“How do you know?” the boy asked, “How do you know the colors, grandpa?”
“Be still a moment child,” Armi adjusted the dark glasses up his nose. An old habit, he’d been blind as a Milton poem for years. He clicked a stone three paces upward and one to the right felt to the left of the board and delicately tapped the clock.
“Old dog” his friend of ten thousand games muttered.
“How many times will you ask?” Armi said to the boy. He sighed. “If I am playing defense the stones in front of me are black; offense, white.”
No matter how many times the boy asked he never asked right, but now it was habit, a comfortable old sweater of a conversation, the only one he knew for sure that his grandfather would not blame him for if he lost focus.
All the stone were river rocks, flat, so grayish, some brindle, some dark and some spotted. The boy had even found a few himself when one went missing. The hashmarks on top told the blind old men what piece was which and the skin memory told them where in a game their pieces were. To a stranger it would look like chipped stones on a straw mat and only an astute stranger, a chess player, would note the dirty worn smooth squares measured eight by eight.
Little John moved his king. There were two johns in the home, the other was frail and skeletal, but he had his sight. He gave Little John the nickname. He was stoic as he was brittle and so the boy never knew whether it was vanity or irony that gave little john his name. Big john hardly seemed vain but little john was old and bent and his bowels gave him much trouble and to the boy he hardly seemed the right shape for irony. Little john fumbled, found the edge of the clock and snaked a feeble finger to the edge and found the clock button.
Armi moved a dusky stone with an off center copper streak. “Check,” he clicked the clock.
Little john studied the board, well, he bent forward, a gesture the boy had come to call studying the board.
“Mate in three,” the boy said.
Little john flipped his king stone over. “Thank you,” he said to Armi. He stuck his mottled dry tongue out at the boy. “Peace, I am done.” Little john gently raised his hand to where he had left the handle of his cane; the boy silently pushed the cane towards his outstretched hand.
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