The Hauntings of Hood Canal

The Way of the Hustler

Petey followed The Way of the Hustler through late June and a good piece of July. It takes time to make a stake because loafing is part of the hustle. Petey’s old Plymouth, also part of his hustle, parked outside poolrooms or before cheap motels on Highway 99 in Seattle. Petey would not attend a good hotel if someone paid his admission. Image counts. Some hustlers go for Cadillacs and class, because showy stuff challenges punks who own more pride than skill.

Petey, on the other hand, likes the “aw shucks” approach. With his stripey shirt and creased pants he looks like a small town tin­horn. He talks like a small town tinhorn, and waits like a loaded bear trap for city boys who fondly believe they know something. If asked about The Way of the Hustler, Petey would doubtless clam up because The Way requires great purity of mind.

It was tough to leave home, and even tougher because love bloomed and all of Petey’s senses told him it was wrong to go. Yet, if a guy sees zeros coming up in the money stash he must make another stake. Without money Petey would be too embarrassed to hang out at Beer and Bait; and Petey believed his presence there would, sooner or later, present a perfect opportunity to cuddle up and marry Bertha. Sometimes he dreamed of snow blowing in over mountains, piling so deep only he and Jubal Jim could break trail. Bertha would be stranded, alone, listening to soft music on the tape deck; at which point the dream changed from heroic to sensual and is really Petey’s business and no one else’s.

The hustler is not exactly a nobleman, although a few have been rumored to show occasional twinges of kindness. The hustler is a man, or sometimes a lady, who lives by wit and skill. That the hustler can shoot nine ball better than most other humans may be assumed, but no hustler is a superior shot in every game. Even Willie Musconi was known to shank shots, and the legendary Minnesota Fats was not technically as good as Musconi. Willie Hoppe, whose reputation echoes through the halls of time, sparked a phrase among generations of players. When faced with a truly complex layout, players will scratch their heads, sigh deeply, and mutter, “Now what would Willie do?” The answer is: “You damn fool, Willie would miss. Because he screwed up.”

Because of the “screw-up” factor no hustler can depend on technical superiority to carry each and every day. Hustlers can win big when they’re hot. They win when suckering novices. They win by placing bets on trick shots. They win in tournaments. They win most of all when they play guys who have some slim chance of winning.

A hustler is a fifteen percent gambler, which means that any game he enters will be no more than fifteen percent luck and eighty-five percent skill. If he plays blackjack he counts the cards and sits to the right of the dealer. If he’s in a game where the deal passes, he measures the amount of his bet accordingly. When working a new bar or poolroom the hustler makes only small bets until he learns flaws of the pool table. He hangs his jacket where he can keep an eye on it.

It’s a solitary life; a life of rented rooms, sandwiches, coffee, and pop. The hustlers who last, drink about as much beer during a night’s work as it would take to float a ping pong ball in a saucer.

When engaged in making a stake hustlers have no time for social graces, which is why, when Petey is on his home turf he finds himself inexperienced with women. Thoughts of love can be expensive to the hustle because they break the concentration. And, time itself stands against intimacy. Mornings are for sleep. Noon to two AM requires attendance at the tables. Only Sunday is open for prayer or a bath, and even then the pool halls open in early afternoon. Most hustlers settle for a shower.

And finally, the game itself is an exercise in purity. No one realized how pure the game is until computer jocks, having a sporting nature of their own, calculated the possible combinations on a pool table at slightly over sixty-five quadrillion. The changing face of the game fascinates beginning players who do not understand how a good hustler can shape that face in pretty much the same way a sculptor shapes clay.

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.”

“It’s what I like about you…” Lee came from the back room and talked to the truck driver. Lee tried to look inscrutable, and not advisory, which is easy enough for the average Chinaman. Lee, however, is far from average. “…you’re easy money. Let me sell you a damn tavern.”

