Island by Alistair MacLeod

the door and against the wall. Always mindful of the sign which reminded him that he was a “minor” and as such should “not enter”; but realizing with the passage of time that no one really cared, no more than they cared for the other sign which read, NO GAMBLING . And he moved farther away from the door and deeper and deeper into the room, becoming slowly aware that the strange, violent, profane men seemed to like him, and winked at him when they sank the good shots and complained to him when they missed. And he discovered still later that the door was open even at four when he went to work as well as at seven when he returned. Often in the time when there was no football practice he would almost run from school to get there for a few precious moments, hoping with a desperate hope that the table would be empty and waiting so that he might deposit the quarter which was always sweaty because he held it so tightly while almost running. And then he would watch and listen to the balls as they rolled to their release and practise by himself the shots he had seen the night before; practise intently and relentlessly until four o’clock when the heavy men began to appear from the completion of their shifts. He had done all of this somehow without even daring to think that he would ever play in a real game himself, and now, seeing and feeling his body leaning over the table, he felt a strange sensation and kinship with those boys in the F. Scott Fitzgerald stories who practise and practise but never play until a certain moment comes along in their lives and changes them forever.
    There had been four men playing when he had entered and taken his stand beside the wall and beneath the signs that forbade his presence. Two sets of middle-aged men who circled the table, first swiftly with their eyes and then slowly with their bodies, speaking to the balls with pleading profanity and wiping away the tiny beads of perspiration that formed upon their brows. They played for only the token dollar, which too was forbidden by a sign, and when the losers had paid, one of them said that he must go home and had gone almost instantly. And then his partner had turned and said to the figure that he had so often seen there beside the wall, “Me and you,” and offered him the cue-stick. So he had taken it, almost instinctively and if feeling like the boys of Fitzgerald, feeling also, and perhaps more, like the many youths of Conrad who never thought they would do what is now already done. And the commitment had been made and the night had so begun.
    At first he was so preoccupied with the thought that he would lose, and have to pay a dollar he was not sure he had, that he played very badly, and they won only because of the shots his partner made, but in the second and third games he became stronger, playing cautiously and deliberately, and while he was not spectacular at least he did not lose, and he was surprised at how much he had learned from the solitary practice sessions and from the hours of standing and watching beneath the signs. And when the men they had played went out into the darkness he and his partner played against each other and after what seemed like a very long time he won and pocketed the dollar and stayed and stayed, seeing from the corner of his eye the challenging quarters being laid on the brown-black wood by the broken-nailedfingers of the faceless unknown men, until he had recognized one set of fingers and looked into the face of Everett Caudell but said nothing, as nothing had been said on that first meeting here in a time that seemed so long ago. So they played quietly, both of them, very carefully and very slowly until only the eight-ball remained and the older man took his shot and scratched and then laid his dollar upon the table and went out into the night and was replaced by a set of nameless hands and another nameless face.
    He had thought while playing against Caudell many different things. First he had been