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Local Legends

Lincoln Hirn

    The old man had been the king of the bar, of that there had been no doubt. He used to strut around the pool table, the cigarette smoke that swirled around his head lit up like a crown in the glow of the hanging light, wowing any and all who had come over to watch him play. But it wasn’t just his game that made him the King. Sure, he was good, the best, even, and maybe that had been the original source of his power, once upon a time. But, by the time I’d taken over the bar from my father, the King was the King because the table, win or lose, was always his. Even after his losses, rare as they were, he’d remain, ready to welcome the next supplicant. In this way, his losing actually helped him consolidate power over his little fiefdom more than his winning. Because, when the King won, the vanquished challenger could walk back to their booth or barstool with their held high, knowing they had lost the table fair and square. But, when the King would lose, when he would lose and still refuse to cede the table, he’d look the victor square in the eye until the younger player – for it was, invariably, a younger player who could beat the King – buckled, and smiled, and said something like “Oh hell, I ain’t gonna kick you off your table. Good game old man, you’ll get me next time.”
    And then the King would smile back at the challenger and, in his mercy, nod slightly, as if to confer a special honor on the victor, who could take back to their seat not just the satisfaction of beating the King, but of winning his approval.
    In those moments, there was not a more powerful man on Earth than the King.
    It really was a sight to behold, the King in his pomp. The way he would loom over the pool table – making use of every one of his five feet and eleven inches – gave him a giant’s stature, even in the company of larger men. The way he’d hit the cue ball, lightly, gently, yet somehow with more power than the laconic movement of his arm would seem to allow, lent an air of the supernatural to his pool playing. Even the way he sat on his stool in between shots, more lithe and languid than you’d expect for a man of his age, leaned back and sipping on his beer, his cue nestled in the crook of his knee, exuded power.
    And so the bar was his kingdom, and he was its King. It didn’t matter that I owned the place, that my name was on the deed. It was his. And I was happy to let it be, in all honesty, because the King had me under his thrall more than just about anyone. Even though it was my place, I still spent most of my nights behind the bar watching for the King’s eyes, waiting for him to look at me and give me a little nod or tip of his glass. And, every time he did, I got the same jolt of exhilaration I’d felt the first time he’d told me, about a year after my father had died, that “you done good with your old man’s place, your daddy’d be proud.”
    Such was the power of the King.
    Which is why it was so surprising when he died. Not surprising in a medical sense, I suppose. Drinking and smoking haven’t been known to do wonders for an old man’s health. And, I guess, on some level, I knew this. But still, when I’d gone to his little apartment, after the fourth day he’d failed to show at the bar, and found him dead on the floor, I was shocked. Because the body laying cold on the carpet, more shriveled and frail than it had ever been in life, still gave off the power of the King, a power I could not believe a dead man could still command.
    Perhaps, I thought, thinking back to the year of college I’d done before coming back to the bar, this was how Antony felt, standing over the body of Caesar.
    The funeral was a minor affair, just some bar regulars and me. As far as I ever knew, the King didn’t have any kids. If he did, none of them showed up to the service, so the funeral home gave me his ashes. I took them back to the bar, along with the other mourners, and opened the best bottle of bourbon on the shelf.
    “To the King,” I said softly, looking at the shitty urn they’d given us the ashes in.
    “To the King,” intoned the rest, who were as motley an assortment of barflies as you’d expect.
    And so we drank, and told stories about ourselves, about each other, and about the King. After a little while, once we’d all put back a few, one of the older guys spoke up:
    “You know, it’s kind of fucked up there was no-one at the funeral but us, y’all think?”
    “Yeah, I was thinking so too,” Agreed another. “Any of y’all know what he did when he wasn’t here?”
    “Collect his draw checks, most like. He was in the service with your daddy, right? I heard they was running buddies back in the Vietnam days.”
    They all looked at me. I nodded. “That’s the rumor. But neither of them ever really talked about it.”
    “How can you have been running this bar this whole time, since your daddy passed, and not known if the King served with him?”
    I’d never really thought about it much, I realized. Just like I’d never really thought about what the King did outside the bar, or even that it was strange that so few folks showed at his funeral.
    I suppose, if I really let myself think on it, that I’d never really wanted to know. I liked having the legend, I liked the rumor that the King had some connection to my family from back in the old days, that, through some blood or another, we were connected. So I never came out and asked the King if he’d served with my father, because what if he’d said no? What if he’d just said, in that drawl of his, “Aw hell, that was just some bullshit we made up. Your daddy and I were friends because he owned a bar and I needed a drink.”
    The line would have gotten a laugh, of course, because there was hardly ever a joke the King told that didn’t get a laugh. Such was his power. But, if I’d asked that question, and he’d given that answer, then I’d have lost my special connection to him, lost that bond of blood. So I never did ask. Sometimes, I figured, it’s better to just let the rumor lie.
    “Just never asked him, I guess,” I said, shrugging as I passed the bottle around once again.
    “Well shit, I guess we’ll never know then. Still though, you think it’s sad it was just us at the funeral? That he didn’t have nothing outside of this bar? I mean, he was so big here, you know? Shit, he was big enough people in other bars told stories about him. How could he be just a lonely old man out there?”
    I sat back in my stool, and I thought about the dingy little apartment where I’d found the King’s body. It had been small, with water stains on the walls and frayed carpet on the floor. But it didn’t matter. Because it was the King’s, and everything about the apartment, right down to the joint in the ashtray that seemed to me like a final gift, a settling up of the King’s last tab, reminded me of the power he commanded at the bar, of the rapturous look on the faces of those who won his approval, of the delight in the eyes of those around the bar as they listened to the legends of the Pool Hall King.
    In that moment I realized that I didn’t much care that no one else had been at the King’s funeral, or that his palace was really nothing more than a crappy little walkup half a mile from the bar. I didn’t care that they’d given us his ashes in the cheapest urn the funeral home had, just like I didn’t care that the King’s fellow bar regulars may well have been his only family. I didn’t care about any of that, because he was still the King, and no shitty funeral or lonely apartment could change the fact that what the King did, what he really did, was make people happy. He told stories, and jokes, and he busted the balls of the people who lost to him in pool and conferred his benevolence upon the few who could beat him and, in the end, he always sent everyone home happy, with a smile on their face, and a new legend to spread.
    And that, I figured, was good enough for me.
    “I think,” I said, finally turning back to our little, ad-hoc funeral reception, “that it doesn’t much matter. Because in here,” I gestured around the bar, “he was the King.”

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