Sticks

  “Miniature golf,” he says. “I’ll spot you ten strokes.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Why?”

  I glared at him. “I’m sick of losing, okay?”

  “You lost today, Mickey, but what did you learn?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Really? You didn’t figure out how to beat me?”

  I haven’t figured out anything except that I’ve probably never lost so much in my whole life as I have in this stupid day. He steers me to the golf course. I’m pretty good at miniature golf; most pool players are.

  Joseph Alvarez steps up to the first hole with the little hill and almost makes a hole in one.

  “C’mon, Mickey. Shoot.”

  I can’t beat him, even with the ten-stroke spot. My ball keeps getting stuck in Aladdin’s mouth on the fifth hole and I overshoot the eighth hole because the windmill messes me up. We play three rounds of eighteen holes and each time my score gets a little higher until all of a sudden on the ninth hole I realize how the greens roll—all of a sudden, I can’t miss. I beat him bad on the last round with a hole in one on the seventeenth, right across the little bridge that’s guarded by the ugly troll, and totally miss the water. Joseph Alvarez’s ball hits the troll’s stomach three times in three games and plops in the water. But I see the roll and I’m ready. I tell him to forget the ten-stroke spot, I can win on my own. I nail my ball right through the grizzly bear’s mouth on the eighteenth.

  “Good game,” he says, shaking my hand. We walk up to the snack bar and get double cheeseburgers with chocolate shakes. I’m eating mine, feeling tough.

  Joseph Alvarez looks at me and smiles. “Charlie Vernon’s rule number one in playing pool and anything else—if you can figure out why you’re losing, you can figure out how to win.”

  * * *

  We leave GameLand after two more Ping-Pong matches that I still lose, but my backhand shots are definitely getting better. I figure out that Joseph Alvarez likes to play the corners and he’s expecting me to do it too, so every so often I blip one just over the net and he has to reach like mad to return it. His face gets all stern and I know I have him. I also figure out that if I just keep watching the Ping-Pong ball, not anything else, I can usually hit it. Joseph Alvarez says I’m a natural-born all-around athlete, which no one has ever said to me since becoming the world champion of nine ball has been taking up most of my time.

  I say Ping-Pong isn’t so bad.

  “Great way to clear your mind and work on focusing,” he says. “Winning, losing, focusing, sportsmanship, patience, determination—it’s all there, son, played out on that table.”

  We’re heading toward Vernon’s in the Peterbilt, moving past the abandoned Chrysler dealership on Krenshaw Street. The afternoon shadows make it look haunted. I’m looking in the windows where the new cars used to shine through, trying to picture where that drug pusher has his business.

  Joseph Alvarez stops at a red light. “You know what I found in Alaska?”

  “No . . .”

  “In Alaska I found ganas!”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a Spanish word for desire—the thing that makes you want something so bad you go after it with everything you’ve got.”

  “Ganas,” I say.

  “That’s it. Nothing important works without it.”

  “You’ve got to find the ganas to get better, to push yourself. See, I always loved trucks—everything about them. I’d climb into one and feel this energy pumping through me. But I didn’t have the money to get a truck, to start my business. I had to make it happen. So my brother and I got good-paying jobs in Alaska. We worked overtime for two years, saving, living cheap. I had the desire. It was in my blood.” He pats the dashboard. “I bought this rig. I don’t imagine any cowboy loved his horse more.”

  “Are you a cowboy?” I ask.

  Joseph Alvarez tilts back his hat and smiles. “My great-great-grandfather was a vaquero—that’s cowboy in Spanish. He rode horses from Mexico up through Texas and into California. A vaquero sat on a horse for three days straight not talking to anybody except his animal, which isn’t sprightly conversation. He and I, we’ve got the same spirit for the open road. Lots of truckers do.”

  “That’s why you wear the cowboy stuff?”

  “That’s why I wear it. To remind myself of the spirit inside. Now that’s what we’ve got to find in you—and that will make way for the natural pattern for your game.”

  He pulls out a pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint and gives me a stick. “It’ll come,” he says. “I’m sorry about those nine years, son. I feel real bad I didn’t come by sooner.”

