“Break,” Bertha said to Petey, “unless fear holds you back.” Her smile denied her words and her fingers touched her hair, pushing it back across her shoulder. Bertha looked like a teenage girl practicing seduction moves before a mirror.
Petey set the cueball beside the racked balls, gently popped it three rails to come back and tap the head ball. The rack broke a little, the one, two, and three balls drifting off a couple inches. The cueball nestled against the four, freezing the board.
“If I was a dog,” Petey said, like he talked to no one in particular, “I’d hire a cat to sleep out there by the water.”
“If you was a dog,” Bertha told him, “you could shoot pool better.” She fired a shot two rails. The cueball danced down on the one ball, tapping it into a corner pocket. The cueball drifted across and freed up the seven. “Cops,” Bertha said, “lead snoopy lives. Sniyn’ worse than hounds.” She looked at Jubal Jim. “You’ll forgive it.”
“Mom always told me the policeman was my friend.” Petey chalked his cue with moves delicate as a girl. He never rubs the chalk or smears it. It’s just dab, dab, dab until he gets a level surface. “Of course, Mom always claimed my daddy was my daddy.”
Sometimes his mouth gets ahead of his good sense. He turned to watch the Canal and hide his embarrassment. A yacht slid down the eastern shore, outward bound. Petey blushed red as a faded three ball.
They dance around each other, this blond Norwegian and her too-shy pool partner. For a while people took bets on how long it would take them to conjugate, but time ran on and the bets ran out. Then there was talk that neither one knows what themselves look like naked, being too shy to stand in front of a looking glass. Considering all the razzle-dazzle that goes on in beds around here, we find Bertha and Petey sort of endearing.
“Safety,” Bertha said in pool language and tapped the two ball one rail. The cueball touched the three ball, then sat solid as a stump behind racked balls. The three ball fled to the other end of the table and nestled against the rail like two-part harmony.
“These are state cops.” Petey tried to sound detached. “They’re different than city cops. Take my word.” Petey knows as much as a man needs about city cops. He has to journey to Seattle or Portland or Vancouver when his money runs low. He hustles pool, then returns to the Canal. He keeps his skills honed at Beer and Bait.
“Cops are cops.” Bertha watched Petey’s shot. He cued from behind the rack, heavy right-hand English, and the ball went two rails to end up maybe three-quarters of an inch from the three. Petey muttered something under his breath, something poolish.
“Gotcha,” Bertha said, “or at least I got a little run.” She set to work and it was a dazzler. Showtime. Balls falling, thump. Ringling Bros.
“Take my word,” Petey told her. “These cops are different.” He sat on a barstool watching Bertha loosen that rack, peel off a ball, sink it while loosening another. Sunlight set Beer and Bait aglow. The three pool tables stood like spectators beside a hardwood dance floor large enough for twenty couples smooched together tight; plus a bandstand large enough for piano, drums, and a couple guitars. Chairs and small tables surrounded the dance floor, the tables now sitting in gloom. Sunlight only stretched so far before petering off into shadow.
The fisherman stood, stretched, scratched, then walked to a window. He moved fisherman-smelly through late afternoon, a man home from a month’s work, walking easy and slouched with tiredness. He was not about to ask Bertha for another beer while she was in the middle of a run.
“It mostly happens nights,” he said. He continued to look through the window onto the Canal. “It’s humping again. Putting on quite a show.” Beyond the window a hump beneath the water moved toward the channel like the burp from a giant carp, a carp bigger than a walrus or a whale, bigger than a blimp. Water spread across the calm surface, roiled, and nothing showed—no fin, no rolling body. The fisherman turned to where Bertha knocked down the last of the run. He carried his empty beer bottle. Bertha stays friendly when you bus your own table. Beer and Bait is a nice place for people who are polite.
“And you’re right about those cops,” the fisherman said to Petey. Whereas Petey is about forty and sharp, this fisherman was mid-thirties and qualified as the thoughtful type. He carried wrinkles on his forehead and his face was craggy; like it claimed first cousin to a sea eagle. “These boys act like they know what they’re doing. Makes a nice change, copwise.”
The cops we know are generally not bright, and the cops we know enjoy being nosy. They like to pack.357 magnums, pistols so big that if they ever went off, would scare the living christmas out of their owners. Our cops like to pull pretty girl tourists over, give them a ten minute talking-to, then let them off with a warning. Our cops draw weekly pay and treat the locals like people in custody even when we aren’t. Our cops are country boys, plain and simple, who got jobs on the cops because their talents led them away from honest work.
“I could be wrong,” Bertha admitted. “I was wrong once before. When I bought into a mortgage.” She looked over the premises and her look was sweet. She checked out chipped Formica on the tables, looked at the polished sweep of the solid oak bar, at the twirly advertising hung here and there by beer salesmen. She counted herself lucky, as anyone could see, and even sunlight that showed certain imperfections—scratches on the dance floor—a bullet hole in the bandstand—did not take away her vision of the place.
Jubal Jim snored and gave a little woof as he dreamed of chasing varmints, then poked his nose farther between his paws and kept snoozing. The fisherman, thoughtful, watched him with envy. Petey murmured something low and doggy. Jubal Jim opened one eye, licked his nose, and went back to sleep. A beam of sunlight warmed his fur. Everybody felt pretty dreamy, thinking how it must be if you are a hound hanging out at a nice bar where you are obliged to sleep all day and run all night.
Of course, during the night you meet every kind of creature from rabbit to wolverine, and you learn to use good judgment. More than likely, you also run into whatever it is, out there, that makes the road turn ugly.
“Customers,” Bertha said as tires crunched gravel beyond the open doorway. “Go ahead and rack ’em,” she told Petey. “It’s an hour before things get busy.” Bertha did another flip at her hair, smiled broad as only a Norwegian can, and turned to greet whoever was just then slamming the door of a truck.
A Kid Arrives
Footsteps danced on the porch, then a young man who seemed filled with promise came through the doorway and blinked as his eyes adjusted to inside. He stood no taller than Petey but as muscular, and he moved like a kid practicing ballet or karate. Nothing about him suggested anything but a deep thirst, plus a regular dose of young lust. He looked around for girls, saw none, and figured thirst was the only itch he could scratch. He seemed polite, hazel-eyed, dishwater blond, only a little dense, possibly shy. He said, “Howdy.”
The fisherman sat at one end of the bar pretending to ignore the kid. Petey leaned against a pool table waiting for the next game. Bertha smiled, drew the kid a beer, and for some motherly reason stayed to talk.
“You’ve not been in before,” Bertha said. “Passing through?”
“Hauling wrecks,” the kid said. “Wet ones.” He tried to say it conversational but it was a failure. Bertha gave him credit for trying.
“One of them fish they’re pulling from the creek?” Bertha looked toward the Canal but stayed rooted behind that bar. She was absolutely, completely, one-hundred-percent not going to be first to head out and look at the wreck. The fisherman did not budge. Petey stroked the cueball two rails into a corner pocket while whistling a show tune. The kid, being a kid, expected more. He took a lick of the beer. “Nice dog,” he said. Jubal Jim opened one eye, growled, returned to snoozing.