The Risk Pool

steer him away from the subject, because almost anything that went wrong would remind him of Eileen’s son and set him in motion. And it always ended the same way, with my father shaking his head, his eyes havingnarrowed to the point that they were more inward-looking than outward, as if for the first time in his life he’d come across something he couldn’t understand. “You should see him now,” he’d tell me. “He’s as big as a house.”
    And even though his eyes were little more than slits by the time he finished his rant, I could see something strange in them, something I’d never seen before.
    It took me months to piece together what had happened between them. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could just ask him about. My father had already told me all he was going to tell about how they’d “gotten into it.” If I asked, all he’d do was go through the whole thing again and I wouldn’t know any more than I had to begin with. You couldn’t focus my father’s stories, get him to clarify and expand portions. He’d start all over for you, but that was about it. So I had to make do with oblique references to the incident until I could get Wussy to fill me in. I still don’t know all the details, but the outline is pretty clear, the conflict and its outcome predictable.
    My father must have realized that he couldn’t keep Drew Littler buffaloed forever. Even that second year that I’d lived with my father, the boy had been far bigger and stronger, and he’d known he was, at some level that was not quite belief. But his knowledge was marching steadily in the direction of belief, and he must have awakened each morning with an iota less superstitious fear of the man who appeared to have his number. He must have felt that belief coming like a wave, must have known that the day was not far distant when none of my father’s tricks would work anymore, that there would be no way Sam Hall could get the drop on him. Or that even if he did get the drop, it wouldn’t do him any good. That afternoon they finally got into it, Drew Littler must have known, perhaps had known for some time, that he could spot my father just about any advantage and still come out on top.
    Apparently my father and Wussy had been working all afternoon in the hot sun, repairing the roof on Eileen Littler’s little house. Drew, naturally, hadn’t been around to help. Probably his mother had warned him to stay away, knowing that there was no way her son and my father could work on the same roof withoutone hurling the other off. And no doubt Drew had stayed away until he figured the job was done. He was every bit as lazy as my father accused him of being, and he wouldn’t have wanted to risk being taunted up onto the roof where he’d get tar on his hands and clothes and in his blond hair.
    And part of their getting it on that day wouldn’t have anything to do with Drew Littler at all, but rather the lingering effects of my father’s having had to work all day in the hot sun with Wussy. No doubt my father had talked Wussy into helping because Wussy knew a little bit about roofing the way he knew a little bit about everything. Unless I miss my guess, Wussy also knew a little bit more about it than did my father, whose opinion about such matters was always, “How fucking hard can it be?” It must have been some afternoon up there, the two of them finding out how hard it could be, the hot sun on their shoulders and reflecting up into their faces off the hot tar they hauled up to the roof in buckets. No doubt my father bulled his way through tasks that required finesse, Wussy shaking his head, concentrating fiercely on damage control, trying to kid my father out of the worst kinds of dumbness and getting called “you crazy black bastard” for his trouble. Eileen probably came out every half hour or so to stand in the middle of the driveway where she could see the two of them, listen to their tug of war, ask how it was going, to which Wussy would reply that the whole job would have been finished an hour ago if only he didn’t have no help. Then my father would call him variations on the black bastard theme, Eileen, safe on the ground below, pointing out the literal truth that—covered with tar as they were—anyone would have taken them for brothers.
    Sometime after she went inside the last time, Drew must have roared up on his new motorcycle, the first he’d owned since wrecking the other at the base of Jack Ward’s private