“Shock therapy,” said Doc. “I’m all right, Mack. Don’t let anybody give me a wife though—don’t let them give me a wife! I guess a man needs a direction. That’s what I’ve been needing. You can only go in circles so long.”
“I kind of like it that way,” said Mack.
“I’m going to call my paper ‘Symptoms in Some Cephalopods Approximating Apoplexy.’ ”
“Great God Almighty!” said Mack.
4
There Would Be No Game
As he got to know him, Joseph and Mary regarded Doc with something akin to love—for love feeds on the unknown and unknowable. Doc’s honesty was exotic to Joseph and Mary. He found it strange. It attracted him in spite of the fact that he could not understand it. He felt that there was something he had missed, though he could not figure what it was.
One day, sitting in Western Biological, Joseph and Mary saw a chess board and, finding that it was a game and being good at games, he asked Doc to teach him. J and M easily absorbed the characters and qualities of castles and bishops and knights and royalty and pawns. During the first game Doc was called to the telephone, and when he returned he said, “You’ve moved a pawn of mine and your queen and knight.”
“How’d you know?” the Patrón asked.
“I know the game,” said Doc. “Look, Joseph and Mary, chess is possibly the only game in the world in which it is impossible to cheat.”
Joseph and Mary inspected this statement with amazement. “Why not?” he demanded.
“If it were possible to cheat there would be no game,” said Doc.
J and M carried this away with him. It bothered him at night. He looked at it from all angles. And he went back to ask more about it. He was charmed with the idea, but he couldn’t understand it.