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From: pechever@nunki.usc.edu (gomi no sensei)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,rec.arts.prose
Subject: Eightball
Date: 11 Apr 1995 00:45:13 -0700
Organization: A Flattening of Anvils
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Hi.  Immediately following this (if news propagation and the holy claws
of klortho deceive us not) should be the first of three parts of "Eightball,"
a short story i wrote last week.  Or finished writing last week.

Whatever.

I've split the story into three parts, much like Gaul (like you didn't see
that coming), because of its obstreperous length.  You can save 'em and
read them at your leisure.

I strongly desire feedback on this one.  It will not go unappreciated.

A dedication: "Eightball" is mostly for my brother Ron, but also for
everyone else I've ever lost a game of pool to.

Hope y'all like it.

[alpha]
Stuff i forgot to put in the apologia:  "Eightball" is under copyright
1995 by Paul Echeverri.  Don't reprint it, repost it, or otherwise glom on to
it without written permission from yours truly, or i'll be forced to
have your ass for breakfast.

Most especially in the case of that *wretched* little person and his
*wretched* little magazine.

on with the show.

			    Eightball

	"Cowboy Spiner.  Best pool player in the world."  That was 
always how he introduced himself to strangers.  He'd watch their 
faces carefully, gauging their reactions.  Ever so often, some kid out 
of Hemingford or Otter's Pasture would take him up on his boast.  
Townies never did.  They knew about Cowboy.  Vic Arnold, who'd 
been bartender at the Cat's Chair ever since Tommy Wittenberg fell 
face down on the mahogany bar at the age of eighty-six twenty years 
ago, would tell anyone who cared to listen that in the twenty-five 
years Cowboy had been playing at the Chair he'd never been seen to 
lose a game.  His first shot at the black 8 was his last, every time.

	The Cowboy was past middle age, but not old, exactly.  It was 
more like being preserved.  The word _cured_ came to mind, as if the 
Cowboy had walked out of some weird smokehouse in Virginia.  
His left eye wandered a bit, and there was more steel than bone in 
his mouth, but his hands were still as steady and level as the often-
replaced green felt of the Chair's three pool tables.

	All this is not to say the townies wouldn't play the Cowboy, 
because they did.  They just didn't _compete_ with him.  That would 
have been pointless.  They competed with each other, seeing who 
could hold out the longest before the Cowboy slammed or nudged 
or just plain dropped the eightball into the pocket of his choice.  
The Cowboy was the polestar of the pool universe in Blessings 
Exchange, Indiana, the platinum-iridium standard, the asymptote of 
a green felt hyperbole.

	The New Feller was a regular at the Cat's Chair.  Morgan 
Watson had moved to Blessings Exchange seventeen years ago, and 
had given up on ever being known as anything but the New Feller 
within seven of those years.  The grapevine said he'd lived in Los 
Angeles before moving out here.  The grapevine's usually lucid - if 
not always accurate - information was hazy on why he'd left, 
however.  It might have had something to do with his skin.

	The New Feller's skin _changed_.  Usually, it was a medium 
brown, like any black man with a touch of whitewash or Indian to 
him.  He got darker in summer, of course; the strange part was how 
much darker he got.  In February, the New Feller was a shade darker 
than Sheriff Oliver's triple-cream coffee, but in July he was the deep 
brown of freshly tilled soil.

	That wasn't the whole of it, though.  The New Feller didn't 
just change with the seasons.  He darkened and lightened week to 
week and month to month.  Some said his shade varied with the 
sunspots.  Others swore it was the Zodiac.   Others said people 
should quit this foolishness and learn to mind their own business, 
but the grapevine kept buzzing, like it always does.

	The one thing that was certain, though, was the eclipse.  
It happened about fourteen years ago, when the New Feller was really 
new; a total solar eclipse over Indiana.  School was out that day, and 
pretty much the whole town turned out to watch.  And at totality, when 
the moon put a silver quarter over the sun's closed eyelid, when the 
corona blazed out like the five thousand pale groping fingers of God 
Himself, at least a dozen witnesses saw the New Feller change color.

	There was no agreement as to what color he changed _to_, 
mind you; Lavinia Grumman said it was a bright lavender, and Joe 
Josephson said it was closer to navy blue.  No one paid Joe much 
attention, him being the town drunk and all.  Billy Stuart, who had 
a physics degree from Rensselaer, went on about wavelengths and 
spectra and such.  Everyone thought Billy'd learned a bit too much 
at Rensselaer than was good for him, and he moved to Gary the 
year after that.  Whatever color it was that Morgan Watson'd 
turned under the corona's flailing light, it was luminous.  That 
much the witnesses agreed upon.  The New Feller had _glowed_.

