Though there were thirteen of them at one time he had reduced it gradually to three. This constellation suited him, no Cygnus blinking back, head severed.
He shuffled them along the cross-hatched surface of the stump, end up, planted on the porch.
The checkers were slow, blind to his mistakes. He had chosen them as silent participators in the scenes he desired and manipulated with his brown fingers.
And though he had arranged for senseless examination of facts, there was more sense floating in square pools of space than he would allow.
There was no symptom that could not be corrected. He had only to allow time, to think, ponder the problem. Assign names to circles, class them in two colors: red, white.
After translation, simple movements remained. Forward over the squares. Plain diagonals. And backwards, in any fashion, for the kings. These motions repeated became symbolic of larger patterns he saw in the world around him: they became relationships.
Contact was an actual barrier to forming relationships: it was so easily misread. Example A: he fingered a red checker forward, one named Hannah. He knew this piece intimately; he directed it about the board with delicacy. Fully aware, fingertips burning accumulated touch.
Hannah was in close proximity to another checker, this one white, given the name Clarence. Though one square remained between them, they held this space diagonally, looking askance at attempts at reconciliation.
He eyed the pieces, pondered the third, a red, deep in the briars of the double corner.
Stagnation was never something he had concerned himself with; rather, it had been concerned with him.
Spine-knobbed stone rose against reddened sky, wedging black rifts into the seams of his mind. The sun set; he waited for the next move to reveal itself.
Clarence had a habit of skittish movement. Confrontation was not his thing. A strong feeling, in word only, for literal behaviors manifested in him as hypocrisy.
Panned the board, summed the squares, 64, finite movements, action or reaction. Recant, why not cant it out if both allow? Sinew shrinking the span of his fingers from eight squares to five.
High trees shaded the porch. One by one, the leaves begin to fall. A chance breeze pushed one onto the board. He grasped the withered stem with his fingers, and twirled the leaf slowly.
To bridge the space separating two individuals, a girder, or artificial support, can sometimes be used to great effect.
He placed the leaf silently on the board, then slid the third checker out of the double corner. When kinged after the long march, he would break the standoff. He put his hands on his knees and watched the sun slide below the horizon. The leaves continued falling in the dusk, collecting at his feet. He shucked his way through them and wandered, swamplike.
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