The World Played Chess

After Chris’s death, Beau starts to rethink who he is and who he wants to be. While he wants to look into schools beyond California, he does want to continue to play football. Vincent also has mixed feelings: He doesn’t want Beau to play football, but he also wants to be supportive. Vincent thus brings Beau to Los Angeles for a recruitment try-out, where Beau is one of the smallest players. As Vincent watches Beau in the try-out, he recalls William telling him about feeling like a cog in the machine of the army. Beau is disappointed with the try-out and feels unseen. He and Vincent cheer themselves up with cheap tickets to a Dodgers baseball game. Beau explains that he thought he owed it to Chris to pursue football now that Chris is dead, but he realizes that he can make his own decision, which is not to play football after all. Beau feels guilty for not being in the car with Chris, which might have happened had he not gone to his sister’s birthday dinner instead. Vincent tells his son about Todd and William and their loss of faith. Vincent’s faith in God is stronger than ever, and he believes that God spared Beau for a reason. Vincent is proud that Beau is embarking on his individual journey to discover the man he will be.

William is overwhelmed by the luxury of the military base after all his time the jungle. A person he meets on the base helps him develop the film in his camera. He is impressed and thinks that William could publish his photographs in major newspapers. William feels out of place on base because he has become so accustomed to his life as a search-and-destroy soldier. He worries that for him, as for other soldiers, going home will feel strange and out-of-place. William is offered a job as a clerk on base, safe from the fighting. William refuses because he wants to return to Cruz.

William and Vincent are assigned to a particularly difficult construction project because the man who hired them is picky about money and argumentative. The man’s wife commissions William to create an intricate tile design in the bathroom. William works hard on the design and is proud of the work. But when the husband refuses to pay William for his work, William transforms into another person. His anger consumes him, and he takes a sledgehammer to the wall, scaring everyone. The husband threatens to kill William, which activates William’s memories of fighting for his survival in Vietnam. William turns against the man, but Vincent intervenes before William hits the man with the sledgehammer. William gets paid for his work, and they leave. Vincent is nervous with William in the car, taken aback by his capacity for violence and the way he withdrew into a darker version of himself.

William returns to active duty in the bush with Cruz. Because William has narrowly missed so many instances of death while other comrades have died in his place, the other soldiers are worried that William is bad luck. William is shocked by his own decision to return to the battlefield and feels stupid for turning down the clerk job.

Mif is already at college, pledging a fraternity. Vincent and his other friends drive up to the college to attend Mif’s frat party. Vincent barely drinks, but his friend Donny, the designated driver of the night, gets wasted. Vincent insists on driving them all home, but Donny won’t hear of anyone driving his car. Vincent decides to get in the car anyway because he figures he can at least keep Donny awake and coach him through the drive. At the end of a highway exist, Donny skids the car. They manage to slip off the road upright. Donny is passed out drunk. Vincent is genuinely scared the entire ride, and he remembers William’s stories of Vietnam and how quickly someone can die. When he gets home in one piece, Vincent decides he’s finally done with his partying friends who drink and drive, threatening their lives and the lives of other people on the road.

William looks ahead to his final days in Vietnam. He is eager to finish his time and get back to New Jersey. He looks forward to visiting Cruz in Spanish Harlem. As much as William wants this to happen, he doesn’t believe that it will.

On a job site with William, Vincent expresses his concern over William’s weight loss and other signs of trouble. William tells him to mind his business. He says that Vincent doesn’t know anything— that while the world has been playing chess, Vincent is playing checkers. After his initial defensiveness, William admits to drinking too much and taking too many drugs. The memories of Vietnam have oppressed him lately. He’s reached out to the Veteran’s Association and hopes they can help him. They’ve been treating a new prognosis called post-traumatic stress disorder. William breaks down in tears as he tells Vincent about Cruz’s death, a death that hurt William so much that he didn’t even write about it in his journal. Cruz and William were sent out to defend a hill, but William stayed in the back while Cruz went ahead. Cruz saved many American lives on that hill, but he died in combat.