	It didn't seem to  help his pool game much, though.  Not 
only did he lose regularly to the Cowboy, like everyone else, but 
he'd also lose to the regular pool types: Jackson Harriman, Rich 
Landers, and so on.  He was a persistent sort, though, and he'd 
improved some with constant practice.  The fifteen-year olds had 
moved him up a notch in their ivory pantheon; there wasn't one of 
them he couldn't beat.  Now, his competition was strictly from 
grown men who had the feel for the table.

	Women didn't play pool in Blessings Exchange.  They had 
their own games.  Some played bridge, although that was dying out; 
only a two foursomes left in the town, and no one knew what the 
Levinson sisters were going to do when Martha Hopper's 
pacemaker finally gave out.  The younger women played bingo and 
had bake-offs and disappeared in baker's dozens for a weekend ever 
so often.  The youngest women played the oldest games.

			*	*	*

	The dress was _perfect_.  Turning in the mirror, Laura Green 
thought that if anyone ever wanted to quantify exactly how much 
cleavage it was acceptable to display in a half-horse Indiana town 
like Blessings Exchange, they could just refer to this dress.  Brushing 
some loose thread from the scratched-up wooden chair, she started 
to put away her sewing kit.  Laura always did her own alterations; 
she was far too finicky to trust anyone else with them.

	Once she'd tidied up the small bedroom she rented above 
Teddy Lee's garage, she walked down the stairs into the bright May 
sunlight, her small black purse hanging quietly at her side like a 
well-behaved familiar.  Time for a shake, she thought.
	The dress _was_ perfect.

			*	*	*

	She opened the glass door (clean to the point of invisibility) 
that led into the Ice Shop and walked in.  It was Saturday, so Gus 
Crystal was there, saving up tips and his meager salary to buy the 
next in a seemingly endless series of electronic doohickeys that 
would clip on,  plug into, or otherwise attach to his beloved Les 
Paul.  The night he brought that guitar home from Gary, Gus had 
gotten blind drunk at the Chair; he was underage, but Vic turned a 
blind eye.  It had taken him two years of living on crumbs and 
working thirteen days of every fourteen to buy the damn thing - 
what the hell, let the kid live a little, you know?  These days, Gus 
spent his weekends either working the counter at the Ice Shop or 
practicing, making the Les Paul screech and sing over the cornfields.

	Laura sat down on the red stool.  "The usual Saturday mess, 
Gus.  Big ol' chocolate shake."

	Gus smiled at her and slid it easily across the counter.  It 
made a low, grey sound that almost didn't register but was 
unmistakably present nonetheless.

	"My one indulgence, Gus.  This makes all the exercise 
worthwhile."  She stretched, her arms perpendicular, her smile 
warm.

	"You do enjoy the heck out of your Saturdays, don't you, 
Laura?"

	She smiled, and bent her head to the straw.  "No, Gus.  I 
enjoy the _hell_ out of them."  Her cheeks hollowed out as she sucked 
up the thick, cold stuff, her eyes closed to relish it better.

[beta]
	The Cowboy got up and headed for his bathroom, like he did 
every morning.  A regular man is a happy man, as his father had 
said, and it was his personal belief it kept the nerves - and the hands 
- steady.  After showering and dressing, he walked to the bank.  He 
had his cue with him, of course.  While he enjoyed a nice walk as 
well as anyone, it made no sense to go all the way into town, take 
care of business, and then walk all the way back to fetch the cue 
when it time for pool rolled around.

	At the bank, he deposited some poor fool's fifty dollars.

			*	*	*

	Morgan woke up from the usual dream, the one where 
Helen was still alive.  Looking down at his chest, he saw a red welt 
running down the left side of his ribcage.  He frowned; it was time 
to trim his nails again.  Nothing to do today, he thought, but take 
care of his nails and shoot pool at the Cat's Chair until it got late 
enough to start drinking.  He was definitely in a rut.  But at least it 
was a _safe_ rut.  

