Petey worked the Seattle scene for a couple of weeks. It’s a scene most lucrative because, a few years ago, the game became so popular that “pool schools” appeared. Bright young men who wished to impress young women, or wished to appear in beer commercials, attended school with diligence. A lot of hot rock players appeared, short mileage guys who look good for an hour, then fade.
Petey’s old jeans jacket hung floppity, blue and stained, on a hanger beside suit jackets with expensive labels. Petey’s blue baseball cap, this one reading “Ace Fish Processing” was in stark contrast to fancy green eyeshades and tinted glasses of other players. Petey’s cue looked like a plain stick beside the pearl inlaid cues of the newly initiated, but Petey’s cue is a sleeper. A thousand bucks would not buy one as good.
When Seattle tired of him Petey dropped down to Tacoma, a drive that takes less than an hour. Petey took three days. He checked the action in bars, poolrooms, back rooms, and card rooms. A fifteen percenter, he treated small timers in kindly manner and picked up another thousand over expenses.
Very promising, especially since the big money lay untapped. In Portland it is sometimes possible to gain entrance to a gentleman’s club. In Portland all play is methodical, because in Portland patience is a virtue. Politics excepted, Portland does not deal wild cards or loaded cueballs, never has. Portland was originally settled by New England churchmen and thus suffers. Portland believes that Four Roses refers to a garden show. Seattle, on the other hand, does not believe that at all. Seattle was originally settled by bums.
Petey adhered to the purity of The Way, and the last week of July saw him pulling out of Portland. His Plymouth groaned beneath the weight of his wallet; but the Plymouth was not about to pass up any good thing. It headed for Lee’s China Bay Taverna at the foot of the Hood Canal.
Only the hand of the artist, and an Oriental hand at that, could take concrete blocks, stack them in a fifty-by-seventy rectangle, put a roof over them and make the whole mess beautiful. Dark pines soar above China Bay’s golden, twisty, roof. Its doors shine Dragon-Lady-red. The paved parking lot has a grade dropping toward a roadside ditch. That grade, together with rain, keeps the macadam nicely shined and free of gum wrappers, cigarette butts, combs with missing teeth; all the ragtag and clutter of happily wasted lives.
China Bay is a smiling place, and only occasionally scary. The bartender is renowned for wisdom, and the owner, Lee, has the Buddha’s tolerance for occasional imbalances between yin and yang. Lee and the bartender have been together for more years than most folks can imagine, although no two people could seem more mismatched. Together, though, they give China Bay Taverna a reputation for good sense in an area where good sense is at a premium; an area that cares nothing for yin and yang, because abstract stuff is hard to steal.
The state Capitol sits nearby. As Petey’s Plymouth pulled onto the paved lot, Petey could see the Capitol dome rising like an ambitious hamburger above a low range of hills. Petey pulled into a parking space beside a new Chev pickup. He looked the lot over, saw one frowsy Jaguar, one Japanese rice grinder, and two old hang-and-rattle dump trucks. The Jag belonged to the bartender, the pickup, Petey figured, belonged to Lee. The junk dump trucks spelled workingmen. The rice grinder could be anything. Petey scratched his bald spot and felt the way a guy does, when that guy has been too long away and sees the first signs of home.
Petey told himself he must be getting old. It was not that his joints ached, or that he felt bored. He just felt a little too pleased to be back on familiar ground. In a man born to hustle that seemed worrisome. But, although he worried over being happy, he would not have to worry long. He did not know about developments back home.
Petey did not then know, and would be surprised to learn, that Sugar Bear brooded. He did not know that Annie had changed from a lithesome shadow flicking between trees in the forest, to a vital and beautiful young lady.
Nor did Petey know that cars were dunking with great regularity, or that Bertha had spoken to women from the housing project. Most of the regulars at China Bay knew nothing of these things, either, but accurate information has never been a requirement for bar talk.
Petey eased from the Plymouth, walked to the Dragon-Ladyred doors. The doors opened to a view of four pool tables, a twenty-five-foot bar with polished top, and a front of black and green enamel. Three exceedingly fat goldfish swam in a tank big enough for ten. The tank had a top fastened with clamps, thus keeping twenty-one-year-old alcoholics from showing off as they tried to swallow the fish. A carved dragon sat beside a halltree on which hung tinsel left over from some now-forgotten holiday. Tables and chairs staggered across the room in happy confusion. Two retired gents played cribbage at the fish tank end of the bar. From the storeroom behind the bar Lee’s voice consulted with itself in Chinese.
“Petey,” the bartender said. “Long time.”
“Petey,” a guy said. “I get first shot at you. Five bucks, bank the eight.” The gent unwrapped himself from a bar stool. He was thin to the point of gangly and moved with the grace of someone who mostly lives outdoors. He smelled of loam, which meant he worked with plants and grades and trees; and loam must be what he carried in his junk dump truck.
“Working or drinking?” the bartender asked. This bartender, of all bartenders anywhere, could keep a joint under control by voice alone. This bartender’s eyes were golden, or sometimes gray, or sometimes blue. This bartender had a young girl’s moves and a strong man’s assurance.
“Bottle-a-pop,” Petey said. “Strawberry if you got it.”
“I’ll watch the show,” the other truck driver said about the coming pool game. “If you can’t stop a massacre you might as well enjoy it.”
At the far end of the bar a guy wearing a dirty suit sat staring into a beer glass as he puzzled the meaning of life. Everyone politely ignored him. This guy would doubtless get skunked a little further, somehow make it back to the rented room, sleep it off, and then try to listen to his lawyer. In a year or less he’d be married again; that sort of guy.
“You don’t wanta play for five,” Petey advised the first guy. “I’m on a roll. I’m making ’em overhand from center court. Play for a buck.”
“Ten,” the guy said. “I know you’re bulling me but get in line. Lemmie do it to myself.” The guy racked for eight ball.
“We could still do a little work this afternoon.” The truck driver who was not playing was also skinny, but not so tall. He looked into his beer glass. “When I die I’m gonna get myself cremated. I raked so damn much dirt in my life I can’t bring myself to be buried in it.”
“Petey don’t come by here all that much,” the first guy said. “How often do you get a chance to hustle a hustler?”
“…trying to decide on a long or short afternoon,” the shorter guy explained. “Which means do I plan on one more beer, or what?”
“The electrical system on Jaguars,” the bartender mused, “is like playing solitaire with wild cards. I presently have one headlight that winks like a hussy picking up Pontiacs.” The bartender turned as the sound of Lee’s voice rose in the back room. Lee cussed, sincerely, heartfelt, deep in his own problems; the cussing like fundamental curses from prophets of olden days, but all in patriarchal Chinese. “Pearl of the Orient,” the bartender called, “Petey’s here.”
Petey broke the rack, made a solid, ran four balls, then failed to break a little cluster that covered the other solids. “Run ’em,” he said to the dump truck driver, and the driver did. Petey tossed ten bucks on the table, gave a tight little grin like he was in pain and had planned nothing. “Next time,” he muttered and began to rack the balls. The tall driver stood as proud as if he’d accomplished something. “You think you’re doing me but I ain’t going to let it happen.”