Chess Eyes, by Jerry Vilhotti

On the filthy chessboard of life another game was being waged according to Byrom Lighthouse Bush, whom his mother attempted to name after the club-footed gloriously handsome English poet Lord Gordon, the federal law - overruled by the "Supreme Court" when "democratic" elections were trying to happen in a place called Land of Flowers and as his father often pontificated about most of the founding fathers that they loved their England and their fortunes even more and really were terrified of the uncouth masses so keeping them at arms length by contriving an electoral college system - was his opponent's ruthless queen. This added to Byrom's x-wife's four rooks, really two for he believed the last two children were not really his, giving her more power than she deserved. That wife of his had always been a liability. Never once in their years of marriage did she suck in her breath out of respect for him. She could make bishops sucking on the privileges of the wealthy. All her humiliations upon him made him deeply feel his father's concern that if a man had not made it by thirty, he had no choice but to topple his impotent king. Byrom was nearing forty and finding himself hiding in a "marginal" neighborhood so the authorities would not find him and force him to make his monthly child support payments. This was the third such place; having to flee two other cities when fire had eaten up the places in which he was hiding; recalling his father's prophetic words: "Byrom didn't we concentrate the red niggers on reservations and I tell you - we should make sure the other niggers are never allowed out of their ghettos. We should at all costs keep denying their identity and their leaders are aiding us in this by calling themselves African- Americans as if that defines anything! By God, that's like calling all the riff-raff that came to our sacred shores European-Americans making it very difficult to sort out the takers from the bigger takers. And I tell you Mister Lord Byrom, who is missing a smile because he can't afford to get a bridge for his mouth - that the next time those dirty people flair up about some mythical injustice - they will not only destroy their own places where they eat and defecate but will come out to get what they perceive as their tormentors also; like moths attacking light! And who are these so called tormentors? Why dear Byrom, who dropped out of high school in his second year - I shall tell you? It will be people such as I who have firmly believed that to help those people in any way was a total condescension implying they could never do for themselves! Was it our fault they lacked the ability to open doors and spoke broken English? We gave them opportunities! We allowed them to protect us in wars and even allowed them to belong to our army - the police! How many wealthy people have they captured for murder or worse? One hand washes the other, I say. Did they expect to begin working as bank presidents? Are you having chess eyes, Byrom?" ....
Byrom asked with the utmost respect not using his whistle that his speech therapist said he should when attempting to say words beginning with a consonant and so most of his words fumbled out of his mouth like fetuses with only two chambers of heart: why were the innocence killed like children and others who had done nothing bad in the Oklahoma bombing? Wouldn't it have been better to bomb and kill the elite rulers who manipulate the world deep inside shadows? These few super elite who dictate to their puppets their will and are only concerned for their power and ability to garner most of the moneys in the world?
His father's dismissive contemptuous expression stopped Byrom from going on with more thoughts: that perhaps if these people were killed off that then perhaps a better world might begin to see a dawning.
Most of Byrom's gambits were of the kind that tried to make a certain kind of psychological hue of gray surround him that would render him almost invisible: going to a store to purchase only two items to reduce his time among eyes; not shaving for days; seldom speaking so people could not identify him by his speech impediment; nodding instead in a grim-like way as if always dissatisfied with pawn moves; attempting to create with his dazzling cruelty what his father called "chess eyes": The tearing up ever so slightly of an opponent's eyes when he knew defeat was imminent; just a stroke there and another stroke there - mate!
Byrom decided to go to bed early so as to reduce his chances of being detected. The natives around him seemed to know their places and seldom bothered him because, he supposed, his posture of disdain was always at the ready as was his father's advice inside his brain waiting to manifest truth upon their heads.
Byrom looked out his window and saw an American-Black running. He wondered what the nigger had stolen as he turned off the light. He would go to sleep. Slowly, carefully he crawled deeper into the darkness of his father's words. END