THE MAN WITH THE HOBEDNAILED SHOES

THE MAN WITH THE HOBNAILED SHOES





The light gray concrete steps leading down to the pool hall in the basement of the Greyhound bus station in Logan were all cracked and chipped. The round steel handrail is loose and wobbly from its years of use and small pieces of almost powdered concete fall each time it is touched.

The thirteen-step descent is littered with empty Miller beer bottles, Kool cigarette packs crumpled into little balls and waxed paper cups with the red, white and blue Pepsi logo on them. The last being discarded by the high school lunch crowd, eleven hours earlier. When the boys stood around trying to act like men and showing off for the girls who were trying to act like women.

No one here now but the suckers and the hustlers and the only way to tell them apart is with how much money they have in their pockets after they leave. A seemingly uncountable number of cigarette butts lay strewn about, some still smoldering. I put my foot down on one and with a twist of my ankle, put it out.

Thirteen steps, black cats, walking under ladders, bad luck. That's the way it is. To
little, too late or not at all. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not knowing what to do, be it right or not and usually choosing the latter.
Choices, make a decision and reap the reward or live with the consequences of a mistake made. I think of daddy, that I should have stayed with him but now he's gone and it's too late. That's the way it always seems to me, too late I mean. Make a decision and deal with the consequences, but sometimes the consequences last forever and forever never ends.
I try not to think about that.

I look over at my older brother Dean. I.B. to most everyone else. Anyway that's what the smart asses call him because that was daddy's name, they call Dean that to annoy, but if it bothers him, he doesn’t show it.

My brother is the complex type, he's good at hiding his thoughts and feelings and I’m never quite sure what’s on his mind, maybe he's figuring out how to hustle the suckers out of their money on the pool table.

He's a good shot, possibly the best in Logan. He was barred from the pool hall once, no one would play him, he was that good.

He is older now and some of the stuff has left him but not all. He still holds a mean cue. The crack of the pool balls as they strike against each other echo up the steps. The sound coming from out of the open door that leads into the darkened room of the pool hall.
Dean seems to walk just a little faster.

I look at Dean; he takes out a pack of Beechnut chewing tobacco from his back pocket and places two fingers worth in his mouth. I take a tin of aspirin from my pocket and quickly swallow four pills. It's going too be a long night.

One sixty-watt light bulb is the only illumination over the only door leading in and out of the pool hall, its cone shaped shade casting a triangle of light at the bottom of the
steps. We walk in and the smoke from an untold amount of cigarettes, cigars and pipes
hangs in the stale air over the tables like a cloud about shoulder level. It gives the faces of
everyone in the room a ghostly appearance. Each table is lit only by one florescent light, each light hanging low over its table and leaving the spaces between them in darkness. The tables each in a row set like tombstones, shrouded in the mist of an early dawn fog and the people standing around like specters up from the grave. Men who are old and young men that look old set, backs to the wall in high wooden chairs and face the table closest to the door, the table that Dean always goes to. The table where big money is won or lost, the one where all the sharks and the ones who think they are sharks go. It's the table where the losers who think they are sharks walk away from when their pockets are empty and their mouths are full of anger.

The tables are big and heavy, eight foot Brunswicks, made of oak or some other hard wood and the talk around them is the kind of talk you expect to hear in pool halls, down and rough, straight in your face and no blinking. Dean stands and watches until someone half-turning gives Dean a look and asks.

"You goin to play or you goin to watch." It's a challenge more than a question.

Dean doesn't even look at the one who asked, he just watches the last few shots from the
game being played and then says to no one in particular.

"You don't want me to play, unless you're that anxious to give your mommy’s milk money to me.”

“Rack’um up.” Yells the challenger to the man running the pool hall.

The game is nine-ball, racked tight in a diamond; get all the money balls in, the five, seven and the nine. Five dollars riding on each. Four people playing counting Dean. Forty-five dollars if you can sink all three. Ten cents each to play.

Dean walks over to the chairs and I follow, he sets down a black, narrow, rectangular case on one of the seats and takes out a two-piece custom cue, won in the basement of the Greyhound bus station on a night just like this night. Shoot for the break; see who can bring the cue ball off the far rail back closest to the break line. Dean shoots softly; the cue ball comes back and stops right on the line.

I set down to watch.

Dean gets another stick off the wall rack for the break, never,never use the good stick for that, he chalks the tip and places the white ivory cue ball where he wants it and takes aim. He makes the break and the five ball kisses off the eight and goes straight into the corner pocket. Fifteen dollar shot.

"Well shit I.B." Someone said from the shadows, not so much to Dean, but at him.

"Don't choke." Said another.

Dean pauses only long enough to put some chalk on the good stick and too put more Beachnut in his mouth.

I think about daddy again, he was a hard man to ignore; he would walk up to people and get right in their face and in a commanding voice would say.

