The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis Read Free Book Online

contribution,” I said with due reverence, enunciating as well as I could around the foot lodged in my throat.
    “Kind of you to say.” Angus seemed to be enjoying my discomfort yet, at the same time, seemed clearly pleased that I was familiar with his wife’s work. Most men weren’t. Eventually, he showed mercy.
    “Dr. Addison, enough of this depressin’ talk. I propose the tonic of chess.” At that moment, I would have given him a foot rub had he asked, so playing chess seemed like a big win to me.
    We sat down at the chess table. Angus shuffled one black and one white pawn under the table and presented me with two clenched fists. I chose his left and was handed the white pawn. I opted for the standard Bobby Fischer opening (e2-e4), moving my king pawn up two squares. Angus responded with c7-c5, and we were off with the standard Sicilian defence. I won’t bore you with a move-by-move analysis of my expedient demise though it wouldn’t take long. Let’s just say I was clobbered and leave it at that. Actually, by the third game, I was holding my own, and we stalemated the fourth (which I considered a well-earned victory under the circumstances). I seemed to pass this initial test, as there was talk of future matches.
    I was reasonably pleased with my performance on the board after a slow and embarrassing beginning. I was, and still am, quite capable of stringing together several solid moves in something resembling a strategy before executing a spectacular blunder and losing my queen. But there’s nothing like playing a superior opponent to elevate your own game. We talked about chess for quite a while after we finished playing. Angus spoke in hushed and reverential tones. He’d been bitten by the chess bug at the age of 12 and had played ever since. The advent of Internet chess had resolved a perennial problem for the avid player – lack of opponents.
    “I’ve played over five hundred games of chess online in the last four months,” said Angus. “Modesty aside, I think the concentrated game time has made me as good as I’ve ever been. But it certainly was refreshin’ to have an adversary before me in the flesh. Chess is a mind game, and it’s hard to read yer opponent through cyberspace.”
    “Delighted to be your punching bag,” I replied, hoping to shift the focus away from my lacklustre play. Angus had a different view. He was not yet finished with the postgame show, though I was certainly ready to roll the credits.
    “In that last game, you brought yer queen out too early, you crippled yer pawns, you marooned yer knights on the edges, you castled too late, and you split an infinitive when I took yer bishop. Other than that, you were flawless,” he decreed.
    “Thanks, I think. I’m a little out of practice. Give me a couple of days, and we’ll line them up again.”
    “Aye, we will,” he concluded.
    Now done, Angus hoisted himself from the board and left the room to write out a receipt for my rent cheques. While he was gone, I headed over to his bookcase. You can learn a lot about people from their books. The overflowing shelves confirmed that this engineer was cut from a different cloth. Yes, he had science and engineering books, many of them on the topics of fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and something called finite element analysis – whatever that is. But he also had many more volumes from many more fields – philosophy, history, art, politics, and an excellent complement of novels from around the world. Easily a better collection than mine. I also saw a special shelf dedicated to Alexander Graham Bell. The library of Angus McLintock revealed a man of culture, science, intelligence, and sensitivity with an enlightened world view. At that moment, an earthshaking fart, long, loud, and almost melodic, ripped through the house. On instinct, I buried my nose inside the neck of my shirt. Angus didn’t just break wind, he tortured it first.
    “Blast that damn turnip! I’m swearin’ off