The Risk Pool by Richard Russo

Author:Richard Russo [Russo, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-80993-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-11-15T16:00:00+00:00

27

My father liked to wait until he was sure winter was finished before he went back to work on the road. That meant May, even when spring came in April. This year, though, he went back to work at the end of March. The reason he gave was that he owed me money, and for a while I thought I might get it back, or part of it. But, like the previous winter, we’d gotten behind a couple months rent and we owed Harry, too. Then Drew Littler got himself in a jam and my father loaned Eileen some money. My father’s ideas about debt were vague, cosmic. He figured if you had money and somebody needed some, you gave it to him, at least if the guy was all right and would do the same for you. Later on, if you needed it and he had it you could call on him. In the meantime, if you didn’t need it, you left him alone.

My situation was this. I’d loaned him money, sort of. Because he needed it and was good for it, sort of. But I didn’t need it back, which meant I had no business worrying about it. Later on, if I needed it and if he had it, he was supposed to give the money back. If he didn’t have it, he’d regret the fact and wish there was something he could do. But right now, Eileen needed the money and I didn’t, so he gave it to her. The reason she needed it was that Drew had landed himself in jail after beating some Negroes half to death outside the pool hall. I hadn’t been there, but the event was recounted at the Mohawk Grill in several versions, each apocryphal after its own fashion. After listening to all of them, I did a composite sketch based on my knowledge of Drew Littler and those details common to the several versions of the event, tossing out variants that seemed out of character or attributable to the character and prejudice of the speaker. Having seen Drew Littler shoot pool, I absolutely believed certain aspects of the story that other people doubted. Drew believed that pool operated on much the same principles as weightlifting. He never could be made to understand that a cue ball could not be blasted through a dense cluster of balls and come out the other side with its original trajectory intact, like a fullback plowing through the line of scrimmage. It never paid to daydream when he was shooting either, because balls had a way of becoming airborne in multicolored blurs, rattling off walls and cracking along the floor at shin level. He attacked even the side pockets viciously.

One afternoon, Drew and I had shot a few racks up in my father’s apartment. I didn’t like playing with him because he couldn’t win but hated to lose. I’d sandbag like a son of a bitch, but there was just no way to keep him in the game.

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