Billy Lancing serves as the novel’s deuteragonist and an important foil to Jack Levitt. A 16-year-old African American pool hustler when he first appears, Billy is immediately established as a character who survives through intelligence, exceptional talent, and a deep understanding of social dynamics. His skill with a cue stick shapes his identity and serves as his primary tool for navigating a hostile and racist society. Where Jack is reactive and physical, Billy is calculating and philosophical. His ambition to transcend his circumstances is ultimately thwarted, while his capacity for love and self-awareness shapes the novel’s exploration of Intimacy as Vulnerability and Salvation.

Billy is defined by a powerful internal conflict between his ambition and his loneliness. He is fiercely independent, leaving home to make his own way and using his talent to accumulate a caseroll that symbolizes freedom and security. He attempts to build a different life by enrolling in college, but finds himself an outsider, alienated from both the white academic world and the Black community from which he has distanced himself. This deep isolation drives his search for human connection, a search that culminates in his relationship with Jack in San Quentin. Billy’s philosophy of “connection” is his attempt to find meaning in a world that feels disconnected and chaotic. He theorizes that “Everything in the whole fuckin world is connected… and the connection turns you on, and the broken connections burn you out” (208). This belief underpins his decision to reach out to Jack, seeing in their shared prison experience the possibility of forming a bond despite the prison’s rigid social hierarchy.

Ultimately, Billy’s character arc embodies the theme of Intimacy as Vulnerability and Salvation. He is the first person to offer Jack unconditional love, and in doing so, he exposes himself to the pain of Jack’s emotional limitations. His confession of love and his request for a kiss are acts of deep vulnerability that Jack is unable to reciprocate. Despite this rejection, Billy’s love for Jack remains steadfast as he sacrifices his own life to protect Jack from the prison predator, Clifford. This act becomes Billy’s clearest expression of the “connection” he believes in, standing in contrast to the self-interested struggle for survival that defines prison life. While his life ends in tragedy, Billy’s death permanently shapes Jack’s understanding of love and loss, leaving him more reflective, if not happier.

Denny Mellon is a significant supporting character and a recurring presence in Jack’s life, offering friendship while reflecting the aimlessness of the world from which Jack tries to escape. As a member of Portland’s “Broadway gang,” Denny is characterized by his easy-going, hedonistic nature. His motivations are simple and immediate: He seeks pleasure, easy money, and companionship, often sharing what he has with a casual generosity. He is the one who first befriends Jack in Portland and later reintroduces him to a life of drifting and petty crime in San Francisco. Denny remains a friendly but ultimately unreliable presence whose repeated return to crime and instability contrasts with Jack’s later attempts to build a different life.

Denny’s affable exterior conceals a deeper lack of direction and a growing desperation. His plan to join the Marines is a fleeting ambition to find structure in his life, but his experiences in the Korean War only leave him traumatized and more deeply entrenched in a criminal mindset. He returns a more reckless thief whose stories of violence and near-misses reflect the instability of his life. His sudden, knife-wielding attack on Jack marks a sharp change from his friendly persona, revealing how desperation has overtaken his earlier easy-going nature. The assault is triggered by a perceived betrayal, a moment when Denny’s need for a partner in crime is rejected, showing that his friendship, while genuine in its way, is ultimately rooted in a need for accomplices in his self-destructive lifestyle. His journey reflects one of the Inescapable Cycles of Repression, as his attempt to find an honorable path through a social institution—the military—only leads him back to a life of crime and violence.

Sally is a significant supporting character who becomes central to Jack’s attempt to build a conventional family life. When Jack meets her, she is a member of a wealthy, jaded social set, defined by her beauty, intelligence, and a cynical, world-weary demeanor. Having already guided one husband to fame and fortune, she is bored and looking for a new project. She is drawn to Jack’s raw vitality and sees him as a “piece of meat in action” (224), a man of primal force whom she can potentially shape. Their marriage is Jack’s attempt to build a family and Sally’s attempt to find a purpose, yet her desire for a meaningful connection conflict with her growing dissatisfaction with domestic life.

Sally’s character is shaped by a central contradiction. She pushes Jack to better himself and is frustrated by his low-paying job, yet she resists the stability she claims to want. Her intelligence and sharp wit often allow her to maintain emotional distance. As Sally becomes increasingly dissatisfied with life as a housewife and mother, her restlessness grows into a self-destructive pattern of behavior. She begins staying out all night, drinking heavily, and ultimately uses emotional cruelty to push Jack away. Her threat to abandon their son in an orphanage, aimed at Jack’s deepest wound, is a desperate, calculated act designed to end a life she feels has imprisoned her. In the end, she leaves Jack for the stability and wealth of Myron Bronson, but her journey highlights the difficulty of finding lasting fulfillment, even when freed from financial and social constraints.

Myron Bronson is a minor character who belongs to the wealthy, detached upper class. A self-made millionaire with a background as a Mormon missionary turned cynical expatriate, he moves through life with an air of detached philosophical observation. He is a man who has learned to enjoy the pleasures money can buy without being ruled by them. He becomes an occasional, almost accidental, benefactor to Jack, first giving him a ride after he is fired and later becoming the man Sally turns to. Though he presents himself as a gentle, understanding figure, his actions are ultimately self-serving. He has long been in love with Sally, and he uses his wealth and influence to win both her affection and, eventually, custody of Jack’s son, Billy. His character shows how power and money operate subtly, allowing him to incorporate Jack’s family into his own financially secure world.

Kol Mano is a minor character who is a cool, professional gambler. A war veteran with a distinctive throat injury that forces him to speak in a whisper, Mano is a constant presence in the pool halls and card rooms where Jack and Denny drift. Unlike them, Mano approaches gambling as a disciplined profession rather than a desperate means of survival. He is respected and slightly feared for his composure and his ability to make money without succumbing to emotion or impulse. He treats Jack with a strange, almost familial friendliness, recognizing a shared outsider status. Mano demonstrates that it is possible to survive within the criminal underworld through discipline and calculated risk, a path Jack ultimately does not take. As he tells Jack, “If I worried about cops, I’d have to lock myself in my room and do nothin” (53), capturing his acceptance of the risks that accompany his way of life.

Harmon and Annemarie appear only in the prologue, but their brief and tragic story introduces the novel’s fatalistic tone and introduces the theme of Inescapable Cycles of Repression. They are Jack’s biological parents, two restless and alienated individuals who come together in a brief relationship that results in Jack’s conception. Harmon is a cowboy running from a past in Oakland, a man who “brought it all with him when he ran” (9). Annemarie is a rebellious 16-year-old runaway from Portland. Their inability to form a lasting bond, Harmon’s disfigurement, and their subsequent violent deaths—Harmon from an accident, Annemarie from suicide— leave Jack without either parent and shape the circumstances of his childhood. They are the origin of Jack’s story, and their experiences foreshadow his own struggle against institutionalization and isolation.