The Curse of Sanity Lost

The Curse of Sanity Lost - David E. Malone - Sept 23, 2006

I moved to Burlington, Ontario in 1996. It was a boring little dormitory town - the only thing justifying its existence being the massive Ford plant just down the road on the 401. My wife was occupied in decorating the new house and the first thing I did was look around for a place to play a little straights after work. At that time, the only poolroom in town was called Sanity Lost. I asked old Jimmie why that was so and he told me that the original owner, Sam Hillenbrand got tired of everyone telling him he must be out of his mind to open a pool hall in a town with only five thousand residents. Thus the name. Of course, since then, the population has swelled to nearly five times that size and the poolroom must be making a fair profit being crowded every night. The new owner sagely got himself a liquor licence and a couple of nubile bar-girls with very short skirts and tight tops - business is booming.

It seems originally the place was an old barn, so the construction is massive support timbers and exposed beams. Without any partitions, there is room for two strictly regimented parallel rows of old Dufferin Challengers with plenty of elbow room in between. It's cold in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer. The floor is chalky white concrete littered with the detritus of cigarette butts and discarded candy wrappers. Nobody ever makes any attempt to sweep it up, and you get used to pushing the trash aside with your foot before getting down over a shot. The only attempt at decor is a motley collection of posters advertising various tournaments that had been held there over the years... "Five Dollars Added!" one of them bragged in 1946. That's before I was born. There's a prominent sign on the door that says 'Gambling Not Allowed' and in smaller letters underneath some wag has added... 'If you're sure you can beat him... then it's not gambling...'. I soon found the No Gambling sign was for show and enforcement officials only and watched a great deal of money change hands while I was there. Unfortunately, and to my ongoing distress, quite a lot of it turned out to be mine. But that's another story.

An odd thing about Sanity Lost that caught my eye was the Forbidden table in the corner. It always had a black, fitted naugahyde cover on it and, even if every other table in the room was in use, this one remained sacred, untouched and unused. I played there for almost a year and never saw anyone playing on it. One night a brash young player boldly walked over and removed the cover - the table turned out to be a quite unremarkable and respectable Dufferin Challenger - and was quickly ushered away and chastened for his transgression.

This made me curious, so I approached the room owner, Gus and asked him why it wasn't used.

"It's a long story...", he said cryptically. "The table is cursed."

"I'd like to hear it, if it's alright with you...", I said.

"Well, the thing about telling a long story is that it makes a man thirsty, if you know what I mean." he said, winking.

I ordered him a pint of his favorite Old-Familiar Dark Porter throat lubricant and a Guinness for me. He sat down, took a long sip, and this is what he told me...

"Back in 1948, old Sam who owned the place used to gamble a lot. It was the only way he knew to keep enough cash coming in to keep the place afloat. And he was a great player... one of the best hereabouts in those days. Anybody new was promptly assessed and his prospective cash potential evaluated with a canny eye - old Sam knew how to match up and he knew when to take a chance... and he rarely lost. The locals got smart enough not to keep on making donations after a while, so his alternative sources of income began to dry up except for the fresh meat that walked in the door. It was a dangerous game, because many of the drifters and casual drop-ins were hustlers in their own right and looking to make a living themselves. But, like I told you, old Sam was one of the very best and he won more than he lost.

I was the bartender in those days...

One day, young Billie Scarsdale dropped in. Now Billie was a farmer... had a spread down where Smitty's farm is now and we had never seen him in the poolroom before. He was a skinny, red-haired, tall drink of water and wore the same coveralls he likely wore on the farm. Leastways, they smelled like it. There was something a bit odd about the lad - couldn't quite put a finger on it, but he was ill at ease and obviously had something on his mind. I asked him if he wanted a beer and he said, no, he was looking for a game.

"A money game?" I said.

"Yes...", he said.

Well, I didn't even know if Billie had ever played pool before, but I called over Sam from his office and told him what was going on. He immediately got that 'Hmmn... fresh meat...' look on his face and before you know it, he had young Billie down at the corner table racking for a respectable (in those days) fifty jellies a game, playing straights to a ton. Turns out Billie is quite a player even playing with an old house cue. Didn't try to hide the fact neither... before you know it he'd run a handy fifty-six and Sam was sweating a bit. Won the first game going away and pissed Sam off quite a bit. Old Sam didn't like to lose - especially when there was money on the line. But he came back and won the next one and they traded back and forth until Billie was ahead around two hundred. Looked like the kid had Sam's number and Sam was getting impatient.

"Let's stop farting around. One game, to a hundred, for five hundred bucks...?" said Sam.

"Make it a thousand and I'll play..." said Billie.

"A thousand?" said Sam, a bit shocked and not sure if he'd heard him right. That was a hatful of money in those days and would pay the taxes on the hall for two years. "You got that kind of money, Kid?"

"I have indeed." says Billie and digs deep into one of his overall pockets and briefly shows him a big fistful of twenty dollar bills with an elastic band around them. "You got the stones, old man..?"

Now what made Sam take him up on it, I don't know. Maybe he really thought he could beat him. Maybe he saw something desperate in those haunted eyes, or maybe his pride was stirred by the sheer arrogance of the kid. God only knows.

