First-Degree Murder and a Game of Chess

(photo by JM)

by Jeff Martin

When Saturday afternoon came, I surely needed it. I'd been stuffed in a Jackson County courtroom for four days, listening and reporting on what had to be the most horrifying story I'd ever heard --- or, at least, was part of.

Sixteen year old Eddie George one night tried to cut his best friend's dad's throat. When he failed, he ran upstairs and, within 56 seconds, managed to stab the man's wife, his friend's mother, seven times in the chest. He broke the knife off inside her, with one puncture nearly four inches deep. The two, who had planned this for over a year, then fled the house to Colorado, where they were picked up by cops.

Well, the kid got life without parole. Had they been adults when they hatched this plan, the defense attorney said, they would have received the death penalty, too. Too bad: they deserved the death penalty. Some souls are not of this earth and should not be here. These are two of them.

Anyhow, spent Saturday in downtown Kansas City at the Literary Festival, which was basically crap. Writers should not host festivals; they are simply not social creatures who can accomodate all people, only their own kind. I should know. I have a hard and fast rule usually and that is not to hang out with other writers unless 1) they know how to talk about something else and 2) they know how to talk about something else.

Then the boys and me went the KC library, and on the top floor in a garden outside, we found a lifesize chess set. We spent ten minutes moving the pieces around and then commenced to play. It was a great time. Very surreal. No one won the game, however, mainly because the black pieces became too hot from the sun and 2) we started forgetting where we moved our pieces because we were looking over the roof and, well, because one cannot achieve a necessary and elevated perspective of the playing board.

That and my youngest, Noah, kept rolling a pawn in circles.