The Protege: Part I

By Mark Williams

A bartender, Charlie Grifter, is taught the 'tricks of the trade' by a pool tournament champion, Big Milwaukee, shortly before his demise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Williams
• Release date: May 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310016325

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THE PROTEGE: PART I

Mark Williams

Published by Pinot Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Mark Williams

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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1

The Protege

The nervous pool racker, with a cigar hanging thinly out of his mouth, leaned over and then began to rack the set of pool balls. The two others before him, the rest of the players in all, had lost badly to the man in front of the barroom table. His name, well known in ‘Randys Bar’ and in the Midwestern town of Kenosha, Wisconsin, was Big Milwaukee. He was regarded by the large pool and billiard community, nationwide and as a whole, as the best. He had dominated the pool game since the late 90’s and even moreover in the 2000s. Onlookers in the bar: a curvy blonde with a cocktail in one hand and its cherry in her other, a kiosk boy from up the street holding newspapers under his arm, several drunk but musing men and women in front of the bar, a few more men seated at the various barroom tables, three or four feigning patrons pausing from their walks down the street and Charlie---Charlie Grifter.

Charlie had, now, worked at the bar for nine months and as the rest of the onlookers had, he’d seen this particular type of pool episode happen before but had never failed to become astonished. So, all the same, the group of bar patrons formidably watched as ‘Game 3’ got underway.

It was usually during this brief transient of time that the extra drinks were hurriedly ordered and that men and women went to use the bathrooms, or that terse phone calls were made on the phone machines found against the wall (oddly, not very far from a dart board).

‘Randys Bar’ was a comfortable, homely type place-although, it was not a setting for kids, or wives. All the local drifters-drifters…not tramps, fast girls looking to score (yet, they never seem to do), pool sharks, beer brains and the bar crowd in general-tended to frequent the small bar which was plush in its bourgeois atmosphere. Its gaming consisted of three pool tables-two ordinary types along with a custom-made, carved, wooden framed version in the middle.

The middle table, naturally, was always used by Big Milwaukee himself and the professionals, and the bettors who tried superficially to imitate them.

Hanging over the pool tables, were shaped or ornate lights, adding an amiable ambient to the smoky bar atmosphere. The walls were covered with various sports memorabilia, plaques, and pictures of sporting games, sports celebrities, and team mascots alike. A Milwaukee Brewers poster covered one wood paneled wall, a Milwaukee Bucks poster covered another and Wisconsin Badgers’, beer mugs were a common site seen on tables. Winding neon wires of advertisement and sporting humor, electrified almost every corner of the room.

Altogether, the barroom was dark, but easy enough to find ones way through. The out-of-towner, or first-timer, might think the bar to be a trouble spot, or possibly a pimp hangout, but in reality the ideal itself was ludicrous. Most of the frequenters of the bar came only to have fun, or just to view one of the bars three hanging television screens, or of course, for the beer-fresh from Milwaukee's vast range of breweries, or, and most excitably, to see Big Milwaukee play pool.

Big Milwaukee was the bars only informal means of entertainment and to the bar itself, Milwaukee was as important as Babe Ruth to New York, Michael Jordan to Chicago or, Joe Louis to Harlem. But, only for entertainment purposes only. Only, so that the leering spectators of the bar could watch Big Milwaukee and his ever fretting opponents. So many had came by and tried their luck, it seemed-from Michigan, New York, Ohio, Chicago, Los Angeles-only just to play him…and,