A crowd of on-lookers had gathered around as word spread quickly of the substantial stake. I guess, like me, some of them just wanted to see Sam get his ass handed to him after experiencing first-hand the same fate at Sam's hands. Some of them just enjoyed a good money game. Some of them were straight-pool purists. And, as usual, some of them just wandered over because everyone else was over and they wanted to see what was going on.

After the usual delicate foreplay with neither player moving the pack to any great extent, Sam finally miscalculated and sprung an object ball with just enough clearance for Billie to take a calculated risk and sink it... breaking out a few more balls at the same time. He started in on the rest of the rack, totally focussed and oblivious to any distraction. But he got himself in a heap of trouble right from the start of the second rack and each shot only seemed to make matters worse. His first run only slightly moved the counter recording a mere 26. Sam took full advantage with a sterling run of 86 balls and was grinning by the time he finally missed. And to make matters worse for Billie, he left him plugged behind the thirteen ball on the rail, almost touching it and with no reasonable shot in sight.

You don't tickle a tiger. Billie stood over it for a while and then called the 7-ball, kicked off the short rail with authority... and sank it perfectly in the far corner. The crowd erupted in applause before the stern look on young Billie's face cowed them again into appreciative silence. It became a clinic as Billie began to methodically sink balls. Nothing flashy... nothing wasted in the way of ball movement. Draw and drag... perfect angle... perfect position and then natural roll with the only adjustment for the speed of the shot. The beads crept up towards 100 and he still hadn't missed. You could tell by the look on Sam's face that he knew he wasn't getting back to the table and he tapped his cue nervously as he sat there.

Suddenly, the crowd gasped as the 9-ball rattled in a corner pocket and hung on the lip... refusing to drop. There was a hush as everybody held their breath and wished it into the pocket. It didn't drop. The score was 93 to 86 and Sam got up a bit unsteadily. The kid's face was white as a sheet and even that hardened old bastard, Sam may have felt sorry for him as came to the table. But Sam wasn't the kind to let sentiment enter into any game - to Sam billiards was a blood sport.

"Tough luck, kid... but now it's my turn." he said.

It took him just a few minutes to reach one the magic one-hundred mark and close out the match.

Billie was trembling like a leaf, but he reached in his pocket and handed Sam that big wad of bills. And after that, I can still remember it to this day, he reached into his other pocket and took out a little derringer pistol. For a small gun, it sure made a big impression and the room was full of people diving under tables and knocking over other people just trying to get out of the way. Sam just stood there - I think he thought his time had come. But instead Billie climbed up on the table and raised his arms like he was delivering a sermon from the Mount.

"I curse this table and anyone who plays on it...", he cried.

And then he put the barrel of the little gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. His brains splattered out the back of his head and he fell in a heap on the felt... stone cold dead. There was a silence that you could feel in the pool room and the remaining people simply filtered out until the only bodies left were me and Sam and the inert one on the table...

We found out afterwards that the bank foreclosed on the farm and Billie couldn't get the money together to pay the mortgage. Needed two thousand more or less to cover the tab or he'd have lost the farm. The thousand he ended up donating to Sam was all the money he could get together...

Sam covered the table the very same day and put up the room for sale. That one game broke his heart and put him off playing pool - I hear he never played another game of pool in his life. When I bought the room from him there was a clause in the contract that said the ill-fated table is part of the lock, stock and barrel of the room and cannot be sold or played on in perpetuity... I try to keep my side of the bargain."

He leaned back and finished his beer. I signalled to the bar tender to get him a refill.

"Besides, would you want to play on a table someone died on? The cloth has never been changed and if you take a look, there's a dark stain where the kid bled to death on it... the legend says that anyone who plays on it is cursed and will die within twenty-four hours."

He sat for a while, obviously moved by his recollections and I respected his silence and left him there with his memories.

I went home that night and told the wife the story. She was horrified but thought the whole thing was romantic and awfully tragic at the same time.

"That poor boy," she said. "He must have been in awful despair...". I myself couldn't sleep and lay awake restlessly thinking about the poor kid and his dreadful fate.

Thursday night I was back at Sanity Lost and played a few games. Because nobody else volunteered to be my next victim, Jimmie dropped over and we chatted about politics and what the morons in Washington were up to and why they should be shot or at least impeached. This triggered a thought and I said in a hushed voice,

"Talking about shooting people, I heard the story about Billie and the cursed table the other day..."

"What story..?" said Jimmie.

"You know... about Billie, and him shooting hisself when he lost to old Sam... and the foreclosure on the farm, and the blood stains on the cloth, and everything..."

Jimmie started to chuckle.

"What's so funny, you old jackass?" I said.

By that time, he'd nearly fallen off his stool laughing and wheezing and it was a good few minutes until he was able to coherently speak again.

"That Gus, he's such a card. The only reason we don't play on that table is because the ball-return is broken and the son of a bitch is too cheap to have it repaired..." he said. "The stain is where Sam dropped a fresh pizza on it a few years ago.

Um... how many beers did make you pay for?"