"They call me I.B.!"

It was a way to introduce himself and a way too have some fun; he never did lose that sense about him. Even in the hospital bed, dying from black lung and with cancer already invading his brain he would joke.

"How do you feel dad?"

He'd hold up one hand and touch each of his finger tips with his thumb and without saying a
word, that hand movement would say- I feel with my fingers. Yea, that was kind of lame, but that was just his way sometimes.

I never really knew daddy that good, not until after he died. Too little, too late or not at all.

Daddy worked on the C and O railroad for most of the time I can remember. His job was Boilerrmaker helper, that was in the days of steam. Then the diesels replaced the coal burners and after a time of being on a lay-off, he got a position the company called stationery engineer. A fancy name for a job to heat all the buildings during the winter months from huge coal fired furnaces. He had the boiler shop to himself during his shift and he enjoyed the work. I always thought the inside of that building looked like the engine room of some gigantic ship. Eight giant boilers, jet-black and two stories high lined one side of the hanger size building. Over the boilers, a maze of catwalks and ladders leading to an even greater maze of pipe work and smoke ducts. All leading into a yellow brick stack standing two hundred and fifty feet over the Peach Creek yards of the C and O.

At night when he worked the graveyard shift, mommy and I would watch from windows of the enclosed porch of the house as he drove to the shop. We could hear the sound of the loose wooden planks on the Peach Creek bridge behind the house as he drove across it. We could see the headlights of his car and know when he got to the building. He would blow the car's horn and the sound of it would say, love you, good night and I'll see you in the morning.

Mommy would wave a replay to the sound the horn made even though daddy was across the river a mile away. He kept that job until he was made to retire. Many times I could have walked over to where he worked but I didn't, now I know that I'm the loser for the not, just like the losers around the pool table in front of me now.
Decisions made and a lifetime to deal with them.
A wish to have time rewind, but time is gone and will never come again.

I think back to the time three years ago, Dean and I took daddy's lunch over to him,
that was the last year he worked, his job being phased out by automation. After we give
daddy his lunch he tried to make small talk, but Dean and I didn’t stay long. When we got in the car, Dean turned to me and said.

"We should have stayed longer; daddy wanted to talk and one of these days me and you will wish we had him to talk to."

Yea we should have stayed longer.

"You goin to let anybody else shoot." Someone shouted to Dean.

"No." Came Dean's replay, and with a one finger push-up of his glasses added, "I'm
going to teach ya' all how to play nine ball."

The cue ball comes to rest right behind the one ball. Dean makes a long bank shot into the far comer, the cue ball touches off the near rail and rolls half way down table lining up with the number two ball.

"That was ah good shot." Said an old black man setting next to me. His face a scuff of whiskers and one eye looking sideways.

"Ya sir ah good shot." He said again and gave his knee a slap.

Slow easy stroke, light touch to the cue, the two ball drops into the side pocket, cue ball rolls some before it comes to a stop. Dean is walking around the table to line up with it.

He already knows where it will end up.

Cue ball stops just short of the number three ball with it between the cue and the seven sitting at an angle to the far right comer pocket.
Dean looks over the table at me and winks one eye letting me know to watch this next shot, it will be a good one. He pauses and uses his tongue to adjust the chew in his mouth, chalks up and with a slow steady stroke sends the cue ball away, aimed for the number three ball. The three ball strikes the five ball and it in turn makes a slow roll to the pocket, looking like it will run out of momentum and stop short. The whole room seems to go still; the only movement is the five ball making it's slow way down table. The rolling sound of the ball on the hard felt covered table is all that can be heard. The ball makes it's way to the pocket, hangs at the edge for a second, and then falls in. The cue ball coming off the three and lining it up with the side pocket. Easy shot. Cue ball off the rail right behind the number four ball. The nine-ball right in front of the far pocket, kiss the cue off the four and sink the nine, game over, pay up and rack up.

No one said a word. Dean picks up the forty-five dollar’s that’s tossed on the table and jams it into his pocket.

Dean doesn't win all the time, but wins enough, loses some for the hustle, some for a
shot not made. Mostly he takes the money, takes the break and the games go on.

Somewhere in the darkness of the room, out of the range of the lights suspended over the tables, a clock hangs on a wall. I cannot see it but I know it is there. I can hear it's ticking and the longer I sit, the loader the ticking becomes.

I think of daddy again when we were told by the doctors that he had cancer and later that same day alone in my room how I cried, and then stopped myself thinking he's not in the grave yet. That was the only time that I cried for him. I should not have stopped myself.

At the wake, as I looked down at him in the casket I remember thinking then how good a storyteller he was and that I'll never hear him again. He would tell the same stories over and over again but each time the stories where told it would be like the first time they where told, I never got tired of listening to them. He would tell of the time that his own daddy had died, tell the story in such a way that I could see it in my mind like a movie being played out.

