The Man Game (21 page)

Every morning they ate breakfast with the groceries Molly supplied them, getting ready for the day like they were going off to log, leaving Mrs. Litz back at their hideout. They would sneak through the forests, occasionally embarking on a clandestine trip into town for Chinese opium, or maybe to give Toronto a letter for Pisk's mother in Penticton. Then, careful to avoid alerting Furry and Daggett, they'd portage south to the clearing on Doyle's land where they practised the man game with Molly. Starting with basic ballroom holds, Pisk and Litz took turns learning new steps. From that foundation she taught them how to do the volta, how to shika, crip walk, and do a faster version of the Boston waltz. There was groundwork, too, including an adaptation of the classic Corker. These and other combinations of European dance, the martial arts she'd learned while touring the Orient, and acrobatics formed the basic grammar of the man game, which included a repertoire of moves. But in those early days it was not at all clear to either of them what she intended. A day that began with traditional sparring and ended with two-man naked barrel rolls was not the most comprehensible. She continued to refer to it as theatre, and then rephrase it as a sport.

Nor was she a relaxed coach. Rather she was forceful and exact, strict and impossible to ignore (
Again
, she demanded;
Please
, she squeaked). And unlike other ladies of her stature, Pisk didn't get the sense when he talked to her that she thought he was a slug. Where is the problem? was a frequent question of hers. He'd met circus girls before but none of them were ever like Molly either. None of those girls carried themselves with such sophistication, good humour, and steady spirit. None were so fetching. Molly didn't fit properly into any type of society, not any kind Pisk had ever known. For Pisk the only character similar to Molly was alcohol. That cruel beautiful prohibited drink could traverse the whole world unscathed.

There were days when Pisk held her in a dance move and had to resist the urge to crush her. He knew better. She could put him flat on his back. But whenever he felt his desires eddy down his intestines and his body erupt in sweat, the only thing left for him to do (he thought) was crush her. They danced chest to chest. It was unavoidable, the pleasure of it, and the pleasure was awful. Pisk had never held a woman so delicately. His throat was a wedge of nerves like he'd swallowed a shoehorn. He knew that if he were a gentleman he could dance with a lady and not feel the way he did. What was the difference between him and Sammy? Nothing in his years had prepared him to dance with Molly Erwagen, let alone in a secluded field on the edge of the world. Her right hand lay in his left hand like a baby bird. Her left hand on his right arm, experiencing the bicep there under his shirt, which she insisted he relax. Your arm is too stiff for dancing, she said, you're not trying to hit me, you're trying to dance with me; could she read minds, too? She counted aloud in a sweetened whisper knowing he still needed the cues not the rhythm. Her black hair fell around her shoulders in the intermittent sunlight, his concentration never far from crushing her. His right hand on the small of her back, feeling the meridian of her spine shift and revolve through the steps, whisking her skirts against his legs terribly, made his heart leap to conclusions, and rather than voice them, he was
determined to crush her. But when he took the breath she caught the tension in his fingers and it took only one unexpected step from her to make him lose his balance, and in recovering it, lose his will.

Don't think I'll ever learn it right, Pisk said while they relaxed with some weed after one long day feeling he'd accomplished nothing.

Once you see yourself as a performer and not my suitor, she said, it will come easily.

Not the answer he'd expected. He sat on a log and caught his breath, staring disconsolately at his fuzzy gut heaving, the bleeding scab on his knee, and wondered what he thought he was doing with this lady who threw matches at his temper. He stamped out his cheroot under his bare foot.

While Pisk aimed to loosen up in the early days (she called them rehearsals), Litz was already so weakened and wobbly on his feet. He couldn't make a proper fist when he tried. She would say: Make a fist, show me a fist. And he'd make one, and she'd come over and peel open his fingers like the petals of a wilted tulip. None of the lessons or plans for the man game disturbed him. Fighting with his best friend without a stitch on was not a problem. Lumberjacks were used to seeing each other in the buck. It was Molly herself that perverted him. To Litz's eyes, her beauty seemed forever moonlit. When he danced with her, she had to keep reminding him not to watch his feet. He was too shy to admit that her shining ankles were what held his attention, clad in the fairest fashion of embroidered leather from the realms of the unreal. From out of these boots came the goddess who smiled in his ear. He accepted that when dancing she would lead because after all it was her, his love. It was because of her that his knees demobilized out and he tripped, frequently. She spoke with dramatic concision. Every word required only its neighbours. To Litz, even her most unreasonable demands—Strangle Pisk upside down while he's running, she once
said
{see
fig. 5.2
}
—were far sweeter than the throbbing lyre. Her voice was more golden than gold. Litz had heard enough about poetry to think so. He wondered if he could remember the poet who wrote, If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. That anonymous line was stuck in his mind. Trying to perform an applejacks for her was all he wanted from life. It surprised him how easily he could do a one-handed spinning handstand, and her delight in that early success was food for a week. They practised until they were raw and not a tendon would stretch and their lungs might shred and they finally gave up. She loved every minute of it. They could tell from her applause.

