Victor Learns to Play Chess

Halfway through my work in progress FIANCHETTO, I have this flashback to when Victor (my chess prodigy)first plays the game. As I said before, this is not a YA novel, despite these chapters featuring children.

The formatting has changed for the blog.

2036: A Field of Red and Black

Through a veil of dark foliage a lone strawberry gleamed. Dew hung heavy on the serrated edge of each leaf, like beads of crystal on green velvet. The boy's sleeves and the knees of his jeans were already soaked. He reached his small hand through the damp, silvered leaves and found the fat red berry. Careful not to crush it, he pinched the stem in two and extracted the strawberry intact. In the past he'd spoiled too many being impatient. Spring strawberries were a cash crop for the Farm, and his mother wouldn't stand for anyone mutilating the best berries by rough picking.

Victor Leventon squatted between long rows of low berry plants, looking down the furrow to where the girl worked. Her hands moved with quick jerks, snatching fruit from the plants and tossing them backward in one motion. The wicker tray behind her held a pile of mangled berries. He glanced at his own brimming container, where every berry was sorted by size, with the largest ones in the center and the lesser specimens lining the edges.

Behind him, Chloe complained loudly there were no berries for her to pick.

"You took 'em all!" she exclaimed. Victor was very thorough. Any berry larger than the tip of his thumb was fair game.

"Move ahead," he suggested.

Chloe stomped past him, went down on one knee, and started grabbing berries in the row ahead of him. Every fourth or fifth one she cast a withering glare back at him. She was annoyed Victor had finished ahead of her since every kid in the berry patch this morning had to fill their tray before lunch. His efficiency would keep Chloe in the field longer.

He stood, gathering the wide wicker tray in his arms. It was a lot for a six year-old to carry, and he wobbled a bit as he tried to balance the load while treading the softly plowed earth. Approaching Chloe he paused.

"Whatsa matter?" she sneered. "Go around. You afraid?"

He was. It would be just like her to trip him, make him spill his morning's labor in the dirt. Then he'd have to start over again, and Chloe would gather up the best berries he'd dropped.

"Hey!"

The girl called from down the row. Victor and Chloe looked at her. At nine, she was older--and meaner--than either of them.

"S'there a problem?"

Victor shook his head. Chloe shrugged broadly and vowed nothing was wrong. She knew better than to cross the older girl. Chloe still had the fading remnant of a black eye from their last encounter.

"Get on with it then."

He eased by Chloe and walked quickly down the furrow. When he reached the other girl, her head was down and she was savagely snagging berries again. Sometimes she pulled so hard she tore plants out, roots and all.

"Thanks," he said, standing over her.

"Yeah, sure. I don't need Miss Chloe making trouble this morning."

He checked her tray. It was a mess. Mashed berries, shredded leaves, and a generous layer of loam over everything.

Victor put his tray down and picked hers up. He shook it carefully side to side. Bits of leaf blew off, and some of the dirt sifted through the slats. Her berries were still rough, but at least they were cleaner.

"What're you doing?" she said sharply.

"Fixing your tray."

"Who said you could?"

He pretended not to hear. After blowing off more torn leaves and dirt, he set her tray down and added double handfuls of berries from his own overfilled one. She protested--mildly--but he continued until her tray was nearly full. Then he walked on. Govinder was waiting at the end of the row with a handcart full of the morning's harvest.

"Hey," she called after him. "Why?"

Victor looked back over his shoulder. He didn't know why, but he said, "Why not?"

At the handcart, Govinder took Victor's berries and set them, tray and all, on a balance scale. Satisfied with the weight, he slid the heavy tray into the rack on the cart.

"Very good, young man," he said. Govinder was a newcomer, and didn't know everyone's name yet. He was older than most of the adults on the Farm, past forty. Victor had heard Frances say she didn't think he would stay long. He was a 'huggy,' she said, which in Frances-speak meant he was at Fysikós Farm to meet women, and not to live a truly natural life.

He hung a yellow painted wooden disk strung on a piece of string around Victor's neck. This was to show the boy had completed his morning chore satisfactorily.

"I saw you help her," he said in a low, friendly voice. "You like her?" Victor didn't answer. "It's okay! Watch out--she's a rough one!"

