He sat down across from old Fred, legs dangling even in the spindly little chair, and watched the old man with owlish eyes. As if his gaze exerted some sort of force, Fred raised his hat brim enough to peer under it at the boy. “Well?”
“How ’bout a game?” The boy leaned back and hooked his fingers through his overalls the way he’d seen the grizzled hangers-on at the store do many times.
“Aren’t you a mite young, Squirt?” Fred surveyed him as if he were a used car on the lot next door. “Yore head barely tops the table sittin’ up straight.”
‘Squirt’ merely shrugged and crossed his legs, staring off into nothing. He picked up a checker and spun it between his thumb and finger, shifting the gum in his mouth from one cheek to the other with his tongue and mock spitting into the dust by the porch.
Fred chuckled and sat up, adjusting his hat. “Well, might as well see what you’re made of, at that.” He cleared the board. “Don’t you be thinkin’ I’ll go easy on you, though. Man acts like a player he’s gotta prove his worth.”
The boy sat up and propped both elbows on the table, slapping his checker against the squares with a loud clack. His face serious, he adjusted the ball cap on his own towhead. “Black or white?”
The Word Worker 