Commune: Book One (Commune Series 1)

by Joshua Gayou

  Jake snorted humorlessly to himself. “Out in California, ‘hydroponics’ was just code for ‘weed growing supplies’.”

  Billy paused and seemed to contemplate this for a moment, looking up at the high ceiling of the garage. “The climate here for pot is all wrong but if you happen to find any, bring it back here certainly. I’d hate to think I’ve already smoked my last joint.”

  I laughed at this and Billy hastened to add, “I’d never do that in front of Lizzy, of course.”

  I laughed even harder. “Billy, after everything we’ve been through – after what that kid has seen, you think I care about you taking a hit? Just do it outside is all I ask; the stuff smells like a skunk’s business end.”

  Billy nodded, turned around, and wrote in “cannabis” under “corn”. He looked at this for two seconds and then added a question mark next to it. Behind his back, Jake glanced in my direction and gave me a “do you think he’s messing with us?” look. I smiled and shrugged.

  In the absence of easily renewable power, our evenings began to feel like Family Fun Night. When the light failed, we would light candles and spend time together in the front room. Most evenings found Billy in his favorite leather chair by the fireplace (not lit during this time; the log home was surprisingly good at holding in the day’s heat) with a bright LED lantern propped over his head on a wall shelf. He usually had about five or six books stacked next to him on a side table with a notebook in his lap, switching between reading various volumes and scribbling in the notebook, often times muttering to himself. I spent some time in Billy’s library trying to find books to read but his taste in novels skewed in a direction different to mine. He tended to favor a lot of classics and various flavors of what I thought of as “Manly Fiction” – many sci-fi, military, and thriller titles with a lot of historical fiction sprinkled throughout. My tastes swung towards romance and supernatural stories, so there was little for me in his collection. I made a mental note to have Jake pull over the next time we passed a book store.

  Billy also had a good collection of board games, which we used to play often in the evenings. We would spread the game of the night out on the low coffee table between the couches and chairs in the house’s main front room. There were plenty of the standard games that everyone in the world knows like Monopoly, Sorry, The Game of Life, and even Battleship but he also had some games that I never heard of like Stratego, Risk, Forbidden Island, and more. He also had a chess set, to Jake’s delight, which would sometimes be set up on the table so he could teach Elizabeth to play. To my surprise, she was eager to learn. The game might as well have been Greek Calculus to me so I had a hard time following some of the concepts he went over with her. Even so, after a few nights of listening to him go over the rules of the game, I found myself picking up more than I intended.

  I recall the first evening he just focused on how each piece moved. Some of them were simple, like the bishops and rooks but others seemed like a pain, like the knights. When I said as much to him, he said, “Knights are horribly undervalued in this game. The nature of their movement makes it harder for your opponent to anticipate your intention; I’ve won several games because the person I played against made a simple blunder – they basically forgot that my knight was covering a key square. I’d personally take two knights over a queen in any game, really.”

  “Get out of here,” said Billy from his chair, looking at Jake around the edge of his book. “Over a queen?”

  “Sure,” said Jake.

  “Think I want to play you some time. Might be an easy win.”

  Jake sat back and smiled. “I’d like that.”

  On the following evening, Jake discussed how there were essentially three phases to any real game of chess: an opening, middle, and end game. “The opening is where the players position their pieces, planning their attacks and defenses. The middle game is where all the plans you set up in the opening are executed, which typically results in a bunch of pieces getting captured on both sides. The end game is where you have a reduced number of pieces, sometimes only a couple, and someone is actively pursuing a mating move.”

  On the third evening of play, Jake focused on the opening phase of the game and how Lizzy could get herself into the best position of strength to maximize her chances of beating her opponent. “See these four squares?” he asked while pointing at the exact center of the board. “This is the most important area during the opening phase. You want absolute control of this terrain by the time the middle game phase begins. The ability to gain superiority over these four squares can often times determine who will maintain an advantage throughout the game.”

  “So if I do it right, I’ll win?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Oh, no, it’s not guaranteed,” said Jake. “It only helps. Situations always change. Your ability to win is defined by your ability to adapt to the board as it changes. Control of the center early on is just a way to put the odds in your favor.”

  “So how do I get control?”

  “Basically,” Jake answered, “you try to cover as many center squares as you can with as many pieces as you can and then, at some point, you decide which single square you’re going to target. That square will be occupied by your opponent and you’ll attack it. You need to have enough pieces targeting that square so that when you and your opponent are done fighting over that square you’ll come out with more pieces left than him.”

  Every evening they played, he covered a new key concept with her and then they would play through a game exercising what they had discussed. He never played to win during these games. He spent most of his time asking her why she made such and such a move, not telling her that the move was right or wrong but just asking her to explain the reasoning behind it. In the process of doing so, she would soon discover whether the move she had made was wise; if it was not, he allowed her to take it back and try another direction. Through this process, I began to understand what an outstanding teacher Jake could be and wondered, not for the first or last time, if teaching had been some aspect of his previous life in any capacity.

