Something Rising

He was tall and dense, with arms the size of hams, and an enormous head on a thick neck. Bud kept his hair, which was going gray, cut so short he looked like he’d gone missing from some secret branch of the military, and he dressed in T-shirts and blue jeans and motorcycle boots and wore a wide belt with a Harley-Davidson buckle. But he didn’t own a motorcycle. There was a wide gap between his two front teeth and his eyebrows sprouted wild. He had a tattoo of Donald Duck on his forearm, the origin of which he would not discuss, and he had formerly smoked cigarettes but had given them up for cigars; Cassie liked the smell. On the whole Cassie faced the world of men with the wariness of the repeatedly betrayed child—Poppy was the only man she trusted—but long ago she had taken to Bud and felt safe in a room he was in. He kept his distance from her.

“Cassie,” he said, surprised to see her. “What are you doing here?”

She shrugged.

“Well, come help me carry these boxes up front.”

The cases of soda were heavy, but in Bud’s arms and against his stomach, they looked like matchboxes. As she passed the glass room for the third time, Jimmy stuck his head out. “Keep her workin’, Bud. That’s why I had children, although I thought they’d be sons.”

Bud ignored him.

Jimmy came out and sat down at the bar. “Give me a cold something.” He turned to Cassie, winked. “I ever tell you how I came into possession of that table?”

Bud sighed, stopped at the refrigerator door as if he might not open it.

“Okay, okay. I may have mentioned the adventure a time or two. Let me say that I stole so much from that man that night, pretty much everything he held dear, that if we’da kept it up, I woulda left with one of his kidneys.”

Bud relented and got Jimmy the beer.

“I’m back at it,” Jimmy said. “Bud, if she bothers you, send her scootin’.”

Cassie watched him go, accepted the cold Coke that Bud offered her. “You want to play, Cass? I’ve got some bookkeeping to do.”

“I can’t. I’m not allowed.”

“Who says? Jimmy? This is my pool hall, those are my tables, including the one he’s playing on which he keeps insisting is his.” Bud shook his head. “Nothing to be done about him.” He took a tray of balls off the rack and dropped a cube of chalk in the middle. “He never taught you to play?”

Cassie shook her head. “But I’ve watched a lot.”

“I know you have. Jimmy loves an audience. Well, come here, then.”

Bud took down a house cue and examined its tip, then chose another. He said ferrule, scuffer, shaper, mushrooming. He put the cue in Cassie’s hand. She had sometimes snuck Jimmy’s cue out and looked at it, but there was a space that Cassie had never crossed between contraband and the legitimately held thing. She crossed it. The cue felt more formidable than she would have guessed, heavy at the bottom like a weapon and delicate at the top, just a stem. Bud showed her how to rack the balls for 8-ball, 9-ball, straight pool, which she already knew, then taught her the difference between an open and closed bridge, then taught her how to sight and where to hold the cue with her rear arm. He said head spot center spot foot spot comer pocket long string foot string center string head string. Kitchen. Head rail side rail foot rail side rail, and for the next four hours, as they lined up shots and hit them, he said a thousand things that Cassie fought hard to remember. When the tip of the cue strikes the cue ball, the forearm of your rear arm should be at a ninety-degree angle to the floor. Play begins here. This is a foul, and this is a foul, and this is also a foul; one of your feet must remain on the floor at all times. This is a mechanical bridge and there is no shame in using it. Chalk your tip before every shot but not until your opponent has missed because it’s rude not to wait. A slice, a thin slice, an impossible slice. The ghost ball, or phantom ball, the ghost table acting as a mirror. Bank shots and combinations and the massé and jumps. Sharking. Speed of stroke, hold the cue lightly, deadstroke. How to will deadstroke, or if it’s always a gift from God. On the cue ball: the vertical axis, the follow, right English, 3:00, low right, the draw, 6:00, left english, 9:00, high left.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Ten.”

“You need to get an Introduction to Physics textbook. No one in Hopwood county is going to teach you physics at this age. Also you’ll need to know something about geometry. Your fool father will say he’s good at this game because he thinks in geometry, but he’s lying. He never even learned geometry, they didn’t go that far in reform school. And this game is about physics, so do that, get a book.”

Cassie nodded. She wished she had her notebook.

“And grow. You’re too short to see what’s happening on the table.”

“Okay.”

“Cassie,” Jimmy said, standing at the bar with his cue taken apart and stowed back in the case, “I’m leaving. Put this stuff away and tell Uncle Bud thank you for the lesson.”

“You’re out of here early,” Bud said, crossing his arms across his wide chest. “I thought you’d still be here when the late crowd arrived.”

“You were wrong.” Jimmy pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Get in the car, Cass.”

“You go on, Jimmy. I’ll take her home.”

“Or I’ll call Edwin,” Cassie said, shocked as she heard herself say it.

“Get in the car, Cassie.”

