Checkmate

I killed a man over a chess game once.

My brothers will tell you I don't have a temper. With a brother like Gabriel, one learns tolerance quickly. But I can be provoked.

When we came to the United States, we struggled for acceptance, and worked to blend in, but small reminders of home were welcome respites. I met an old German soldier living in a boarding house in southern Georgia. I walked past their house each day when I was taking classes at the University. I can't remember his name, but I remember his face vividly. He would sit on his daughter's porch with a glass of lemonade every afternoon, staring at an empty chess board. This was well after the Depression, when people still did such things.

When I could feel his loneliness even from the road, I climbed the steps and asked him, in perfect English, why he did not play.

When he responded in German, explaining that he did not speak English, I knew I would come back. We were all desperate for the familiar. The next day I returned with my own pieces, and challenged him to a game. I learned that his pieces had been stolen during his trip to America, and he had no money to replace them. I was more than happy to share mine. They had been a gift from my father, and they were one of the few things I had kept with me when we left.

We played every day for weeks. He told stories about the first world war, thinking I was too young to have experienced the politics and battling, though of course we had been in the thick of it.

Though he was old, he was perceptive. He recognized something was different about me, and I should have stopped coming. I realize now that I thrived on the intellectual competition of the game, and I didn't want to relinquish this small daily ritual that reminded me of home.

I must have grown too comfortable with the old man. I stopped simply listening to his stories, and started sharing my own.

I felt it. When he started growing suspicious, I knew. We always know. I tried to stifle it, but his mistrust was established.

He stood to leave the game. I knew it would be the last time we played.

Then he swept my pieces into his bag. Said someone like me who would trick an old man didn't deserve to have them.

You can imagine how that talk ended, I'm sure.