Chapter 8: Bound in Jail, All Night Long

Capt. Reed didn’t haul me in himself, he called some junior officers and they took me in. He went on home. I didn’t see Willis again—I don’t know if he took a while to wake up or if he slipped out the back door, like everybody else. Either way, I was slipped into the back of a sheriff’s deputy car by a corporal and taken to downtown Chattanooga. The jail/police station is diagonally across the courthouse square from the Brass Register, a place where lots of my friends used to go. I don’t drink, so hanging around in bars is lost on me, but under the circumstances, it was likely that several of my friends were across the square having a drink as I was being fingerprinted.

The intake officer also had corporal’s stripes. She was almost as tall as I was, maybe 6”0”, and friendly, in an odd way, given our respective positions. She had a blonde poofy do and wanted me to call her Dot. Late twenties, maybe.

“So what are we charging you with?” she asked. The corporal who’d driven me in was missing. I was still handcuffed.

“Couldn’t tell ya’” I said. “I was walking out of a bowling alley and got tackled.”

“Hixson lanes?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“So you’re the one who got into a fight with Willis?” she asked.

“I think so,” I answered.

“O.K.,” she said. “You’re stuck here for the night. If you had a lawyer, he might be able to spring you tonight, but without a lawyer, you’re not likely to get out on an affray charge before magistrate’s court tomorrow morning.”

“I have a lawyer,” I said.

“Really?” Her face registered surprise, then doubt. “Most guys who lose a fight to Willis don’t have attorneys.”

“Hang on. I’m not sure this matters, but I didn’t lose. Willis was out cold behind the pool table when I left.” I think this was a foolish instance of allowing masculine pride to talk. It should always hold its tongue.

“Bullshit,” she said.

“No really,” I said. “He went down like Liston.”

She frowned at me for a few seconds, and then picked up a bulky walkie-talkie from the counter. She pushed a black button and got back a squawk of static. “Kenny?” she asked.

“10-4” came back.

“What happened at the Hixson Lanes tonight?” she asked. Squawk.

“There was an apparent 10-15 discovered by Capt. Reed.”

“Gimme a break, Kenny. What the fuck is a 10-15?”

“A civil disturbance.”

“Listen, asshole, I know there was a disturbance on account of I got the civil disturber here at intake. What happened?” she asked.

“Some guy named Leon punched out Willis,” he said. Squawk. I smiled.

“Is Willis okay?”

“He’s fine, yeah,” came back. Squawk. “I called in a 10-52 but by the time it got to dispatched Willis was up on his feet again so I 10-66ed it.”

“So Willis is okay?” she asked.

“10-4,” he said. Squawk.

“Kenny, you dick-head, does that mean yes or no?” she said. Squawk.

“It mean’s ‘yes,’ under these circumstances,” he answered.

“Thank you,” she said with exaggerated emphasis. She looked up at me, as if realizing for the first time that the foregoing exchange had been witnessed. “I went to high school with a lot of these assholes,” she said, “and they’ve never stopped driving me crazy.”

“So, Leon,” she said. “You’re not only the first guy ever to knock out Willis Reed, you’re also the first guy to get arrested on Saturday night in Hamilton County who has his own lawyer. You get a call, so go ahead,” she said.

“Why are you so worried about Willis?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she asked. Cops are hard to read. There’s always this guarded thing about their expressions. Their eyes don’t convey much.

“Is Willis a friend of yours or something?” I asked.

She paused a few minutes. “We were in high school together.”

“Oh, you dated,” I said.

Pause. “A little. We’re friends, is all.” I decided that telling the admitting officer that her boyfriend was now dating a beautiful red-head who couldn’t play pool was a bad idea.

“Okay. Here’s what happened. He got mad at somebody for reasons that escape me. He was about to clobber a nice old guy with the fat end of a pool cue which might of killed the old guy, so I grabbed the cue, so he got mad at me. I don’t like to fight, so I decked him. Everybody else in the bar saw the Captain’s car pull into the parking lot and left. I have a strong right, but not strong enough to do any lasting damage to Willis.”

“You a boxer?” she asked.

“No. Why?”

“I’ve known him for ten or fifteen years, and he’s always getting into fights, but I’ve never heard of him getting KOed before,” she said. “Anyway, here’s the phone, if you want to call your lawyer.”

“What time is it?” I asked. My watch was missing. It wasn’t expensive, I wasn’t worried. It may have popped off when I hit Willis. I’m left-handed, so I wear my watch on my right hand.

“12:15,” she said.

“I’ll call tomorrow,” I said. This confused her.

“This is your opportunity to call your lawyer,” she said.

“It’s late,” I said. “I don’t want to wake anyone.”

“You’re not going to get him,” she said. “You’re going to get an answering service or one of those machines.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t really want to call my lawyer,” I said.

“You said you had one,” she said, with rising exasperation.

“I do, but I don’t want to call him.”

“Who do you want to call?” she asked.

“My geometry teacher.”

“All right, asshole, that’s it. You’re spending the night in jail, you meet with the p.d. at eight thirty, arraigned at ten.”

“I don’t want a p.d.”

“Good night.”

And so I was led down to the jail by someone else in a sheriff’s uniform. It was after lights out, so I slept in a tiny little closet next to the drunk tank. An odiferous experience.

Chapter 7: All Drifters End Up In Jail Eventually

I wanted to stop in on the Hixson Lanes. I really can’t say why. It may be the beginnings of an egotism. They were always nice to me there. I’d been there maybe six or seven times over the last year, so the regulars knew me. I couldn’t make much money there, but it was a nice place to go. So I went back.

