It’s been three decades since Waterdog disappeared into the neon wilderness of all-night poolrooms. He was 15 years old, a kid hustler from Connecticut carrying nothing but a cue stick and a bus ticket. In the late 1960s there was action in every town and even a skilled teenager could make money on the road. In Norfolk, Waterdog hustled sailors for $30 a rack. In Albany he shot against men who’d traded their identities for pool-hall handles like Boston Joey, Popcorn, Charlie Mumbles, or the Connecticut Kid.
That year Waterdog was on the road with a buddy named Billy Teeter. They’d met in LA and decided to head up Highway 5 to the Bay Area, where no one knew the longhaired kid who could sink five straight racks. Living out of Teeter’s trailer, they were scoring $500 a night in the rooms of Alameda, an action town on an island in San Francisco Bay.
“It’s enough to eat, go to the methadone clinic, go to Dunkin’ Donuts,” he explains. “It all adds up. The other day, I beat a guy out of $24 playing $3 a game. After I beat him out of eight games, he quit. I had to pay $3 for the time, so I ended up clearing $21.”
Waterdog gives $30 lessons in the poolroom. In October one of his pupils paid to get him into a new methadone program, and so far he’s stuck with it. But the mark of hard living hasn’t been washed away. Waterdog has the worn, defeated look of a sharecropper in a Walker Evans photograph. The top of his head is broad and bare, with slicked-down wisps of hair that thicken into an old hippie’s hairdo past the crown. The face winnows down to gaunt cheeks covered with bristles, a pointed chin. His mustache looks enormous on such narrow features.
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This Friday night at Chris’s the heavy action is happening at a table near the stairs, where Jamaican Aaron is playing one pocket for $50 a game. Joe and Waterdog are at a table in the back, next to a paneled wall hung with portraits of pool greats. They’re gonna play nine ball, first to seven games takes the round. Waterdog spots his egg two games and lets him break every time. In nine ball the players have to shoot at the lowest-numbered ball left on the table; whoever pots the nine wins. Waterdog takes the first game by using the four ball to knock in the nine. In the second Joe scratches on the break, but Waterdog misses the four ball. He’s distracted by a punk sitting near the action table, screaming that the room is full of “cowards” who refuse to play for $50 a game. Joe runs the rest of the table.
“The motherfucker cost me a game with his big mouth,” Waterdog gripes. “I can’t play pool and listen to the motherfucker talk.”
But Waterdog is down $20 after losing the first two sets. They double the stakes and even the odds. Now the winner gets the break. In the first game the eight gets stuck on the rail, and Joe can’t rescue it. Waterdog can. They’re keeping score by moving dimes up the side of the table, and Waterdog’s dime overtakes Joe’s. By the end of the evening, he’s up ten bucks.
