The Ninth House

I love chess. Mind you, I’m a fair player at best, but I love the game. I love to play chess and I love to read about chess and chess personalities.

Even if you’ve never touched a chessboard, you’ve probably heard of Garry Kasparov. Until his retirement from competitive chess in 2005, Kasparov, though not unbeatable, was damn near so. He has enjoyed the highest rating of any competitive player in the world in the recorded history of the game, with a peak FIDE rating of 2851. The current world #1 player, Viswanathand Anand, is currently rated 2801. Kasparov, in retirement, is currently rated 2812.

So he’s a bright guy. And at age 44, he’s currently running for president of Russia. Most folks say he’s got little chance of success, and that’s being kind. It’s not that Kasparov isn’t qualified for the gig, though who knows if he’s got the chops. It’s because it’s Russia, and current President Vladimir Putin’s got a lock on the government, and things are getting scary over there again. Hell, they’re scary over here.

I happened to stumble upon Kasparov’s appearance on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher a couple nights ago. Thought you might enjoy it.

I’m thinking we might all want to play more chess.

TNH

I saw my first episode of Star Trek when I was eight years old old. The original series was still in production then, third and final season. You wanna know how old I am, have Spock do the math for you.

I even remember the episode: “The Mark of Gideon.” It was a thinly-veiled cautionary tale about the dangers of overpopulation. All I remember was all those banging heartbeats and all those sardine-packed people spooked me. It was scary, at least to an eight-year-old, and it wasn’t because of the Spandex.

And yes, I know most all Star Trek episodes were thinly-veiled cautionary tales and/or morality plays and/or paeans to democracy and/or enlightened secularism. Except for “Spock’s Brain,” a not-so-thinly-veiled cautionary tale about the dangers of being so desperate for a script you’ll film anything.

And at the center of it all, there was The Man.

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As long as Steve Earle is still doing his thing, I feel okay.

I am a secularist. I am also religious.

(And no, don’t ask me, “Which one?” This isn’t Wal-Mart. I didn’t pick it shrink-wrapped off a shelf and even if I had, believe me, I’ve re-built and graffiti’d that sumbitch so many times by now that “which one?” wouldn’t apply anyhow. In fact, the very idea of “which one?” makes by teeth grind. It’s like the scene in The Blues Brothers, when the woman in the redneck bar declares they’ve got “both kinds” of music there: “country and western!” I also generally do not like lengthy parenthetic statements but this one seems to be working pretty well.)

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All of the places in this story are real but I’ve changed their names and where they are, so if you follow the directions I give to Covenant Spring you’ll wind up someplace else entirely, past the New Covenant Presbyterian Church and Miz Dori’s neat white house, past the dirt road into the woods by the swamp where Mister Silas lives, over and beyond the little cement bridge, where I held Aaron’s hand and faced down Pastor Lamm, with the storm black and howling over our heads and the world a tick from ruin.  

Some of the events I have changed for certain reasons that ought to be clear by the end.  I’ve also changed the names of everyone involved, for the same reasons.  All of them by now know who they are and they’re pretty much fine with it.  So if you think you see yourself in here, it’s not intentional but you can’t say it’s all that surprising, the world being what it is.

My name is Daniel Ivy and I live in New Jersey.  I’ve lived in Jersey all my life.  I was born and raised in a typical Jersey town, which I know won’t mean a thing to you if you haven’t been here.  There are worse places to grow up, and any place is fine when you’re a kid and don’t know any better.

My hometown is small.  You might find it on a good state map.  It’s about an hour west of New York City, identical to the towns that surround it, like interlocking amoebas in a petri dish.  Millions of squirming souls captured in a drop of dirty water, squished beneath a microscope slide, fighting for parking spaces.  It’s home because it’s where I was born and grew up, and that’s the end of it.  It’s difficult to get sentimental about asphalt and strip malls.