Bowling alleys always seem like home. They’re all laid out the same. Off to the right from the main entrance is a bar/diner, and behind that is the pool table, sometimes two or three. There was just one at the Hixson Lanes, a fifty cent per game table with very few cues on the wall. When I walked in, everyone stood up. They apparently remembered the night I’d played Donnie/Hank. The two young community college students playing nine ball stood up, as if at attention, the heels of their cue-sticks resting on the floor.

This was a little weird. I don’t usually go back to places too much, so I’m not used to being recognized. Even still, as I looked around, they started to look familiar. Last time I’d been there the best player had been a blonde kid about my age named Donnie. Or was it Hank? He wasn’t there. But Ford was there, at the bar, drinking some kind of pint, and Walt, whom Donnie/Hank had said owned the place, was waiting his turn to play pool. They all seemed to be looking at me expectantly. It was weird. I took the stool next to Ford.

“Hey. Ford, right?” I said.

”Um, yes. I must admit I don’t remember having the pleasure of meeting you before,” he said.

“It was right here, several months ago. You’d misunderstood the neon sign for Jax beer, which now seems to be gone, as an ad for something you referred to as Janks’s spirit.”

“Yes. Janx Spirit,” he said. “Sorry for having forgotten.” He was English, but I had no idea where from. I could tell South Georgia from North Alabama from West Tennessee without thinking, but toff and Cockney were vaguely different variants of a local dialect to me.

“So what do you do for a living?” I asked.

“I write a sort of travel review,” he said. “Look, are you the pool player they talk about here?”

“I don’t know. I play pool.”

“I think you’re the one who beat Hank, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Well, last time I was here, there was a guy who was running the locals named Hank, although he later told me his name was really Donnie. I bought a game and beat him three times, I think. He was pretty good.”

“Okay,” said Ford, “These guys thought Hank was the best ever. Then you came in and beat him without much effort. Then for the next months or so, they thought he was vulnerable in a way that they’d never thought of before, but he still won every game. Then he disappeared. They think all of this has to do with the man who beat Hank three games straight.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake.”

“So I imagine they want you to play,” he said.

“This ain’t right,” I said.

“How so?”

“I generally try to make money when I play pool, and this will be difficult here. Plus, its almost like they were waiting on me or something. And Hank/Donnie just went off to college. I didn’t kill him or anything.”

“Ah. Nevertheless, they’ve recognized you.”

A short, gaunt man with short dark hair and a grizzled beard took the stool next to me. Ford said hello.

“I’m Henry,” I said, extending my hand. “And you are?”

“Δίδιμασ,” he said.

“Excuse me?’

“I’m sorry, Thomas.”

“Hello, Thomas. Ford is encouraging me to play pool.”

“Yes, well, Ford knows these people better than I do. I’m just passing through.”

“As am I,” said Ford. “I thought I was just passing through here, but have been stranded here for several years.”

“Okay, guys, I’m going to go play pool, but they’re all acting kind of funny so if I get a bad vibe I’m going to bail. If I fail to say good night, no harm intended.”

I went down the step from the bar area to the pool table. It contained the pool table and three or four pinball machines, which no one was playing. I had meant to ease myself into their afternoon, but when I got to the pool table, a new game of nine ball was racked up. A kid handed me a cue.

“This is the one you played with last time,” he said. I looked at the tip. Still pretty flat.

“Okay,” I said. “Chalk?” He handed me one. “So I’m playing?” I asked the group. Everybody nodded.

“I like to play for money,” I said. “Dollar a ball?”

There was some shuffling of feet, then Walt spoke up. “We were thinking ten bucks a game,”

“Okay, but you realize that, since this is nine-ball, you’re actually raising the stakes on me by going to ten bucks a rack?”

“Yeah, but we just figured if we bet it this way we couldn’t be taken to the cleaners.”

“Really, I don’t argue against self-interest, but I promise you that sometime in the future you’re going to realize this was a slightly foolish decision. Lag?”

We lagged, I won, I broke, and I won seven straight. The next up was Walt. The owner of the bowling alley. He was a medium-sized forty-five year old wearing a button-down flannel shirt and khakis. He was smoking a Lucky Strike and had a moustache. The table was clear, except for the cue ball.

One way to test if a table is level and even is to place the cue ball on the cue spot hit it medium solid straight center with top right English. If the table’s right, the cue ball will pocket in the top right. I set the cue ball on the cue mark and tapped it top right. It sailed right into the pocket. True table.

“So tell me how to play pool,” Walt said. Everyone was still very attentive. Odd question,

“What?”

“Tell me how to play pool,” he said. “What makes you so good? All of us in here, except for Ford and Thomas, we play pool all the time. And you’re better than all of us. Why is that?”

How do you answer that?

“Okay, well, I have to say, that’s a complicated question.”

This had never happened before. Flattering, so dangerous.

I wasn’t so reluctant about answering, and not so hesitant about being truthful, which was odd. I’m a guarded guy. But what to say?

“Okay, I’m not much of a teacher. I just started off playing when I was young. Nine, I think, and I played every chance I got. So I got good.” I kind of looked around. Everyone seemed very interested in what I might say next. I just didn’t like this, yet I kept playing to it. It was quiet, amidst the cigarette smoke, so I spoke.

“I’d play sometimes eighty or ninety hours a week when I was a kid. Plus, for the last year or so, I’ve been wandering around playing for money. When you play for money, you think, ‘what do I need to do to win?’ It’s a different way of thinking.”