  I’m looking out the window, watching a bus pick up an old man with a cane. “How come you didn’t?”

  “Your dad dying just laid me out. I drove away from it—as far as I could go.”

  Joseph Alvarez steers the Peterbilt onto Mariah Boulevard, heading for Vernon’s. “Your mom’s got a right to not be happy to see me.”

  I look at him. His arms get stiff holding the wheel. His face looks so sad.

  I want to tell him it’ll all work out.

  But I don’t know that it will.

  CHAPTER

  It’s Sunday. At church I prayed that Mom would get happy about seeing Joseph Alvarez and that Buck would go to military school. After lunch I went to the hall to play nine ball with Marcus Denny, who’s thirteen years old and makes big-time stupid mistakes. I’m beating him, too. Joseph Alvarez said he wanted to just watch me play. Part of me wishes he wasn’t watching.

  This isn’t my best game.

  I’ve missed two bank shots and I almost blew an easy tip in the corner. My hands are sweaty and I keep glancing over at Buck, who’s looking like a tank. The red shirt’s hanging in the window right by the Knights of Columbus dinner dance poster; the dance was last week. Poppy’s slow in taking things down.

  I want it so bad.

  I take a big breath, wipe my hands on my jeans, and bank the eight ball at a forty-five-degree angle; it just makes it into the side pocket. I look up at Joseph Alvarez, who’s sitting on the bench against the wall, stroking his beard, not frowning, not smiling. I shoot the nine ball at the side pocket and miss, but Marcus misses too. I tap it in the corner.

  Yes! That’s a win.

  “Good game,” I say to Marcus, and shake his hand, looking up at Joseph Alvarez, who stands up and leans against the table with his hands in his pockets. Marcus walks off.

  Joseph Alvarez says, “You could have played that cleaner.”

  “I won . . . .”

  “You did,” he agrees, “but you almost didn’t.”

  I kick at the floor because I just won and I’m used to grown-ups falling all over themselves about how good I play. He throws the balls back on the table.

  “Shoot something,” he says.

  I bend over to hit the three ball.

  “Shoulders and neck can’t move when you stroke,” he says. “It messes up your aim. Try again.”

  I freeze my neck and shoulders, bend over—

  “No.” Joseph Alvarez gives me a light push against my shoulders and I crash forward. “Tighter,” he says. I squeeze my shoulder blades until they hurt. “Tighter.”

  “I can’t breathe!”

  “You’ve got to break those bad habits before they become a part of you. Shoot.”

  I shoot and miss the three.

  “Follow through,” he says. “Don’t hurry it, just let it come natural.”

  I’m standing here suffocating, pinching my shoulder blades together, and he says be natural. I try it again, follow through, and nick the three.

  “Better. Do it again.”

  I do it again and again and again.

  “Feel the difference?” he asks.

  I’m rubbing my neck and shoulders. I feel the difference—pain.

  Joseph Alvarez turns to me and puts a quarter on the rail of the table. “On bank shots,” he says, “you’re getting the angles pr
etty well. You’ve got to focus on hitting the ball clean. Shoot the quarter.”

  “What?”

  “Aim at it. Shoot it medium hard. Like this.” He rams the cue ball into the rail and the quarter jumps off.

  I try. The quarter doesn’t move.

  “You’ll get it.”

  I try harder and don’t get it.

  “Focus on exactly where you want the cue ball to hit,” he says. “Your dad had the best focus of any pool player I’ve ever seen.”

  “Really?”

  Joseph Alvarez sticks quarters up and down the rail and starts shooting the cue ball at them, making them jump. “Charlie could block out anything and anybody that was trying to throw his game.”

  “How’d he do it?”

  “I asked him once. He said he just closed the blinds in his mind and played.” He makes the last quarter jump and hands it to me.

  “Time for homework.” It’s Mom. Her voice is flat. She’s standing at the table looking like she’d rather be anywhere, including the North Pole.

  Joseph Alvarez shoves his hands in his pockets. “How are you, Ruthie?”