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I graduated with my class.  My yearbook photo shows me standing in front of a pine tree with my arms crossed, staring up and off into the distance. 

Before he snapped the photo, the photographer said the same thing to me that he’d said to everyone else.  Smile, and think of your future. 

I am not smiling in my photo. 

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Years went by.  I worked a handful of jobs.  Most aren’t worth talking about. 

I moved out of the house as soon as I could afford it.  I found a little apartment I could manage on my own.  It had putty-colored walls and brown shag carpeting.  The air conditioning carried the damp smell of everyone who had ever lived there.

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No car salesman I have ever met ever planned on being one.  If you have any kind of personality at all and you can do basic math, you’re qualified.  It doesn’t mean you’ll be good at it, of course.  One of the guys who works at the dealership had done time in a minimum security prison for forging his mother’s signature on her checks.  She’s the one who’d turned him in.  He had turned his life around since, he said.

I spent a week watching training videos and reading pamphlets before my first day on the floor.  The new car manager gave me some advice, which was this: “Buyers are liars.” 

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We moved one hundred five vehicles the second month Cai was with us.  One hundred fucking five. 

That was more than double the dealership’s best month, ever.  And forty-two of those, Cai sold.  Better than a car a day if he’d had the whole month, and he did it nineteen days, Sundays off.  You can’t do any better and not go to jail. 

I need to tell you the numbers, so you’ll truly understand. 

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I never forgot that day when Cai stripped the world from me. 

I won’t say it was easy, to tell myself it was just some strange thing, some temporary weakness of flesh, coincidence that Cai happened to look at me then.  But it was enough to dig the memory a shallow grave, until the next time it arose.  It didn’t always work.  Sometimes nothing I did would make it go away.  It would come as I drifted into sleep, it would seize me so that it took everything I had to tear myself free, like struggling to awaken from a dream.

I don’t know if it was death I feared.  I don’t know enough about death to be afraid of it.  But I am afraid of dying, of the very end, that moment when you know your death has arrived, you’re out of time and you’ve missed the point and now it’s too late to go back and get it right.  Knowing that I have failed, imagining that infinite, categorical moment of recognition, and how it will feel.  That’s what terrifies me. 

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Friday afternoon I left work early and went to my apartment to pack.  I had asked Cai what it was like in Covenant Spring, in the summer.  “You won’t need a jacket,” he’d answered. 

I didn’t have a suitcase.  I’d never traveled far enough to need one.  I stuffed clothes into the knapsack I’d used to carry my books in high school and wondered why Cai had invited me.  I wondered why I was going.  I told myself it was because I wasn’t going to show Cai how frightened he’d made me, which was ridiculous.  I was certain he already knew.

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The farthest I had ever driven until my trip with Cai was down to Cape May, which is the extreme south tip of New Jersey, right on the ocean, with a big lighthouse there.  It’s about three hours in good traffic.

I went there with Cheryl.  We spent an off-season weekend in a budget motel and did nothing but rut.  That’s the only word that fits.  She’d suggested the trip, two weeks after we’d met, and paid for it all but she let me drive, her car, a year-old VW convertible.  We listened to salsa music on CD all the way down.  She stuck her tongue in my ear at the check-in desk while the clerk’s back was turned and grinned at me like no woman had ever done.

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We visited the restroom and went outside and drove to the next lot, where the gas station was.  It was self-serve, which was against the law in New Jersey then.  I told Cai I would pump.  I had never pumped my own gas before, if you can believe it.  I had to hold the handle down, otherwise the pump kept cutting out. 

“What do you mean, it’s not good to do what?”

Cai was checking the truck’s oil with a dirty rag he kept in the back of the cab.  He said he’d just had the rear seal replaced at the dealership, he used to have to add a quart every three weeks before that. 

He finished and slammed the hood closed.  He folded the rag and put it back in the cab, in the cargo netting behind the seats with the rest of his road kit.