“What do you do to win?” someone asked.

I paused. This was odd. “Look, I’m really not much of a teacher, but pool is all about straight lines. Just pay attention to those lines. Money is something else. When you look at the table, just look at the lines. When you think about two balls colliding, the one that’s struck is going to move in a direction described by a line drawn between their two center points.” Unfortunately, they all looked baffled. I was telling them something they all knew, intuitively, but as soon as I said it they didn’t recognize it. People are strange. Or maybe I’m a bad teacher.

Everybody looked at me expectantly. They were waiting for something.

“Think about it, if you’re going to play,” I said. “When you knock one ball into another, they’ll always bounce the same way. Every time. Think about that. You’ll realize you understand it. Once you articulate—can explain it, you’ll all play better. Also, listen to guys who play better than you. Even if they’re assholes. Any time somebody beats you, you have something to learn from that guy.”

They all looked deeply distressed.

“Look, if you want to win, you have to think about how the balls are going to bounce. Once you figure out how it works, you just have to practice. Here. Watch.”

The six was just in front of the side pocket, and the cue ball was on the rail by the corner on the same side. I tapped the cue ball and it rolled softly on down to the six and took a wafer-thin slice off of it, sinking it in the side pocket. It fell in like it was going to bed after a long day. It was only barely possible to have made that shot, but it worked, like they almost always do. The table likes me. Egotistical, I know. But true. All the Hixson boys looked at the pocket. They knew they’d seen a display.

They were all expecting something next. What to do? Do it again

“Okay, look,” I said. “If that six ball had been just a half inch further down the table, I couldn’t have made that shot. So I wouldn’t have tried it.”

“What woulda you did?” asked a great big black guy.

“I don’t know. Set it up.” The big guy—maybe six four and big all over—put the cue ball back on the rail and the six a little too far past the side pocket think about rolling it in over there. “That it?” I asked.

“Yeah. Get that done,” he said.

It didn’t take much thought. I lined up and rocketed the six into the far corner with enough backspin that the cue ball came back close to the rail. Then I shot the seven, eight, and nine in succession, each time bringing the ball back to that same rail. Okay, so I was showing off.

“What else? There was a pause. They all took drags off their cigarettes.

“You never lose a bet,” said Walter.

“Not true,” I said. “I don’t lose many, but I lose some.”

“Okay, I’m curious about two things, then,” said Walter. “When do you lose, and how is it you win so often?” Practice is the answer, but he doesn’t want to hear that.

“Well, I lose when there’s not a shot on the board. That doesn’t happen much, but it does. Most players you meet in bars and bowling alleys don’t talk about table scratch rules before a game starts, but there are rules. If the six is the next ball on the table, you gotta hit that six ball first. If somebody tries to take a thin slice off the six and misses, that’s a table scratch, and I should get to place the cue ball wherever I want above the cue spot. But I never know what’s going to happen. Some people know the rules and some people don’t. If you’re in Wadley and the guy you’re playing doesn’t understand the table scratch rule and he has friends there, best let it go.”

“What’s Wadley?” asked a short guy at the bar.”

“A little town in Alabama,” I said.

“Cain’t you just talk about the rules before you play?” asked a round guy with a red beard to my left.”

“If you ask about table scratch rules before the game, everybody knows you know what you’re doing and the betting will be light. Better to leave it alone and take the risk. When it comes up, waste a shot, waste a turn.”

Long pause. It was fun to be listened to, but I wasn’t sure I knew what I was talking about. I could play, but wasn’t sure I could tell anybody else how. It was the hours playing that gave you confidence. What to say?

“I also lose when there’s no shot on the board,” I said. “If the next ball you’re supposed to sink is the three, and the it’s surrounded by a cloud of higher balls, it’s tough. If you don’t have a shot, there’s not much you can do.”

By this point, I should have shut up. I’m not sure I believe what I’m saying any more. These people want to learn, and I know more than they do, so I’m talking. They’re taking it in, but I’m not sure I have much to teach. I can play, but I learned from practice. To learn, they’ll have to practice, but what they want is an insight that will short-cut the practice, and it’s not there. So I should shut up.

“If I’m playing against somebody good he can beat me if there’s no shot on the board to get to the next ball. I have to take a shot, and will probably fuck myself by doing so. If there’s no shot on the board, rearranging the balls on the table is doing my opponent a favor. Of course, that happens the other way around once or twice a night, too, and that’s a lot of fun.” I was rambling. “You only run into this when the break doesn’t go well, and I generally win the lag, so breaks almost always go well for me. I’ve played against guys who could chip away at a break, and rather than sending the balls helter-skelter, they send one ball in somewhere with each shot. It’s pretty to watch, but I almost always beat them. I’ve never seen anyone who can reliably run the table that way, and if you can really play, the chaos of a real break is a lot of fun.”

A long pause.

“So why do you win so often?” Walter asked.

“Mainly practice,” I said. “This is my job. You run a bowling alley. Everybody else here has a job. Me, I play pool. That’s all I did since I was nine. Six, eight, ten hours a day. If you practiced at it that long, you’d be able to beat me. I don’t know—it may be that some people can’t see the lines or understand the physics and so they wouldn’t get to be good, but really, the mechanics are pretty simple. Angle of incidence equals angle of refraction. Preservation of inertia. That kind of stuff.”

“Betting,” said Walt.

“There are some funny things about that, I said.”