	Nobody particularly cared about him here one way or the 
other, and that was fine with him.  If he kept saying that to himself, 
he thought, it might come true.  He finished buttoning his shirt as 
he walked through his living room, past the framed photograph of 
Helen he kept on the coffee table.  Every Friday, he had a cup of 
coffee while sitting mutely in front of the picture.  Fifteen minutes 
of mourning.  He put on his shoes and walked outside; the sun was 
bright and his skin was a fine dark brown, like bitter chocolate.

			*	*	*

	Laura didn't much care for ruts, and while the Saturday 
milkshake was more of a tradition than a rut, she wanted to spend 
the afternoon after it in a different place, just on general principle.  
She was in a mood to watch people that day.  She was in a mood to 
watch men.  Gus was a sweet boy, always polite and all that, but not 
what she was interested in just then.  The guitar ate too much of his 
mind - no, it wasn't that.  It diverted too much of his lust, might as 
well be honest with herself, he didn't look at her in the _perfect_ dress 
the way she wanted to be looked at that afternoon.

	So she went to a man place, a place in Blessings Exchange 
where women showed up as often as men did at the monthly 
'picnics' in Ella's Grove.  She pushed open the door to the Cat's 
Chair and walked inside.

			*	*	*

	The New Feller was already busy losing his first round to the 
Cowboy when that woman came in.  Not a single conversation 
stopped, but the atmosphere changed.  What had been amorphous 
before now had a definite focus; the looks that had been randomly 
distributed now shared one direction.  Still, the difference was 
subtle, and those crouched over the three pool tables did not notice 
it until they'd finished their shots and looked up.  Jackson 
Harriman sucked his breath in through his teeth, narrowed his 
eyes, and thought of a body in a quarry.  Rich Landers smiled and 
walked to the bar, taking the opportunity to adjust himself 
surreptitiously on the way.  Morgan just looked at her, examined 
her with the same attention the Cowboy gave to his cue's tip.  For 
twenty unbroken seconds he looked at her, expressionless, as she 
walked to the back, sat on a stool, and ordered a beer.  Then he 
looked at the table, where the situation had changed for the worse 
since his last shot, and started to scan for possible bank angles.

			*	*	*

	The Cowboy knew she was going to bring trouble without 
having to look at her.  Half the time she didn't cause it, but trouble 
had followed Laura Green ever since that cockeyed duel where Tim 
Jones had shot Bobby Cochran.  There went the four-ball.  Big White 
was lined up nicely for six.  Tap, thunk.  In it went.  

	He didn't blame her for the Cochran boy's getting shot; he 
was a romantic fool and lucky to get off with a bum shoulder 
instead of getting his brains blasted out the back of his head.  The 
Cowboy was of the opinion that Tim Jones had pulled his shot; he'd 
watched the youngster shoot pool a few times and knew his aim 
was fairly good, considering he was at that age where your balls 
make you shake all the time, like it or not.  He did, however, blame 
her for the fact that Jones hadn't gotten his three years suspended 
but instead went away to Brucksville for eighteen months.  She'd 
been uncooperative and evasive on the stand, hadn't stood up for 
him when she should have.

	That looked like it for this turn.  He tapped the white ball, 
which struck seven and banked twice to lie frozen to the rail and 
fourteen, whose path to the easiest pocked was blocked by eight, 
which only wanted to be breathed on to fall inside.  He straightened 
and watch the New Feller turn back to the table.  After a few 
seconds, Morgan cursed and bent to make the best of it.

			*	*	*

	The Cowboy didn't much care for the way the girl was 
looking at Morgan.  But it was the New Feller's lookout, he 
reckoned.  There.  Five, and set up for eight.  "Middle pocket," he 
muttered.  Morgan nodded distractedly.  A nice, solid hit off the rail, 
and in it went.

			*	*	*

	Laura thought Morgan was, in his own way, just as _perfect_ as 
the dress.

			*	*	*

	Morgan grunted disgustedly and moved over to Landers' 
table, waiting for him to finish beating some Hemingford punk 
with a nose ring and bad teeth.

			*	*	*

	"H'lo, Morgan."

	"Hi, ah...I'm sorry.  I've forgotten your name."

	"Laura Green.  It's okay; I have a trick memory."  He laughed 
and leaned on his cue.  "Well, Susan Torkington's spring cleaning 
party was a while back, so I guess I shouldn't be too embarrassed.  
How are you these days?"

	"Hey, Watson, you're up."

	"Oh.  Sorry, Landers."  He bent over the table, sighting angles, 
making measurements.  An ambitious two-bank shot lacked the 
power to sink fourteen; the cue ball rolled lazily into a perfect 
position for Rich's next shot.  

