The Dreamer’s War

“ Bishop or rook—make a choice.”

I grimaced. His horse was there like a black weed, planted in the middle of my white garden, and there was nothing I could do to pluck it out. With all the power of my armies at my disposition, I found my men frustratingly trapped. Snagged by the useless bureaucracies and inefficiencies of my government.

“ Take the fucking bishop,” I snapped.

No sooner had Dane triumphantly snatched up my piece did I slaughter his knight. I wondered, briefly, if that little black warrior could ever have known of the sacrifice he’d made, a templar knight thrown into a hotbed of infidels.

“ Too bad for him.” I glanced at his piece, trying to make out the face carved so crudely into the wooden base.

“ That’s how it is in my army,” Dane whistled. “ My men never question my orders. They trust me blindly. I’m all about efficiency. Look at your poor bastards; they’re tripping over one another. I bet they can’t wait to join forces with their little African brothers over here.”

I skipped one of my own horses over his pawns, zigzagging into the most awkward of safe zones. It was an international police state, a neutral territory for now, and none of his little rogue henchmen could touch me.

In another move, I’d be in the same spot he was—giving him the choice between his queen and his tower. Now all I had to do was hope he didn’t spot the trap, didn’t see the pendulum of doom swinging over his royal family. I was going to take Maria Antoinette to the guillotine.

Dane smiled, a handsome and unnerving expression. He fixed his green eyes into the back of my skull, and I wondered what it looked like—all that brain matter behind my eyes. Could he read my thoughts too? God knows the bastard was smart, with his collection of classic readings, and his fascination with art, and his little assortment of souvenirs from around the world.

“ Sad, sad, sad,” he mumbled. “ Trying the same lousy stunt on me.”

He moved his queen back a spot—now she could cover her brethren tower and threaten my horse along the diagonal.

“ Bitch…” I glared at her murderously before retreating my knight to the safety of his people. No holy crusade for this little soldier.

Dane’s eyes swept the board, that maddening half-smile still on his lips, and he spoke to me absently. “ So, Fielder, what do you think about Darwin?”

“ What?”
“ Darwin. Survival of the fittest, evolution, all that jazz. I think it’s a crock of bullshit.”

“ Evolution? Where do you get off saying that? You been hanging around all the Fundies?”

He laughed, sonorous and pleasant, and I joined in with my coarse cackles.

You see, we had a whole lot of inside jokes, Dane and me, and one of them had to do with the “Fundies,” which was short for “Fundamentalists.” Neither of us believed much in God and angels and divine intervention, but we got a real kick out of some of the people who did. The Fundies were the diehards, the right-wing fanatics who loved two things: the sound of their own voice, and damning the innocent. We had a couple at our school. They hated all the gay kids—that was more ignorant than funny—but some things they did were downright hysterical. Like the one time, when I lost my entire internet project to a server error and punched my seat and roared “ Goddamnit,” at which point a ratty blonde Fundy covered her ears and screamed in full hysterics: “DON’T USE HIS NAME LIKE THAT. YOUR SOUL IS BLACK.”

Well, I thought it was funny at the time.

“ Evolution, you crackhead,” I snapped at Dane. “ It makes a whole damn lot of sense to me.”

Dane sighed with impatience. “ Not evolution, Fielder. I’m talking about the other stuff. Survival of the fittest.”

“ Only the strong survive,” I added. “ Are you gonna make a move anytime today, Hans? I’ve had more fun watching paint dry.”

He swung one of his pawns forward two spots—you know, that stupid little charge that the troops can make when they’re fresh and untroubled. Kind of like sending greenhorns into battle—they’re yippy and excited until they see the bloodshed, the slaughter, and then they slow the hell down. That’s what these pawns are like: eager to head out, then they lose courage and end up being useless side-hoppers on a one-way street.

The pawn he had moved was alone and seemingly undefended. Was it bait for my knight?

“ What’s this all about, Hans?” I demanded.

Dane was unfazed by his nickname, though he generally disliked it. My buddies and I were fond of calling him “Hans” because he looked German—well, Aryan, I suppose would be correct—if you take into account his dirty blonde hair and light eyes and that firm jaw. He looked like a Nazi bastard, even though he was charismatic and intelligent and could never be brainwashed, like the real Nazi bastards. It was fun to yank his chain, though, every now and then. No one should waltz through life too easily.

“ What’re you up to, you Fuehrer-loving Kraut? Trying to appease me. Just a little bit of the Sudetenland, a little more living space, is that it? Peace in our time…”

I was rambling. I do that a lot when I’m thinking. And right now I was thinking hard, trying to figure out why he would throw away a piece like that.

