“Yo, Chance!” Paul waved his hands in front of his brother’s face.

Chance came back to the present, “Sorry, just remembering when Dad was busted.”

Paul looked pained, “Yeah, that really sucked.”

Chance, appetite gone, pushed the waffle around on his plate. An old couple at the next table sat watching the hotel’s huge television. Another younger couple, with an infant asleep in a car seat, were reading different sections of USA Today, seemingly oblivious to each other.

“Don’t you find it odd that they paraded Pop on the six o’clock news? He was just a hotel burglar, for crying out loud. Why was that big news?”

Shrugging, Paul scratched his head. “Well, they just wanted publicity. I don’t know.”

A slightly unfocused look came into Paul’s eyes as he, too, drifted back thirty years.

“Yeah, it does seem a bit overdone in retrospect.”

“Do you know where that speaker is?” Chance asked.

Paul shook his head, and stood up, coffee cup in hand. “Not a clue. Haven’t seen that for years. You?”

“Last place I remember seeing it was when we moved Mom’s stuff out of her house here in TR. I think I gave it to the Salvation Army or something.”

Paul refilled his coffee and sat down again. He scrunched up his face, and rubbed his eyes. Sighing, he said, “So much for that.” He stirred the cream into the coffee and look at Chance. “You’re going to check this out, aren’t you?”

Chance drank the last of his milk, and stabbed absently at the waffle.

“What’s to check out? The only clue is long gone. Not to mention a twenty-five year old trail.” He looked at Paul’s face, getting neither help nor hindrance from its expression. “You think it’s a fool’s errand, don’t you?”

“Mom wasn’t the most reliable person on the planet. A bit given to melodrama.” Paul set his coffee on the table, and wiped his lips. “Come on Chance! You remember her stupid sweepstakes? Her lawsuit? She was nuts. You never accepted that!”

Chance scowled and stabbed again at the waffle debris. “Yes, she had her issues. God knows. But most of that surfaced only in the last few years.”

Paul grunted and pushed his chair back. “Right, that’s why she ended up in Marshall Pickens twice. Drug interactions, right? Prescription or otherwise, Mom had problems.”

The old anger flared. “That’s not fair. It turns out they’re pretty sure those episodes were caused by her emphysema. Acute ischemic attack, or something like that. But that’s irrelevant.” Chance stabbed the yellow paper. “This was written twenty-five years ago. She was fine back then!”

“Relatively speaking.” Paul’s voice was acid with sarcasm.

A look of determination crossed Chance’s face. “This isn’t about Mom, anyway. It’s about Dad.”

Paul looked at his little brother, his expression bland. “Mom’s the one who wrote that note.”

“I don’t understand why you need to disparage Mom. She worked her ass off her whole life.”

Paul smiled sadly, “Yeah, because Pop was gone all the time.”

“I’m not defending Pop. I don’t understand Pop.” Chance squinted out the window. “I just don’t understand him at all.”

Chance turned back, and poked the yellow paper with his finger. “This – may explain a lot. Come on, Paul! We’ve both wondered about this forever!” Amazement infused his voice, a faraway look in his eyes. “That would be wild. All that stuff might be true?”

Paul softened. His younger brother had been hardest hit with Dad’s arrest. Paul was already working at the time, living on crew boats out in the gulf most of the time. Chance had still been in school. He’d ended up dropping out because of the intense embarrassment. Hell, he ended up leaving New Orleans and jumping into the Navy, just to put as much distance as possible between himself and the situation.

Paul sat up straight. “What stuff? That Pop was CIA? Or the Bay of Pigs?” He curled his fingers and looked at them, as if inspecting the nails for dirt. His voice sounded distracted. “If it is true, I guess it means that the CIA doesn’t pay very well.”

The brothers both chuckled. The tension eased a notch.

Paul continued. “For the sake of argument, let’s say there’s something to all this. We don’t have the speaker. Can we verify any of this?” He waved at the paper on the table.

That was the issue, certainly. “I don’t know.” The unanswered questions started piling up. “But – his arrest and prosecution…” Chance’s voice trailed off.

Paul finished the thought, “… was over the top. Just like his sentence.” Paul laced his fingers and sat back in the chair. A fledgling excitement causing him to fidget in spite of himself.

“He copped a plea for burglary and got seven years. That is – ridiculous. Included the car, too, I guess.”

Chance nodded. “Yeah. Rotten plea bargaining.”

Both sons sat quietly, each following their separate historical trails.

Suddenly, Paul snapped his fingers and sat up straight. “Wait a second. I – vaguely remember something.” He rubbed his eyes.

