Dead Men Rise Up Never

Coils of cigarette smoke hung like spiral nebulae in the dimness.

Near the door, an old man was talking about a cat that he claimed had walked twelve hundred miles to return to its home. Yes sir, from Chicago to Bell Harbor in six months. The cat's name was Bucky.

The yeasty-smelling room was narrow and deep: A black mahogany bar ran two-thirds the length of one wall, with booths and tables opposite, and in the rear section there were pool tables and electronic games and a massive, ticking jukebox.

I walked to the end of the bar and ordered a beer from a fat man in a dirty apron.

"Hot," the man said.

"Very," I said, although it was cool in the bar.

A few stools away, a slattern in pink slacks was loudly saying, "Sure, I believe in fair trials for the innocent. But why waste all that time and money giving fair trials to the guilty?"

On a shelf behind the bar, there were jars containing Polish sausages and jalape-o peppers and hard-boiled eggs. And on the wall were some trophies: lacquered game fish, a marble-eyed deer head, a bearskin, and a dusty raptor--hawk or small eagle, I couldn't tell.

"Burn them in Old Sparky," said the woman who championed fair trials for the innocent.

Two young men were playing pool in the back section. "You hold that cue stick like a nun," one of them said. In this light the speaker's tightly kinked mass of dull red hair looked like a sponge.

I ordered another draft beer and two of the sausages. The bartender removed the sausages with his fingertips and served them on a paper napkin.

The pool players moved in and out of the cone of light, absorbing and losing color and definition; then the straight white thrust of a cue stick and the clicking, swiftly changing geometry of the balls. The patterns reminded me of broken molecular models.

"Where'd you learn to play pool?" the redhead asked his opponent. "In the convent?"

The sausages were too vinegary, but I ordered another and a hard-boiled egg.

"We got pizza," the bartender said.

"Oh, God, don't eat the pizza here," the woman in the pink slacks said.

"Irene," the fat bartender said. "Irene--"

"The pizza here'd gag a vulture." She was drinking shots with beer back. Her lipsticked mouth was twice as big as her natural one.

I walked over to the pool table and put two quarters in the slots. "Play the winner?"

"Sure, Fish," the cocky redhead replied. He was about twenty-five, not tall but powerfully built. He wore jogging shoes without socks, cutoff jeans, and a fishnet shirt. I could see tattoos beneath the shirt.

"Frank makes his pizza out of cardboard and vomit."

"Shut up, Irene," the bartender said. "Shut up or get out."

"I was only joking the man."

"This is a business."

"Sure, Frank. I'm sorry. I like your pizza."

The redhead called his pocket and sank the eight ball on a fine table-length bank. "Rack 'em, Fish," he told me.

His opponent wandered into the bar section. I racked the balls tightly, hung my suit jacket on a hook, loosened my tie, and selected a reasonably straight stick. "I break," the redhead said. "Eight ball. Call your shot and pocket." He leaned over the table for a moment and then straightened. "Oh, do you want to play for something?"

"Sure. Let's play for a beer."

"Can you afford it? Look, let's make it for five bucks a game."

"All right."