Checkers
by Barnali Saha
I loved colors. Red, blue, yellow and purple. As for me, I wanted to be red: the crimson red of a sad sunset, or the soft morning hue of dawn.Now, I do not see colors, they are lost. The colors had been there for a while and then, suddenly, like Grandpa they were gone. Did he take them with him? or did they leave me spontaneously? You know, everything you love eventually leaves you. I wonder why they left, but really I can never find the answer. It was an old autumn eve in Wyoming. Grandpa was playing checkers with me. I was blue and he was red. I think blue suited him the best. He was into the game, looking pensively at his board and contemplating his moves. I was in front of him, in the wooden chair that someone in the neighborhood made for us long ago. The fall colors were mesmerizing, the whole neighborhood and our back yard seemed seeped in vivid colors that captured the essence of different intensities of ambient light throughout the day. Red and orange predominated; the leaves were scintillating as if with autumnal glow. The soft evening breeze blew over the hot furnace to my left. I could see Mum; she was doing something in the kitchen. The evening radio was blaring and she was swaying with Billy Joel. An apron, which was once pink, now frayed and colorless, was hanging from her waist. The wall paper in the kitchen looked odd sap green. I sat brooding in the chair while grandpa with his trembling hands made a move. Grandpa always trembled; a strange cold shudder seemed to run down his spine perpetually. The plastic table rocked as he quivered. The pound of the chair legs on the wooden deck was like a lullaby, a constant vibration of some sweet tune, never loud, never a bang; it was a carefully orchestrated move of his trembling body. Once I asked Dad why Grandpa trembled. “He has a condition,” he replied, but never explained to me what “condition” meant. And if it was because of that condition that Grandpa would sit all day long in his Adirondack chair and look with vacant eyes at the sky and see the day come and go. He was a listless old doll, with glassy eyes and storm struck streaks of white hair. I often wondered what grandpa thought. He had brown and gray scars and marks on his body, a hole on his left thigh, they were wounds of some war which he had once fought for his country. Did he think of the war? Did he horripilate and tremble because of the war? I never knew that, all I knew was that he was forever languid. His old eyes and soporific lids enervated me. Grandpa was like that. The only happy memory I had with him was that checker game that he once played with me, no baseball, and no basketball, just a game of checkers with red and blue pieces. As evening dawned our game reached its end. Grandpa moved his ominous red piece and killed my last remaining soldiers. “Over, I won” he said. A strange joy filled his face as he grinned showing his toothless gums. I had never seen him smiling before except for that one time.He never laughed again for for as long as he lived, and he never played again. Was he afraid of losing, or was it the fear of laughing that made him give up the game? I wanted to ask him the question several times over dinner, but then when I saw the quivering movements of his hands taking the food to his mouth, I had stopped. After a year grandpa died; dad moved his stars and badges to the basement and emptied his room. His room was whitewashed and cleaned; it became mum’s sewing room. Frilled floral curtains now hung from the windows. The Adirondack chair was broken; the colors of autumn gone. Red and orange gave way to and black and white: the soot from the chimney, and white snow, white as grandpa’s hair. Everybody stopped talking about him. Except on Memorial Days nobody visited his grave, which had turned green with moss overtime. I continued remembering him, as I am remembering now. I always cherished the bond I didn’t have with him. When I saw his dead body, I thought I saw him grinning, but before I could confirm they put him in the black wooden coffin with a metal cross on it. Men in gray came to our house, they ate and drank and were gone, like grandpa they never came back. I am playing checkers now. I am brown today. An empty chair sits opposite to me. I have placed red on its side.
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Bamali: I am a creative writer currently living in Nashville, TN. I enjoy writing short stories, poems, along with occasional articles on social issues and also film reviews, travelogues etc. My works have been featured in The Statesman, The Indian Express, DNA-Me etc. along with several other magazines (e.g., Pens on Fire, Many Midnights etc.) and e-magazines (e.g., Palki, Sristi etc.) in the USA. I have recently published my first book -- Figments of Imagination