I was practicing lagging as I talked. I’d lagged hundreds of thousands of times before. Alone, in a pool hall, in a church basement, to start a game. Over and over and over. There’s something extremely satisfying about a lag. The smooth green felt. The crisp yet soft rails. The ball kicks back from the far rail and how close can you get it to the near rail? I was good at it, and as I shot those lags none were more than a half inch from the near rail, none hit it, and most were within a quarter inch. The locals were noticing. And yes, I was showing off. I have a good lag stroke.

“Okay,” I said. “To bet, just think about what you’re doing. So you have to have practiced to the point that you’re confident that it’s more likely than not that you’re going to make the shot when you take it. If you haven’t gotten to that point, you shouldn’t be betting. If you are at that point, start betting and see if you win or lose. If you lose, stop betting and practice more. Once you’ve practiced to the point that you’re confident you’re going to make most of your shots, there’s another thing you have to learn, and I’m not sure I can explain it.” I thought for a minute.

“What kind of thing?” Walt asked.

“Hang on, I’ll get it in a minute,” I said. I’m not very articulate. At this point in my life I didn’t really think much about things I was doing, I just did them. Intuition and common sense and a good pool game. So it really did take a minute. “Okay, look,” I said. “About gambling, most people don’t want to lose more than they want to win. They don't want to make a mistake. They’ll make stupid shots to avoid doing something that they think might look like a mistake. They won't take obvious shots for fear of screwing up. If there’s an easy shot they’re unsure of, they’ll make a terribly hard shot instead, so that their buddies will say “Well, that was a hard shot, I can see why he didn’t make it.” That’s really stupid. Always take the easier shot. Or people will pass up the shot they should make in favor of taking one that won’t do them any good but has less risk of failure. If the shot is on the board that will win the game for them, they won’t take it if there’s another shot that they can’t screw up. It’s stupid, but almost all amateur gamblers are like that, and it’s … inexplicable.”

“And professional gamblers aren’t like that?” somebody asked.

“Gack, no,” I said. “To make a living at it, you have to succeed. If your fundamentals aren’t sound, you can’t.”

There was a pause.

“Gentlemen, I must take my leave,” said Thomas, still sitting on the barstool next to Ford.

“Alas,” I said. “Your bed time?”

“No,” said Thomas. “I’ve been having premonitions that something bad is about to happen here, so I think it best if I go elsewhere. Good night. This was an interesting evening. I want you to think about right and wrong.”

“Okay,” I said. “See you around.” Odd guy. Right and wrong?

“Oh, yes,” he said. He smiled and left. Funny accent.

“Okay, so I’m about done,” I said. Long pause. Lots of drags off of cigarettes.

“I think I can beat you,” said a short-ish, attractive young woman with a highlighted shag hair-do.

“In any given game, anybody can,” I said. “Probability is like that.”

“Yeah, but I play these guys all the time, and some of them are really good. And I almost never lose.”

“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” I said, extending my hand.

Nobody seemed to know what to do.

“Um, that’s Rosie,” said Ford, from the bar. “Actually, I think her real name is Melissa, but they call her Rosie because she’s a riveter by trade.”

“Pleased to meet you Melissa,” I said, re-extending my hand. She stepped forward into the light, and I saw an extremely attractive red-head with flawless white skin. Petite and slender but with fulsome curves. She shook my hand and gave me an electric smile. A few of her teeth were a little out of alignment but somehow that added to the charm. Absolutely beautiful.

“And Rosie’s my girl, so don’t be getting’ any ideas,” said a big man in the back. Maybe 6’4”. Not mean-looking, but a guy who likes to fight. Fuck. And his girlfriend wants to play.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr.— ”

“Reed. Willis Reed.”

“Okay, I said, looking towards Melissa. Do you want to wager, or just play?”

“Oh, no. Let’s play for money. We generally play for a dollar a ball.”

“Okay. Nine ball?” I asked.

“I don’t think I know that one,” she said. “I generally play eight ball.”

Not knowing nine ball in a bowling alley is a little like not knowing cars in a parking lot.

“Okay. People play eight ball different,” I said. “What are your rules?”

“I don’t know,” said Melissa. “We always play it the same.”

“Do you lag?”

“I don’t know what that means,” she said.

“Who breaks?”

“Well, ladies first, of course.” Of course.

“If you’re first person to get a ball in, do you call whether you’re going stripes or solids, or are you stuck with the first one that goes in?”

“Why wouldn’t you go with the one you already sunk?” she asked.

“People are strange. Do you have to call your shots?”

“Only on the eight,” she said.

“And if you get the eight accidentally, before the end?” I asked.

“You lose.”

“Scratch on the eight?” I asked.

“You lose.”

“Rack ‘em up.” I expected she’d do the honors since I had the table, but no. Willis stepped forward, plunked fifty cents into the slots and racked all fifteen balls. I wasn’t used to playing with all the balls on the table, but she had the break. Ladies first.

She had a decent break, but more importantly, it was immediately apparent why she’d been winning all those games. When she bent over the pool table, it was quite a view, and everybody present except Willis seemed to be aware of it. As she lined up her shots, all eyes were on her neckline, except for Willis, who seemed to think she had an uncanny ability with pool, and was surprised and disappointed each time she missed a shot, which she often did. Everybody else was looking at the third button of her blouse. Every now and then someone would look over at Willis to make sure he wasn’t noticing, but he really was focused on her game. I'm sure when they played her, they weren't concentrating at all on the game, and most wouldn't mind prolonging the game as long as possible. Guys are funny.

I noticed it, and I noticed her, but it was lost on me. I have the libido of a ninety year old man.

