The redcap complied, but the old man still wasn't satisfied. "Better wheel me in the club car straight off," he decided.
"Sorry, mister," the redcap said, "but you gotta ride in your own car till the conductor takes the tickets. Then you can have your train porter take you in there." That wasn't quite true. The conductor could have picked up the old man's ticket in the club car, but this way the redcap was not personally violating the orders of the lady who had given him the tip.
"Take myself in there, long as he opens the doors," the old man grumbled. But for the time being, he stayed put.
The train gave just one lurch, then picked up speed as the straggling city, then trees and suburbs and finally fields flowed past the opposite window. Now the old man felt free—for a day, at least, until his daughter Edna would take over the job supervising his every move—but at first the trip was lonely. Nobody talked to him and the only diversion in the car was a baby, which started squalling.
The old man found himself thinking how much friendlier the atmosphere was in the pool hall on Figueroa, where he rolled himself almost every day when he took his "walk" to watch the boys shoot pool. He could get there alone from his son's house, for there were driveways he could use to cross the streets, avoiding curbs. He was always welcome in the pool hall and he saw to it that he remained welcome. Every month, when his social security check came, he would buy a box of cigars and a couple of bottles and take them to the pool room, where he poured drinks for everybody until his money was used up. What else was money good for but to have a good time?
He felt more at home in that dingy place, with the walls covered with pinups, than he did in his son's modern ranch-style house. For all his daughter-in-law's fussing over him, her efforts to keep him on the diet and the medicines that were supposed to prolong his life, he knew she was glad to get rid of him for the rest of the summer. He knew because he'd heard what Jane said to her best friend, Sarah Tolliver. Jane kept track of him by the squeaking of his wheelchair, and once he had bought a can of oil at the drugstore, and oiled the wheels so they didn't make a sound as he rolled up the inclined planks Will had laid over the kitchen steps.
Sarah and Jane had been in the dining area, having coffee, and the old man turned up his hearing aid so he could hear what they were talking about from the kitchen. They were talking about him.
"You don't know how lucky you are," Sarah was saying, "that it was his legs gave out on him—not his head. When I was working at the hospital, I saw so many old folks who were just zombies, not knowing who they were, where they were, or what time it was. I tell you, there's nothing worse than that. But Will's dad? Why, he's sharp as a tack. Nobody puts anything over on him."
"He's sharp, all right," Jane agreed, "in some ways. But if he had the use of his legs, he'd be chasing after women. And that pool hall he hangs out in! When a man gets to be seventy-eight, you'd think he'd spend his time in church, not in a dive like that."