"Pool Hustlers"

The story spirals outward with a slow, inevitable logic-- like a spreading oil-stain threatening to catch on fire and enflame the entire St. Louis criminal underworld. And here poor old Bobby was in the center of it-- one cold, windy night in the late '70s idling inside a mostly-empty pool hall with himself and a stoner buddy who had nothing better to do but to slap "The Grim Reaper" on the back of its hooded skull like pranksters running past the lockers in gym class. Actually, it was Hayes who held back and noticed the cloak, scythe, and sepulcher lightness of gait that suggested the fleetingness of life in this human sphere, the realization stabbing through with a spurt of ice-water pumping through the ventricles of a sensible pigeon-heart.

Like most epics of TROUBLE with a capital "T", these two boys were set on making money without working. Well, at least one of them was. Bobby was more of a passive spectator wading on the edge of the hedonistic revelry found in screwing, drinking, and smoking pot-- which seemed like the ticket to the futureless future, like a grimy passport with golden fringes that was the limit of your horizons with all the soul of a cockroach. Evidently, much more rewarding than "hitting the books" at the community college library. Your credentials in this dead zone were balls of stone and thunder-hearted recklessness, like a cowboy let out of the rodeo chute saddled on top of a bucking bull jacked up on amphetamines. He's hurled from the angry animal then lays there, knocked-out and unmoving-- like a dummy-- stomped on a couple of times by the enraged beast before the hands can distract its attention and get it away.

And that's almost what happened, when the muskrat's friend tried to hustle a member of the "Satan's Slaves" biker gang out of some money like a real "smooth jewel". The ingenius plan was to act stumbling, pissed-pants drunk and challenge the unwary to games of pool for $20 bets. Now, it seemed as if it would be an "easy win" for the sucker, sliding off his barstool like a lank-haired panther, until the hustler got back his composure, turned the tables, and went for the win.

Just why Hayes' friend had to go up to that old biker is a twist of fate perhaps only known to forces heaven-ward (-- or hell-bound) that we don't quite understand, but remember this motorcycle club in question was notorious for riding down the highway with headbands flapping and snatching neighbors' dogs to kill and roast over a fire for a low-down snack out on the wind-burnt mesa. They were also heavily into the drug trade, snorting coke around the fire like post-apocalyptic brutes, but that figures later into this story. . . . .

Bobby's friend was scamming "the mark" (-- who might as well have been a roadie for "ZZ Top" for the beard, sunglasses, and scowl) and they played into the night around the dim, mostly-deserted tables. When the final ball went down the pocket, the biker refused to take out his wallet. He may have been grizzled with his eyes yellowed like an old wolf's, but he wasn't stupid.

Well, Bobby's friend got mad.

The biker shrugged.

Then he got madder and madder.

The biker told him to go fuck his momma.

Then the friend started yelling. In a sudden fit of bad judgment, he shoved the biker over-- who fell over in an explosion of overturned tables and rolling bottles. The biker leapt to his feet and busted a bottle on the table, ready to fight. Then the friend ran and got the fire-axe off the wall-- and chased the biker with it, hollering, "I want your jacket!"

The biker dropped the bottle, the two burst out the front door like racing chickens, and the biker rode off perturbed and shaken like a bat out of hell. But that wasn't the end of it. . . . .

A few nights later, Hayes returned to the pool hall to see his friend and a gang of bikers hanging out and drinking like old buddies. They liked the kid's reckless attitude and figured that he was cut of their cloth. And there the kid was in a biker's jacket. Just like the one he wanted, and the biker he tried to scam was patting him on the shoulder. The kid had killed his first dog and they were toasting his initiation.

To further "break him in" to the gang, they had another low-down proposition. . . . . a hit on a local mobster's suburban home. The head banana in question, the boss of the local Bananno crime family, owed them some money and now it was up to a local daredevil to do a drive-by and "send a message". They'd give that kid more pot then he'd ever dreamed if he rose to the challenge.

The friend spied Bobby, went up and whispered, "I need your van!"

You know, he was soon no longer friends with the lad. . . . . smiling sweetly and leaving.

But as these things go, the presence of the Bananno family would hover in the air like an evil invocation. The same kid later got into a hot-headed confrontation with the North Side Crypts where he shoved over a gang leader, got into a car chase, and fired shots out on the highway. All over a misunderstanding over two joints. Before it turned violent, he bullshitted that he'd come back with the Bananno family and take over their neighborhood. That started a panic in the ghetto, and when Bobby turned on the news he saw a black grandma warning "The Banana" crime family away.

"We don't have much, but we'll fight for it!", shaking her finger into the interviewer's face as they cut to footage of the kid's shot-up body being loaded onto a stretcher.

So it is, as Bobby rocks out on the patio, warning young people away from shiftlessness and drug use. Keep it sane, y'all.