"It was raining." Daddy would say as he started the story, after a pause he would go on.

"The only light that was on, was over the bed. My brothers where asleep, I was the only one up. There in the stillness I heard what sounded like a man walking across the front porch, walking from one end to the other with heavy hobnailed shoes on. I went to the front door to see, but no one was there. No one came on the porch that night because there wasn't any footprints from the muddy ground; one hour after I heard that sound your grandfather died."

Daddy could give the time, day and year of his father's death right down to what the room smelled like. I can remember but parts of my father's life. My memorys of daddy are like a puzzle, incomplete, with too many pieces missing to see the whole.

Opportunity lost.

I think back to the last days when daddy still had most of his sense's, he was in the
emergency room of Logan Memorial, just him and me in the exam room. Without looking at me he asked,

"Where's mom?"

"In the waiting room." I said.

"Where's mom?" He said again this time turning his head to look at me.

"Mon's in the waiting room." I said again beginning to get a little on edge at the same
question asked.

"Where's mom?" He asked again this time with a shaky voice.

"Dad I told you mom is in the waiting room!" I heard my own voice much too loud and harsh.

He just looked back up at the ceiling, that was the last time we said anything to each other. He died not long after that.

I should have gotten mom; I still don't know why I didn't. All he wanted was for the one person who had been with him through most of his life to be with him now through part of his death. Why is it that we remember more clearly the bad times when it's too late to be able to share the good times?

The least I could have done was to stay with him on the last day he had. He was put in a semi-private room, I stayed all night with him, watching him in the dark, watching his chest rise and stop like he was holding his breath and then go down as he exhaled heavy and labored. As if the next inhaled one would be the last one. Tubes where all over him, up his nose and in his arms. A heart monitor was counting off his pulse beep-beep, beep-beep. Counting off daddy's life, the final countdown. Like the next beep would be the last. Daddy could not see the monitor but I believed he could hear it. I listened for sounds too, the sound of heavy shoes upon the white, tile floor of the hallway outside the open door. listened and watched, watching for a man that would be in dark shadow, despite the bright lights of the hallway. I waited in the corner of the darkened room and looked to the bright hall, at the place I knew the man would stop. He would stop at the door and turning only his head, he would look into the room. He would be looking at daddy, but would also he be looking at me as well?
He didn't come that night and I fell into an uneasy sleep, the only sound was daddys breathing and the beep-beep, beep-beep of a machine counting down a life.

When morning came Dean and mom walked in.

"Go home and get some rest." Mom told me.

"We'll call you if anything changes."

I started not to go, but I did, no sooner did I get home, then the phone rang.

"Your father passed away." Mom told me, her voice to the point but shaky.

I should have stayed. That was the least I could have done.

I hear the invisible clock on the wall someplace in this darkened pool hall ticking its
own countdown and I know the countdown is for me.

Counting off the last turns of my own life.

The games end and begin, Dean looses some, wins most. I loose track, it all seems like one long continuous game. The smoke in the room is making the headache that started when we walked down the steps worse. The kind of pain that starts in th back of the brain stem and works it's way up the back of the neck into both sides of the
head.
I take two more pills.

The pain has a mental image to it. In my mind, I can see a man dressed in black, walking down a very long and straight hallway. Office doors are on his left and on his right. The overhead light cast a dark shadow on his face from a wide brim Quaker hat pushed tight on his head. Each time the man gets beside one of the doors, tight-lipped
office workers slam them shut. The man looks to his left and to his right without stopping. The slamming of the office doors are much faster than they should be and the sound echoes down the hall. The sound of the man's heavy shoes upon the bare
hardwood floor add to the din until all that can be heard are his foot steps and the noise
becomes a sickening roar. The last thing the man looks at before the doors are shut is the
fearful looks of the people on the other side of them. The dead bolts are turned and the
doors locked because the people know that the man with the hobnailed shoes has came to pay a visit.

The asprin doesn't seem to be working.

The first light of morning can be seen coming into the pool room, the last game is played out, the money is picked up. The suckers and the hustlers start heading home or wherever men go when there is no other place left to go. Dean puts back his cue in its case and we walk back up the concrete steps to his car.

Dean starts counting his winnings. It's only monetary, but at least he walks away with something tangible, from something completed. Thats more than I can say for myself, more than I can say for most I guess. Sometimes, all that we have, is only pain from that which we have lost.

The night is over and a morning mist hangs lightly over the parking lot from off of the
river near by. We start for home but some in the pool room choose to stay. I suppose it's the way it should be, play the game, win or lose, stay or go but always the game goes on. All that is left are the discards of life, the smoke of old memories and broken steps leading away from a darkened room.