Bud took a step toward Jimmy. “I’ve got an idea, how about you head on wherever you were going, which was surely not home where you belong, and I’ll take care of getting Cassie back. Sound good?”

The muscles in Jimmy’s face tightened and relaxed; Cassie had seen this many times, he did it when he was furious, as lions yawn before they attack. His whole body was tense. But he said, smiling at the end, “Whatever. Save me the trip.” He walked over and kissed Cassie on top of her head. “Don’t let Bud talk you into playing for money.” He strolled out the front door, unlocked now, even by leaving through a door you didn’t enter through is very bad luck, Cassie almost said something.

“All right, come here now,” Bud said, setting up the three ball in front of a side pocket. “I want you to take this shot a hundred times, I’m going to stand here and count. If you make it fifty times you can come back tomorrow.”

It was an easy shot in some ways; she was shooting from the side of the table, and she didn’t have to reach. The three was eighteen inches from the pocket at what Bud said was about a thirty-degree angle. But Cassie had seen right away that this was a game in which mysterious forces seemed to be at work, which meant that sometimes things might go well and that was a surprise, and sometimes everything went wrong and that was also a surprise. Bud said there were an infinite number of variables to consider, and Cassie didn’t understand what that meant but remembered the phrase so she could ask Belle. He said take the best shot available to you, and if there isn’t one, go safe. If you practice a shot many times, you add it to a repertoire until you own the table. He said don’t go for the slice beyond ninety degrees, because when you do, you’re pushing hard against the spectrum of possible outcomes.

Other people began to trickle in, a middle-aged couple who looked like they’d just woken up and eaten fried eggs. A thin bald man playing alone. Cassie barely registered them. She made the shot sixty-two times, told Bud he could go about his business, then lined the balls up and started all over, and she did that right up until Edwin Meyer touched her on the arm and told her it was time to go home.

They got in Edwin’s car, a clean, modest Dodge that smelled like nothing but an unfolded map, and headed home. Edwin was younger than Jimmy but had started school at four and skipped two grades, so they ended up in the same class. Unlike Uncle Bud’s, Edwin’s life had diverged early from Jimmy’s, when Poppy wanted Jimmy to work at the hardware store and he refused. Edwin took the after-school job and stayed right there, no ladder to move up, just more responsibility to take on, longer hours to work, until Poppy decided to retire and sell, and Edwin bought the place. He’d been at Public Hardware twenty years now, Cassie guessed, and he was so much entwined with the building and the smell of nails in wooden bins, the creaking of the old floor, that if the store didn’t exist, Edwin wouldn’t, either. He’d go trinner and thinner until finally he couldn’t be seen, couldn’t be remembered. Cassie forgot him all the time. Laura said he felt responsibility for them all, as if, when he purchased Poppy’s business he also purchased his failings; Jimmy was clearly a failing. Someone, Edwin was fond of saying, had to keep everything in working order. He had no family of his own.

“Are you—you were there a long time—all right?” Edwin was wearing the clothes he favored for work: polyester trousers in a horrible shade of tan or green and a seersucker dress shirt from Sears. His thin dark hair lay flat against his head, Laura said he had a Lovely Face. Laura called him Sweet Reason. Cassie told Belle one night she thought Edwin loved Laura, and that’s why he was always calling on them for Chinese checkers and hot tea, but Belle said Cassie was wrong. She said he came for other reasons, and he was Pure.

“I’m fine, yeah.”

“A pool hall,” Edwin said, shaking his head. “I would have been in all kinds of trouble if I’d been caught in a pool hall at your age.”

Cassie looked out the window. Roseville was closing the shutters and rolling up the streets, as Jimmy would say. “What kind of music is this?”

Edwin turned the volume up. “It’s a polka. A German polka. My parents were German, you know, very firm. Firm, hardworking people.”

“Okay.”

“This is my favorite kind of music, although I don’t ordinarily say so. My parents had a Victrola, a real one, and a collection of seventy-eights. Big records. They used to put on a polka record on Saturday nights, just like tonight, and we would dance, it’s very joyful music, as you can hear.”

“Okay.”

“And my father became a different man. All week long he”— Edwin paused, drove—” counted the grains of salt we were allowed to put on our potatoes. He counted for my mother so she wouldn’t cheat. So Saturdays were great. For me.”

They drove out to the edge of town, turned on 300 West, headed for the King’s Crossing. “Do you know anything about bicycle chains?” Cassie asked, embarrassed.

“I surely do. I’m thinking about your bike, what sort of chain you need.” He thought. “It’s too old and slow and meant for a boy,” he said, as he turned the car around and headed back to the hardware store.

“Not if it’s a bother,” Cassie said.

“We’ll take care of it.” Edwin leaned in toward the steering wheel, smiled. “A project.”

They finished late. Cassie rode the bike down to the crossroads and back, and told Edwin it felt like new.

“I don’t think it was ever new, Cassie.”