William is patrolling with his platoon when a jeep pulls up. He’s ordered to get in and told that he’s being sent home. William still has three months left on his deployment, so he’s confused and hesitant. He is certain he will die in Vietnam. He is quickly processed through, not even given the time to gather his belongings. He leaves without his camera or anything else but his journal. He and the other returning soldiers cry on the airplane as they fly away from Vietnam.

Vincent, Elizabeth, and Mary Beth all drive Beau to move into UCLA. Because they live in Northern California, Los Angeles is farther away than Elizabeth had wanted her son to move, but Vincent is proud of Beau for making his own decisions. He advises his son to find his passion and pursue it and to consider what kind of man he will be. Vincent tells his son that he loves him, which is a sentiment Vincent had felt from his own father but never heard out loud.

After a long journey and several flights, William arrives back in New Jersey. Throughout that journey, one stranger thanked him for his service, but mostly he got strange looks. He forgot that he looks like a man who has been to war, disheveled and gruff. Back in New Jersey, William immediately struggles with the sensation of being home. He was unprepared for Vietnam, but he is equally unprepared to return to civilian life.

When Vincent returns home from dropping his son off at college, he feels ready to restart William’s journal. Surprisingly, William has left another personal note to Vincent in the journal. William asks Vincent to be patient while William tells him the truth, the real story. He also asks Vincent to forgive him. Vincent feels trepidation about what this revelation will be.

William rewrites the story of Cruz’s death. Again, they are on the hill in a fierce battle. Cruz is telling William about his family and the life he has waiting for him in Spanish Harlem. William is confused that Cruz is breaking his first rule not to talk about home. Cruz decides to head to the front line of the fight. William tries to hold him back, but Cruz accepts the inevitability of his death. He tells William that he lied about his family. Cruz’s mother is dead, and his father is in prison. He has no home to return to. If he goes back to New York, gangs will kill him. Cruz volunteered for the military when he was 17 years old and decided to make it a long-term commitment because he has nowhere else to go. After the battle, William looks around for Cruz and found him dead at the very top of the hill. On his way down and away from the hill, William stops to take a photograph of three soldiers. They point out an old Vietnamese woman in the distance in a paddy field. They make bets about taking one shot to kill her. All three miss. But William raises his gun and shoots the woman down. He walks up to her and discovers that it’s not an old woman—it’s a little boy.

At the end of Beau’s first year of college, Vincent drives to Los Angeles to pick him up. He tells Beau about a time when, right after law school was over, Vincent and his friend drove through dangerous fog. Just minutes behind them, the fog caused a huge pile-up of car accidents in which several people died. Luck saved them, but the point of the story was that they could have made their own luck by simply pulling over and going to a hotel for the night to be on the safe side. Vincent gives Beau William’s journal to read.

Vincent looks up William online and finds out that he’s a retired drug rehabilitation counselor for the VA and that he lives in Seattle. Wanting to see him, Vincent finds his address but no phone number, so the visit will have to be a surprise. When Vincent arrives at an idyllic house, he meets William’s real estate agent, who has sold his house. William has left Seattle in his RV. The agent doesn’t know where he has gone or how to get in contact with him. When Vincent tells him who he is, she chuckles and gives him an envelope addressed to him from William. William had asked the real estate agent to mail the letter after he moved out.

Vincent opens the envelope and finds two photographs inside. One is of Mike, William, and Vincent in the summer of 1979. The other is of William and his wife, happily smiling together in an embrace. Vincent is happy and relieved that William had a happy chapter in his life. William has also left Vincent a letter. William has been lonely since his wife Cheryl’s passing, so he’s taking their RV cross-country and experiencing life in honor of his fallen comrades. He met Cheryl at grief counseling through the VA. She had lost her first husband in the Vietnam War and had a daughter from her first marriage. William married Cheryl and raised her daughter as his own. He’s been sober for 37 years. He is still haunted by the boy he murdered in Vietnam, but his years of counseling have helped him manage his grief and his guilt. William has reconnected with God and his faith. He hopes that in the afterlife, he’ll have a chance to earn the boy’s forgiveness. William thanks Vincent for listening to him during the summer of 1979 and showing him the empathy William needed to propel him to seek help. He tells Vincent that Todd died in his forties due to cancer from Agent Orange.

Vincent is happy for William. He wonders if he should restart his dream to be a writer and tell the story of William Goodman.