Dane had other things on his mind, of course. The chess game was a last priority to him—how infuriating was that? Here I was, working my ass off to try to get the best of the Great Dane Pulman at chess, and he didn’t even care. And he was winning.

“ Survival of the fittest…you ever wonder where people get off with that kind of attitude?” he wondered. “ You hear it all the time, usually from assholes. Like some guy cutting to the front of the grocery line because he knows no one wants to fight him for the sake of fairness. Or some big sixth grader on the playground grabbing candy from the kindergartens, just because he’s big, and they’re terrified of him. Strong? What’s it mean to be the strongest?”

“ Dane, Jesus, what the hell are you talking about?”

My impatience was rising with my temper. I couldn’t figure out what he was trying to pull off with the lone pawn, holding down a white patch of desert in a sea of enemies. The little bastard looked like Davy Crocket, all boonied up in the Alamo.

Here comes the cavalry.

I made the move quickly, before I could lose the nerve. I jerked back my hand and held my breath, waiting for the repercussions.

Dane was staring at me hard, oblivious to the game. “ What I mean, Fielder, is why do certain people feel as if they’re entitled to the best of society’s desserts because they’re bigger than the rest of us? Or better looking? Or more intelligent? Why do we put up with it?”

“ Why? Because they’ll kick our weak asses if we don’t,” I shot back. “ Or they’re ridicule us, throw us out of their social network. Or they’ll fire us. Those are the people in power—the ones you described.”

“ So it’s fear, then,” Dane said, nodding his head quietly. “ Of course it’s fear. That’s how most things are done these days. We don’t perform for the good of society; we perform out of fear of society. We don’t want to become outcasts. We don’t want punishment.”

I gave my friend a horror-filled stare. “ No shit, Sherlock? It all makes sense now, Doctor… but my God, but if what you’re saying is right, then I know, I know where to find the Lost Covenant of the Arc!”

Dane scrunched up his brows. “ Cut it out, Fielder. Did you ever stop to think about this? I mean, what would happen if people suddenly stopped being afraid?”

“ How should I know?” I said. “ I suppose they would quit putting up with all the bullshit. There would probably be a revolution, and another Lenin, another Trotsky, and then another Stalin to remind the world that there will always be fear.”

Dane sighed. His fingers twitched over his queen, and I saw the move, saw the end come spinning down like whiskey, filling my stomach with the queasy sense of dread.

Of course. I had moved my knight, but the knight had never been the target. It had been the man behind the knight—the man who had christened the knight and sent him on his crusade—the bishop. His queen was in line with my bishop. And there was nothing covering his flank.

For a moment I wondered if Dane hadn’t cheated. He could have slid his queen over a spot when I wasn’t watching, because surely I wouldn’t have missed…

No. She was there. Now she was here.

And out went the bishop.

“ What a slaughter,” I said. “ There will be an Inquisition for that.”

“ Think of a world without fear,” Dane said. “ What would drive us then? Compassion? Think of how incredible that would be. We all have compassion, because we’re all human. What if our society became selflessly productive, devoted to helping those who have less?”

I rolled my eyes. “ You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…”

“ Oh, Fielder, buddy, your singing needs some work.”

“ Fuck you,” I replied. “ And another thing, my little Freud—there are a ton of other motivators for society. Compassion’s at the bottom of the list when you consider money, power, and lust.”

Dane shrugged. He exchanged two pawns with mine, throwing his men into the meat grinder at Antietam. I’m glad he did. The board needed to be cleared up a bit. And besides, wasn’t chess usually a war of attrition?

A thought came to me. “ Listen, we could never destroy fear, because that would require toppling the oppressors—the capitalists, the rulers, the bourgeoisie—essentially another Bolshevik revolution. Those in power would never want to surrender the upper hand, all of their assets. Why? Because humans are inherently evil creatures. Machiavelli tells us that we are all greedy and selfish by nature. So there would need to be a bloody revolution to instill equality, and to do this, a lot of people would have to die. Essentially, we would have to create fear in order to destroy it. It’s one big catch-22, and that’s why it would never work.”

Dane’s pawns were on the move, marching down the right flank of the board. They brought a tower and a knight with them, intent on laying siege to my castle. I made adequate preparations—popping open a little escape hatch, clearing the back aisle for my other tower, giving speeches to my troops like Patton on a power trip.

His bishop and his queen were aligned and angled at my castle. This was generally not a comforting sight, but I had taken enough precautions to ensure that my Charlemagne would not be trapped in check. I had peered into the future like Cassandra, and I saw the slaughter, and I knew that, this time, Troy would not burn.