I told Cai I’d really appreciate it if he’d answer me for once.  I said I deserved an answer.

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A woman was singing.  It was all around like a warm chocolate bath, low piano notes and rhythm like thrusting hips, a harmonica moaning.  She was riding atop it, pulling it into her and through her with sweat and breath and making it a spell.

I couldn’t see her.  All I could feel was her song.  It pulsed against me in the dark and taunted me, it dared me to come closer, to dare the brush of her lips, the damp kiss of her breath, the hot grinding press of her sex. 

Let those come who would try.  You will burn to flashpaper ashes without her knowing you were there. 

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Drive south on I-95, look for a billboard advertising log cabin homes, take the next exit.  Turn right at the stop sign, which is west. 

The road is a two-lane state road.  The rain passes, the sun bakes away the wet and turns it gray as slate.  It burns the fog off the fields, around the next curve and the next, miles of gentle sloping land plowed and planted and steaming in the morning’s heat. 

There are no traffic lights, no towns.  Some houses are brick and some are older, wood-framed with porches.  Some are trailers, satellite dishes perched on aluminum-sided corners, late-model pickups and sedans parked in the dirt turn-around out front.  They all sit in their oases of trees well back from the road, as far back as an entire lot back home – some neat as new haircuts, some ragged and wanting for care.  Some have barns and buildings, trucks and tractors and big harvesters painted green or red parked beside them, metal skeletons with bars and blades and tines. 

A dog barks and runs along the ditch, trying to keep up as we drive by.  He stops at some invisible barrier, sending us on our way with a final gunshot warning.

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I said I felt like a wad of dirty underwear.  Cai laughed, tired, and nodded. 

That was the first thing of the next part. 

A little blond boy emerged from around the back corner of the house, shorts and a tee-shirt and barefooted.  He stopped next to the porch and looked at us.  Cai peered at him through the bug-spattered windshield and swore.  He undid his seat belt and we got out and closed the doors.

Cai said, “How you doin’, Aaron?”  The boy didn’t reply.  “I bet you don’t remember me, do you?  The last time I saw you, you were just a little thing.  You were only two years old.  Do you know who I am?” 

The boy offered a shy nod.  Cai squatted down next to the truck, elbows on knees, and took off his cap.  I walked behind the truck until I was standing next to him.  Cai said, “This is my friend Mister Danny.  Did your mama tell you we were coming?”

Then a woman’s voice scolded, “Who do you think you are, parking on my grass?” 

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Cai was already gone into the guest room to sleep.  Aaron was playing in the back yard.  CeeCee was in the kitchen, making iced tea.

I sat at the square wooden table in the little kitchen, old yellow cabinets and a faded linoleum floor and photos and things stuck to the big white fridge with magnets.  The windows were open, the morning breeze carried the scent of outside into the house. 

I watched CeeCee, held again by her beauty.  I was afraid to study her too intimately, fearful that at any moment the mistake would be discovered.  That I was a fraud, undeserving of this sweet wonder, and it would be taken from me. 

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We stuck close to the shade of the few trees on the left of the road as we walked.  CeeCee had brought me an old ball cap to wear against the sun.  She took it out of the basket.  The cloth band was sweat-stained and the words Smith-Douglas Fertilizer were stitched above the faded blue brim.  CeeCee said her daddy had given it to Royal a while ago. 

I asked her who Royal was.  She said he was Aaron’s daddy.  I didn’t ask more.  I’d already noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.  I’d noticed that right away.  I thought of what CeeCee had said to Aaron before he went inside, to lock the doors and wake Uncle Cai if anything happened. 

I put on the ball cap and adjusted it in back so that it fit me, and another nail got driven.

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We came to the end of the road.  There was mud from the morning rain in the weedy ditch over which the cement bridge sat, its edges crumbling like old sugar cubes.  CeeCee said there was a swamp on the western end of the woods, to our left, Buck Swamp.  It ran around the woods behind her house and then curved behind everything else.  I asked her how it got its name, and she said she didn’t know, she reckoned maybe someone had seen a buck there once, although there were hardly any deer left there at all, now.

