Insurrections (10 page)

Though Gabby wasn't finished feeding, she removed him from her nipple, lowered her sweater, and returned to the fire. Gabby whined and Nicolette shushed him. The men had begun eating. Nicolette dipped bread into the bacon grease and chewed slowly. The three of them sat in the quiet of stirring insects, flickering flames, labored breaths, and smacking lips. She noticed for the first time a chorus of crickets and, in the distance, the lapping of the river.

Nicolette asked for another slice of bread. Daf reached into the bag.

The Breadsman, the slapsmith said. That was his name. Owned a bakery in Cleveland and slapsmithed on the side. I was good at talking shit. I said to them cameras that any fight between me and him would be
The Death of a Breadsman
. That pissed him off, so that's why he punched me.

The World Brawl. One day, twenty-five matches. Like a tournament and shit. Lots of money riding on me. But that don't matter when you up there in the moment fighting. When you in that ring it's just you and another warrior. That's all that matters, and eventually when you start slapping, it's just you. Everything else disappear. And then you disappear. And that's when I'm most alive, when I disappear. People come from all around to fight. They got slapsmiths everywhere, but mostly here. We invented that shit. Tournament of emperors, not kings. They give you a purple cape and a crown when you win. Fuck a belt. Who need a belt? I want the damn crown! Four years in a row I'm the champion. And the only way I get taken out is when they cheat me. You about as slapdrunk as a mu'fucker when you get to the end of that thing. I done seen people start it a genius and they fucking retards by the end of the day.

Now, Slapfest, Daf said. I don't know if our guest wants to hear all that.

The slapsmith started yelling. The Breadsman, he cheated. He punched me. You a slapsmith or a bitch?

Slapfest stood, bounced on the balls of his feet. Again he dipped and ducked from imagined blows. Slapping and backslapping the air. Emitting a soft hissing sound with every slap he threw. He glared at Nicolette. Come on. Come on.

His eyes turned to glass. He was staring at an invisible enemy and everything else disappeared. Shadows danced to the rhythm of the fire. Nicolette imagined an audience, lusting and crying for violence.

She flinched each time the slapsmith swung his hands. The baby cried with a new rhythm. The sounds echoed through the night.

You'll have to forgive our friend, Daf said. He's off in a zone. A part of him is permanently slapdrunk. There's no rousing him when he's like this. Give him a minute and he'll calm. Look at him. You, me, that baby, even his own body. It's all disappeared. He might not look it, but he's at peace now. He's lucky really that he has a place to go and just be. Most people don't even have anywhere like that to go. That sort of peacefulness is what it's all about, isn't it, Nicolette? Nicolette?

Nicolette trembled, and tears beaded at her eyes. She didn't hear Daf's words; she only saw the slapsmith's menacing taunts. I'm Slapking Of The World and who the fuck are you?

Nicolette remembered the train and the men snatching at her, baby
be damned. She grabbed a cloth from the ground and wrapped it around her free hand.

I'm not down for the count, uh-uh, the slapsmith bawled, slapping at shadows. I can go another round. Another two. Uh-uh. That bitch nigga punched me! That bitch nigga punched me! Let me at him!

Nicolette sprung to her feet, snatched the skillet from the fire, and slammed it to the side of the slapsmith's head. Bacon strips flew through the air. The baby roared as if cheering. The slapsmith dropped to the ground, out cold.

Daf rushed toward his friend. His movements reminded Nicolette of the men on the train. Before Daf could reach the slapsmith, she rammed her foot square into his testicles. Daf stumbled, holding his crotch. He fell, groaning and wheezing. As he tried to rise, Nicolette tossed the skillet toward him, striking him in the mouth. She could hear the clack of the metal against his teeth. He fell back onto the dusty ground. One hand cradled his crotch, the other his bloody mouth.

Nicolette bounded up the embankment and walked swiftly along the track, listening to the music the rocks made beneath her feet. She shushed her son and bounced him, and finally he fell asleep peacefully against her chest. Every so often she'd stop to adjust the sling and to glance at the flickering fire at her back. Soon she could no longer see the injured men, and then even the flame was no longer visible.