He was thirsty, and his hands and knees were dirty from picking, so Victor did not linger. He climbed the hill above the strawberry field and went to the wash house. Some of the men were working there, enlarging the end of the building to hold more shower stalls. They called out to Victor as he entered. Waving, he went to one of the big soapstone sinks and washed his hands. Same old bars of white Ivory soap at every sink. It was the only soap Frances would buy. It was natural.

Done with chores till after lunch, Victor drifted back to the Hall. This was the large, open barrack where the children of Fysikós Farm all lived together. It was a single long room, built balloon fashion like a camp shelter. The long walls on either side were lined with wooden bunks, three tiers high. Younger kids slept in the low positions, older kids higher up. Victor had been here a year since outgrowing the Farm's nursery.

At the far end of the Hall, where the bunks stopped, was an open area. There were two tables ringed with chairs, a few rag rugs, and home-made beanbag chairs made of denim and canvas, stuffed with pulverized corn cobs. Victor spied two boys, Shawn and Jesus. Everyone called Jesus 'Hay,' after the way his name was pronounced in Spanish, Hay-soos.

"Mister Victor!" Hay said.

"Hey Hay."

The boys were crouched on the plank floor, flicking checkers at standing targets consisting of random dominoes and other jetsam of the children's games box. Victor watched as red and black disks flew, knocking down targets with a satisfying clatter.

Shawn took more careful aim and clipped a tall figure shaped like one of the sundae glasses Victor had seen in the soda shop in Pittsboro. The black figure went flying. Victor ran to retrieve it.

"What is it?" he asked, returning the piece.

"A king," Hay said. "You know, a chess king."

Victor had seen the older kids playing chess sometimes, but he didn't understand it. He studied the wooden figure in his hand. It was cylindrical, with a bulging, curved center like the chair legs in the adults' cabins. The bottom was flat and covered by a circle of green felt. At the top the king was shaped like a sundae, but instead of a cherry on top, there was a cross.

"What does the cross mean?"

"Means he's the king," Shawn said. He thumped a red checker so hard it caromed off the back wall and flew back at them. Hay yelped with delight and dodged the missile.

"King of what?" Victor persisted.

Shawn sat up. He waved Victor over. "C'mere," he said. "I'll show ya."

"Uh-uh," Hay said. "He's a baby, he don't know anything."

Shawn was not dissuaded. "Come here, Vic." He told Hay to grab the chess board out of the games box. Grimacing, Hay dragged a hand through the wooden chest until he found the board. He slapped it on the floor in front of Shawn.

"Look," Shawn said, "this is how you play chess."

Victor sat down, folding his legs under him. The board he saw was no mystery; it was a cardboard checker board, covered in worn, glossy paper. Each alternating red and black square was edged in gold. Shawn turned it halfway around, placing the folded seam parallel between them.

Without being asked, Hay rounded up stray chess pieces they'd been using as targets. There were two colors, black and white. Some of the pieces were twinned while others were unique.

"This is the king," Shawn said, holding up a white version of the piece Victor still had. "He goes here." He put the white king on a black square, on the back row in the center of the board. "Next to him goes the queen."

The queen was almost as big as the king, but it had no cross on top. It had a little ball, like a cherry on a dish of ice cream . . . Victor's stomach gurgled. He was hungry, as usual.

Outside the royal couple (as Shawn called them) went two pointy pieces that looked to Victor like a pair of rockets. "Bishops," Shawn called them. Outboard of them were a pair of horse-headed figures.

"These are knights."

Victor knew from Farm school what knights were, but these looked like horses, not guys in iron helmets.

"That's just what they call 'em," Shawn explained. He held up a stubby piece with a notched edge circling the top. "This is a rook."

"That's a castle," Hay countered.

"It looks like part of a castle, but it's called a rook!"

They argued about it until Victor finished setting up his black pieces in imitation of Shawn's.

"Shut up, Hay." Shawn picked up a handful of identical little tokens. "These are pawns. They're like army soldiers. They go in front."

He lined the eight pawns ahead of the bigger pieces. Victor did the same.

"White goes first."

Victor said, "Why?"

"'Cause it always does. It's a rule, like in checkers."

"Black goes first in checkers. 'Coal before fire,'" Hay intoned.

"Well, White goes first in chess!"

Shawn explained how the pieces moved, shifting each example back and forth. Hay kibitzed, offering corrections when he thought Shawn said something wrong.

