Checkmate

Glen disappeared in crowds: at parties, in restaurants, even at small get togethers. He was thin and average looking but the main thing was that he had no personality. He seemed only partly there, moving as if he was wondering in a daze. People said that he'd never recovered from Vietnam.

But at a chess board, he was a whole different being. I'm tempted to say that he was a master except that he beat most chess masters who went up against him. He wouldn't complete in tournaments (he got too nervous) but his reputation was such that the best chess players from all over the country stopped by the Meat Market to drink great coffee and play Glen.

Everyone (including me) was stunned when I beat him in our first match. I'd been playing for less than three months and the only reason I took the game up at all was because I was living in a hippie house filled with chess fanatics. The only chess book I'd read was Beginning Chess by Bobby Fischer. Fischer being Fischer started where everyone else ended. The whole book was on how to see checkmates.

I saw one from seven moves out against Glen. Being the great player he was, he managed to stop the mate but I fatally crippled him.

Everyone said I was lucky, especially after seeing me lose to a series of second-rate players, but there really isn't much luck in Chess. You either see the moves or you don't. I never beat him again but I always played Glen well and my greatest chess moment (better even than the victory because he paying more attention) was fighting him to a draw.

This baffled everyone. But they misunderstood. It wasn't me playing over my head. It was Glen raising me up to his level. I have a gift for analytical reasoning and Glen's logic was crystaline and pure. I'd look at the moves of lesser players and see nothing but confusion. With Glen every move was part of a grand design and seeing that design told me what move I should make. I'd have no choice.

Glen's mind was a thing of beauty and it was a joy to watch it unfold. Maybe the real tragedy of his war was that it left him capable of using his intellectual artistry only for the benefit of eccentrics like me at coffee houses.

At that time, the press was making a hero out of a crack-junkie who was robbing taxi drivers. One article even called him a "criminal genius." Why? Because he wore a suit and came out of upscale hotels and restaurants to flag down the cabs. Once inside, he'd put the driver in a head lock and steal the money. He was very strong man and seriously injured a few of the drivers. He committed 21 robberies in 19 days. If he'd been half-way smart, he would have quit while he was ahead.

Instead he got into Glen's cab and tried to put a headlock on him. What most people didn't know was that Glen had been in Special Forces. He broke the headlock and tied up the man in his own belt. For me, the awesome thing was he that didn't seriously hurt the guy.

"I've done enough of that," Glen told me, "I just couldn't let him rob anybody else."