  Billy and I both also began to learn how devious Jake could be.

  After several nights of Jake working through the basics with Elizabeth, Billy finally challenged him to a game. To my surprise, Lizzy happily set the board up for them and then moved to the side to watch them play (I thought she would be annoyed at having her game preempted but she seemed more eager to watch the two men play a game).

  “White or black?” Billy asked. Jake responded by picking up a pawn from each side of the board. He put his hands behind his back and we heard the sound of the plastic pieces clicking around in his hands. He then put both hands out in front of Billy, both of them closed into fists around the pieces. “Pick one,” he offered.

  Billy tapped a hand, which Jake rolled over and opened, revealing a white pawn. Both pieces were replaced on the board and Jake said, “After you.”

  The next series of moves were slightly disconcerting to watch. Billy started by moving one of his center pawns two spaces out into the middle of the board, which Jake met instantly by moving out his opposing pawn. Billy pushed another pawn next to his initial piece, this time only one square forward. As soon as his hand came off the second pawn, Jake had a knight moved out from the rear and placed down in front. As they went another five or six moves into the game, Billy’s choices came slower and slower, requiring more consideration as the board developed. In contrast, Jake countered instantaneously each time, his hand already hovering over his selected piece and waiting for Billy to release his own (I noticed Jake would never touch one of his pieces until Billy had let go of his).

  It wasn’t very long before the board resembled the last possible second before a major car wreck. I had at least learned the basics of the game over the last few nights just being in the same room and listening to Jake teach Lizzy; I could see how much tension was built up on the center of that board. Every piece was threatening an opposing piece or protecting one of its own. T
he only thing I can bring to mind that really describes what the board looked like was the closing scene in Reservoir Dogs where the characters all held guns on each other in that giant Mexican Standoff. I didn’t see how it could get any worse – neither one of them could move another piece outside of pushing a random pawn out along the edges of the board. Evidently, Billy agreed and pulled the trigger.

  An exchange of six moves followed quickly, each of them resulting in a capture for the other side. They happened so fast that I couldn’t keep up with which pieces were being taken and had to bring myself up to speed by looking at them lined up along the sides of the board. I could see that Jake had captured two pawns and one bishop while Billy had two pawns and one knight.

  The center of the board was now a shambles as far as I could tell. The balanced aggression that had existed only a moment ago was now obliterated with only a few survivors left out in the center. This fact seemed to deter Jake and Billy not at all; they began to bring out more pieces in a second wave to the first skirmish. I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to know who was ahead at the time but if I remember correctly now, a bishop and knight are considered equal in value, so they would have been at a draw by this point. This slowly began to change as Billy pressed his advantage.

  He proceeded to cut down pawns while Jake seemed only to divide his responses by either running away or attempting to block Billy’s advance. Jake pulled a bizarre move that I had never seen where his king and rook suddenly swapped places; Elizabeth spoke up at this, wanting to know what just happened. Billy assured her that the move was perfectly legal and referred to as “castling”.

  Billy reached out and captured a bishop with his knight in a seeming sacrifice of the knight (one of Jake’s pawns was guarding the bishop). Rather than capturing the knight, Jake ignored it and moved his own bishop from its starting position out to the middle of the board on Billy’s right side. Shrugging, Billy pulled his knight back out of harm’s way. Jake responded by moving his own remaining knight forward into the middle of the board in support of his bishop, which Billy promptly captured with his queen. He grunted when he did so, mildly surprising me. Both of Jake’s knights were captured and now Billy’s queen was out in play, threatening to make an even worse mess of Jake’s defenses.

  I feel like I need to explain something about Jake at this point. Thinking back on the game he played with Billy, I don’t believe there was a single instant where he wasn’t in complete control – of either himself or the game. I honestly believe that the entire game went exactly as he wanted, including every piece he lost. Even when it looked like he was being beaten, I really think it was by his design. At no point throughout all of this did he betray a single ounce of emotion or indecision. I would call it a poker face but this was something else entirely. It’s a misconception that high stakes poker players show no expression or emotion during play – they show plenty of both, realizing that a complete absence of any human behavior is unnatural, cannot be maintained indefinitely, and betrays just as much about the player as any number of tells or ticks. Due to this understanding, the poker face of a high stakes player is really just an exquisitely practiced performance of choreographed expressions, positions, and statements that are in line with the player’s own normal behavior. The trick for them is not to hide all emotion; the goal is only to camouflage deeper intent.

