There were more people gathered in “Top Boards” than before; as games ended they came in to watch the finals. She pushed by them, stepped over the rope and sat down. Her hands were perfectly steady, and her stomach and eyes felt fine. She reached out and moved; she punched the clock firmly.
Beltik studied the move for a few minutes and took her knight with his bishop, as she knew he would. She did not retake; she brought a bishop over to attack one of his rooks. He moved the rook the button down on his clock, leaned back in his chair and drew a deep breath.
“It doesn’t work,” Beth said. “I don’t have to take the queen.”
“Move,” Beltik said.
“I’ll check you first with the bishop—”
“Move!”
She nodded and checked with the bishop. Beltik, with his clock ticking, quickly moved his king away and pressed the button. Then Beth did what she had planned all along. She brought her queen crashing down next to the king, sacrificing it. Beltik looked at her, stunned. She stared back at him. He shrugged, snatched up the queen and stopped his clock by hitting it with the base of the captured piece.
Beth pushed her other bishop from the back rank out to the middle of the board and said, “Check. Mate next move.” Beltik stared at it for a moment, said, “Son of a bitch!” and stood up.
“The rook mates,” Beth said.
“Son of a bitch,” Beltik said.
The crowd that had now filled the room began applauding. Beltik, still scowling, held out his hand, and Beth shook it.
FIVE
They were ready to close by the time she got to the teller. She’d had to wait for the bus after school and wait again transferring down Main. And this was the second bank.
She’d carried the folded check in her blouse pocket all day, under the sweater. It was in her hand when the man in front of her picked up his rolls of nickels and stuffed them in the pocket of his overcoat and left the space at the window for her. She set her hand on the cold marble, holding the check out and standing on tiptoe, to be able to see the face of the teller. “I’d like to open an account,” Beth said.
The man glanced at the check. “How old are you, miss?”
“Thirteen.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ll need a parent or guardian with you.”
Beth put the check back in her blouse pocket and left.
At the house, Mrs. Wheatley had four empty Pabst Blue Ribbon beer bottles sitting on the little table by her chair. The TV was off. Beth had picked up the afternoon paper from the front porch; she unfolded it as she came into the living room.
“How was school, dear?” Mrs. Wheatley’s voice was dim and far away.
“It was okay.” As Beth set the newspaper on the green plastic hassock by the sofa she saw with quiet astonishment that her own picture was printed on the front page, at the bottom. Near the top was the face of Nikita Khrushchev and at the bottom, one column wide, was her face, scowling beneath a headline: LOCAL PRODIGY TAKES CHESS TOURNEY. Under this, in smaller letters, boldface: TWELVE-YEAR-OLD ASTONISHES EXPERTS. She remembered the man taking her picture before they gave her the trophy and the check. She had told him she was thirteen.
Beth bent over, reading the paper:
The world of Kentucky Chess was astonished this weekend by the playing of a local girl, who triumphed over hardened players to win the Kentucky State Championship. Elizabeth Harmon, a seventh-grade student at Fairfield Junior, showed “a mastery of the game unequaled by any female” according to Harry Beltik, whom Miss Harmon defeated for the state crown.
Beth grimaced; she hated the picture of herself. It showed her freckles and her small nose all too clearly.
“I want to open a bank account,” she said.
“A bank account?”
“You’ll have to go with me.”
“But, my dear,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “what would you open a bank account with?”
Beth reached into her blouse pocket, took out the check and handed it to her. Mrs. Wheatley sat up in her chair and held the check in her hand as though it were a Dead Sea Scroll. She was silent for a moment, reading it. Then she said softly, “One hundred dollars.”
“I need a parent or guardian. At the bank.”
“One hundred dollars.” Mrs. Wheatley said. “Then you won it?”
“Yes. It says ‘First Place’ on the check.”
“I see,” Mrs. Wheatley said. “I hadn’t the foggiest idea people made money playing chess.”
“Some tournaments have bigger prizes than that.”
“Goodness!” Mrs. Wheatley was still staring at the check.
“We can go to the bank after school tomorrow.”
“Certainly,” Mrs. Wheatley said.
The next day, when they came into the living room after the bank, there was a copy of Chess Review on the cobbler’s bench in front of the sofa. Mrs. Wheatley hung her coat in the hall closet and picked up the magazine. “While you were at school,” she said, “I was leafing through this. I see there’s a major tournament in Cincinnati the second week in December. First prize is five hundred dollars.”
Beth studied her for a long moment. “I have to be in school then,” she said. “And Cincinnati’s pretty far from here.”
“The Greyhound bus requires only two hours for the trip,” Mrs. Wheatley said. “I took the liberty of calling.”
“What about school?” Beth said.
“I can write a medical excuse, claiming mono.”
“Mono?”
“Mononucleosis. It’s quite the thing in your age group, according to the Ladies’ Home Journal.”
Beth kept looking at her, trying not to let the astonishment show in her face. Mrs. Wheatley’s dishonesty seemed in every way to match her own. Then she said, “Where would we stay?”
“At the Gibson Hotel, in a double room at twenty-two dollars a night. The Greyhound tickets will be eleven-eighty apiece, and there will, of course, be the cost of food. I have calculated all of it. Even if you win second or third prize, there will be a profit.”
Beth had twenty dollars in cash and a packet of ten checks in her plastic purse. “I need to buy some chess books,” she said.
“By all means,” Mrs. Wheatley said, smiling. “And if you’ll make out a check for twenty-three dollars and sixty cents, I’ll get the bus tickets tomorrow.”
After buying Modem Chess Openings and a book on the endgame at Morris’s, Beth walked across the street to Purcell’s Department Store. She knew from the way girls talked at school that Purcell’s was better than Ben Snyder’s. She found what she wanted on the fourth floor: a wooden set almost identical to the one Mr. Ganz owned, with hand-carved knights and big, substantial pawns, and rooks that were fat and solid. She was undecided for a while over the board and almost bought a wooden one before settling on a folding linen board with green and beige squares. It would be more portable than the other.
Back home she cleared off her desk, put the board on it and set up the pieces. She piled her new chessbooks on one side and placed the tall silver trophy in the shape of a chess king on the other. She turned on her student lamp and sat at the desk, just looking at the pieces, at the way their curves picked up the light. She sat for what seemed like a long time, her mind quiet. Then she picked up Modern Chess Openings. This time she began at the beginning.
She had never seen anything like the Gibson Hotel before. Its size and bustle, the bright chandeliers in its lobby, the heavy red carpeting, the flowers, even the three revolving doors and the uniformed doorman who stood beside them were overwhelming. She and Mrs. Wheatley walked up to the front of the hotel from the bus station, carrying their new luggage. Mrs. Wheatley refused to hand it over to the doorman. She lugged her suitcase up to the front desk and registered for them both, unperturbed by the look the room clerk gave them.