It takes a few turns longer for an eight ball game to shape up than a nine ball game because of all the clutter on the table, but pretty soon I was able to sink all the solids. It actually would have been easier if she’d been a little better and had gotten some of the stripes out of the way. After a few turns I had it.

“Eight ball, far corner,” I said, and rifled it in. I put on enough stop English to stop the cue ball dead in its tracks.

“Well, damn,” said Willis. “Wanna play again?”

“It’s getting a little late,” I said. Besides, Thomas had been having bad premonitions. I’d never heard anybody say anything like that before.

“She just never lost before,” said Willis. He put ten bucks on the table to cover her bet.

“I’m not easily distracted,” I said. Melissa had sat down on a bar stool near Ford. She didn’t seem to care about losing and seemed just as happy sipping on a beer.

It didn’t look like there was going to be another pool game, so the onlookers started filing away. Some settled tabs with the bartender, some just slipped off. Lots of them tipped their hats to Melissa or me as they left. I wanted to go, but big Willis was staring at the table as though something unimaginable had happened, and it seemed disrespectful to ignore that.

“Damn,” he said.

“Willis, he just wasn’t distracted by her, like most of them boys is.”

“What do you mean, distracted?” Willis asked.

“Melissa’s the prettiest girl most of these boys have ever seen, and playing against her is like a thrill. They cain’t concentrate. This boy here, he just didn’t notice.”

“I noticed,” I said. Melissa smiled at me. Are red-heads the prettiest women? “It just didn’t keep me from concentrating on the game.” The guy talking to Willis was an old man I’d heard them refer to as Smiley. An ironic nickname, as he never cracked any kind of a smile.

Willis walked back to the bar, and the bartender poured up a double or triple shot of Jack Daniel’s. He shot it back in one gulp. How often had that already happened tonight? Uh-oh.

“So you think every time Melissa’s been playing pool, these people in this bar in this bowling alley have been looking at her boobs? And while they’re looking at her boobs they can’t concentrate?’ Melissa began to frown.

There was a big plate glass window on one side of the bar. It looked out over the bowling alley parking lot. In the background, a black Chevrolet Impala rolled slowly into the gravel lot. Everyone present seemed to notice, except for Willis. Willis was focusing his keen and suddenly angry attention on Smiley, and everyone else in the bar was nervous.

“Aw, come on, Willis, don’t be like that,” said Smiley. “She’s a really pretty girl, and guys just cain’t help themselves, looking at her.”

“I’m ’o’n’ tell you what I’m ’o’n’ do,” said Willis. “I’m ’o’n’ kick yo’ ass.”

As if by mutual consent, everyone in the bar got up to leave, and walked not towards the door, but towards a rear corner of the bowling alley. A few bowlers were still rolling out their lanes, with that lovely sound the ball makes striking the pins, but none of them were paying attention to the bar. Melisa put on her jacket and gathered her purse. She kissed me on the cheek as Willis glowered and growled at Smiley. “This never goes well. He shouldn’t drink. You should follow us to the rear door. “

“Okay. In a minute,” I said. I was worried about Smiley. Melissa ran after the others.

Sure enough, after glaring and stomping back and forth for a few more seconds, Willis picked up a cue stick and pulled it back over his head like a man about to split a log with an axe, intending to bean Smiley with it and maybe crack his skull. Poor Smiley was just trying to get away and protect himself. When the cue stick was at the far back end of its arc, I grabbed the fat end with my left hand. Willis was already committed to beaning Smiley, so his motion went forward and the small end of the cue stick broke off a few inches above his hands. This had the effect of immediately changing the focus of his rage from Smiley to me. Smiley got up and ran to the back door.

“You son of a bitch,” said Willis. I punched a good right jab straight at his nose and he went straight down like a brick dropped from a kitchen window. Out like a light. I have a really strong right.

“Excuse me,” said Ford, “but I’m going to visit the restroom. They never seem to find me there. Three bits of information you could use. First, the reason everyone ran away is that the black car that pulled into the car park a few minutes ago may belong to Willis’ father, Walter. Willis frequents this pub, and has a certain predilection for trouble, so his father checks in on him from time to time. Second, Walter is a captain with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department. Third, he generally blames the people with whom Willis has his fights. I’m sure you can sort it out from here. I’m in keen need of a loo.” Ford walked off.

I could see Capt. Reed at the front door. He stopped to talk to someone. I grabbed a chalk and stepped over to the nearest booth. I stood on the seat, then reached up and lifted a corner on one of the acoustic panels in the dropped ceiling, then slipped my wallet into the space. I marked the panel I’d lifted with a blue chalk mark and stepped back down. Capt. Reed walked into the bar just as I got back down, and he noticed me for the first time. “Where is everybody?” he asked. His son was sleeping peacefully on the other side of the pool table and wasn't visible to Capt. Reed.

“Gone on home, I guess,” I answered. “Where I’m going to,” I said, and headed for the front door.

I took my leave and had almost made it to the front door when he shouted out “stop that son of a bitch” and I was surrounded by bowlers.

Oh well.

And so did I come to be a resident of the Hamilton County Jail.

It would have been much worse had I not stashed my wallet.

Chapter 6: Lawyers who bear a slight resemblance to priests

I got back to Chattanooga in the fall. Mrs. W took me to her lawyer, a handsome short man with a good head of hair. Maybe my father’s age.

“Well I can’t do that,” he was saying. “It might be a conflict of interest.”

“I know,” she said. “Just tell me who to go to.” The lawyer looked surprised. I had gone to high school with his daughter, I think. Pretty girl.