By day's end, the sun was rarely more than a perforation in a sheet of clouds laid across the sky's desk. It was under this hooded eventide that Litz and Pisk returned home back through the woods to their hideout, more exhausted than after a day of logging. Every muscle burned. Stubbed toes. High above them it was pouring cold rain. Beneath the trees it was only icy cold and as humid as the inside of a lung. They made their way over and across the many chattering creeks, stepping from stone to stone over waters swollen with salmon. At first glance the glittering water seemed uninhabited until your eye caught sight of one, a huge fish sheathed in a silvery chainmail coat, then another and another, all camouflaged, rippling like the water and the sunlight and coloured to match the wet stones beneath. There were dozens of them within only a small pool of water, resting in the calmer eddies or keeping pace with the speed of the current, waiting for the strength to lunge ahead a foot or two over and around the boulders to their next available resting spot. Many were already half-dead, exhausted, their torn and shredded scales exposing the pink flesh underneath, with just enough energy left in them for one last attempt to make it to their destination. Here and there the men could see bright glistening roe draped like strange clusters of orange pearls over thin branches and hanging off rocks just under the surface of the water. More out of frustration than hunger, Pisk chose one heavily laden stick, pulled it out of the river, and swallowed all the little bubbles, every egg that was on it, then threw the stick aside. Good stuff, said Pisk, nice and salty. Litz was amused by him at first and tried to smile but found he couldn't. He knew Pisk's appetite, the greedy side of him that wanted to grind his teeth into everything.

FIGURE 5.2
Sausage Links

Calabi's commentary: The giant timber made of two men, head to head, the branches trying to strangle the trunk, which, out a fear, has uprooted itself, and desperately looks for help among the other trees in the forest.

The men carried on past all the riverways. It was a difficult walk and they took it slowly, cautious for sounds— Furry-and-Daggett–like sounds. When they arrived back at the hideout Mrs. Litz would be entitled to deliver her profanest summary of the nine-ten hours' worth of solitude, cursing her husband and his partner with every word she knew in her language, Sto:lo, and every word she knew in English—; and subsequently they'd be obliged to do something about the dwindling stack of firewood, the leak in the roof, and all the other deprivations she endured while they spent the day free as birds, out in the forests cutting down spars (so she believed), her languishing here in this tiny expanse of a hideout walled on all sides by acres of gnarled and thorny blackberry bush, with nothing to do with her time but go absolutely skookum and talk to the sky.

SIX

My mother always said, Democracy is the best revenge.

–
BILAWAL BHUTTO ZARDARI

The early-morning streets of old Vancouver were littered with slimy old logs, ravaged by lichens and moss and rotted to the core. Shadows played in the fog. The zombie lope of a raccoon family crossed in a nose-to-tail line down the rutted mud. Snowy rain fell. The steely boom from a foundry startled the raccoons, who stopped, listened, blinked their dead diamond eyes, then prowled some more, passing unafraid right beside the man asleep—but waking up—under a tree.

Upon being awakened, Clough went immediately on a search of his person for his suede bag to fix himself a wad of tobacco. The crust sealed around his eyelids made opening them a second priority. Reclining on his grass bed he finessed a nice pinch of fresh tobacco into a paper rolled up one-handed, smoked it. When he finally opened his eyes to look around for who was attached to those whiskers that had sniffed his face, he saw only his spotted dog curled up with his chin on the ground, looking at him from a fair distance away with his ears perked.

What's all that aboot, eh? Who's supposed to be guarding me, eh? said Clough, and the dog wagged his tail and came right over. What's the use even having you around, you old bone-bag. Come here.

He stuck the rollie back in his mouth and ruffled the dog's ears, fished around in his jacket again and dropped the dog a linty sausage treat that it snapped up before it hit the ground. Clough coughed glue-ily. He still had the empty hair tonic bottle, once full of potato liquor, between his feet. How long had he been out? Where was he? Clough turned his head and saw the fresh ditch behind him. The horses had pulled the chain gang's carriage about two feet as they grazed on the long white-tipped grass. He was supposed to have brought the carriage back to the mews last night after the men were finished digging. Seems he forgot. The chain gang must have straggled off single-rowedly.

Constable Miller and the po-lice came down the road and saw Clough sitting woozily against a cherry tree not far from the GL Boot Store. He appeared to the po-lice to be in a moonshine stupor. It was serious moonshine on the streets these days. Rumour had it the potatoes were being grown in Indian burial grounds. That's what you heard in Vancouver. The po-lice did their job, came up, slapped Clough out of it, and took him to the pen to sober up.

What time is it? Clough asked. Behind him and his escorts, another man was taking charge of the horses and readying to bring them and the carriage back to their stable.

Eight, said the constable. After our chain gang appeared on our doorstep, naturally we came looking for our warden, our guard, and our horses and carriage.

Good men, Clough said as they dragged him down the street, you po-lice are good men. You found us all safe and sound.

Well, buddy, said the po-lice, just doing our jobs. Lucky we made you warden or you'd be late for work.

And I admire you for your good sense, said Clough, who managed to walk without any influence over his knees, and was halfway down the block before he realized they were carrying him under his arms to the jail.

Let's make one more stop before we take Clough home, said Constable Miller.

So they wandered down Pender Street swinging batons with their free hands all the way through Chinatown. Clough stumbled along between them. Besides him and the po-lice, the only people awake were vagrants and coolies and worse. Clough shook his head, cast an eye to and fro through the pale muddy streets under a pale muddy sky. Ten feet behind them Clough's skinny dog rubbed his muzzle along the sidewalk, following.