Chess
When the memories come, with their waves of red anger and blue fear, I play Chess.
A long time ago, I watched men take my father away. I became their Pawn. I did what they said because I didn't matter, and I was too afraid to resist, afraid they would torture him, kill him, and make me share his fate.
Miserable, always moving forward, one square at a time. Then they told me to kill the American.
I did not like him when I first saw him in the fancy car with the little girl. He looked perfect, like a plastic man built in a laboratory. I liked him even less when we fought. I do not like to kill, but I'd have hardly hesitated to do so if ordered.
But then he saved me, and I saved him, and I watched him withstand what no person should have to bear. Somewhere between the punching and the lying, he became my friend, even though I do not have friends.
So I refused. I didn't do what they said. I defied them.
In Chess, when a Pawn reaches the end of the board, it becomes another kind of piece, a better one. There was a time when I thought that friendship made me weak, but sparing Solo's life made me stronger.
For the first time in my life, I felt like a Knight.
When I was a child, I loved to read about King Arthur. Not very Russian of me, but there was something in the legends that made me want to have a purpose bigger than myself, to be better than myself. You wouldn't think it to look at me now, but I was an idealist. A romantic.
Knights are the only Chess pieces that can jump over others in service to their Queen. She is the most important piece, the strongest, the key to the whole game.
I did not think I would ever have a Queen to protect. I did not think she would be small and clever and determined and infuriating. I did not think that she—that she would pick me when she could have picked the Cowboy, with his perfect hair and perfect suits and perfect manners. But she did.
She is the strongest piece, and I would do anything to protect her.
The King can't do much in Chess. He has to be protected by his Queen. I have always thought he was weak, but now I'm not so sure. My little girl's arms around me make me wonder which of us is protecting the other. I am supposed to make her feel safe, but that is how she makes me feel.
The Queen does not protect her Knights; she protects her King.
I am just a man with red and blue memories, who plays Chess when he's too afraid to live. I do not know why, but sometimes, when I look into the eyes of my chop shop Queen, I wonder if—somehow—she is making me her King.
