only place he could be and he had to be good. That was what eightball was all about. If you played, make it good or don't play at all.
The Rainbow Inn's Fifth Annual Eightball Pool Classic had progressed through a dirty, dreary winter and wet, early spring to final play between Joe's Capri Lounge and the New Moon, Bennie's team of North Side oldtimers. They had outlasted a dozen teams, who now sat enviously in the bar, groggy from beer and hastily made side bets that instantly turned bad, and Bennie and his pals struggled to show why they were the best.
From the beginning of the match Bennie could feel that his team was in trouble. He split his first two games.
Squirrel, the crazy biker who brought two guys with big biceps and filthy t-shirts for protection from the rowdies he expected to confront him in these Chicano bars, was off his game. He was stoned, that normally didn't make any difference in his shooting, but his balls were just a little slow, his stick too much on the inside of the cue ball and so his shots fell short or missed by a hair. He lost his first two games.
The hawk-nosed carpenter, Chief, was clobbered in his first game by Ace, Chuckie Garcia, the finest shot on the West Side. He evened up in the second game, but Chief was only going through the motions. Ace had showed him how to shoot and now there was no doubt in anybody's mind who was best, yet Chief had to keep playing. He drank more beer than he should, slouched in his booth, and darkly waited for his next game.
Fat, dependable Ray and Tony the playboy plumber won their games and at the end of the first two sets the New Moon team had the advantage. But there was trouble in the game, there was a bad feeling in the night, and they were in the Westsider's turf. Bennie toyed with the tip of his cue and absent-mindedly rubbed chalk dust in his hair when he stood to take his turn.
Bennie worried. "These fucking Westsiders always hassle you if you beat them. Their goddamn women and the punks that hang around, they're the ones. Without them we could probably make it out of here without a fight." He didn't know what would be worse, winning or losing. The crowd cheered only for the Capri players.
Bennie misplayed his roll and had no position for the eight. His young opponent, a slick, greasy guy in a shiny, blue mylar jacket with JOE'S CAPRI LOUNGE written across the back in orange script, eased the cue ball across the table, tapped the black eight ever so softly and, as it fell, whistled just loud enough for Bennie to hear. It dropped safely in the corner pocket that had eluded Bennie for most of the game. Bennie thought he heard trumpets and a hundred charging horses, but there was no cavalry for him, and he had to stretch his hand across to the winner's waiting, flat palm. He passed the twenty-dollar bill that had made the game twenty dollars more interesting. The slick kid said, "Nice game, bro," but Bennie had given it to him. Bennie answered, more for the crowd than the kid, "Sure, man. Hell of a shot."
Chief never got into his last game. He had four shots and made only two balls. Bennie hoped he would quit the team.
Tony played the best pool of his strung out, uptight life and wiped out old 'Mando. Bennie knew 'Mando was over the hill, and that was sad because Bennie could remember when the old goat was smooth as ice on a hot night. He'd made five thousand in one game and then dropped it at the dog races, but what the hell, the old man said, "I'm just a crazy viejo from the Valle, and one of these days I'm going home."
Bennie told 'Mando, "You should have left last week, guy."
Then Ray blew it. He scratched on the eight on a simple, short, straight-in shot, the kind you hate to have to make to win because they never drop, they won't fall, and you can only say stupid things like "too much green," or "too straight, man." Ray stared wide-eyed at the cue ball as it bounced around the table then rolled into the side, his pudgy fingers tightening around the stick in a strangle hold. He stood and without a word walked out the bar, climbed in his pickup and drove home where he had the worst fight of his long marriage with Helen. Someone said that Ray Charles could have made that shot, but that was long after Fat Ray had bloodied Helen's eye and she had broken his pool stick by smashing it against his beer can collection.
Ray's choke meant Squirrel had to play Ace, the man who laid it on the line in these tournaments, the man who gave no quarter to rag tag, pick up players such as Squirrel. The whole damn tournament, the months of playing every loudmouthed pool player who could afford the twenty-five bucks entry fee, the cheap beer and the Tuesday morning hangovers, the whole damn mess came down to the spaced-out Hell's Angel reject who didn't know what the score was, much less that winning the trophy was dumped right on his scrawny, pink-meated, bony shoulders.
Bennie ordered a shot and a beer and decided it was time for serious drinking. The match was over. Only the formality of losing the game remained.
Tony sat down with Bennie. "Squirrel's nowhere around. Where the hell can he be?"
Bennie said, "Out back, tokin' up. Where else? You better drag his ass in here, before we forfeit. The Capri guys are gettin' anxious, assholes." Tony walked through the back door into the alley.
Bennie could feel the sweet tension in the bar. The Westsiders knew they had the game; it was wrapped up. They wanted it to end quickly, end the suffering, start the party. Get it on, man! They gave Bennie five minutes to have his next man up at the table or that was it, brother. The end. Premature climax, no long, drawn out final act. The bartender tapped another keg and dropped five dollars in the music box. Westside, forever!
