In Alabama: Undefeated Champion

By Gregory Jaynes

"B

roke it in nine places," Eugene Roach was saying. He hitched a pant leg up to show his shin and the jagged evidence upon it, a scar that resembled a map of Central America. "They had to set it six or seven times before they got it back straight."

It was a turning point in Roach's life. One car had sideswiped another on the road out front of his gas station and fruit stand, and before the cars could come to a stop, Roach was flattened. One of the first things he did when he got out of the hospital was to supervise the construction of a fortified fruit stand at a right angle to his gas pumps, thereby shielding himself from the side of the road that sacked him. "Those pillars are sunk four feet deep, and each one is set in a wheelbarrow full of concrete," he explained. "Not even a train could get to me now."

Another thing he did was to hang a defiant sign challenging passersby to a game of checkers. After a preamble about the history of the game, the sign exhorts earnestly: "Let's play checkers. Free six-pack of Cokes if you win! I will play anyone!" He has never had to forfeit a six-pack.

That is because Eugene Roach knows his checkers. As a child, he was casually interested in the game. But when he went into the Army in 1953, in Fort Benning, Ga., one of his bunkmates was a checkers master from New York, and the champion's influence "got me to scratching them books" (he now possesses more than 250 manuals on checkers). Roach went on to make it himself as a master in tournament play and to earn the nickname "Double-Trouble" Roach, and to antagonize his wife Laura. "I don't play with him any more," she allowed. "He started getting fancy, playing me blindfolded. I won't put up with that mess."

Roach stayed in the Army twelve years, then drifted into other occupations, including the junk business, and in 1972 he found his calling with the gas station and fruit stand. They are situated about 17 miles southwest of Mobile on a two-lane blacktop bleached by the sun to fish-belly white, in a community called Fowl River. After the accident in 1975 gave him a limpy leg, his physician told him to assign his hurt limb to as few chores as possible. So Laura Roach took over the fruit stand, as well as a barbecue pit in summer, and Eugene Roach bolted to the wall nearest his gas pumps a custom-made checkerboard table bearing the legend IT'S YOUR MOVE. And Eugene Roach sat down.

Thousands of happy games followed. Occasionally, Roach would be held to a draw, but he was never beaten. Now and again he would bring out eight or nine more checkerboards and play all his opponents at once, never losing. Whole tour buses, making the Southern azalea-magnolia-plantation circuit, were made to wait while their drivers lost to Double-Trouble Roach. And then, early last fall, the Roach gas station and fruit stand had the rug pulled out from under them--by the highway department, of all things.

Just up the road from the Roach outfit is a bridge that spans the Fowl River. It used to be a narrow bridge, but last year its narrowness caused a traffic fatality, so now it is being widened. The work closed the road that runs past Roach's place. This unfortunate situation, from the standpoint of commerce, has lasted four months, and may last two more. "It's killing me," the proprietor was saying one day recently, as he poured a cup of coffee with a honeybee in it. Bees were everywhere in his station. Two floated in the pot from which Roach poured. He paid them no mind. "I ain't bringing in enough money to make my power bill. My bookkeeper says I can take it off on taxes. But if you don't have any income, you don't pay any taxes."

Fog hugged the ground, and there was a sense of time arrested on the dead- quiet road. The only sounds were the refrigeration units cutting on and off in the soft-drink machines and the whirring of the timer in an antique traffic light. The detour that people have to take, now that the bridge is out, intersects Roach's road two blocks south of his station. "You think people will drive two blocks out of their way to get gas? Loyalty around here lasts about one week, I can say from experience."

The checkerboard lay unused. As if to explain its idleness, Roach said, "A fellow from North Carolina called yesterday. He was a champion. The station is closed on Wednesday. I'd just taken a bath and I was about to rest, but I reopened the station. We broke even."

He sat down and ran through some world-class moves, saying that when you have engineered the play sweetly in your favor, you are "called the cook, 'cause you cooked up the deal. You lead the other fellow into the woods and he don't know where he is, but you know where you are, and that's what it's all about." He went through more moves: the double-corner opening, the cross opening, the laird and lady, the old 14th. The old 14th? "It either takes 14 moves to get there or it was played in the 14th century, I forget which."

More on checkers: "It ain't a game of luck. They been able to program a computer to play a fairly good game of chess, but not checkers. A fellow here has been pestering me for six months to play his computer. He brought it around last Tuesday, and I played it four times. Won twice and got two draws."

He moved a few checkers. "Right now I've got seven options, but there's only one that would be considered strong. There are no losers, though, 'cause this is an unusually even opening. They can come up wicked on you."

Providentially, a loser stepped out of the fog. This was Lewis Burroughs, a retired merchant marine, a human tableau of tattooed serpents and sabers. A little girl named Emily held one of his fingers. "She's my brother's granddaughter," said Burroughs. "I guess that makes her my great-niece or something."

Burroughs walks for a hobby, Roach explained. "He'll walk 15 miles for breakfast," he said.

"I walked to Mississippi once," Burroughs said. "To Pascagoula. Sixty-five miles."

"He won't accept a ride," Roach said. "A couple of months ago, a truck driver offered him a lift. Getting into the cab, he grabbed the exhaust stack and burned his hands something awful. That stopped him accepting rides for good."

The two men and the little girl sat around the checkerboard. Theirs is a world in which every boy matures to master small motors, to understand the importance of the cotter pin. The importance of the old 14th, however, is an acquired taste Burroughs has not acquired, and Roach has. Burroughs began to walk away, then sighed, sat down and made a move.

The board is green and white floor tile, inlaid into the table. Green and white are what they use in championship play, Roach has explained. "You stare at a red and white board for four hours, and you'll go blind. I don't know why they still sell red and white boards in dime stores." His checkers are red and butterscotch, instead of red and black, because "black is nauseating to the eye."

Burroughs commenced another move. Roach said, "That's a loser. You're off your feed today."

Burroughs moved the chair back and took another tack. Two minutes and 20 seconds later, Roach said, "King me." Burroughs said, "You always do this." Roach said, "I've got seven men now, and I'll have seven when this game is over."

Burroughs went down, from start to finish, in five minutes and 20 seconds (Roach's longest game was six hours, ending in a draw). "You skinned me again," said Burroughs, rising to leave.

When the competition was gone, Double-Trouble Roach rearranged his checkers into the starting position. He sat there beneath his sign, his traffic light blinking red and yellow, his soft-drink machines coughing off and on, alone. There was no one on the road, and no one likely to be.