Chinese Checkers

An old man plays Chinese checkers with himself, the only opponent he really feels matches him in ability (true, technically). In the park, under the oak trees, on a cement table with nailed-down chairs, he knows he will always win. Not always a winner, he lost on the stock market, lost his wife to a car accident, lost his children’s love, and even now loses his sight, hearing, and memories.

He wears gray corduroy pants and a button-down navy blue sweater. His face is dry and crumbly, like a statue.

A candy-striped ball rolls to his feet and a ten-year-old girl settles across from him. "I call next game," she says.

Practicing for a state-wide soccer championship, Alicia kicks the ball around the park. All goes well until she kicks it and it rolls down the hill, eventually stopping at the tables.

She follows it down to the table, only to notice that someone is at the table, a little old man who would have been golfing if he’d had anyone with whom to do so. He is scrunched over, apparently watching the table, but, upon closer inspection, is playing Chinese checkers with himself.

She remembers her grandmother’s apartment, learning mah jhongg and Chinese checkers, eventually forgetting how to play regular checkers. She wants to play.

Perfect marbles are moved, one at a time, by a hand that quivers slightly. Light blue, an ocean captured in glass, rages against ruby red, the molten lava underneath. The dance continues, cool marbles momentarily warmed by the scant body heat of the gentle old man.

The sky above threatens rain, clouds churning in the wind. How can something so empty have so much force?

The mashed potato patches leave shadows on the ground, being pulled to the center of the earth by vague laws of physics and the inevitability of going up and, more importantly, coming down. The terrain feels something different now, unusual pricks of pressure, as something moves towards the habitual pressure of the table by the street.

A kid blasts Eminem and makes the ground beat in video-game rhythms for a few moments as his car stops at a red light by the park.

He believes he’s the only educated one in the area; he is sick of his retired neighbors telling him to turn the music down. He wants natural selection of the weak; he wants death for the dying.

Glaring out the window in pre-ordained cool, he sees a park: how dainty, how perfectly scripted. He sees a little brat run down a hill after a multicolored ball and sit down across from an old man. He figures they are grandfather and granddaughter.

The old man finishes the game (blue winning) and smiles at the girl.

"Which color would you like to be?"