“What’s next for you?” Waldo says loudly to Mikey, who glances up at him, then turns back to push more buttons. “I mean where do you go from here?”
“California,” Mikey says, “then Manila, if I can raise the dough.”
“Maybe we can help you there,” Waldo says.
Mikey stops in mid analysis, watches Waldo warily. “Like how?”
“Don’t you think about that, Mikey,” Pam says, “he’s very clever you know,” she says pointing at Waldo. “Don’t worry about that. This really isn’t the time. The exhibition starts in an hour.”
“Yeah,” Mikey agrees. “Lemme show ya the last trick.”
Waldo nods to me, as if to say, ‘See fella, even these obsessive types stop what they’re doing when money is mentioned.’
“Arnold give you space for the feature?” Waldo asks me.
“Sure, and very contritely.”
Waldo laughs, but Mikey comes back to the issue. “You gotta way to raise the money?”
“There are ways and ways,” Waldo says expansively. “Young Snell here might make you such a celebrity a major news station would pick up the tab. And didn’t some millionaire back Fischer once?”
“Just before the Spassky match, but that was different.”
Pam says, “Mikey, don’t worry. These things have a way, a wonderful way of working out.”
“Maybe the paper will pick it up, if you’ve got a good chance to win,” Waldo says.
“I’ll win all right,” Mikey answers. “Nobody there can beat me, except with a prepared variation.”
“Whatever that is,” Waldo smiles nodding toward me.
“Nobody can beat me, if everything’s even and nothin’s been worked out before hand.”
“Yes,” Pam says.
“Well, I suppose you had best simply plan one tournament at a time. A lot of mediocre talent to be whipped tonight, for example,” Waldo continues.
“They’re easy.”
“Or so it has been arranged,” Waldo says. “You have lots of people looking out for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mikey says.
“This little simultaneous,” Waldo says, “this little simultaneous isn’t exactly the Interzonals, but how would we ever know?”
“What are ya saying?” Mikey asks.
“It’s clear enough. I hope you do well,” Waldo answers.
“I’ll do better than anybody else around here. Better than anyone else you could get to come here.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see,” Waldo says
“That’s right,” Pam answers, all solicitation. “We’ll see in a very few minutes, and then you’ll all get your answer all right. Won’t they, Mikey?”
What little allegiance have we here, I think? The partially lost leading the maimed? And for what reason?
Hillary saves the day. She comes into the dining room, takes over Waldo’s rising antagonisms, and molds them into appropriate assertions of her prerogatives. But that little ritual is lost on Mikey—apparently so, too, on Pam, who merely parrots Mikey’s thoughts on his new variations to the Sicilian Defense. Hillary persuades Waldo to remain behind with her when Pam and Mikey and I leave for the exhibition.
Mikey sits in the back seat of Ned Snow’s Buick station wagon, a behemoth as long as a freight car. Pam swivels in the front seat to watch him.
“Will it take a long time?” she asks.
Mikey doesn’t answer, merely works at his buttons more furiously. So I fill in, “Probably till the wee small hours of the morning. I’ve heard of some that go on past dawn.”
“Not with these wonks,” Mikey says.
“Okay, not tonight then.”
“We’ll all be home early,” he says again, apparently about to laugh at his own remark. Then suddenly he is back on the electronic board again, punching in new variations. Through the rear view mirror he looks very young, vulnerable. I can’t imagine what opening he can be thrashing through that would make a difference at this point.
Pam says, “I used to swim with a swim club. I mean competitively. I used to dread going out for the meet. I used to get sick to my stomach. I remember I used to think, surely this is not a very nice way to spend your time, feeling this way. And I remember getting so upset just before my race would start. Imagining what it would like on the starting block, leaning over the water. Watching that funny, very blue, too blue pool water and smelling chlorine and thinking it would be pretty cold even after I got in, because the air in the pool room was always so hot anyway.”
“Be quiet,” Mikey says, pushing more buttons.
“And daddy would always be in the bleachers right near the timer and he would always be better dressed than anybody in the bleachers and I could tell he was just as nervous as I was. And knowing that made it a whole lot easier to go through with the start. Waiting for that gun to go off and thinking, if only they’d press that little pistol right against my temple, I wouldn’t ever have to do this again.”
“Will ya shut up?” Mikey says louder, but still not looking up from his board.
“But then, after a while I began to think having daddy there wasn’t making it so much easier after all. Sometimes I thought it was making it worse. How could that be? But it was. It was! And so I started to think about ways I could ask him not to come, not to be so involved. But did I know any? No, I didn’t. Do you?”
“Why not ask him directly and be done with it?” I ask.
“I didn’t want to insult him, if you want to know the truth—“
Mikey says, “We don’t want to know the truth. We don’t want ta. We really don’t want ta.”
Pam falls silent. I listen to the giant Buick’s air-conditioning, and to the little clicking of buttons in the backseat.
“I’m not very competitive,” Pam says.
“Well, I am,” Mikey says. And with that declaration we glide to a stop in front of the main meeting hall of the Brandon-Mercer Trailer Park.
Chapter 13
No slender operation, this park. Carefully planted pine trees mask the rather shabby aluminum residences. Wide spacious boulevards. Nifty white cement statues of baseball players mark off the corners. The meeting hall looks like a long, low ship—port hole shaped windows spread across the wide Ocala block front façade. Automatic sliding glass doors.
The thirty-six boards have been arranged in a large circle in the cleared main ballroom. The bleachers have been pushed away. Instead, folding chairs have been set up about ten feet behind the circle. It makes little sense, since you cannot see anything from these chairs. Doubtless the audience, what audience there will be, will crowd around the thirty-six players. Inside the circle there are three stools arranged equi-distantly. So this will be the house where Mikey lives, the house that Vera built. His opponents are a motley group, perhaps twenty of them come directly out from under the aluminum shelters hidden in the pine trees. The rest appear much younger. Two clearly are junior high school students. There is a single black man.
At the far end of the room a long table has been set up holding a mammoth silver coffee container and several baskets of potato chips. The Tribune photographer poses Mikey on the third stool. Mikey works his fingers back and forth as