	"Thanks, Watson."

	"Fuck.  Um, sorry."

	"It's all right.  You take the game seriously."  He shrugged.  

	"It's something to do on weekends, I suppose; I don't get out 
into town much except for this."  Landers had sunk three and five, 
just narrowly missing two.

	"You're up again, Morgan."  

	"Thanks, Laura."  The table was still crowded; Morgan had to 
bank around two to nudge nine into a corner.  He tapped the cueball 
into a position Landers was going to have trouble with.

	"I've been doing okay.  Moved out of my parent's house; I'm 
living over Teddy Lee's garage, keeping his numbers straight."

	"Eh?"  

	"You asked how I was doing, remember?"

	"Oh.  Right."  He chuckled.  Landers had been stymied last 
turn, so he was up again pretty soon.  Fifteen, twelve, and - yes! - 
eight.  "Good game, Rich." 

	"Yours was better, Morgan.  See you next week?"  

	"Sure."  Landers walked off towards the bar for a shot of Wild 
Turkey.

	"Hey, Morgan, Betty Schneider's putting on a play in her 
dad's barn.  Some postmodern thing about beer and nuclear war.  
You wanna go?

	He grinned.  "Sounds like a plan.  When is it?"

			*	*	*

	He didn't notice it until he she'd walked up the steps and 
disappeared behind the door.  It was the feeling of watching a dawn 
you stayed up all night for; the graywashed, acidburned feeling that 
settled like sharp dust in the joints of the shoulderblades, lower 
back, and knees; the slow-motion blinking, the urge to quickly 
hunch and extend his neck.  He was getting too old for all this.  
Well, parts of it, anyway.  He chuckled.

	He drove home very carefully, and slept blankly for ten 
hours.  When he woke up, he was ravenous.  She was in the house, 
cooking him breakfast at four in the afternoon in a light blue cotton 
dress.  After eating, they fucked violently on his living room floor.  
He stripped his shirt off impatiently, almost desperately; his 
outflung arm knocked over Helen's photograph.  He didn't notice it 
for four days.  Then he moved it to his dresser, where he saw it 
every morning when he combed his hair.

[gamma]
	"No."

	"Come on."

	"No.  You come on.  Why do you want to?"

	"It'd be fun.  You think it's fun, or you wouldn't keep doing 
it.  C'mon."

	"It's different."

	"Bullshit, Morgan.  It's just a game."

	"The guys..."

	"Fuck the guys!  Morgan, why are you so caught up in this?"

	"I'm not caught up in this, Laura; you are.  But fine.  I'll teach 
you to play pool.  Fine.  You happy now?"

	"It'll have to do."

	"Great.  Let's get back to sleep."

			*	*	*

	Vic Arnold didn't think much of the New Feller bringing 
that Green woman - hell, almost a girl still - into his bar to teach her 
pool, but there wasn't much he could do about it.  A paying 
customer, so Tommy Wittenberg had taught him, was sacrosanct.  
And she paid her own way.  She wasn't very good at first.  No upper 
arm strength, jeered Rich Landers.  Terrible aim, muttered Jackson 
Harriman.  The Otter's Home punks played her until the 
Hemingford punks taunted them for feeling big over beating a girl.  
There was some scuffling and Tommy threw them all out, 
bellowing.

	She improved, some.  The local teens considered her fair 
game - they even sought her out, especially on nights when she 
wore something low-cut.  Laura would smile, and Morgan would 
chuckle from the bar.  But everyone else was uncomfortable.

			*	*	*

	"I want to play the old man."

	"The Cowboy?  Sure.  You won't beat him, you know that."

	"Why do you say that?"

	"No one does.  Ever."

	"You guys just let him win?"

	"No.  He kicks our butts ever y time.  You must have  
noticed."

	"No, I hadn't.  Wow.  I still want to play him, though."

	"Okay, sure.  Just go up and tell him next time you're there."

	"All right.  C'mere."

	"Mmm."

			*	*	*

	He didn't like the way she smelled.  Under the perfume and 
the soap, she smelled like adhesive does when it's going bad, the 
smell that tells you before you feel the wobble that you have to 
replace your cue's tip.

	"'Scuse me, Mr. Spiner?"

	"Cowboy, miss."

	"Would you like to play a game?"

	"Sure.  You going to bet on that?"

	Vic and Rich turned their heads.  The Cowboy never bet with 
townies.