No one can guess Lee’s age, but in the very long-ago he must have stood five-nine and weighed one-thirty. Now he’s shrunk to five-seven and gained to one-sixty. His color fades with age, so he’s almost bleached. He sat at the end of the bar. “Petey,” he said, “what’s news from the home front?” Lee wears black suits, gray shirts, orange ties.

“Can’t say,” Petey told him. “I’m just coming off the road.” He watched the truck driver break. The guy popped the rack head on, the way they do late at night in small joints throughout Montana. Nothing dropped.

“Don’t spend that ten,” Petey told the guy, and Petey set to work. To Lee he said, “Haven’t been home in six or seven weeks.”

“Then you don’t know about the mystery girls,” Lee said. “The woods up your way are supposed to be full of them. Our guys keep drifting up that way and looking. I’m losing customers.”

“The woods may be filled with something,” the bartender said, “but not with mystery girls. Rumor is a dreadful thing. Our boys will soon return and again consort with local trollops.”

“Lot of wrecks going on up your way,” the shorter driver said.

“A guy at the truck stop told me.”

“I’m thinking about that problem,” the bartender mused. “Something up there isn’t square.”

“You could square up this table,” Petey said. “The right corner on the breaking end backs up like a plugged drain.”

“Mystery women up that way don’t make sense,” Lee said. “There’s nothing up that way except a few stores and Bertha’s joint. Good-looking babes, my kiester,” and that’s where he scratched himself. Lee’s hands are chubby with short fingers, while the bartender’s hands are slim and reachy; and it isn’t only the hands. Those two are different in about every way, although they’ve worked side by side for a long long time.

“Plus you’ve got that serial murderer,” the shorter driver said. “What’s all that bull about lynchings?”

“What’s the bull about the wrecks?” Petey worked the table, his face shadowed beneath the baseball hat. He seemed sort-of Italian, but too relaxed to be Mafia; a nice deception. He ran six of seven, left the other guy completely hooked. As planned. The guy missed. Petey cued and missed. As planned.

“Somebody’s forcing cars into the water,” Lee said. “It’s gotta be that. There’s too many for a coincidence. The road hasn’t changed, the Canal hasn’t changed. Somebody’s gone ugly.”

“Anybody we know? I mean the wrecks.” Petey watched the other guy make a little run. “You ought to give lessons,” he said to the guy. He watched the guy run the table. As planned. Petey threw down a ten. “I got a lonesome twenty says you won’t do three in a row.”

“Rack ’em,” the guy said. “I’m on a roll.”

“A lot of cars,” Lee told him. “I haven’t heard any familiar names. No one we know.”

The tall driver broke the rack. Nothing dropped. Petey dropped a stripe, pulled the cueball to kick a little cluster, and had his table set. He ran the table while the other guy stood helpless.

“Play for a buck.”

“Twenty,” the guy said. “I got a feeling.”

A low moan sounded from the far end of the bar where a tortured soul wore a dirty suit and stared through a beer glass toward the far end of eternity. The moan sounded adolescent, like the guy had no experience with the suffering that occurs for pool hustlers, bar owners, Jaguar drivers, or poets. The moan sounded sincere but inexperienced.

“We have ninety seconds,” the bartender whispered. “There will be a revelation concerning someone’s infidelity. It will end in a full confession and/or indictment. Perhaps there will be excuses. We may see manly tears.”

“Her name was Georgia,” the voice quavered from the far end of the bar.

“Oooopsy,” the bartender said, “I was off by sixty seconds.”

“Gray,” the guy said. “Georgia Gray. It was a sort of a joke.” The guy looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He straightened his tie. Sniffed back snot. Squared his shoulders like a good soldier.

“You gonna rack ’em or what?” Petey could see his hustle fading. A hustle depends on the undivided attention of the party being hustled.

The tall player racked, but his thoughts clearly drifted elsewhere. Petey had to figure that a mildly promising hustle was going to end in no more than a twenty buck profit.

