HomeThe Way The Game is Played
by Gina Grimaldi
They didn't know it; should have but didn't. That's the way the strangers are. They drive into town in clean cars, stop over at Al's for gas and buy a dope and a moon pie. Then they kinda look around like maybe they was admiring the statue of Colonel Whitehead who died fighting on the confederate side in the battle of Sampson's Ferry thirty miles south of town.
Anyone driving a clean car automatically comes under suspicion. If the folks in it haven't just got married or maybe was burying kin at the big church over on Clarke's Chapel road, everyone would begin wondering what they was up to.
No one likes them; they were revenuer's sent by the government to put honest men out of business. The anger and resentment the towns people felt when they showed up is unmentionable. Louie, over at the town's only gas station lost a brother when they cornered him at his new copper still over at the foot of Black Mountain. Shot another man in the butt when he took off down the cut trying to get away. Max over at the general store still walks with a limp from the busted leg he got jumping out of an upstairs window when they surrounded his home.
That ain't to say the guys from the government didn't get busted up regularly. One of them, walking toward his car after stopping to buy a pack of cigarettes, got pole axed with the business end of a plow handle when he rounded a corner. Ten more steps and he would have been safe.
Everyone in town remembers when one of the revenuers named Fred got into a pool game with big old Sam in the back room of Max's place. The silly fool figured no one would know he was looking for information or maybe one of them clues. The clown shot a pretty good stick but no one told him Sam hadn't lost a game of eight ball since he dropped out of school in the second grade.
What made it bad was they were playing for a quarter a game and Sam was two dollars ahead. When he offered to use his cane instead of a cue stick, it just plain embarrassed the revenuer in front of everyone in town who had heard about the doings and come to watch the man sweat and get pent up. When big old Sam suggested the little man buy himself a Shirley Temple and relax, the revenuer got himself all pumped up over that one and looked at Sam like he was going to do something bad and tough but Sam wasn't blinking.
Fred's beady eyes narrowed; his shoulders were already squared. The man's little head tilted to one side. Anger on his face showed cause the two bucks would have bought him a good dinner. When Fred missed a desperation shot at the three ball, he went to sit down cause when Sam approached the table, he had a pretty clear idea of what was coming.
And just as sure as there is due on a watermelon in the morning, Sam bounced the cue ball off of three rails in a way that sent his ten ball scooting into a side pocket. That shot, added to all the others, was too much for Fred. The man's face turned red, his breathing got irregular; only a doctor knows what it did to his heart.
When Fred stood up folks thought the silly man was going to shoot Sam with the revolver he thought no one knew about. He most likely would have but that's when Max stepped forward with the wrong end of a cue stick in his hands and got ready to whack the revenuer up side his pointed head.
When he got outside and thought he was safe, Fred pulled his little revolver out of his britches, fired three shots into the air and swore he would be back. And that, my friends, is when the eight sticks of dynamite someone shoved up the tail pipe of his clean car blew the thing all to heck.