"How do you win?" the younger boy asked.

"You checkmate the enemy king by threatening to capture him--but you don't really. As long as he can't escape, that's checkmate." He set up an example with the black king caught in the white queen's grip, and protected from capture herself by a supporting bishop.

"But the king isn't captured," Victor objected.

"Doesn't matter. He will be."

"So the game stops before the king dies?"

The older boys exchanged smirks at Victor's deliberate reasoning, but Shawn agreed. Checkmate meant the king was about to die, and nobody could save him.

"Let's play," Victor said. Hay groaned.

Shawn won in eight moves. Hay high-fived him, chortling. Victor stared at the board for a long time. He was so quiet so long Shawn thought he was going to cry.

"Hey, I lost all my first games too," he said. "That's how you learn."

Victor pushed the chess men back to their starting positions. "Play again."

Hay rolled his eyes. Shawn shrugged. "Might as well." It shouldn't take long to beat a six-year old again.

Ten moves in, Shawn's over-confidence vanished. Victor evaded his simple traps and counter-attacked. Hay, bored with his companions' absorption, went back to flicking checkers against the wall.

Sixteen moves. Twenty . . . twenty-eight. Victor's queen thrust forward, menacing Shawn's rook on its corner square. He studied the situation frantically, then spotted a wonderful move. His knight swung wide, catching Victor's queen and one of his rooks in a twin attack, called a 'fork.' Without hesitation Victor moved his rook to safety. In triumph Shawn captured the black queen.

In the next moment, Victor pushed his rook to White's back row. There was nothing there to stop him, nor could the White king escape.

"Checkmate."

"What?" Hay left his target practice and hunched over the board. "Shawn man, he won?"

Shawn shook his head in disbelief. He held out his hand. Victor gazed at it dumbly until his friend prompted him to shake it.

"Good job," Shawn said.

At that moment a pack of older kids burst noisily into the Hall: Chloe, Michelle, Harris, Lex, and May. They chattered loudly, ignoring the younger boys. Chloe strode right through where Victor, Shawn, and Hay sat, trampling the chess board and kicking over the pieces.

"Cow!" Hay exclaimed.

She made an obscene gesture and kept going, into a closet at the end of the room to visit the chamberpot.

"Hope you get splinters!" Hay called. From behind the door Chloe laughed.

The older kids flopped in their bunks and kept up their running commentary about the morning's sensation. Apparently Frances had come out to inspect the harvest and ended up chewing out the girl Victor gave his strawberries to. When he heard that, Victor stopped moving chess pieces and listened closely.

"Her tray was a mess!" Michelle declared. "Squashed berries, lots of leaves and dirt. Frances reminded her we can't sell ruined berries at the Farmers' Market."

"What'd she say?" asked Lex, swinging his feet off the side of his bunk.

"The usual: 'Who gives a shit, Frances?'"

"She didn't!"

Michelle held up a hand. "Swear! She stood there while Frances had a fit at her and said those five words!"

"What'd Frances do?" May wondered. She was afraid of Frances. She was afraid of lots of things.

"She handed her the messed-up tray and said, 'This is all you get to eat, until they're gone. And don't throw them away, or you'll nothing after you do for twenty-four hours!'"

"Harsh!" said Harris.

The girl walked in. Talk died. Dry-eyed, Frances' nemesis went to her bunk, at the end of the row by the game area. With one hand she swung up to her top bunk and turned her back to the room.

Chloe emerged from the closet. Finding the room awash in awkward silence she said, "What?"

From her bunk the girl growled, "Shut the fuck up!"

"Dirty mouth," Michelle muttered.

"Better a dirty mouth than a dirty snitch!"

Stiffly, the older kids filed out, some looking back at the unmoving girl in her bunk. Feeling awkward and exposed, Shawn and Hay got up and bolted for the exit, leaving scattered checkers, chess pieces, and dominoes behind.

Victor remained. The girl said, "You leaving too?"

"No."

"You're not scared of me?"

"No."

She turned over and looked down at him. He sat on the floor, legs straddling the checkerboard.

"You're weird."

Victor brushed off Chloe's dirty footprint and set up the chess men again. He'd thought of another way he could have beaten Shawn four moves earlier--and as he was arranging the pieces, he saw another way two moves before that.