The Risk Pool

“And I’ll believe you too. You know how come? ’Cause Sam Hall always tells the fuckin’ truth, that’s how fuckin’ come.”
    “Then shut up and let me tell you, you drunk,” my father said.
    “Tell me,” Roy said. “Go ahead. I’ll believe you, too. I am a drunk. I can’t fuckin’ help it.”
    “Shut up before I punch you,” my father said.
    “It’s be a fuckin’ honor to be sucker-punched by Sam Hall.”
    My father looked at me and grinned. “What a drunk. I ever get like him, shoot me.”
    “Shoot me too,” Roy said, and he began to cry.
    “Hey!” my father shouted at him, scaring Roy half off his stool. “Answer me. You want to know who’s really the best?”
    “Who, Sammy?” Roy whimpered. “Who?”
    “My son,” my father answered, then promptly put me in a rancid headlock. “You’re looking at the only thing I ever did right in my whole life. Right here.”
    When my father released me, Mike came over and surveyed the situation. “Roy!” he said. “No crying in the bar.”
    No crying in the bar was one of Mike’s few rules and he was adamant about it. Roy wiped his nose and eyes on his sleeve.
    “Buck up!” Mike said.
    “Every man should have a son like mine,” my father said to Roy, as if Mike’s appearance had made exactly no impression on him. “I don’t deserve him.”
    “I had a son once,” Roy said. “But I lost him.”
    “He’s the best,” my father said to Roy, but all the while looking bleary-eyed at me. “It’s just too bad his old man’s a no-good drunk.”
    “I can’t help it,” Roy repeated, crying harder now.
    “Can’t help what,” my father swung around to glare at him.
    “I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about me.”
    Mike came back over. “Buck up, Roy,” he warned. “Don’t make me run you.”
    “I had a boy,” Roy wailed. “I did.”
    My father noticed I didn’t have anything in front of me andthrew up his hands. “Can we get a drink around here or what?”
    Mike ignored him, fixing Roy intently and ferociously. “No crying in the goddamn bar!” he bellowed.
    “I gotta wee,” Roy said, as if this sudden necessity were what he’d been crying about.
    “So go,” my father said.
    Roy headed for the men’s room. “What an asshole,” Mike said. “You watch. He’ll be in there for about five minutes. Then he’ll try to sneak out on his tab.”
    “Take it out of here,” my father said, pushing the money he had on the bar toward Mike.
    “What for? He pulls the same shit every week.”
    “He probably hasn’t got it,” my father said.
    “I can’t stand that crying shit,” Mike said.
    “Shut up and get my kid a drink,” my father said. Then to me, “You had dinner?”
    I said I hadn’t.
    “Me neither,” he said. “Or lunch, or breakfast.”
    “We had breakfast together, if you remember.”
    He stared at me. “That was yesterday.”
    “That was today. Yesterday was yesterday.”
    The door to the men’s room opened a crack.
    “Watch this,” Mike said, pretending to go about his business.
    After a minute the door opened wider, a liquid eye in the crack. Then Roy appeared. He was a little guy anyway, and pretty nimble for a drunk. All the way to the front door he scooted along, facing the wall, perhaps on the ostrich principle that if you didn’t see anybody, then nobody could see you. When he got to the door, Mike yelled, “So long, Roy!”
    “What’s the damage?” my father said.
    “Couple a bucks,” Mike said.
    “So why the big deal?”
    “Fine,” Mike said, taking them from my father’s pile. “Spend your money.”
    “Let’s eat something,” I said, fearing my father had forgotten and wouldn’t remember again.
    “Why not,” he said.
    He was wobbly, but we made it to a booth.
    “Eileen off tonight?” I said, for something to say, and because I wondered what had become of her after calling me.
    My father shook his head. “I don’t even feel sorry for her anymore.I try to tell her a little bit. Prepare her.… What for? You can’t talk to people who won’t listen.”
    “That’s true,” I said.
    “She’s a good girl. The best. It’s not that. She’s pretty smart, too. Except about Numb Nuts. Then she’s dumb as …” He looked around the table for something that Eileen could be dumb as.
    “You should stay out of it,” I said.
    “I should,” he surprised me by saying. “I know I should. I just can’t stand the sight of him. He’s no good. Hell,
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