I squinted through the blacktop glare and saw the bridge at which she pointed, a flat concrete thing about a quarter-mile down the road, the one I’d seen earlier.  CeeCee said she and Cai used to play in the swamp when they were kids, fishing and catching crawdaddys and king snakes.  She said there were water moccasins there, too, and copperheads, and it was a wonder they’d never been bitten. 

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We traveled through the trees and emerged with the corn before us, leaves brushing scratchy hands together in the hot breeze.  No one had said anything since Royal’s departure.  CeeCee was someplace else, and Miz Dori was concentrating fully on safe navigation.

I felt as if I had eavesdropped on dirty family business.  I didn’t know what to say. 

We passed CeeCee’s house, and she satisfied herself that it was still there.  I felt something lift from her then.  She upturned her face to the sun and sighed, eyes closed, and returned.

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There is the dark bedroom.  There is Royal, big and drunk, and there is CeeCee in her nightclothes holding her screaming baby, fighting for her baby’s life. 

She talks to Royal but he doesn’t hear.  She kicks him with her bare feet, she claws at his face and draws blood. 

Cai and their daddy Mister Lorrin Bass come into the room.  Cai bolted from his bed out of a dead sleep and called for his daddy to bring the shotgun as the back porch screen door clapped shut behind him.

Cai and Mister Lorrin come into the room in time to see Royal hit CeeCee hard enough to knock her down.  

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The swing creaked on its chains.  All CeeCee has told me is that Royal hit her and tried to take Aaron and Cai stopped him, and that the next morning Cai was gone. 

It has been five years.  In that time, Royal has not once dared return uninvited, CeeCee says.  Aaron sees his daddy by arrangement once a week, in the afternoon at CeeCee’s house or at Pastor Lamm’s farm, with CeeCee and Mister Lorrin always there.  CeeCee is certain that Royal would have turned down the road to her house that morning had we not met him, had she not told him Cai was back, had he not seen me, another man, standing next to her. 

I feel glad that I was there.  I have been good for something.  Right that very moment I vow I will protect her and Aaron, and with that vow another switch is born inside me, solid and sure as if it had always been there. 

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The house in which Cai and CeeCee’s parents live was built before Mister Lorrin married Miz Charlotte. Mister Lorrin built the house for them, with his daddy Cole and Mister Silas and Miz Dori’s husband Raeford and others helping. He and Miz Charlotte have lived there since, and Cai and CeeCee were born there with Miz Dori as midwife. It is a house built knowing exactly who would live in it, with family placing every board and brick and nail, and there has never been anyone inside of it who was not invited, and it will never be sold, never given to anyone who is not family. You can sink your arms into that house as far as you can reach and never find the bottom.

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Aaron was staying with his grandparents that night.  I told him good-night and shook Mister Lorrin’s hand and hugged Miz Charlotte.  She called me “hon.” 

Cai hugged his daddy.  Mister Lorrin kissed his son’s cheek and whispered something into his ear I couldn’t make out. 

We walked down the front porch steps.  I saw Cai wipe his eyes.  He didn’t speak or look at us all the way back to the house.

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Cai and Sarabeth drove off together in her car, a cherry ‘78 Camaro, midnight blue. It would never pass the emissions test in Jersey. When they stopped at the lot curb for traffic I saw Sarabeth through the rear window pull Cai to her and kiss him such that I wondered if they’d make it to her apartment.

CeeCee drove us home. The sky hung over our heads like a ribbon above treetops, stars revealed when the trees fell back from the road, broad flat fields opening around us. There were clouds in the east far ahead, piles of indigo mountains with moonlight shining like snow atop them. You can’t see the stars where I live. There’s too much light pollution, too many buildings to feel the space. 

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