“During the raid – you weren’t there – the lead officer took me into the bedroom and questioned me – pretty hard.”

He opened his eyes and looked at Chance intently. “Now I remember what was weird at the time.”

“Picture this: There were three of them, but only the leader actually did any real searching. The other two were in uniform, and the lead guy wearing a suit. Anyway, one of the uniformed guys stood outside the whole time. The other uniform guy stood there and watched me the whole time.”

“The suit – he’s the only one that did any looking.”

“Holy crap. One guy caused all that destruction?” Chance asked.

Paul ignored him. “He took me in your room and kept asking me if Pop had another car, or where he would keep valuables. Store rooms, etc. I didn’t know, of course.”

“That doesn’t sound weird.”

Paul’s face showed impatience. “Hold on, that’s not the weird thing. He tore through both bedrooms first, then came to the living room. The – very last thing he checked – was the speaker! Absolutely last thing.”

“OK, but that’s not so…”

“Damnit, will you let me finish?” Paul’s face became ruddy with barely suppressed excitement.

“The cop pushed out the cabinet – the TV fell off – and he ripped off the back. Then he said, ‘Got it!’. He fumbled around in it for a couple of minutes, then took a pillow case from Mom’s bed, and put a bunch of stuff in it.”

“I still don’t see…”

Paul snapped his fingers in irritation. “The uniformed officer, standing in the living room began to walk around the cabinet – to see what the Suit had found – but the Suit ordered him to stay where he was.”

Chance’s voice echoed the obvious conclusion. “He didn’t want the uniform to see what was in it.”

“Exactly. That was odd.”

“And that was the end of the search.” Chance sat up. “He knew what to look for.”

Paul sat back. “Yes. But…”

“What?” It was Chance’s turn to be irritated.

“It’s possible that Pop told him about it. After all, he copped a plea.”

Chance shook his head. “That doesn’t follow. Why hide it from the other cop? And if Pop told him, why the long search?”

It was Paul’s turn to look puzzled. “True. Very true.”

The baby in the car seat woke up and announced that it was ready for its breakfast. The older couple looked dismayed, and left abruptly after the young mother began nursing the child.

Chance drummed his fingers on the table. “But this doesn’t make sense. If the cops got the stuff – whatever it is – back in ‘75 during the search, why is Mom telling us to look there again in 1982? Wasn’t it already gone at that point?”

Paul looked up and smiled. “You remember one of Pop’s maxims? ‘The best place to hide something valuable is beneath something slightly less valuable.”

“Hmph.”

Paul began cleaning his glasses with a paper napkin, a far away look in his eyes. He said softly, “I think Mom wrote this for you, Chance. You’ve – always had more questions.”

“I don’t see that. It’s to both of us.”

“Chance, come on. The tone of the letter, she’s directing more toward you than me.”

“She wanted both of us to look at it.”

“I’ll be very interested in seeing what turns up. But I have to tell you – I don’t have the time to take off. It was hard enough getting here already.”

The two brothers looked at each other over the table. The older brother, poised and thin. At fifty, his hair was still brown, and closely cropped. Gray was just beginning to touch the edges around his temples. He had the indecently dark outdoor tan acquired by contractors and beach bums. He’d inherited a slightly smaller version of the Palmer family nose, though it was still prominent, even beneath his gold wire rimmed glasses. It was Grandpa’s nose.

Chance, much bigger in height and girth, had gone gray at thirty-five and was now almost white at forty-five. He’d inherited the premature gray hair DNA from Mother who got it from Grandma. Unfortunately, that gene also seemed to be associated with calorie conservation. Chance was at that awkward size where it was impossible to get clothes. Too big for most regular stores, and too small for big & tall specialty shops.

He’d always felt a bit different than the rest of the family. Dad was five-seven, Mom five-six, and Paul was five-ten. At six-four, Chance frequently joked he was the milkman’s kid. But his mother assured him that was not very likely.

Between the two boys, almost nothing genetic came from Pop. His absence wasn’t only during their childhood, but also in their appearance. Almost as if the world wanted to erase Dad’s existence completely. Nature was covering its tracks. Like Pop had covered his own tracks. Talking little, revealing little. About himself. His youth. His work. His life.

This chain of thought threatened to pull Chance into a funk.

Then he remembered at least a couple of Pop’s legacies. Chess was certainly one. And old sayings. Pop loved transferring parables, analogies, metaphors, maxims, and puns to his boys. “What do you see, Son?” was a popular saying of his own. Growing up, Chance used to bristle when he heard that. But now, nostalgia squeezed out instead.

Chance smiled suddenly. “Wait! I remember now. I gave that speaker to Mrs. Clutter.”