“Oh,” he said. Not quite surprised, but her answer wasn’t what he’d expected. He paused to consider.

Mrs. W had decided several things, and she was right, as always. She had figured out that I was making money. She wanted it to get a good rate of return. The way we’d worked out of investing it, depositing it all into passbook savings, seemed to her a wasted opportunity. She wanted to invest it in other things, but to do that other documents had to be signed. I was too young to buy stocks, and even if I were old enough, my interest in money and things having to do with money was about as low as neap tides can go. I like having it and would find it extremely fretful not to have any, but I just can’t work up much of an interest in it. Wish I could. But Mrs. W could and she wanted to put my money in places where it would do me the most good. And the fact that I had no interest whatsoever in helping her do what was good for me wasn’t going to deter her from doing what was right. So she’d brought me to her lawyer, John Warmblood, knowing he couldn’t advise me about what to do, to get a recommendation from Warmblood about who I could go see about giving Mrs. W pretty much complete control over my money.

I really didn’t much care. I was a pool player who liked to play cards.

Mrs. W waited patiently while Mr. Warmblood thought through the question of who he was going to recommend I go to for advice to make sure Mrs. W wasn’t cheating me. I watched Mr. Warmblood as he thought about this and then he may have realized that Mrs. W was pretty much several steps ahead of him throughout the entire visit.

“Well, Margaret,” he said. I know that sentence continued to go somewhere else, but I didn’t really follow. I know everyone has a first name, but I’d never thought about Mrs. W’s and really didn’t like this yo-yo addressing her so familiarly. He should have respect.

Apparently he told us to go to a lawyer named Fieldey Atchling, but I didn’t hear it.

I was at his office the next day, in the afternoon. Mr. Atchling was a man in his late twenties who was wearing, against all probabilities, a Nehru suit. The Nehru suit was a fashion phenomenon of 1966 or 1967. I remember seeing Johnny Carson wearing one in one of those years. I also remember seeing a department store ad flogging them just a few months later and realizing that as soon as it had come, the Nehru suit had gone. It was a suit with a jacket that was supposed to be worn buttoned. The lapels were tuned up, in a way, and it was designed to be worn over a thin turtleneck rather than a coat and tie. It looked fine, it just didn’t catch on. So people had worn them in 1966 and 1967, and here was this lawyer wearing a black Nehru suit over a bright white turtleneck. I wanted so very much to be dismissive, but he has some sense. As I recalled, Nehru suits included bell-bottomed trousers, so I was craning my neck to see if Mr. Atchling was wearing bell-bottoms, too, but he was behind an enormous altar-like desk that hid his pants legs.

“So you’re coming to me for advice about how to structure a power of attorney so that the holder can’t cheat you, is that right?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said. I wasn’t used to this kind of question. “I want Mrs. W to be able to invest my money however she sees fit, and I want you to write us up the documents that make that possible.”

“I know you don’t know me, but I actually have a role in this process,” he said, “And my role now is to advise caution.” He was leaning back in his office chair, left leg over right, figure four fashion. He looked almost like he might blow a smoke ring, only he wasn’t smoking.

“Look, Mr. Atchling, I appreciate the advice, but I just need to get some documents drawn.”

“So how much money are we talking about?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. Somewhere between a hundred and two hundred thousand dollars.”

“Wow. A lot of money,” he said.

“Thanks.” Where were we going with this?

“Where did it come from?” he asked.

“I made most of it playing pool. A big chunk came from playing cards in New Orleans.”

There was a pause while he thought about this. First both of his eyebrows went up, then the left one by itself, then, after it went back down, the right one by itself.

“I guess if I’m going to be giving you legal advice, I ought to advise you that gambling is illegal,” he said.

“So I’ve heard,” I said.

“It doesn’t worry you that making money by gambling might get you arrested?” he asked.

“That’s not the way it works. I’ve played thousands of pool games and hundreds of poker games. Nobody ever calls the cops. If they’re mad, they try to jump you in the street afterwards, but nobody calls the cops.”

“What do you think about that?” he asked, contemplatively

“That I want to learn more karate.”

“A very pragmatic response.” He paused for a few minutes and looked me over. “Okay. You don’t know me, but I’m a good lawyer. Actually, I don’t even know that. I’m just a lawyer who takes his position seriously. Warmblood sent you over to me because he represents Mrs. Wertheimer and you’re looking for a power of attorney that would allow her to invest your money however she sees fit. Is that about right?”

“That’s it,” I said.

“I can’t do that without talking to you about it.”

“Why not? All we want you to do is draw up a couple of documents.”

“I know, and I understand that it seems odd that I won’t just do that. But I’m not just a scribe; I’m a lawyer, so I can’t just write down what my clients want. I need to ask questions and make sure that my client is making good decisions.”

“Why? Mrs. W and I just want a service for an hourly fee.”

“The law’s not like that.”

“Why not?”

“The law is an institution. Like church. Like school. Like college. It has its rules and requirements. It plays a role in the way society and politics play themselves out. By becoming a part of that institution, I agreed to play my appointed role. And that role includes not doing anything that will traduce the system.”

“Traduce?”

“Tend to lower expectations. Degrade.”

“Okay. So what do I need to say to convince you I’m not traducing your institution?”

“Oh, answer a few questions, I think. One advantage of an established institution is that there’s always a book that tells you what questions to ask.”

“What other advantages are there?” I asked.

“Institutions change slowly, so last year’s questions are probably just as valid as this year’s questions.”

