The Key Wall

I never planned on staying in Skrindavik. That's not even the real name of the town, but it's close enough and I can't spell the real one. Point is, I was driving a rental van north along the one road that goes there, and the county closed it behind me. Snow. Not a cute dusting. The kind of snow that makes a plow driver laugh at you.

So there I was. Twenty-eight years old, a former supervisor for a housekeeping company that serviced summer lodges along the coast, and my last job had gone sideways in a way I still couldn't talk about without my jaw tightening. Short version: a guest accused me of stealing a watch. Long version: I didn't steal the watch, but the client didn't care, and my boss didn't fight for me, and I quit before I could get fired. Within a month I was cleaning toilets in fishing towns and telling myself it was temporary, which had been going on for two years.

The van sputtered into town on a Tuesday. Everything was shut except a gas station and one bar that had lights on. I asked the gas station guy where a man sleeps in a town like this.

"Bunkrooms at the old cannery," he said, jerking a thumb. "County turned the offices into rooms last winter. Heated. Ten bucks a night if you find Jonas."

I found Jonas. Jonas was seventy-something and wore a sweater that had seen things. He handed me a key off a nail and said the word "tournament" like it was a religious event.

"Tournament?" I asked.

"Saturday. Pool. Cannery floor. You play?"

"I used to," I said, which was true. Semi-pro in my early twenties. Good enough to beat most people and not good enough to make a living. I'd quit when the money ran out and told everyone, including myself, that I'd gotten tired of it. Really the money ran out because I stopped winning, but who's counting.

"You should sign up," Jonas said. "Prize this year is special."

I followed him in my van to the cannery, because everything in that town involves somebody driving you in their truck. The cannery was a huge dark building with a fish smell soaked so deep into the concrete it had probably become part of the concrete. Inside, under work lights strung on cables, were six pool tables. Actual decent tables. Somebody in that town cared.

And along one whole wall, mounted on boards as if for a museum exhibit, hung hundreds of keys. Old brass locker keys, rusted ones, shiny ones, each on its own hook with a little paper tag.

"That's the prize?" I said.

"That's the wall," Jonas said, proud as a father. "Every winner takes one key and puts one back. The key you take means something. Old man Stefan took the key to locker forty-one because that's where his late wife kept her boots. My brother took the key to the office where he got the phone call about his son being born. You take a key, you leave your story on the tag."

I stood there longer than I meant to. There was something about it. A trophy you couldn't sell, couldn't pawn, couldn't put on a shelf. A trophy that was just a small piece of metal that meant you were part of a town's memory for one year.

"You play," Jonas said. It wasn't a question.

"Yeah," I heard myself say. "Yeah, I'll play."

Here's what nobody warns you about small towns: word travels at the speed of gossip, which is faster than light. By the time we got back to the bunkrooms, three different people had asked if I was the outsider signing up for the tournament, and one old woman had already bet on me against the local champion.

"Who's the local champion?" I asked her at the gas station counter.

"Garth Paterson. Harbor foreman. He's won it five times running." She squinted at me. "You any good?"

"I used to be."

She did not look convinced. I didn't blame her. I wasn't convinced either.

Saturday came and the cannery was packed. Forty people, easy, all of them holding beer and all of them knowing my name somehow. I signed the sheet with a fake flourish and instantly regretted the fake flourish.

And then I saw him.

He was racking balls on table two, and I knew him on sight the way you know a car model. Broad shoulders, forearms like dock rope, a face that didn't give anything away for free. He wasn't showing off. He was just setting the rack, and even setting a rack he looked like the best player in the room, because he was calm. Winners are calm. Hustlers are calm too, but hustlers watch the room. He was watching the table.

That's when the old feeling showed up. Not nerves. Hunger. I hadn't felt it in years and it arrived like a dog that still remembers you.

"That's him," said the woman from the gas station, who had materialized next to me. "Garth."

"I noticed."

"You're staring."

"I'm scouting."

She laughed and left me alone with my ego, which at that point was the largest object in the building.

The bracket put us on opposite sides, which was a mercy, because I needed three wins to even reach him. I won my first match clean. Second match I got sloppy and dug myself out by luck. By the third I'd stopped thinking about the watch, the job, the snow, all of it. My stroke came back like a bike you never really unlearned. Nine o'clock that night, the crowd pulled tables together and it was me and Garth, race to three.

He broke first and ran two racks without a whisper of drama. I mean it. No showboat angles, no crowd-pleasing draws. Just a man who knew exactly where the cue ball was going to stop before he hit it.

I lost the first game fast. Won the second when he scratched on the eight, which drew a hiss from the crowd like I'd never heard. He didn't react at all. Third game went to me on a fluke. Fourth went to him in about four minutes.

So we were sitting at two and two, and the room had gone quiet in that way rooms do when everybody realizes the out-of-towner might actually have a game. Garth walked the table before his break, and I caught myself watching his hands. Big hands. Careful hands. I looked away and failed.

He broke. Ran four balls. Missed a cut that I would've missed too, honestly, and I stepped up.

Three balls left, and he says, quiet, just to me, "You drop your elbow."

"I what?"

"On your stroke. Elbow drops. That's why you miss long rails."

"Thanks, coach."

"I'm not coaching. I'm telling you why I'm going to win." He chalked his cue. "In case it hurts less."