What a long walk it would be that night, and an even longer journey across that twinkling river to wherever she'd eventually rest her head. She paused again to shift the sleeping baby. She looked down. At her foot lay a rock, big and smooth, heavy to the touch. Nicolette rested it in the sling, a good luck charm, sitting right where the tightness in her chest met the untroubled child.

In my eleventh year, my father taught me defeat.

I sat with my back pressed on that old, scratchy brown couch. Tom chased Jerry across the television screen and then the image dissolved into a white dot in the center. I turned to see my father holding the remote control in one hand and a crumpled cloth cradled in the crook of his other arm.

What are you doing with that rag, Daddy? I asked.

It's not a rag, girl, he said. It's a mat.

He unfurled the dirty checkered mat onto the coffee table and dropped a handful of chipped and faded black chess pieces in front of me. He started setting up the white ones without looking at me. I tilted my head, watching my father curiously.

I tentatively set up mine, following his lead. Each piece looked like a veteran of many battles, with nicks and gashes exposing the wood beneath the paint.

Your queen always starts off on her own color square, he said. She's a woman like you and your mother. She likes to match. He reversed the positions of my king and queen.

When my father explained the rules, I thought I'd never be able to keep them straight, especially the rules about the horse, because he moved like a ballerina, jumping to far-off squares, or rather he galloped. I grabbed hold of a horse and moved him to a vacant square.

Now hold on, little girl, my father said. Chess is like real life. The white pieces go first so they got an advantage over the black pieces.

With that I removed my horse and he inched a pawn one square forward. I was on my way to being checkmated for the first time.

He was the god of chess each time he spread the crumpled mat and set up the pieces with his haggard, dark brown hands. I used to look at the grime beneath his fingernails and the scars on his knuckles, wondering why his hands looked older than him.

And my father's voice crackled when we played chess. Daddy often sounded like a kung-fu master in one of those movies me and my brother watched on Saturday mornings. He didn't speak like that all the time, but he always spoke like that when we played chess.

Once, I was so deep in concentration that I didn't look up when my father broke our silence. Instead I chose to imagine one of my horses speaking.

I used to play this game with your grandfather when I was your age, he said sitting hunched over the board, moving around the pieces he had captured, waiting for me to make a move. Pop was good, he said. I never beat him.

How come?

'Cause he was good. Naw, really, I could have beat him had I had the chance. He got real sick. Couldn't even finish the game we had going 'cause we took him to the hospital. He told me to bring the game with me when I went to see him. Your grandmother wouldn't let me take it to the hospital, though.
Don't bother your father with that foolishness now
. Daddy's impression of my grandmother was a high-pitched shriek that sounded like her only in spirit, and even then it was Granny as a cartoon character. You know how your grandmother is, he continued. Every time we went, he used to ask me about the set and—

My father paused as I moved my queen to a middle square. He swooped in swiftly and tapped it from the board with the base of a knight. It bounced once it hit the carpet.

Thought you had something, huh? Let that be a lesson, little girl.

With my queen gone, I made my moves lazily, waiting for the twentieth checkmate, and then my father said this: You playing like the game's done. The game ain't over until that king is pinned down and can't go nowhere.

If a pawn makes it to the other side, he told me, it becomes a queen. I imagined a little pawn magically blossoming into royalty on that last square.

It became something I longed to see. Sometimes when all was lost, I'd just inch a pawn forward, but the piece would never make it. The fifty-seventh checkmate was one of those games.

We woke early in the morning before I went off to school to continue a game carried over from the night before.

While we played, my father told me that when he was my age he imagined he'd be the first black grandmaster. He was the best chess player in school, winning casual games as easily as drinking a glass of water. He became king of the tournaments.

Yeah, figured one day everyone would call me Grandmaster Rob.

What happened?

Just didn't work out that way, I guess. After a while, I wasn't worrying about being no grandmaster or nothing like that. You stop thinking about these things at a certain age.