“Why is slowness to change an advantage?” I asked.

“Because everyone knows what to expect. Most people are resistant to change and the institutions around them make them feel secure. Banks. Schools. Churches. The United States Senate. All of them change slowly. If they evolved rapidly no one would know what was going to happen next, and most people wouldn’t like it.”

Why a Nehru suit?

“Okay, let’s start talking about this,” he said. “First, I need a complete name and address.”

“Henry Baida.”

“Middle name?” he asked?

“Don’t have one.”

“That’s odd.”

“My father was superstitious about numbers. His birthday was June 3, 1927, and mine was March 6, 1954. There’s some funny stuff about the number nine involved, but he wanted my name to relate to the number 72. My mom says he thought would be lucky for him and for me. He thought having middle initial would mess it up,” I said. He was the kind of guy who stuck with an idea once it lodged in his head and the fastest way to get out was to answer his questions.

“How does ‘Henry’ relate to the number 72?” he asked.

“The Greeks used their letters to express numbers. The seventh letter of the Greek alphabet looks like an H.”

“I see. And the first letter of your last name is the second letter of the Greek alphabet.”

“That’s it. Plus, my mother said I could choose a middle name at confirmation if I wanted.”

“Ah. I’m not Catholic. Is that common?” he asked.

“Well, you’re given a confirmation name, but it doesn’t stick. It’s not legal.”

“And what is yours?” he asked.

“Thomas.”

“Would you like to make it legal? It’s a very simple procedure,” he said.

“No, thank you.” I look at interactions with lawyers kind of like interactions with surgeons: I’m not a fan of elective surgery or elective lawyering either one.

Mr. Atchling was a contemplative, excruciatingly slow and thorough man, but he got everything done in one visit. He took notes in tedious detail, but at the end of it, he pulled a book off a shelf, handed it and his notes to his secretary, and a few minutes later handed me a “General Power of Attorney” giving Mrs. W authority to invest my money however she saw fit. His secretary was a notary, and came in with a seal before I signed it.

He stood up behind that great big desk and looked very seriously while the secretary and I sat in our chairs. Mrs. W had rejoined us, and looked like she was getting itchy for a cigarette. Back when she was a teacher, one day at the beginning of geometry class she had a white mark on her lipstick, and I was convinced she’d absent-mindedly tried to take a drag off of her chalk.

“Before we execute this document, Mr. Baida, I want to say before you and your attorney in fact, as well as Ms. Chat as a witness that this is a risky document to give to someone, and that as your attorney I advise you to carefully consider what you are about to do, and that if you do execute it, that you monitor and audit all of your accounts carefully.

“Did you say ‘Chat’? I asked.

“Yes,” he said, with a look that suggested that my question was vaguely irritating.

Ms. Chat smiled brightly at me. “It’s French for ‘cat’,” she said. Pretty girl. A few years older than me.

“Thanks,” said. “So where do I sign?”

We signed, Ms Chat notarized it, and I immediately handed it to Mrs. W. “Do I need another one for the bank?” she asked Mr. Atchling.

“No, don’t bother with that,” he said. “Banks, as institutions, don’t like dealing with powers of attorney. Just change the accounts into joint accounts. It will be far easier and cheaper for you, too.”

At the end of it, she had control of my money. I’m really not interested in money.

A good feeling, to be taken care of.

After we were done, we went out for a drink. She had scotch and soda, I had ice water. She enjoyed a cigarette.

“Henry, I want to thank you for trusting with all of this.”

“You’re doing me the favor. You’re doing all the work. I’m driving around playing pool.”

“I enjoy it,” she said. “I’ve also been looking into chaos theory. Are you still noticing anomalies when you play pool?” she asked.

“Not so much as a few months ago, but that could be due to several things.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“I don’t know for sure. I seem to have been visiting smaller and smaller towns the last few months. They don’t have pool halls, so it’s harder to practice alone. Usually when I play these days I’m playing against somebody else. I don’t make as many shots, so there aren’t so many chances for an observation.”

“Well, I thought chaos theory might give me a way to think about what you were talking about. I’m not sure it does that, but it still reminds me of you, in a way.”

“That whooshing noise is the sound of everything you said going over my head.” She smiled.

“There’s an MIT professor named Lorenz. He programmed his computer to create a kind of simplified climate. He has a group of I think it was twelve equations that governed things like ocean temperature and wind speed and that kind of thing, and it would print out numbers that showed what the weather was like each few hours. It fascinated everybody. They thought if they could refine the equations enough, it would be possible to make long-term weather predictions. He found something else entirely, though.” She paused to think, and looked at her cigarette in the ashtray. Teacher as she was, she was thinking of how to introduce a new concept to a student. She looked back at me. “He discovered instead that tiny differences are extremely important. He discovered that if he fed in the numbers for a starting point in the slightest bit off—say he put in an ocean temperature as .309160 instead of .309162, that within a few cycles the computer would reach a completely different result that wasn’t just a little off from the original, but completely off. It wouldn’t resemble the original at all. That wasn’t what people were expecting.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It turns out this notion we have of the law of large numbers just doesn’t apply to complex systems.”

I think I followed that. We tend to think that small variations don’t matter. She was saying they do.

“ Lorenz thought of it as being like turbulence,” she said. When a seagull flaps its wings, it creates turbulence in the air, and Lorenz came to the conclusion that the tiny bit of turbulence in the air was like the difference between .309160 and .309162.”

“So a seagull can cause a storm?” I asked.

