“That’s debatable.” Fats picked up the three ball and sent it spinning around the table. It went three rails and fell in the corner pocket. In the parking lot a car began honking in short bursts, then stopped. “I also told you to play in tournaments.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Eddie said. “The World Open in in New York this winter and first prize is eight thousand. The entry fee is five hundred, and you have to stay in New York for two weeks. There’s only money in that if you come in first.”
“Then come in first,” Fats said.
“Against Seeley and Dorfmeyer? You couldn’t beat them, and I can’t beat you.”
“Don’t tell me who I can’t beat, Fast Eddie.” Fats took the seven ball and did the same three-rail toss, this time plunking it into the corner pocket on top of the three.
“Then you play the World Open.” Eddie looked up into the stands a moment, where a group of people was finally getting up to leave. It had been a dull crowd and their applause had been light, even for Fats’ final run of forty and out.
“I don’t need to play the World Open. When I finish this tour next month, it’ll be the last game of pool I’ll play. I don’t need it anymore. You’re the one who needs it.”
“I’ve never played tournaments, Fats. A hustler didn’t do that. You didn’t want to come out of the closet.”
“The times have changed, Eddie. Straight pool is out of style. You could stay in that closet and starve.”
“Or sell real estate.”
Fats looked at him thoughtfully. “The money’s in nine-ball.”
“I don’t play nine-ball.”
“You can learn.”
“Nine-ball is a kid’s game. It’s what they play in those bars where you put a quarter in the table and another in the jukebox.”
“They play for a lot of money in some of those bars.”
“In Cincinnati you said I wasn’t good enough.”
“You got better.” Fats looked at him. “Do you know what Earl Borchard made last year in nine-ball tournaments?”
“No.”
“Sixty thousand. And I don’t know what he made hustling on the side. They say he plays the bar tables.”
“How would you know how much money he makes?”
“In Billiards Monthly.”
Eddie got the magazine at the poolroom but never did more than flip through it. It was mostly ads for pool-table and cue-stick manufacturers, or books on trick shots. There were “profiles” of young players—usually a few lines of praise under a glossy photograph of somebody holding a pool cue. It made him vaguely sick to look at it. There were also ads for nine-ball tournaments, in places like Asheville and Chattanooga and Lake Tahoe. “Sixty thousand?”
“That’s in seven tournaments. About ten weeks’ work.”
He’d had no idea there was that much money in it. “He’s got to pay expenses.”
“You paid expenses when you were on the road. Did you ever make sixty thousand?”
“Borchard’s the best. What does the second-best make?”
“Don’t ask.” Fats turned back to the table. “If you don’t trust your eyesight, those bar tables are better. Smaller.” He looked at Eddie. “They play eight-ball on them too. A man can make a good living at eight-ball in bars.”
“Eight-ball is stupid. There’s nothing to it but slopping around.”
Fats looked at him silently a minute. Then he went to the place at the end of the table where the balls were kept, squatted down and took them out. He racked them into a triangle, with the black ball in the center. “Let’s play a game of eight-ball,” he said. He got his cue case from the bleacher and took his silver-wrapped Joss from it. Eddie watched him in disbelief. You did not think of a player like Minnesota Fats playing eight-ball. Fats tightened his cue, went to the head of the table, took his stance and blasted the balls apart. The weight behind his stroke was impressive. Balls went everywhere and two of them fell in. “In the first place,” he said, “you have to make one on the break.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“On a bar table you can,” Fats said. “I’m going to take the stripes.” A striped ball and a solid one had fallen in on the break, giving Fats his choice. “Do you know why?” He was like a schoolteacher at the blackboard.
Eddie looked over the table. “Those four stripes in the open.”
“Not at all,” Fats said. “In eight-ball the main thing is not to leave a shot. Not in the important games. Sometimes you let him have a few balls when it’s time to. You have to control it. I’m shooting the stripes to control the solids.” He bent down and made the thirteen ball. There was movement in the bleachers. Eddie looked up to see the half-dozen remaining people coming down to the front row to watch.
“I’m going to shoot the nine now,” Fats said, “and I’m going to make my position a few inches off, for the twelve. The kind of thing that happens now and then.” He bent, shot the nine ball in. His cue ball rolled too far, leaving a difficult shot on the twelve. It would have to be banked. “Now, the thing about the twelve,” Fats said, “is that I don’t have to make it. Watch.” He banked the ball across the side and missed it. The cue ball rolled to one side of a cluster of balls, where the only shot was on the fourteen ball. “If I’d made it, I’m fine. If I miss it, he has nothing.”
“I know how to play safe,” Eddie said.
“I’m talking eight-ball safe,” Fats said. “I’m trying to tell you that if you learn how to control this game you can make a living at it.”
“In bars?”
“In bars, Fast Eddie.”
Eddie thought about it, about the games of eight-ball he had played with Skammer. “In the South?”
Fats looked at him. “Winter’s coming on.”
“You’ve been talking nine-ball tournaments,” Eddie said. “Now it’s eight-ball.”
“You have to crawl before you can walk.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re not ready for nine-ball, Fast Eddie. Borchard would walk right over you, and so would a half-dozen others. You can play eight-ball on brains and experience, and you’ve got those.”
“Thanks.”
Fats started taking his cue apart again. The people behind him in the stands were watching him, fascinated. “If you do it for six months, it might put you back where you were. Then you can take up nine-ball.”
“I hate the punks who play nine-ball.”
“It’s that or real estate,” Fats said.
“Where would I play eight-ball for money?”
“When we get to the airport I’ll give you a list. Our car’s coming.” Fats pointed to the parking lot. A blue car was driving up. It had a sign on its side reading AIRPORT SERVICE.
“Where would you get a list of places to play eight-ball?”
Fats put his cue in its case. “How do you think I made the money to retire on? While you were racking balls in Kentucky, I was putting quarters in slots in North Carolina.”
Eddie stared at him. “Wearing that suit?”
“They make blue jeans in my size. It costs twelve dollars extra.”
Chapter Five
When he was a kid in Ohio, you never broke the balls with a jointed cue or with the white ball; you used a house cue stick and a special dull brown cue ball. Charlie taught him that, and it was Charlie who bought him his first Willie Hoppe cue, with the black leather wrappings on its butt and the brass joint. “You don’t slug them with this, Eddie,” Charlie said. “The joint can’t take it.” In those days Eddie would pick out a club of a cue—twenty-two or twenty-three ounces—and smash the rack open with it before using the Willie Hoppe. It was all different now. The balls were made of something called phenolic resin, and their colors were brighter: the old dark green stripe on the fourteen was now a bright emerald with a glow to it, and the nine was canary yellow, like something in Walt Disney. You broke the rack with the white ball now and, with a handmade Balabushka cue, slammed them as hard as you could. You couldn’t ruin the steel joint.