  She holds the mega-flashlight they use on citizens’ patrol. “Tired.”

  Joseph Alvarez looks lost.

  “You want to play some nine ball, Ruthie? I mean, you used to have a serious break. I remember that time when we were all—”

  Mom shakes her head and motions me toward the stairs. I put my stick on the wall.

  “Here.” Joseph Alvarez hands me one of the quarters. “You ace that homework. Okay?”

  My fist closes around it. “Okay.”

  I’m thinking we should invite him up for something to eat.

  But being ten, I’m powerless.

  I tell him thanks for everything, really, and follow my mother up the stairs.

  * * *

  I’m standing in the kitchen holding a banana. Mom just announced that she has homework, important homework—she’s writing a paper called “Educating the Reluctant Thinker.” It’s about how kids don’t always want to learn and what teachers can do about it.

  Give them a day off, if you ask me.

  Then she storms out of the room yelling at me to do my homework and she isn’t going to tell me again. I do my genuine karate kick that T. R. Dobbs taught me and eat the banana.

  Dad’s favorite fruit was bananas. Poppy said when I was small I used to leave a banana out for him at night, in case he wasn’t getting enough food in heaven.

  I sit at the kitchen counter and open my vocabulary book to lesson thirty-four. The first word is confound: “To cause to become confused or bewildered.”

  I’ve got to use it in a sentence. I write:

  “The mother’s strange actions confound the world champion pool player.”

  You hardly ever see something in vocabulary that applies to real life.

  CHAPTER

  School isn’t going so well.

  We have a substitute teacher because Mrs. Riggles has to go to the doctor to get her pregnant stomach checked—not the good kind of substitute that knows how to teach, either, the bad kind that thinks we’re babies. She makes the whole fifth grade sit on the floor in a circle for “Self-esteem.” We have to imagine we have a box in our laps with something inside that will make us happy. Arlen asks how big the box can be and can his have holes because without them his tarantula is going to suffocate. Everyone starts laughing and Petie Pencastle asks if his box can have meat in it to feed the twelve-foot man-eating crocodile. The substitute’s face gets red and she makes us sit quietly for ten minutes while she stares at us. I imagine the red championship shirt is in my box, but I don’t tell anyone.

  Lesson three with Joseph Alvarez isn’t going so well either. He starts by telling me to brush my hair even though I brushed it this morning already to go to school. Then he says to tuck in my shirt and wash my hands.

  “You’re a pool player, Mickey. That’s something to be proud of.”

  We’re at table nine. It’s hard to feel proud when you’re playing like dirt.

  “Slow, disciplined, focused,” he says. “Nope, you’ve got too much swing on your stroke.”

  He stands behind me and shows me how to hold a cue stick like I’ve never held one before in my life.

  “You hold it like it’s a butterfly you’ve got in your hand that you don’t want to escape,” he says. “You’re gripping too tight.”

  “That’s how I’ve always held it.”

  “I know. But it’s going to mess you up later on. Look.” He shows me how he does it.

  I’m gripping the thing, feeling my muscles twingeing.

  “Relax, it’ll come,” he says.

  I tense.

  We move into the second hour of our practice and Joseph Alvarez is racking the balls, telling me that learning a new way of playing is going to be hard. “In the beginning, Mickey, you’re going to play worse.”

  Worse!

  “I haven’t got time to be worse!” I look over at Buck Pender, who’s smirking and nailing long shots, and here I am back in kindergarten.

  Joseph Alvarez is saying how I’ve got to not focus on winning.

  “You said if I can figure out why I’m losing, I can figure out how to win.”

  “Yes I did, and I want you to tuck winning behind your brain for now. We’ll bring it out when it’s time. You concentrate on getting better. Be satisfied with that.”

  Is he kidding?

  “You can’t find the fun in playing if you’re always hung up about winning,” he says. “See, Mickey, you’ve got to learn to relax. People who are coming down hard on themselves about each shot, each thing they did wrong, each missed ball, are tense. Tense people make mistakes.”

  I’m working hard to untense and it’s giving me a headache.