I'm going to be a grandmaster, I said.

My father stared hard at the board.

You know, Daddy, it's never too late.

He chuckled, and in less than two minutes my king stood pinned by a bishop, a rook, and a pawn.

Checkmate!

He jumped and shuffled across the floor like the Holy Ghost had slithered up his pant leg.

Robert, she's eleven years old, my mother said, passing by.

The girl ain't too young to learn, he replied. Then he turned to me. Ain't that right?

I nodded, thinking about my loss rather than whatever I was nodding about. My impotent pieces stood meekly, no longer any use.

He stuck his hand out for a victory shake.

You cheated me, I said, raising my voice a little, ignoring his hand and frowning, damning him for phantom moves I was sure he had made in my absence. Daddy, you cheated.

Don't blame me because I'm better than you. You gotta start thinking two, three moves ahead. Then you can challenge me. Don't worry about me. Worry about your game.

My mother called out from the next room. Said I was going to miss the bus. My little brother had walked off to wait without me. My mother
stood before us talking fast and loud. She got this way sometimes. My father placed his hand softly on my head.

Come on, baby girl, stop pouting and get your stuff together. I'll walk you to the bus stop.

My father never walked me to the bus stop in the mornings. Most days he'd leave for work early before I even got out of bed. He'd return late in the evening long after I had come home from school, his clothes and skin covered in black grease. After a half hour he'd walk out of his room looking immaculate, his face clean and smooth, each hair lined up waiting on my inspection. His hands, though, were always stained with traces of thick oil and dirt that rested beneath his fingernails. He'd sit on the couch with his scarred hands wrapped around a green beer bottle that rested on his thigh.

As I stood from the game, Daddy took my hand in his, and there sat the grease, nesting beneath his nails, as much a part of his hands as the creases and veins.

Even though in my little girl mind he had cheated me, the thought of walking with him filled me with pride, making me the happiest girl in all of Cross River.

Dammit, Robert! my mother said. You made her miss the bus.

I peered out the window to see its yellow tail pulling off.

Well, baby girl, we're going to have to take the L9 downtown to Ol' Cigar Station, my father said. But we got to leave right now, because I'm sure the buses are behind schedule.

We stepped out the door and I forgot to wonder why he wasn't at work.

That was my fifty-seventh checkmate at my father's hands. I refused to play with him after that and instead taught my little brother the game. He was six at the time and had a short attention span. I got tired of beating him, though. He never figured out how I could mate him in three moves.

Soon my father and I returned to the board. Around this time it became clear that my mother didn't much like chess. She used to say things like, Chess ain't gonna get your homework done. One night when she thought I was asleep I heard her tell my father, Chess ain't gonna get you work. That was in the middle of a bunch of hollering from both of them. Then
the front door slammed. My father was back in the morning to finish up the previous night's game.

Sometime around the hundred-and-first checkmate, I cut through the park on my way home from a friend's house late in the afternoon. There hung a sharp chill in the air. Around a picnic table stood a silent crowd looking severe and intense. Everybody pulled their jackets closer when the cold breeze blew in, but even as the heat left their bodies the people's eyes stayed fixed on the game. Two guys—an older man with a white Afro and yellowish-brown tobacco stains soiling his white mustache and a younger man with smooth dark skin and thin, trimmed black hairs neatly resting on his upper lip—sat at the picnic table with its black graffiti on flaking maroon paint. The men were face to face, staring at a crumpled board more tattered than my father's. A pale brown time clock sat near them, and after each move one of the men slapped a button atop the timepiece. The elder man had a grizzled face that looked as if it had been punched too many times, while his opponent's was young, strong, and handsome, dimples passing over his cheeks when he flashed a transient smile.

Brilliant, a tall guy whispered loudly after the older man moved a pawn one square forward. Then a few minutes later: Man, fuck a Bobby Fischer. We got two Bobby Fischers right here. And these Bobby Fischers ain't crazy.