Neither Wilson nor Matt knew how to play. Gabby said he didn't care. He was more than willing to teach them. In fact, he almost looked excited. Wilson suspected he was just as bored as they were.
"Come back any day of the week,� Gabby said before they
left. �Two o'clock is the slowest part of the day. Just remember at three o'clock I have to close the station."
They�d gone back and within a couple of weeks they were
visiting Gabby everyday.
Gabby never talked about himself, however, he was always
giving them 'sound advice'. Things like stay in school, mind your parents, don't steal, make something out of yourselves, and stay away from this or that. In the last three weeks he�d given them so much 'sound advice' they couldn't remember it all. Finally they decided to just nod their heads and agree with him.
This was the last week of practice before they held the
play-offs. One final set of games to see who the best chess
player was. And - just to make it a little more interesting -
Gabby said he would give them each ten dollars if either of them could beat him. But if he won, they had to clean the station from top to bottom, including the toilets, everyday for a week.
Wilson and Matt needed all the practice they could get. Neither had won a game from Gabby. Not even once.
"Checkmate!" Gabby shouted happily, slapping his knee.
Wilson moaned. "Your turn Matt."
The man quickly reset the game, rubbed his hands together
and smiled. "Okay... where's my next victim? Heh, heh, heh."
While Matt tried in vain to beat Gabby at chess, Wilson
stood and walked over to the station's huge plate glass windows
that faced east. He gazed out across the railroad tracks at the
golden wheat covered hills, then off to his left, toward a wooden
shack.
It wasn�t easy living in a town like Clayton, with a total
population of nine hundred people. The town was only three
blocks long. The movie theater had shut down. There was no
video arcade, no bowling alley, no swimming pool, and no
skating rink. And now that the irrigation ditches were dry due to
the drought that had hit Ohio, there was no swimming.
Wilson could remember his father telling him that Clayton
was a small farming town. In hard times, everyone had to stick
together. Of course that was before he died two years ago.
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