"Don't tell me what I had. You think I don't know what I had?"
"Ronnie," said one of the other Schmitt's guys. "Come on. It don't matter. We lost by eleven."
"It matters to me." Ron leaned over the table. "You sit here all night, you got one job, and you can't even—"
He stopped. He straightened up. He looked around at the men on the bench, and at lane three, where people were looking, and something went across his face, and he laughed, a big loud empty laugh, and slapped Russ on the back of the head, not hard. Hard enough.
"This kid," he said to the bench. "My kid. Couldn't hit one pin to save his life, and now he can't count either."
The Schmitt's guys laughed, because he wanted them to.
Russ didn't move. He sat there with the grease pencil in his hand, looking down at the projector sheet, his face lit from underneath by the projector lamp so that it looked like a mask. Then he got up and went down the side of the lanes to the bathroom, not fast, and the door closed behind him.
Wally looked at Augie. Augie was standing at the end of the shoe counter with a rag in his hand, watching lane four, not wiping anything.
"Augie."
"I know," said Augie.
"That's what he said to me. That's the same thing."
"I know." Augie put the rag down. "His grandfather said it to Ronnie. Stan Kubiak. Right there on lane four. I was standing right here. Ronnie was eleven, twelve, he left a ten pin in the city junior tournament and old Stan said it in front of the whole house. You can't even hit one pin." Augie shook his head. "Things go in families, kid. Good things and lousy things. Same as noses."
* * *
It was snowing when Wally went down the stairs at nine, the first real snow of the year, big wet flakes coming down slow through the streetlights on Lincoln Avenue and melting on the sidewalk. He had his hat pulled down and his hands in his pockets and his new shoes in a bag over his shoulder, and he was half a block toward home when he saw Russ sitting on the bus bench outside the Rexall with no coat on.