Tony slunk in and Squirrel followed, grinning from ear to ear. Tony whispered to Bennie, "That shitface didn't even know it was his turn. Too much, huh! I'll kill him if he fucks up."
Squirrel's abrupt appearance was an insult to the crowd. They had started the celebration, and now it had to be delayed because the missing player had decided to show up, finally, and they were going to have to sit through one more game, one more detour on the long road to the Rainbow Inn's trophy, one more of life's little frustrations that made a person want to cut some-thing, or at least break a few chairs. The mood was ugly.
Bennie saw his old friend Artie Reynoso walking through the haze. Artie had said he might drop by to watch the game. Bennie regretted he hadn't told him to bring a baseball bat.
"Yo, Bennie. You guys winning? I'll take a Bud." The waitress rushed by and nodded that she had heard his order.
"We're about to lose this thing," Bennie said. "Squirrel can't hold up his stick, but he has to win for the team to win. You're just in time to help me get drunk."
"We better go somewhere else, then. I don't see too many faces I know, and even fewer friendly ones. Jesus, you guys are really outnumbered." Otis and Carla, singing "Tramp," blasted from the jukebox. "These Westsiders, all they know is oldies. Christ, I wonder if they ever listen to anything that was recorded after 1965?"
Bennie knew. "That song came out in 1967, but who's counting?" Artie laughed and drank from his beer bottle. Squirrel broke the rack and the game started.
Both players were stiff, Squirrel from the cold alley and Ace from the wait. Bennie prayed that Squirrel would loosen up, at least give Garcia a run for his money. Slowly, the biker warmed up.
It was one of those games. Shots were made that wouldn't be duplicated again in five, ten years. The people who saw that game always talked about it later in shorthand, code of the streets, in language you knew if you grew up playing pool or hung around with guys from the streets. They talked about it in the joint, at the all night keg parties in the projects, and in the early morning hours when young men were coming down from the night's high, the last story before home. It was the Rainbow Inn Final, the night Ace and Squirrel squared off, that game on the Westside.
Ace was smooth, cool. He shot fast, and hard, and he knew his groove was good. But Squirrel stuck with Ace and when he got his chance he took it.
Squirrel made a bank shot off one of the side cushions and Garcia clicked his teeth. Squirrel's next shot required precise placement of the cue ball for the sharp angle needed to make the ten spin and drop in the far corner. He made it.
The crowd squirmed at each of Squirrel's shots. He had been reborn. He was slapping the hands of fate and the crowd could feel the change.
Squirrel bopped around the table, singing, "Otis, you a tramp," smirking like a goddamned clown, making shots as if he was Paul Newman. He scratched the back of his neck and shook his long, scraggly pony tail out from under his cracked, leather cap. He deliberately, slowly chalked his stick. He licked his lips at Connie, a dark-haired, tattooed member of the Chuckie Garcia fan club who only wanted to go down on Chuckie once, if she could ever get him away from Gloria Valdez.
Connie thought Squirrel was trash. "That guy makes me sick, baby. Can't you do anything about him? Look, he keeps eyeing me, giving me that baboso smile. Yech, what a creep; I wish you would do something." Her date was part-time thief, full-time cocaine freak Orlie Garcia, no relation to Ace, and he had enough beer and schnapps in him to believe Connie, something he normally wouldn't do.
Squirrel lined up for the shot that would win the game. He peered across the table at the easy lay of the cue ball and the eight and knew that he was going to make it. He could see the ball score after he gave it his slow, smooth stroke. Bennie and Artie watched with uneasy fascination; they knew he could make the shot, but they weren't sure he should.
Connie whined to her date that the gabacho was a perverted pest. "God! He's trying to make a pass at me right in the middle of the game with Chuckie."
Orlie staggered to his feet and reached for Squirrel's stick. It was his obligation, his West Side duty, to tell the honky hippie that no one could beat Ace on his own table. No Westsider would allow it. And he had to tell the guy to leave Connie alone. Drunken Orlie thought, in his twisted, shadowy way of thinking, "You can't act that way around our women." But Orlie tripped over Connie's foot and fell into Squirrel just as Squirrel pushed his right arm forward, the stick a five-foot extension of his body. The cue sliced the tabletop and left a gash a yard long.
Squirrel's arm jerked to the right. His stick slammed the cue ball and sent it flying across the table and onto the floor. Squirrel pushed the drunk off him and, as the realization of what had happened set in, he stomped on Orlie's fingers as Orlie tried to get back on his feet. Orlie squealed like a cat caught in a screen door.
Connie screamed, jumped to her feet and knocked her longneck beer bottle to the floor. Beer and glass erupted in a small explosion; Bennie recognized the pop of another one wasted. Connie grabbed a ball from the table and threw it at Squirrel with a vicious toss from only six feet away.
Squirrel's head bounced with the force of the impact; his eyes rolled back in his head. He slowly turned to the woman, whipped his stick at her face, and cracked it across her forehead.
All hell broke loose then.
Later.
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Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction. Read his latest story, Northside Nocturne, in Denver Noir, edited by Cynthia Swanson, published by Akashic Books.