“Women sure can do it to ya, can’t they?” The tall player lifted the rack and waited for Petey’s break. “You’d think a guy would learn.” He ground chalk onto his cue tip and looked hopeless as a man writing alimony checks.

“I’m glad I’m settled in,” Lee said. “What with all the society diseases running around. It must be a real crapshoot out there.”

“I miss Pinky, too.” The guy in the suit turned on his barstool and his voice held indignation. “Naturally, I do not miss the sad bastard all that much.”

“We’re playing twenty-bucks-a-game pool here.” The driver who was not playing sensed an opportunity. “To make it friendly I’ll play you for ten.”

“Mistake,” the bartender whispered. “Now you’ve extended an invitation. We will endure a tale of hanky-pank between lonesome Georgia and loathsome Pinky. Imagine, if you can, a lover named Pinky.”

“With tax and license,” the drunk guy said, “she came to a little over sixty-seven thou. The shop can do a dry-out and rebuild, but it’ll never be the same. Never.” He belched, then moved along the bar in a plausible imitation of W C. Fields. “Naturally, they’re all having a good laugh at the office.”

“As grandma used to say,” the bartender mused, “‘I swan to glory: He’s talking about machinery.’”

“I’m now driving,” the drunk explained. “…a little Japanese rental thing with vinyl seats for God’s sake…” He looked at Lee, at Lee’s eyefolds. “The Japanese are a great people.”

“The Japanese are assholes,” Lee told him. “And you’re taking a cab, if we have to club you to get the car keys.”

“I got to quit drinking,” the pool-playing driver complained. “I thought we were talking about women.”

“You were,” the bartender told him. “He wasn’t.” The bartender looked the guy over; gray suit, school tie to a school he likely never attended, high-priced haircut. “For a number of reasons,” the bartender told him, “you may be drinking in the wrong bar. Who, may I ask, is Pinky?” The bartender moved to the phone behind the bar and punched in the number of a cab company.

The guy made it to a barstool, planked his rear, and leaned on the bar. He fished in his pocket for car keys. “Some of my best friends are Japanese.” He put the keys on the bar.

“Pinky,” Lee said. “You have a friend named Pinky.”

“Had,” the guy said, and almost yelled. “Had, had, had! Until he got his stupid self drowned.” The guy teetered on the barstool, and spoke in what amounted to shorthand. “…big golf weekend up north… business deal… lots and lots of real estate… big hairy emergency at the office… caught a quick flight back in a puddle jumper… big hush hush… Pinky follows with the car and golf clubs. Splash. Bye bye Pinky.” The guy weaved, which is not that hard to do on a barstool. “Bastard was a liability from the get-go.”

“This is interesting,” Lee said to the other guys. “I never saw crap stacked so high it could wear a suit.”

Petey, his hustle busted, as surely as he busted the rack of balls, almost indifferently ran the table. He banked the eight ball with no real satisfaction and picked up the driver’s twenty. “I reckon it’s time to travel.” He looked at the driver. “Unless you’re still hot and want healing.”

“Forget it,” the driver said. “And thanks. I needed the practice.” A very cool head, that driver.

Petey turned to the drunk, maybe because “Petey” and “Pinky” sound similar. “You attend the funeral?”

“Dead people shouldn’t look that calm,” the drunk said. “Like all the meanness had been sucked out of him.”

“Was he as nasty as you?” The bartender pretended interest. “Because perhaps we’ve discovered a cure.”

“He was vice president of a mortgage company.” Then the drunk realized he’d been insulted. “Suppose it was your car?”

“If it were my car,” the bartender told him, “and we’re talking authentic Jaguar here, I would erect a shrine in their mutual memory.”

“There must be something to all that bull about accidents,” Petey said. “I reckon I’d better get on home.” Then he paused. “You think somebody’s gone ugly?”

“Something isn’t square,” the bartender said. “I’m thinking about the problem. When I figure it out I’ll send word.”

“Avoid hustlers,” Lee told Petey, as Petey headed for the door. “I worry about you kids.”