  Jake was no poker player and had no poker face at all. In situations such as these, you could feel his insides thrumming. He became a package of hyperactivity concealed in an unmoving shell. His face, already muted in expression in his everyday life, became barren of all expression and articulation. Not a single muscle on his face twitched or moved unnecessarily. His eyelids even ceased to blink as though their only purpose had become the accumulation of data and blinking would create intolerable gaps in the stream of input. At no point throughout the entire game did he ever show signs of satisfaction, annoyance, confusion, or uncertainty. There was never a time where any of us could tell if he was winning or losing – there was simply no way to gauge if the game was going the way he desired or if his plans were being thwarted irrevocably. He only absorbed information and produced none. I am exaggerating in no way when I say the man was a void.

  We all sat around the table wondering what he would do next when he reached out, took his queen, and moved it all the way across the board into Billy’s back rank and said, “Check.”

  Billy froze in place, staring at what had just happened. He reached out towards the board, stopped, and pulled his hand back. Finally, he moved his king over a space to get it out of danger. Jake’s bishop came forward, flattening a pawn at its final destination.

  “Check.”

  Billy shook his head and moved the King again.

  Jake moved his queen, to which Billy responded by growling, “Son of a…”

  “Check.”

  Billy sat now for a long time staring at the board. He leaned in several directions looking at things from all angles, agonizing over what he would do next. I couldn’t see what the big deal was; it seemed clear to me that he had to move his king again. It took me perhaps two minutes or more while Billy deliberated before I realized the problem: both Billy’s king and queen were now threatened by Jake’s queen. Billy couldn’t capture the queen with his king because Jake’s queen was guarded by a pawn deep in Billy’s territory as well as a rook all the way across the board in Jake’s area – Billy would have been moving his king into check, which is illegal. If Billy captured the queen with his own queen, his piece would be lost. He finally muttered, “Damn it…” and captured Jake’s queen with his own, which Jake promptly captured with the rook.

  “Check.”

  Billy sighed and shook his head, clearly disgusted with the entire situation. He moved his king out of check. Jake pushed the rook to the final rank, trapping the enemy king behind a wall of its own pawns.

  “Mate”, said Jake.

  Billy sat back in his chair. “What happened to you liking your knights more than your queen?”

  “Nothing. I still do,” said Jake. “But you were also in the room when I said that.”

  “What?!”

  “You heard me say that I would take two knights over one queen so I figured you would go after them. You did but you developed a case of tunnel vision while you pursued them, sacrificing good formation of your pieces to capture them both. Your desire to get my knights caused you to rush the opening, resulting in many of your pieces remaining underdeveloped. I helped this along by bringing both knights out to attack the center early instead of pushing more pawns to support d5, leaving the knights vulnerable. You were so focused on getting those knights that you didn’t see the check and subsequent king/queen fork coming.”

  “Jesus,” said Billy. “You’re one of those guys, aren’t you? All Bobby Fischer and calculating fifteen moves ahead and everything?”

  “Thinking that many moves ahead is a pointless exercise,” said Jake. “All it takes to wreck a sequence of that length is a single move. I never think ahead more than four.”

  “But you literally went into the game knowing he would go after your knights,” I said. “You set that up, it happened, and you used it to win. That whole game was a lot longer than four moves.”

  “I had a general plan,” replied Jake. “I knew what situation I wanted to create and waited for opportunities to do so. Not the same.”

  “So next time, don’t go straight for his knights, Billy,” said Elizabeth.

  “Except next time I’ll know that we had this experience and adjust my plans accordingly,” Jake told her.

  Billy was waving a finger at Jake and laughing. “You’re a dirty player, Whitey.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘play the board’?”

  Billy nodded, “Sure. It means you make your best poker hand without using any of the hole cards.”

  Jake nodded. “It means something different in Chess. It refers to planning your strategy based only on
the position of the pieces rather than what the opponent is likely to do. It’s how you want to learn to play when you’re a beginner. Later on as you better understand the game, you play the player. The pieces on the board are only an expression of your opponent’s personality; therefore the opponent is your problem. The pieces on the board are only incidental.”

  15 – Bad Times

  Amanda

  The time we spent together at the cabin includes some of my happiest memories since the world toppled over. As I mentioned, there were times during this period in which I experienced discontent with bouts of depression, however Lizzy, Jake, and Billy were always there for me when I needed them or ready to back away when I needed my own space. Even my daughter, who was so young at the time, could tell that I needed the leeway to work through the dark things inside of me, displaying the poise and the wisdom beyond her years to grant it. My family circle, which had collapsed under the weight of the Plague, had expanded again to include Jake and Billy, who transcended the position of simple friendship. They became necessary.

  “I want to thank you both,” I told them one night. We were all sitting on the front porch enjoying the last light of the day before the sun went down completely. “I don’t know what inspires a person to invite a total stranger to come live with him but you’ve saved my life in more ways that I can express.”