  I’m doing everything wrong.

  I can’t grip the stick right.

  I can’t shoot the balls right.

  I feel like I’ve never played this stupid game.

  “I’ll tell you something about your dad, Mickey. He had fun when he competed. He played just as hard when he was winning as when he was losing.”

  I lean over the table and miss an easy corner shot. I can’t believe it. The tournament’s six weeks away and everybody in the hall’s watching me and thinking how skunky I’m playing!

  “Let’s stop for now,” he says.

  “No, I can do it.”

  “Man’s got to know when his horse is beat for the day. Sit down.” Joseph Alvarez points to table seven, where Buck’s just started playing Big Earl’s son, Perry, who is fourteen years old and won the tournament last year.

  “Watch,” he says.

  Perry gets one in on the break and Buck tries sneering, but Perry doesn’t pay attention, gets five more in and misses. Buck swaggers to the table saying how winning is going to be a cinch.

  Perry says, “Then do it, man.”

  Buck snorts, gets the seven ball in and misses the eight.

  Perry smiles—drops the eight and nine in easy for a win.

  Buck says, “You got lucky.”

  Perry’s racking the balls. “Think so?” He rams the cue ball on the break and gets one in.

  Buck’s face is getting pale. I could watch this all day. Perry’s got a tough shot that he misses, but he doesn’t leave Buck much either.

  Joseph Alvarez says just loud enough for me to hear, “That’s how you play Buck Pender. Nice and cool. You don’t say much. You don’t leave him much. The cooler you get, the hotter he gets.”

  Buck hits the five, six, seven balls in. Buck’s gotten better, I can definitely see this, but he can’t throw Perry and that’s throwing him. He blows the bank on the eight. Perry knocks the eight and nine together like nothing.

  “You handle Buck like that next time,” says Joseph Alvarez softly.

  CHAPTER

  I’m thinking this is a pretty stupid way to spend my time, waiting around until Joseph Alvarez comes back on Saturday from his trip to Te
xas with a truckload of canned tuna fish, which he said will make him popular with every cat in America. He told me to practice what he’s taught me, especially the quarter-jumping exercise, which he says is the best he knows for focus.

  I’ve been aiming at quarters for three days and not connecting like Joseph Alvarez said I should.

  Julian Meister slaps me on the back and hands me a Coke. He and Mom went out on a date once; Mom said once was enough. I’m not sure if he’s being nice to me to get to my mom. Some men do this when you’ve got a pretty mom, but kids always find out in the end. Mom’s old boyfriend Kevin took Arlen and me to Dr. Death’s Haunted House on Halloween. We were walking through it scared because something was making noises weirder than Mangler. We stepped in glop and Dr. Death came out of the shadows and grabbed us. Kevin, who’d been through twice before said, “There. That’s the end.” But it wasn’t, and Kevin knew it. This blood-soaked guy comes out in a mask covered with chains, howling, and we tore out like bats with Kevin laughing behind us. I never trusted him after that. Mom didn’t either even though he sent her roses to apologize. Mom kept the roses and told Kevin to take a hike. Mom’s not dating anyone now, which is okay by me.

  I put another quarter on the rail as Francine and Arlen walk into the hall. Francine’s face is all sparkly, which means she’s got a secret.

  “Sister Immaculata was right,” she whispers. “We will reap what we sow.”

  “What?”

  “Buck Pender got the Good Citizen Award of the Week at school yesterday in assembly.” She waits for me to sit down hard. “He supposedly collected more canned food for the hunger drive than anyone, but then Sister Immaculata found Theresa Raster’s initials on twelve Chunky Soup cans that Buck said were his and she made him give back the award and apologize to the whole school in assembly. You had to be a lip-reader to get that apology. It just goes to show that nuns have power.” Francine takes a pad and pencil from her pocket. “Watch your back, Mickey. He’ll do anything to win.”

  I look over at Buck on table three. He doesn’t look like he’s ever apologized for anything. He stares back at me with cold, mean eyes. I chalk my stick, lean over table sixteen, and shiver.