Paul looked up, “Mrs. Clutter?”

“One of Grandma’s friends here in TR. She lives over on Tubbs Mountain Road near Pointsett Highway. When I was clearing out the house, she came over several times and helped. She expressed an interest in the speaker, so I gave it to her. It wasn’t worth any money, and I didn’t want to bring anything more across the country than absolutely necessary.”

“Fantastic! That appears to be the place to start.” Paul looked at his watch. “I’m afraid I have to get going. It takes forever to get to the boarding gates these days.” He stood up, wiped his hands on a napkin, and tossed the napkin on his plate.

Chance stood up as well, “Well, I am not in a particular rush. I’ll call Mrs. Clutter. See what’s up with it.”

Following Paul out to the already packed rental car, Chance awkwardly hugged his older brother.

“Chance, keep me in the loop. I hate to admit it. But – I’m intrigued by this, too.”

Paul climbed into the rental, reversed smartly, and left the parking lot. He turned left, toward Greenville.

Chance watched him go, then walked slowly back to his room, his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans.

He sat on the bed, and reread the note from his mother several times. Ever since he’d read it, unbidden childhood memories had been bouncing around his head, ricocheting off each other, creating a chaotic panoply of images, voices, and questions. He was having a hard time calming his mind.

He bought an overpriced coke from the hallway machine, and filled his miniature ice bucket.

In an almost ritualistic fashion, he reached into his travel bag and pulled out his miniature chess computer. He’d discovered several tricks over the years that helped to calm his mind down. His favorite was to play chess. The computer made a very good opponent.

He’d started playing chess in 1968, while Bobby Fischer was in the midst of his lightning ascent to the world championship. Paul had received a chess set for his birthday that year. Paul and Chance played all day everyday, but Paul dropped the game because he disliked losing every time to his younger brother. After that, Chance and his father had made it a point to play daily after dinner when Pop was around.

The most memorable game of his life, was the first time he beat Pop without a handicap.

Bruce looked over the board, grinned, and toppled his king. “Congratulations, Chance! It’s your game.”

Chance was nine years old.

Still grinning, Pop reached into a kitchen drawer, and pulled out a box. Snuffy Smith and Charlie Brown looked out from the comics – his father’s favorite wrapping paper. “I’ve been waiting for this day. I want to emphasize that you earned this win, I did not give it away.”

Chance looked up at his father’s face and grinned a toothy and gapped grin. His two front teeth were all the way in, and looked especially large, especially since the canines were still missing.

Though very serious, a gleeful dance played about his father’s eyes, and the smile kept slipping back into his lips. Chance took the present as his father began putting the plastic set into its tattered box.

Never one to be neat about much of anything, Chance ripped open the paper, allowing the strips to fall to the floor. Inside the paper was a shoe box. OK. Looking up, Chance saw his father looking at him. “Keep going, it’s not shoes, Chance.”

Sure enough, inside the box was a book and a smaller wooden box with maroon coloring and a sliding top. On the bottom, Chance saw “France” stamped haphazardly on its bottom. He slid open the top to reveal a wooden chess set. “WOW!”

Already excited, Chance looked at the title of the hard bound book, it’s title was, “My System.” He opened the book to a random page and saw tiny diagrams of chess boards. It was a chess book! “Thanks Dad. THANKS!” Chance started pulling out pieces from the set, it seemed very old.

“That was my father’s set, son. He gave it to me when I beat him back in, oh 1944 or thereabouts. He got the set during World War I when he was stationed in France with some Canadians.”

“The book is the first chess book I ever owned, and it turned out to be a very good one. When that book was written – somewhere around the turn of the century – there weren’t any books that showed laymen how to play chess at a deeper level.”

“That book taught me not only a lot about chess – but a lot about – well about how to handle some situations in life, too. The most important thing it taught me was something Nimzovich called “over protection”.

Chance looked up from the book, a puzzled expression on his face. His father smiled. “Don’t worry. Read that book, and you’ll understand. Think of ‘overprotection’ as having lots of backups.”

Oh, backups. Right. Chance was obsessed with NASA and the Apollo space program. Backups for everything was well understood. But Pop wasn’t quite finished.

“Chance, I want you to remember – I have had this set and book with me for thirty years. It is very dear to me, and I hope you will hold it in the same regard.”

“Absolutely! Thanks!”

Using his “new” set, Chance set up the board for another game. He noticed the black queen was chipped, and a white rook had a crack. The set had seen extensive use. He kept adjusting the pieces, so he could fondle them; get a feeling for their weight and texture. The set exuded an elegance simply not possible from plastic.

His father slaughtered him. It would be a year before Chance won again.