“Sort of. No, not really. People in the years since have talked about the butterfly effect—the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Georgia can cause a hurricane in Louisiana, but that’s not really it, I don’t think. It’s an oversimplification that saps the truth out of the math. The seagull doesn’t cause the storm, but all elements of a complex system are interrelated, and billions of tiny, immeasurable forces, acting together, cause storms. A seagull alone doesn’t cause a storm, but all kinds of things that look unpredictable acting in concert do.” She took a drag off her cigarette and put it back in the ashtray. “Look at the smoke rising from my cigarette,” she said. “It rises from the coal in a steady stream but it gets to here, and the streak of smoke dissolves into a cloud. It doesn’t dissipate gradually, like a river delta or a tree branch, which is what you might expect. It gets to here and it turns into a disorganized cloud. You can see the little curlicues start to form, then almost immediately it turns into a cloud, a haze. Nothing organized about it at all.” She signaled to the bartender for another S&S. “Cutty this time,” she said.

“The seagull’s flapping wing is just one of these little curlicues in the smoke, and the cloud is the storm.”

“Okay, I said.” So can chaos theory predict the cloud? Or the storm?”

“Not exactly. What Lorenz did was to plot the divergences. It was too complex to graph the entire weather system, I think, but he found analogues in convection of heat within heated fluid cells, and I think that led him to the water wheel. There’s an old problem that Archimedes noted but didn’t understand. If you have a bucket style waterwheel, and water is introduced at the top—“

“Aren’t they all like that?” I asked.

“Like what?” she asked.

“Water coming to the wheel from the top.”

“Oh, no. That’s what a millwright would call an overshot wheel. That’s the most powerful kind of waterwheel, but also the most expensive to make, and it requires an enormous dam. They’re hard to site. Most are breast-shot wheels, where the water comes in about halfway up. If you don’t have any elevation at all at the mill site you can build what ought to be called an undershot wheel but is in fact called a tub wheel, because the mechanics of the flow are different. Anyway in ancient times people sometimes built waterwheels with actual buckets. A millwright would refer to the enclosures on a traditional waterwheel as buckets, but actually they’re blades, or paddles, constructed to capture both the weight of the water and its kinetic energy as it flows. Both then move the wheel. Back in Archimedes’ day waterwheel construction was more primitive, and sometimes waterwheels were made from actual buckets suspended from spikes driven into cart wheels at regular intervals. Everyone knew, in ancient times, that once the buckets became leaky, the waterwheel would sometimes reverse itself for no good reason. The Greeks and Romans avoided this by offsetting the water source slightly to the right or left—for the wheel reversal to happen, the water source pretty much had to be top dead center.”

She shrugged. “I’m sure this must be boring.”

“Not at all. I got good grades in your classes because I was interested in everything you had to say.”

“Henry, you got good grades because you understand math unlike anyone I’ve ever taught. You also have a memory like a steel trap.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Define the trigonometric functions,” she said.

“Sine equals opposite over hypotenuse, cosine equals adjacent over hypotenuse, and tangent equals opposite over adjacent, but that’s not really a fair test of my memory.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“That born-again student teacher you had with you for second semester of trig told us this really great mnemonic device.”

“Saddle our horses, canter away happily, to our adventures?” Mrs. W asked.

“Yes ma’am. That’s it.”

“Henry, every trigonometry teacher for the last two hundred years has told her students that mnemonic device and you may be the only student I’ve ever had who remembers it.”

“Oh, Mrs. W. I’m sure most of them remember it.” Surely so. It was so easy to remember.

“Back up a minute,” she said. “You’re referring to Miss Coombs, I expect. How did you know she was born again?”

“Oh, well, she was a pretty good teacher, so you used to leave us with her once you’d made sure all of our homework was done, every now and then. I think you went back to your office to take a smoke break.” She smiled and nodded. “On her last day, when she was saying goodbye to us, she told us that the only way to be happy was to be right with Jesus.”

“Ah, Hell,” Mrs. W said. “She shouldn’t have been doing that.”

“It really didn’t do any harm. It meant a lot to her to say it.”

“Yeah, well, I wonder what it meant to Sharmen Steinberg and Janice Shapiro,” she said.

“Nobody should be offended at that kind of thing. She wasn’t forcing her beliefs on s, she was just expressing hers. I’m a heretic and I still got an ‘A’. But wait a minute. We got sidetracked. Go back to chaos,” I said.

“I would have gotten to it eventually,” she said. “The waterwheel will rotate first clockwise, at a given speed, then will slow, then will speed up again, then will reverse, and will reproduce the pattern over and over again. It won’t ever settle into a pattern that exactly repeats itself, but will kind of alternate between one state and the next. So what Lorenz did next was to graph out the leaky-bucket waterwheel’s movement. It took a three-dimensional grid to represent it. I think he mapped out a couple of other simple equations that have similar properties, and they all produced graphs of this strange figure—a kin of lazy, folded figure eight. Because of the characteristic pattern that graphs out, it’s been described as a butterfly, or an owl’s mask. Anyway, this type of equation is known in the literature as a “Lorenz attractor” or “strange attractor,” because there will be two points of attraction, but nothing ever completely converges.”

“Why strange?” I asked.

“Because however many times you repeat it, it never scribes the exact same path twice.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“I have a fanciful theory that chaos is reflected in human behavior, but I’m not making much progress.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Say you were a strange attractor—that a strange attractor equation described part of your personality. Some of it would make sense. On the other hand, strange attractors seem to have two focus points, and you seem to be alone. I’ll keep working on it.” She smiled.