	"Um.  Yes, I will.  How much would you like to bet?"

	"A hundred twenty one dollars and eleven cents."

	Now silence settled across the Cat's chair like a thick layer of 
shed angora fur.

	"Excuse me?"

	"I think you heard me."  The Cowboy put a bit of chalk onto 
his cue.

	"All right."  The New Feller slammed down the last half of 
his beer and frowned.

	The Cowboy pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and laid it 
on the gleaming wood of the rail.  Then he reached back into his 
pocket, pulled out two coins and added them to the bills.  Laura 
smiled and reached into her purse and pulled out her checkbook.  
Muttering from the bar disturbed the silence.  Rich Landers and Vic 
Arnold were bowed over the bar, their cropped gray hair almost 
touching as their lips carefully dropped rounded worries into the 
empty beer glass on the wood below.

	Laura racked; the Cowboy had won the lagging contest for 
going first.  Before she lifted the wooden triangle, he corrected her 
aim, which was slightly off.  His break was massive, as usual.  Laura 
sank two balls on her turn, the Cowboy three.  She put nine in.  He 
bounced the cue ball off two rails and left her in an impossible 
corner.  She returned the favor.  The Cowboy sank fifteen and 
decided eight was too far behind three to get to.  Laura missed three 
entirely but socked one on the rebound.  It didn't go in.  It froze at 
the lip of the pocket, while the cue ball rolled on to a line-up with 
eight and the pocket.  It was over.

	The Cowboy lined up.  Shot.  Slammed the eightball in.  The 
cueball rolled right after it, teetered at the pocket's lip, and sank.  
Scratched.  Scratched on the eightball.  Forfeiture, by the rules.

	The bar's deep silence was shivered by a collective intake of 
breath, but the babble never rose.  The Cowboy took up his cue and 
unscrewed it into its sections.  As he did so, he looked at Morgan 
and said, "Your woman bears watching, Morgan."

	He put the cue in its case and walked up to the bar.  He ordered 
a beer.  Laura took the money with a steady hand and put it in her 
purse.  She walked out of the bar, not looking back at either Morgan 
or the Cowboy.  She would not return.

	And after he left the bar at closing, leaving behind his cue, 
neither would the Cowboy.

			*	*	*

	"Come here, hon."

	"In a minute, Laura; I want to finish this up first."

	"It's just a picture, Morgan.  It can wait."

	"It's Helen's picture, and the frame's been coming loose for a 
while now.  It needs to be done."

	"She's dead, Morgan.  Let her go."

	"Not yet.  And it's not really your business to tell me when to 
let go."

	There was an angry pause that smelled like paper gone 
yellow with age.

	"You believed him, didn't you?  When he said I bore 
watching."

	"I may have."

	"Morgan, don't shut me out.  Put that picture down."

	"No."

	"Don't do this, Morgan."

	"Seems like you're the one doing all that's being done, 
Laura."

	"Fuck you."

	"I'd rather not, thanks."

	She moved out that week, in confusion and tears.  Morgan 
put the picture back on the coffee table.  The nightmares came to 
him less often after that.

			*	*	*

	The Cowboy didn't stop by the Chair to claim his cue; 
eventually Jackson Harriman started to play with it.  It improved 
his game some - it was a very nice cue - but not spectacularly.  The 
cue got broken sixteen months after the Cowboy abandoned it at the 
Cat's Chair.  Jackson broke it over the head of a snotnosed loser 
from Otter's Pasture.  The snotnosed loser pulled a switchblade and 
tried to stick in Jackson's guts; Jackson stuck the splintered end of 
half a cue into the loser's eye socket.

	Jackson served a six months of a two year manslaughter 
sentence.  He spent his parole in the Chair, drinking exactly two 
beers a night, three nights a week.  He didn't play another game of 
pool until his parole was over.

	The Cowboy never shot another game of pool; rather, he 
turned to gardening and became quite a hit with the middle-aged 
ladies at the gardening club.  They seemed to find him rakishly 
charming.  He spent a few years taking in the sun on the porch 
along with his sunflowers, then died quietly.

	Laura Green left town.  The grapevine insisted she was in 
Boston.

heckler
i expect everyone to dig out the lit-crit books now; there will be a quiz

1995:04:07:03:21:13
-- 
"A global village is NOT supposed to be an anarchic tyranny of the 
discourteous!"
		pershing@athena.mit.edu, vox clamans