Page 7 of Tex's Angel

I drive over there ruminating on what I did wrong. Levi used to be a good kid, but after his mom died, he went off the rails. I guess it’s not an uncommon story, but it makes me feel like I failed as a father. After leaving my cut in my pickup I head across the parking lot. When I show up at the police station, I find my son sitting with two older men, like really old men and they’re beat all to shit. God, I hope Levi isn’t responsible for their injuries, if he is then I really don’t know what I’m gonna do with him. Officer Prichard waves me over to his desk, and I walk over to see what the hell is going on.

“I hope my son isn’t in too much trouble, Officer Prichard,” I comment casually as I drop down into the seat in front of his desk.

“Well he’s definitely truanting this morning. He was apparently watching a chess match between two older men while his friends skated on their boards. Unfortunately, there was a disagreement about the legality of a chess move. The verbal disagreement turned into a physical fight when one of them threw hands.”

Damn it. I don’t know what I can do with my son if he’s started attacking senior citizens. Before it was just low-grade troublemaking. But actual physical violence is worse than I could have imagined, “I hope they’re not too badly injured. I don’t know where to begin apologizing about my son—”

Prichard frowned. “They would probably be in much worse shape if your son hadn’t tried to intervene.”

Relief floods my mind that he didn’t have anything to do with their injuries. Still, the problem is he should have been in school. I’m giving him the same warning I did his friends and that is, going to the skateboarding park on their lunch break is fine because St. Mary’s has an open campus. However, when lunch break is over, they need to return to class. The fact that they hadn’t even gone to school this morning showed how little notice they took of my advice.

I guess that because his friends hadn’t been in trouble before, they all got off with a warning. This situation doesn’t bode well for that trust I’m supposed to building for my son.

“Has he been charged?” I ask.

The officer shakes his head, “Other than the truanting, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. We just took him in because we needed a statement. The older gentlemen are looking at being charged with disturbing the peace.

“Trust me, this won’t happen again, he’s gonna get a talking to when I get him home.”

When I walk over to Levi, he’s huddled with the two older men with his cell phone out. I can hear my son whispering, “James is correct. It’s a special move that allows a player tocapture an opponent’s pawn if it moves two spaces forward. It called en passant, which means in passing in French.”

The older man he’s talking to responded irritably, “I know what the phrase means in French. I’m not illiterate.”

The other older man with a black eye and busted lip grins, “Someone owes me an apology and I think his name is Edward Kincaid.”

“To use that move, you’re supposed to call it first,” Edward insisted.

My son scrolls on his phone. “Sorry, Edward. There is no mention of calling it first being a requirement.”

James looks triumphant. “Did you hear that, Eddie-boy? You forfeited the game and I’ve giving you a five-point penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.”

Edward barks, “Don’t you be calling me Eddie-boy like you’re my friend.”

“We’ve been living together for coming up on twenty years, if we aren’t friends then what are we?” James exclaims.

“Well in our case familiarity breeds contempt.”

“Wrong again, sucker. You’re just a sore loser.”

I stand there for a second, looking from one to the other of them. “Time’s up, Levi. We need to get going. Tell your friends goodbye.”

“Sorry, I gotta go. My dad’s gonna have steam coming out of his ears if he has to wait much longer. You two should kiss and make up.”

Both men splutter a bunch of complaints about how they aren’t like that. I wasn’t sure if I believed them, but it wasn’t my business anyway.

The minute Levi gets into the truck, he buckles up, takes out his phone and starts talking about chess. “Did you know that the word checkmate is from a Persian phrase that means the king is dead?”

“Yeah, that’s fascinating stuff. Wanna tell me how y’all ended up skipping class after I expressly told you not to skip class?”

He ignores my question like he was sometimes wont to do when he was obsessing over something new. “This is fascinating. The number of possible chess games is more than the gross number of electrons in the universe.”

I stretch my neck, knowing that it’ll hours before I can get his attention off chess and back onto the issue of his truancy. Tonight we’re gonna be having a long, hard chat. I drop him off at school, apologize to his principal and head back to the Savage Legion clubhouse.

***

On the way home after picking up Levi from school, we stop by the local building supply company, and I pick up the materials I didn’t get a chance to pick up during the last few days. Levi stays on his phone the whole time, reading chess trivia and memorizing all the rules. Some part of me realizes I should be grateful that he’s wanting to learn about chess and isn’t researching ways to cook meth—but whatever the reason, he’s still skipping school and that can’t happen again.

When I pull into the driveway, Levi hops out of the truck and wanders into the house. As for me, I’m surprised he doesn’t walk into doorframes and shit, since his eyes are glued to his damn phone all the time.

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