WAC USES WITCHCRAFT

I shot pool often at the USO. It was free and it kept me away from the card tables. There was one guy with blond hair who played a lot. I think his name was Will. 

In the beginning, he challenged me to play every time he saw me. I am not a good player, but I caught on early, that ego was a big part of his game. He thought he couldn't lose. 

This is akin to throwing down the gauntlet to me. I had to find a way. Improving my game was not an easy task. I decided to let my mind work for me. If I could unsettle him, I would have a chance at wining. 

One night I told him I could control the ball with my mind. By some fluke it actually worked. It seemed easy getting his ball to move in the wrong direction. It was not so easy, getting my ball to go where I wanted it to go. In spite of it all, I won the game.

After a couple of weeks, he was terrified of me. He called me a witch. If he was playing, and I walked into the room, he immediately screwed up his shot. Of course, I got the blame. I admit it was my fault, but not in the way he meant. He tried to have me banned from the game room, but nobody believed him.

That was how I met Bruce. He came to my rescue. He volunteered to play pool with me when nobody else would. He had a special cue stick that he carried around in a case. He was really dedicated to the game. Still, he wasn't afraid to play with me. We played a lot and became good friends. 

There was a huge age difference. He was eighteen and I was thirty-three. All I wanted was friendship. I had a lot of fun times with Bruce.

Some of my poems are written about things that happened with him, like Mirage. I wrote that after we walked to town going through the woods beyond post. The dead leaves were crusted with snow and it had melted in places. I don't know why but as I took a step, I looked down and it was like the earth dropped away and there was this huge sky blue pit that I could not see the bottom of.

My eyes played tricks on me. I stopped suddenly, actually afraid I would fall off the "mountain" I seemed to be on. I even crouched low and held on to a tree. Bruce brought me back to reality. As soon as we got to the USO, I just had to write.

Bruce was also the one who gave me the dime ring.