“ I still think it’s a load of crap,” Dane said. “ Why are people so reluctant to be charitable, to help the suffering, the poor, the oppressed? You remember our field trip to Pittsburgh two years ago? Remember that homeless guy outside the pizza shop? Remember how everyone skirted around him, avoided making eye-contact, pretended like he wasn’t there?”

I nodded. “ Yeah, even the Fundies.”

“ And we gave him our last two pieces of pizza. And he said ‘Godbless ya.’ And it meant so much to me.”

“ Me too,” I said. “ But the situation made sense. We had food left over, so we gave it to him. I mean, when you think about it, no act of charity is completely selfless, either. There’s always personal satisfaction. Even the most covert act of benevolence can be said to be selfish—to inflate your own sense of goodwill.”

“ You’re over-rationalizing,” Dane said. “ You’re being a cynic again.”

My temper flared. “ Better to be a realist and be able to cope with the world than to be an idealist and suffer disappointment after disappointment. Get your head out of your pious ass, Dane. You think you’re a dreamer, but you’re not. You’re just a kid with way too much free time. Your family is well-to-do, money’s never been a problem for you. It’s easy to sit here and philosophize and judge others, but sometimes I wish you would just grow up and quit feeding me the party lines.”

Dane stared at me, expressionless for a moment. Then he broke out into a grin and slid his tower over, directly vertical from my queen.

“ Bitter, are we?” he taunted. His eyes danced gently. “ Lets give you a real reason to be angry, shall we?”

I glanced frantically at my queen and saw that his tower was covered, and all avenues of escape—the endless possibilities two minutes ago—turned out to be booby trapped. A movement forward meant death from his queen; diagonal to the left meant likewise. Diagonal to the right would send me into his knight’s path. My flanks were blocked by two pawns.

I was trapped.

I had been strung along to believe that my king was in jeopardy, but it was all a brilliant ploy. So I had been bent over like Hitler, sniffing out Calais, while Dane had rammed his entire army up my ass at Normandy. Toodle-doo, game over for the axis. Bobby Fischer would have been amazed.

“ May as well make use of her,” Dane advised. “ Make her a martyr. She bloodied up a good many of my men. Take the tower.”

I wordlessly did as I was told. I had no other choice. I took his tower, and let his king cut her down, like some intimate Roman conspiracy for power. Here was Nero, murdering his own mother, driven by paranoia and fear of her influence, her wide-reaching tentacles of power.

“ The end of young Cleopatra!” Dane held up my queen for the world to see. “ Here is the death of Bloody Mary; the fall of Catherine the Great!”

“ What, no reference to Antoinette?” I asked bitterly.

“ Ah, but she didn’t thrive in greatness. She lived in the shadow of her husband, the shadow of the Revolution, my little Robespierre.”

Dane had adopted the voice of Mr. Jewkins, our ridiculous history teacher with a ridiculous name and a ridiculously nasally voice. Jewkins had a tendency to speak with a breathy, lispy tone of voice that was…well, gay, I suppose. That would be the best stereotype.

“ Ohhh, bad!” Dane added, touching his finger to his lips, and I was cracking up.

I sobered up, eventually. One glance at the chessboard told me that the end was inevitably near.

Dane cocked one eye and spoke in a raspy, Irish voice. “ A fight to the bitter end, is it, Fielder?” He was doing Highlander, swinging his sword around.

I felt like Spartacus and William Wallis must have felt, when their ragtag armies finally came face-to-face with the might of the Roman and English empires. There was that impending sense of doom, defeat in the face of overwhelming odds, but always that desire to do as much damage as humanly possible. To leave a mark.

It didn’t last long. And I couldn’t do much. I was sending boys with sticks and stones out to defend Berlin against the surge of Russian, American, and British tanks. I fed them out carelessly. Then I wondered if I could just forfeit and have my little Hitler pop a cyanide capsule. Oh, the shame of surrender!

Three masterful strokes, and Dane had the board set up like a Van Gogh masterpiece.

“ Checkmate.”

I glared at the pieces, making certain that there was no final move. I had given up hope a while ago—such is the nature of a cynical person, or a “realist.” Learn to cope with defeat, learn to see it coming so it doesn’t shatter you with its weight.

“ Well, fuck, good game man.”

I extended my hand, and he shook it twice, and then the ordeal was over, and we left the battlefield behind and went outside to shoot some hoops.

Dane’s a cool kid, though. He deserved it.