Dennis Pitocco, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of BizCatalyst 360° read a pre-pub version of my next novel, The Book of The Wounded Healers, and wrote a beautiful foreword. He also invited me to share some chapters (selected by my first readers).
Uncle Freddie taught me how to play chess when I was about nine or ten.
Sorry, that’s not true. He taught me some chess strategy. A kid by the name of Andrew LaVin taught me the moves. He taught me the moves this way: learn enough to be able to move pieces across the board, don’t teach subtleties of movement (castling, en passant, etc.). He makes a subtlety which I duplicate and am told, no, wrong, you can’t do that. Teach me the subtleties. Don’t teach me any piece can be regained simply by advancing a pawn across the board. Teach me the subtleties. Let me capture his queen on his seventh row because he’s going to regain her with his pawn in the next move, thereby placing my king in mate.
When I got a book on beginner’s chess and beat him in a game, he refused to play with me for two weeks. I later found out that his older brother, Martin, went to the library and looked in all the chess books until he found the one I’d signed out, then spent two hours each night coaching Andrew until Andrew knew each strategy and counter-strategy in the book. After that, Andrew was once again willing to play.
Enter my dad’s brother, Uncle Freddie. I remember Uncle Freddie best for four things: patiently and kindly teaching me chess strategies, taking twenty years to finish his bachelor’s degree while he supported his wife and growing family, letting his infant son cry himself to sleep in a dark room each night because that’s what you were supposed to do with little boychilds to make them grow up strong, and boasting at our dinner table that just as soon as he got his wife who’d separated from him back in bed by Christ she’d take him back.
CR-iced.
That’s the way he said it.
He spent an evening with me teaching me how to play. I don’t know what brought the subject up, perhaps I mentioned that I liked to play, and we got the board out. He taught me strategy by teaching me to think before, during, and after the move, asking me to defend each of my moves with an explanation and a goal, and how did my move move me closer to my goal.
He even let me win.
We come to a street off Mulberry in Little Italy. Some children are playing volleyball with clothesline strung between two first story apartments, one on either side of the street, and a soccer ball. I wonder why Italians would be using a soccer ball for volleyball then see there are Blacks, Indians, Orientals, and others in the group. I think the oldest child is ten, perhaps more, a little over Jiminy’s age. On the sides and acting as referees are some city social workers and police. Behind them are clothing racks. I see Colors hanging from racks; one, two, three, four, maybe more gangs represented in this game. At our approach, the children stop and gather around us.
Some – bolder? more curious than the others? or simply not afraid – reach up for the Healers’ hands or touch their clothing. Everyone seems to have their favorite. Beriah spreads his fingers and lets the children run their hands over his palms and skin.
He smiles and looks to where they play. “What is this you do?”
One of the children pulls back and frowns. “It’s volleyball, man. Ain’t they got volleyball where you come from?”
Cetaf’s eyes open bright. “May we play?”
The children unanimously think this is a great idea. I begin to walk over to sit on the stairs and Cetaf gently pulls me back. “You, too, please, Ben.”
The children show the Healers the moves of the game. The ball goes back and forth over the clothesline. Eventually one player doesn’t return a volley. The Healers start playing. The ball stays up in the air. A lot. The Healers don’t hog, don’t force, don’t rush, don’t spike, don’t curse, don’t favor each other over others in the game. They are the epitome of teamwork, even though Jenreel and Cetaf are on one side and Beriah and I are on the other, it is obvious they are aware of each other and work to keep the ball aloft.
One child, Nathan, a small, thin white boy with a thin face and deep eyes, his hair punked out using his mother’s mousse, a slight overbite and not much of a smile, drops the ball. Cetaf smiles, hands him the ball and motions for him to continue.
One of the social worker referees trots over to me. “Wait a second. Can you explain to your friends here what we’re doing here?”
“I give up. What are we doing here?”
She keeps her eyes on the volleyballing children. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair. We’re trying to teach them peaceful ways to resolve their conflicts. What they’re learning here is to play a game and the winner of the game wins the conflict, rather than have a gang war. We figure if we catch them young, we can get them to transfer the concept of game refs to the concept of arbiters and eventually to the judicial system.”
The game continues as she speaks to me. A boy near me, Danny, a boy who I think is too young to wear any Colors other than those of a stickball team, with ruddy blond hair and fair skin, wide, curious eyes and a look of concentration, drops the ball. Before Beriah can get to him, Danny picks the ball up, laughs, and whaps it to the other side. It goes wide and one of the other children, hesitating only a moment, runs out of bounds to return it. The Healers laugh and squeal with the rest of the children.
Another ref blows his whistle but no one listens. Not the children, not the Healers, not me. The game no longer cloisters around the clothesline but processes up and down the street as the two teams become a single force to keep the ball aloft.
The monitoring adults begin to move towards the children and are intercepted by Cetaf’s outstretched arms. He hugs each of them in turn, “Thank you for allowing us to share our games.” The adults fall away and are greeted by Jenreel’s arms. The adults regroup and are met by Beriah’s too-wide smile and arms.
“Don’t you get it?” The woman who spoke to me screams at the Healers as the children sweep and flurry around them like a whirlwind of multicolored flesh.
One of the children backs up to give Cetaf a clear shot. “Getitgetitgetit!”
Cetaf dives for the ball and up it goes.
The woman focuses her wide-eyed, throbbing neck veined, spittle spraying demands at Beriah because, evidently, I’m not helpful. “We don’t want them to fight anymore: we’re trying to teach them peaceful resolutions to their conflicts, dammit.” The phrase comes out ritualistically, like part of a pagan ceremony. Say it enough and it will happen.
The children hustle but no one shoves. In the space between the woman and Beriah, the ball descends. It bounces once, twice, between them.
Beriah picks it up. “Good. We teach them peace. Co-operation and peace. Teach them these, they will have no conflicts.” He hands the woman the ball.
Red faced with spittle seeping from the corners of her mouth, she throws the ball over her shoulder. The crush of children explodes into dozens of arms and legs and laughter as they join to keep the ball up.
It’s time for us to go. I know this. We start walking away, the adults trying to regain control and the children oblivious.
Jenreel takes one more look. “A finite game becomes infinite.”
Cetaf doesn’t look, only sighs. “Children don’t care about victory. They care about enjoying the game.”
(one line space)
I was so glad and grateful that Uncle Freddie taught me chess. Gladder still that I had been able to beat him in a few games. It gave me confidence regarding Andrew.
Later that night, when I was supposed to be asleep and was still listening intently to the adults’ conversation two rooms away, I heard Uncle Freddie tell my mother why he’d taken the time to teach me chess. “No Matthews is going to be beat by some white jewboy as long as I’m around. Not at chess, not at nothing. I don’t care what it takes.”
My uncle wasn’t teaching me chess. He was teaching me hatred. Probably not much different than Martin taught Andrew. No matter what we teach – piano, chess, basketball, mathematics, physics, cooking, painting – we teach both the thing and the energy we put into what we teach. If we have a core anger when we teach, we teach playing piano, chess, basketball, whatever, is done with anger if done properly. Have joy about when we teach and piano, chess, basketball is taught as an act of joy.
Gayle got me one of those Kasparov chess computers. I played it for about a week, once a day, losing every game until one game ended in a draw. I won the next three days in a row and put it away. I hadn’t learned chess. I learned the computer’s game.
We even design our machines to not enjoy the game.
Jenreel gently takes my arm as we walk. “None of us are machines, Ben. Especially if we wish to learn joy.”
